Chapter Nineteen – Walking in Dreams…

 

The firefly pixies surrounded me, a chattering tornado of greenish light and iridescent magic. They all jabbered and clucked to me like indulgent mothers who hadn’t seen their babies for weeks. It was a whirlwind of enchantment. Immediately, their presence made me feel more lighthearted than I would have without them. Their company had an effect of drinking a Red Bull combined with Mountain Dew before a dreaded test in school. I almost felt as though I could jump to the moon in a single bound.

“Hi, girls,” I said, remembering that Zach was waiting outside for me on the other side of the building. I guessed I couldn’t avoid him forever. Unenthusiastically, I started to head around the building but they flew in to block me. Taken aback, I stopped. This was something new from them.

With a whoop of panache, the pixies opened another path for me, one that led directly into the forest. I took a look around me, hoping that no one was watching and found that we were alone. The office building butted up against the thickest part of the redwoods. I remembered the rule. No one goes into the forest alone. Technically, I wasn’t alone. I had a lot of tiny girls with me and they could sense danger. Reluctantly, I said, “Okay, girls, let’s go.”

It didn’t mean that I was being cavalier with my safety. The burned man was near Crescent City and it would take him hours to get to the Redwoods, provided he knew where to stop and look. But that wasn’t the only danger in the forest. There were other night creatures out there. Bears and mountain lions were two of the before creatures that still roamed. There were also the new animals, not all of which we’d seen and none of which we could say were not a threat to the humans that were left. Apparently, a Big Mama wouldn’t eat us but that didn’t mean it might not inadvertently step on us. And I wasn’t forgetting the raking claw marks that would forever mar my back.

But I had pixie power. (Didn’t that sound like Japanese Anime?) I went into the darkness with only the green light of the pixies to guide me. I had only a flannel shirt and jeans on to protect my flesh. My feet were in their typical Sketchers. I should have been cold but I wasn’t.

They lit the way for me and after a while my eyes adjusted to the dimness. I could see the black shapes of the tall redwoods against the starry skies. I could hear the movement of the wind above us. Occasionally there was the odd animal call, the hoot of a hunting owl. There was the crunching of the heavy debris underfoot and I saw a black-tailed deer scoot away as it became aware of the pixies and me. I knew about other animals I had seen infrequently. Raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, bobcats, and elk were all occupants of the forest. How the change would impact their population was open for debate.

I could feel the upward angle to the course the pixies were leading me on. We crested a bluff after a bit and I was only a little out of breath. The route was slower. I had to pick my way through the forest on a path that really wasn’t a path. Wherever the pixies were taking me wasn’t on the camper’s well-established routes. No youngsters had trodden this way. The direction went down next and soon I heard the trickle of a stream running over rocks nearby. It didn’t tell me anything important. There were many streams and rivers in the redwoods. It was very nearly a tropical forest and the amount of rainfall varied from 40 to 60 inches a year.

They led me down to the side of the creek and I picked my way along the rocks there. I was surprised that the pixies were so tolerant with me. They didn’t sound impatient or volatile, but undemanding and careful.

After what seemed like hours they allowed me to stop. I couldn’t see very well, even with the stars. I couldn’t tell what time it was and I was slightly disoriented. However, I wasn’t frightened. The pixies had never caused me harm before and I didn’t think they would mean to now.

I caught my breath as they twirled around me. Some of them skimmed the water like superior little hunters. I thought they might be eating insects. My face twisted a bit at the thought. Maybe it tasted like chicken to them. They probably thought some of the stuff I ate was pretty gross, too.

Then the moon came out from behind a cloud somewhere between half and a quarter full. I remembered asking Zach if the moon was still around or maybe it had been if the moon was gone. But there it was as it must have always been and I was startled by the amount of relief I felt. Furthermore, it wasn’t green or purple or pink. Had the change impacted the moon? Was the flag still flying there next to Neil Armstrong’s footprint? Or was there a new resident on the moon that was making the large planetoid its own?

With an odd smile on my face I looked to earth and nearly gasped. There in front of me was a moonlit pool of inordinate beauty. It was a gothic painting from a famous museum. It was a stunning setting that had few matches in its splendor. Black water spilled over a low cliff surrounded by dripping ferns. It trickled over a moss strewn rock, splitting into twin waterfalls and landed into a round pool that seemed as deep as the night. The wind had stopped blowing and the air was alight with firefly pixies. I looked closer. Small glowing things swam under the waters and I inched near.

Everything was slick and slippery. I parked myself carefully on a large rock and looked down. The pixies flittered past me, lost in their own joy of being reunited with their kinfolk. When I looked closer it seemed as though the ones in the water were the marine equivalents of the ones in the air. Instead of wings they had a little tail, and they moved through the water at lightning speed. Their tiny bodies glowed the same green as the pixies and slowly it dawned on me that they must be related.

I allowed my fingers to trail in the water and immediately a dozen of the little creatures surrounded my digits. They caressed my flesh, causing flashes of warmth in the chilled waters. The pixies swooped around me; the noises that they made were cheerful and relaxed.

Sighing with pleasure I allowed them to touch my hand as they would, holding my limb motionless. Was this the place that the firefly pixies lived then? Were the marine ones one phase of the pixies and the airborne ones another? Or was it more complex? Were the ones in the water the males and the ones in the air the females? I wished I could ask them.

More suggested itself to me. If this was their home as it seemed to be, then had the pixies found their way up the coast to me? Had they been searching for something? Was the something, me? And why were they showing this place to me?

I touched my cheek with my free hand and several of the airborne pixies twittered with glee. For a single moment I felt good. As in the moment I had had weeks before it was a solitary second full of non-sadness and lack of confusion over what decisions needed to be made. I wasn’t thinking about the burned man. I wasn’t thinking about anything but the warmth of nonjudgmental companionship and the delight of a curious new world. It felt absolutely wonderful.

But like all moments it had to end. This time I didn’t feel the overwhelming guilt of having had such an instant. Certainly, I was sad at what I had lost and what had been lost to all of the survivors. But my parents wouldn’t have wanted me to die with them, if that was what had happened to them. They would have wanted me to live and to enjoy my life to the best of my abilities.

A pixie landed on my outstretched arm and my eyes went to her small form. She pointed up the rock hills where the waterfall was sluicing over the mossy rocks. Carefully, I extracted my hand from the water and clambered upward. The pixie flew up and hovered in front of me, leading me.

I watched my footing and suddenly I was over the rocks, looking into a thick swatch of ferns. The pixie flew underneath the overgrowth and vanished. A moment later she reappeared and beckoned to me. Slowly, methodically, I lifted the thick vegetation away from the rocks and discovered a cave opening. It looked like an old lava tube. Oregon and California were full of such outcroppings, remnants from volcanic eruptions of eons past. Some were miles long. Most were small like this one.

Examining the opening skeptically, I shook my head at the persistent pixie. “I don’t think I’ll fit in there,” I said gently.

I ducked my head so I could see further inside. There was a green glow from the interior. Immediately the cave entrance widened into a bigger area where the pixies were apparently active. I couldn’t tell but it looked as though it was four feet high and twice as long. There was a wealth of goings-on inside. What seemed like hundreds of pixies were glowing and flying and doing whatever it was that they did. Since so few came out the entrance I was looking into, I assumed that they had other exits they used more frequently.

The pixie warbled at me insistently. Several others gathered with her and continued the general message. They wanted me inside.

“Okay,” I said, doubtfully. “But if I get stuck, you all are in big trouble.”

My head went in first and then my shoulders followed. They rasped over the rough lava at each side. My knees slid over the vegetation and I nearly slipped forward in an uncontrolled movement. However, I stopped tight. For a moment I felt like a cork in a wine bottle. What I really needed was someone to give my tushie a push and the pixies weren’t up to the job. I grunted and the pixies in front of me muttered encouragingly. Abruptly my shoulders felt stuck. I wiggled one way, feeling the flesh being scraped, and then I wiggled the other way, grimacing at the sting of the rocks even over cloth covered flesh.

“I hate to say I told you so,” I murmured disdainfully. “But I told you so.”

One pixie flew forward to pull on my hair. She was joined by another one on the other side of my face. They pulled in tandem. I very nearly laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation. Two tiny Lilliputians were trying to pull Gulliver forward by two strands of hair.

I braced one foot on an outcropping of lava and shoved. My shoulders rubbed even more and then abruptly popped through. The pixies flew backward and nearly brained themselves on the cave’s walls. They immediately flew back and scolded me. “Sorry,” I said, insincerely.

Lying there I looked over the interior of the cave. I had just enough room to crawl on my knees with my head only slightly bent. On the opposite was a crevice that split the wall in half. The middle part dipped backward providing a ledge. Upon the ledge there were dozens of little houses, rounded buildings with tiny openings on the sides. Dimly they glowed as green as the firefly pixies.

“Did you make those?” I asked then called myself stupid. Tiny pixies were flying in and out of the little dwellings. Their intense activity reminded me of a bee’s hive. Everyone had a job. Everyone had a purpose.

The closest pixies beckoned me forward again. They got me into a position close to the wall with the small houses and dozens of them came out to watch me. I laid half on my side and propped my head on my bent arm so I could rest comfortably.

The room had a dampness that was like many caves I had been inside. But it also seemed warmer. Whatever the pixies were up to, they were generating a certain amount of heat. It was nice. Suddenly, I was tired. I had climbed up the Bluff Trail with Zach and I had gone who knew how far through the forest with the pixies. While in better shape than I had been, I was not fully recovered.

Dozens of pixies watched me. More and more came. Sleepily I noticed there were pools of water near the end of their little city. Some of the pools glowed as green as anything else. I was too lethargic to investigate. I hoped the pixies wouldn’t take offense if I went to sleep, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Off to dream land I went, and it was a long, long, long time before I came back.

Seriously.

♦

When I woke up, wait, that wasn’t correct. I didn’t wake up. I came to. I came to what? I became aware again. I opened my eyes but they weren’t really my eyes and I don’t think they were really open. And the world was an explosion of colors, a stunning exhibition of luminosity on the senses. Every color of the rainbow was present. Every secondary color was about. There were a few colors I had never seen before. It was a meadow, but it wasn’t a meadow. I was sitting in grass that wasn’t grass. I was awake but I wasn’t awake.

Call me Madame Mystified.

For one thing the sky was purple. Not a lovely violet that I would have imagined in a cogent dream, but a vivid, pulsating purple that bounced and danced. I mean, it was PURPLE! The trees beyond the meadows seemed like normal redwood trees except they were orange and yellow and blue. (The trees were ORANGE! YELLOW! And BLUE!) The grass upon which I was sitting was red, viciously scarlet red that seemed as though it would cut through the flesh. (RED! That’s the best way to get the idea across.)

And should I mention that my legs were green?

Oh, yes, indeedy, I had long legs that didn’t look very human anymore. The color was an iridescent green, the shade of a pale green leaf. Long and thin, without toes. My feet were solid, nearly clubbed in form. My arms were similar. No fingers. But I did have little sticky pads on what would have been my palms.

“Cool,” I said, but it came out high pitched and singsong.

As I sat up, I became aware of something fluttering at my back. I looked over a pale green shoulder and saw a vibrating, shimmering outline of an object. I twisted around to see it, but it twisted with me. I turned again, trying to figure out what was moving with me and moving independently at the same time.

Then it dawned on me. I had wings. I looked down and saw that I was glowing. I was a firefly pixie. “Well, that doesn’t happen every day,” I stated obviously. And the really weird part was that it didn’t feel weird. It felt perfectly normal.

“Certainly not,” said another singsong voice. I turned to see a pixie landing beside me. Captivated by her finely wrought features I stared and continued to stare.

She was the same pale green of my limbs, the color of a peridot glistening in the sunlight. Standing near me, her arms akimbo, her wings fluttering gently behind her, she watched me with a curious deportment. Her eyes dominated her face, the shape of almonds but much larger in proportion to a human’s eyes and face. The color of the eyes was like the iridescence of the wings, but the colors mixed, blended, and went on forever. There was a tiny nose with little holes and a large, welcoming mouth that curved in a smile.

It wasn’t an expression the pixie was used to making and I thought that perhaps she was attempting to smile for my benefit.

“Will the standing-on-two-legs-singing-unhappy-girl not speak to one-who-flies-fastest-in-spring-showers?” she sang to me at last, probably because I hadn’t said anything else.

“I’m…I’m…what did you call me?” I asked and then finished for myself. “Standing-on-two-legs-singing-unhappy-girl?”

“It’s what we call Standing-On-Two-Legs-Singing-Unhappy-Girl,” the pixie replied.

“And you’re One-Who-Flies-Fastest-In-Spring-Showers?” I asked politely.

The pixie nodded.

“Do you mind if I just call you, oh, Spring, for short?” I waited for her to nod. Then I added, “And my name is Sophie.”

“Soo-phee,” the pixie repeated. “Of course, we know your human name.”

I took another look around and then asked, “Am I really a pixie now?”

The pixie giggled like a little girl. “Of course not, Standing-uh, Soophee is still very large, wingless, and lumbers like the giant sisters of the islands.” She demurely covered her mouth with her hand. “But more elegantly, certainly.” The last part sounded like a social lie.

“So what the heck is going on?”

“You’re walking in our dream world,” Spring answered as if I was insane. “There are important issues we needed to communicate with you.”

I would have smiled but it seemed like an alien thing to do.

“Fly with us, Soophee,” she invited. “Come see your sisters. See our world as we see it. Understand us better.”

“I can fly?”

“Most definitely,” Spring said with another amused snigger. “How horrible it must be for one to be wingless, but here Soophee is one of us.”

So I flew. It took a little concentration but the wings were the ones that did all the work. And what do you know, I didn’t fall once.