The stained aluminum screen door was cold in Dora Huntleigh’s hand as she waited in the cool summer night. She stood still for a long time, listening. She heard the hum of the light over the door, the soft rush of traffic on 82nd Avenue, the distant barking of a dog. But no frogs.
Dora worried about her frogs. She enjoyed their soothing, rhythmic bredeep-bredeep-bredeep—it reminded Dora of the peaceful suburban nights at the old apartment. When she listened to the frogs she forgot the peeling paint here, the noisy neighbors, the Burgerville grease that clogged her pores. Sometimes she could even forget about Mom, wasting away in a bright sterile room on Pill Hill.
It used to be that the frogs’ chirping chorus would pause for only a few moments as she walked across the parking lot past the drainage ditch where they lived. It was as though there were some invisible line at the third parking place, where the woman from 3A always parked her rusty green pickup, and once Dora had crossed that line it was safe for the frogs to resume their song.
But two weeks ago, Dora had noticed that the frogs didn’t start up again until she was well past the blue Toyota next to the pickup. Last week they had remained silent almost until she reached her own front door. And tonight...
Just then a single voice called out bredeep, then repeated itself. Soon it was joined by another, and another. But they wove a thin fabric of sound, a patchy thing that felt as though the lightest movement would tear it in half.
They’re frightened of something, Dora thought, then rolled her eyes at herself. She pulled the screen door open, the harsh rasp of its hinges startling the frogs into silence again, and rattled her key into the lock.
The phone machine’s red light blinked at her from the little table beside the door. Her chest tightened at the sight—any phone call could be bad news—but it was only Jenifer, from her old school. “Hey Dora, it’s Jen. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Give me a call, OK?”
Dora paused with her finger on the button. Jen had been her best friend, and it would be nice to see her again. But it would take an hour and a half on the bus, and then, inevitably, she would have to face The Question: “How’s your Mom?”
“Message, has been, erased,” said the machine’s crisp Japanese-accented voice.
Dora took a shower and scrubbed her face hard, trying to remove every tiny particle of Burgerville from her pores. Then she wrapped herself in her favorite fuzzy bathrobe and opened the freezer, where a Marie Callender’s Apple Cobbler waited among the Healthy Choice frozen dinners. “Thanks, Dad,” she said aloud, then pulled the cobbler from its box and popped it in the microwave, ignoring the Healthy Choices.
While the cobbler heated, she sorted the mail that lay piled just inside the front door. That was one of her jobs. Bills went in the folder on the kitchen table. Junk mail went straight into the recycling bin. Letters, or anything that might be important, went on Dad’s chair where he’d see it when he got home from his four-to-midnight shift at the phone company.
Here was a fat envelope from the hospital. Dora flexed it; was it something important, like test results, or just another bill? She finally put it on the chair unopened—she had already learned more than she wanted to know about alkylating agents, and glucocorticoids, and all the other painful and expensive things they were doing to Mom in the hospital.
The microwave’s single clear note, so unlike the calming rhythm of the frogs, jerked Dora from her thoughts. She ate the whole cobbler, washing it down with Diet Pepsi and an ancient re-run of The Cosby Show. She would rather have watched The Sopranos, but that was on HBO and they didn’t have cable here.
Leukemia was a bitch.
Soon the cobbler and the Cosby Show were both finished. It was ten o’clock and she was supposed to go straight to bed, but she turned around on the couch and stared out the window instead.
She saw her own reflection—a sixteen-year-old girl with freckles, straggly dark brown hair that refused to behave, and a nose that was too long and had a stupid little bulb at the tip—and the reflection of the TV, and blackness. Dora listened hard, but if her frogs were singing they couldn’t be heard over the TV.
She got up and turned off the TV and the lights, then returned to her post, resting her chin on the back of the couch. It smelled dusty. With the lights off she could see the parking lot—cracked asphalt covered with yellow lines and rusty, outdated cars—and the line of reeds and cattails marking the edge of the drainage ditch. Beyond that, silence and darkness.
No—not quite darkness.
A light was moving among the cattails. A very faint greenish-blue light. Could it be a firefly? She had never seen one before; she didn’t think there were any in Oregon—or not any more. She had read that they were dying out because of insecticides and global warming. Like the frogs.
Anyway, the light didn’t move like an insect. It traveled in a straight line, three or four feet at a time, then stopped dead for a moment before moving off in a different direction. Up, left, right, left, down. And it didn’t blink on and off—it flickered, like the light of a TV seen from very far away.
Sitting backwards in the dark, watching that strange faint quivering greenish light moving outside the window, Dora suddenly got a chill that started at the back of her neck and ran all the way down to her tailbone. There was something about that light, about its pale luminescence and deliberate motion, that made her feel very small and defenseless. She felt watched.
Dora closed her eyes and shook her head. She was just spooking herself.
But she drew all the curtains and made sure the door was locked before she went to bed. And then she pulled the covers up over her head like she used to do when she was little.
Just before falling asleep she realized she had forgotten to brush her teeth. But even the knowledge that Dad would be disappointed in her wasn’t enough to get her out from under the covers.
-o0o-
Dora hated the paper mask she had to wear when she visited Mom. The little metal strip over her nose always pinched somewhere no matter how she adjusted it, and the mask filled up with her breath and smelled like tears, even when she wasn’t crying.
Mom didn’t look too good today. Her eyes were rimmed with red and black, and they didn’t seem to quite focus on Dora when she came in. A few remaining wisps of hair poked out from under her Cubs cap. Why did she want to identify with a team that always lost—especially now? “Hey, sport,” she said. “How’s my Theodora?” She reached out a hand.
“I’m OK, I guess,” she said. “I’m worried about the frogs.”
“C’mere, you. Don’t be such a stranger.”
Dora took a step toward the bed, but stayed out of reach. Mom looked so fragile, with all the tubes and wires attached to her, and between the disease and the treatment she had almost no immune system. Early in her illness she had caught a cold that Dora brought home from school, and it had nearly killed her. “They’re getting so quiet, Mom. It’s like they’re afraid of something.”
“It could just be the weather changing,” Dad said, his voice muffled by the mask. “They don’t sing when it’s too warm.”
“Already?” said Mom, and sat up a little. “Where did the spring go?” Dad and Dora shared a quick glance over their masks. Mom had been in the hospital since February. It seemed like a year ago. A lifetime. “I wish I... uh... oh God...” Mom groped for the kidney-shaped plastic dish on the table by the bed, barely getting it into her lap in time to throw up into it. Dora smelled the vomit, even through her mask, even through the smell of tears.
She left the room and sat on the hard plastic chair in the hall outside, knees drawn up under her chin and arms wrapped tight around her legs. She couldn’t stand to see Mom throwing up. Through the door she heard the retching, and Dad’s voice murmuring reassurances. Dora shivered, though it wasn’t particularly cold in the hall.
“You OK? Can I get you something?” It was Nina, one of the nurses. She was Vietnamese and even shorter than Dora, who was small for her age. “How about some cranberry juice?”
“Uh... sure.”
The nurse came back with a clear plastic cup. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
Nina stroked Dora’s shoulder while she sipped the juice. “Your mother’s a fighter, Dora. She’ll come through. She’s motivated.”
“You really think so?”
“She wants to see you grow up.”
“Is that enough to make a difference?” The last word came out half-choked with tears, and Dora was ashamed. She needed to be strong.
“It really is. But she needs to know you’re there for her.”
Dora finished the juice and handed the empty cup back to Nina. “Thanks. For everything.”
But she didn’t go back into the room.
Eventually Dad came out and said “She’s sleeping now. Let’s go home.”
-o0o-
In the afternoon Dora visited the drainage ditch with her ecology notebook. So far she had seen water bugs, minnows, dragonfly nymphs, snails, and of course tadpoles and frogs. She had tested the water for some common pollutants. But she still hadn’t figured out what was making the frogs so quiet and nervous. She’d done research at the library and had learned that amphibians were dying out all over the world, but nobody knew why for sure, and that wouldn’t explain what had changed just in the last few weeks.
She pushed through the reeds at the edge of the parking lot and squidged down into the marshy area by the water. It smelled warm and moist and earthy here—a little icky, but natural and real, not like the sterile artificial smell of the hospital.
There was something strange at the edge of the water—a slippery translucent thing, like a used condom but much smaller. She poked at it with a stick, spread it out so she could see what it was.
It was the skin of a frog, about two inches long. Complete with eyes, toes, and mouth. The frog’s stripes and spots were barely visible on the thin translucent surface.
Dora knew that frogs shed their skin, though she’d never seen one do it. But she also knew that they usually ate the skin after shedding it. And this skin didn’t seem to have an opening where the frog had taken it off. It was more like something had removed the frog and left the skin behind.
Dora got a nervous feeling and turned quickly around. But there was nothing behind her.
-o0o-
After work that night, Dora went back to the ditch. She brought her flashlight, but she didn’t turn it on—instead she waited at the edge of the parking lot until her eyes adjusted to the dark. Whatever was happening to her frogs, and whatever was the source of that strange greenish glow, it was a thing of the darkness, and if she blundered around with a flashlight she’d never see it.
Moving slowly, as silently as she could, she crept through the rustling reeds and squatted down at the water’s edge. The frogs shut up as soon as she came near, but after a long time they started in peeping again.
A three-quarter moon illuminated the scene with a cold fluorescent light. Dora’s knees started to hurt and the wet ground chilled her feet and her butt. But she remained still. Waiting. Watching.
A plip sound in the water to her left gave her a start, but it was just a frog jumping. She settled down and waited for her heart to stop pounding.
Then the frogs shut up again, though she hadn’t moved, and she thought she saw something off to her right. Slowly she turned her head. There was a pale, flickering, greenish glow, right at the water’s edge maybe three feet away. And at the center of it was something that made her heart contract into a hard cold lump.
It was a tiny human figure, maybe five inches high. Its arms and legs were long and thin, and it had translucent wings like a dragonfly’s. It crouched at the edge of the water, slowly raising one arm—getting ready to pounce on a frog, which floated stupidly just a few inches away from it.
Dora flicked on her flashlight to get a better look at the thing.
She wished she hadn’t.
Whatever it was, though it was shaped like a human being it had nothing else in common with Dora. Instead of skin or fur it was covered with something hard, glistening, and iridescent—black with purple-green highlights. Its limbs were skeletally thin, with harsh mechanical joints like an insect’s; its hands were as disturbingly inhuman as a mouse’s clawed feet. The raised hand held a three-inch spear, thin as a needle, with a wicked-looking barb on the end. On its head it wore a leaf, twisted into a cone.
But what really made the breath catch in Dora’s throat was its face—huge black eyes and a wide mouth bristling with curved, ragged teeth like fingernail trimmings.
The creature opened its mouth and screeched—a thin sound like two pieces of broken glass scraping together—then it flew into the air. The water riffled in the wind from its wings, which made a rattling hum like a big beetle. Dora kept the flashlight beam on it. It screeched again and flung the spear at her with vicious force.
Dora raised her left hand to ward off the tiny spear. It plunged into her palm with a terrible sharp sting, and stuck out the other side. Dora cried out in pain, but she didn’t take the light off the thing.
And there in the light of the moon and the flashlight, in plain sight, it vanished like a candle flame guttering out. One moment it was there, then it flickered and faded and then it wasn’t.
Dora darted the flashlight around, trying to tell herself that it had just moved out of the beam. But it wasn’t anywhere. It had disappeared. She had seen it go.
She realized she was holding her breath. She let it out with a shuddering rush.
All was silent.
-o0o-
Dora’s mouth was dry and she fought to control her breathing. In the warmth and light of her own bathroom it was possible to imagine that she had not just seen a tiny human figure fly and vanish. This spear thrust through her bleeding hand was just a thorn, she had stuck herself by accident, and she would break off the barb and pull it out and put a Band-Aid on it and then it would all be better.
But when she snapped the spear in half it melted away like a tiny flake of ice. She whimpered as she felt it evaporate from her injured hand.
Trembling, she washed her hands thoroughly with soap and water, put antibiotic ointment on the wound—it smelled like the hospital—and stuck a Band-Aid on each side of her hand.
Then she turned on every light in the house, and the TV, and the radio. And she closed all the curtains and huddled, shivering, in her bed.
-o0o-
She shrieked when she felt a touch, but it was only Dad. Somehow she had fallen asleep. The clock said 12:53.
“Hey, tiger. What’s with the lights?”
Dora opened her mouth, then closed it again. Swallowed. “I... I had a bad dream. A really bad dream.”
Dad sat on the edge of the bed. “Must have been. You OK now?”
She wanted to hug him. “Yeah. Now that you’re back.”
“I’m back.” He looked like he wanted to hug her too. “Want to talk about it?”
“Huh?”
“The dream. Was it about Mom?”
“Uh... no. No. It was... it was bad.” A twinge ran through her.
“Hey, what happened to your hand?”
“I, uh, stuck myself making dinner. Don’t worry, I cleaned it off and I put on antibiotics.”
“That’s Daddy’s girl.” He yawned broadly. “’Scuse me. Sleepytime for Daddy.” She hated it when he talked like that, like she was just a little kid, but at the same time it was kind of comforting. “You gonna be OK?”
“I’ll be OK.”
But she didn’t get back to sleep until after three.
-o0o-
“May I help you?” The librarian had a salt-and-pepper beard and a button that said PERFORM A SUBVERSIVE ACT: READ.
“Um, I’m looking for some information on... um, fairies?” Suddenly she felt extremely stupid, but she pressed on. “I mean, you know, little people with wings. Only not Disney.”
“Fairy tales?”
“No. Non-fiction.”
“Hm.” The librarian tapped at his computer. “Let’s see what we can do for you...”
Dora left the library with a stack of eighteen books about folk tales, mythology, and Victorian England. There was much more to this whole fairy thing than she’d ever dreamed. She wasn’t the first to see one. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, had even photographed them!
But once she got on the bus and began to read, she began to doubt herself again. Arthur Conan Doyle had been duped. The books on folk tales and myths were all about psychology or literature—none of them seemed to consider the idea that fairies might actually, literally, exist. The Victorian fairies were cute, frilly, Disney things, not at all like the frightening being she had met. And the one book of “Faery Magick” that seemed to take fairies seriously was full of meaningless woo-woo about “earth spirits” and “focused energy.”
She thought about taking a different tack—going back to the library tomorrow, researching insects and other small creatures. She knew that love-starved sailors had once thought that manatees—those huge cow-eyed sea mammals—were mermaids. Maybe what she had seen was really nothing more than a big bug. But the thought of asking the bearded librarian for more help was daunting, and she couldn’t really convince herself that any bug could have done what the creature—the fairy—had done.
The one thing she read that resonated with the experience she’d had was that the term fairy, or fair folk, was a euphemism—like when Mom called the President “our glorious leader.” It was a way of talking about them without revealing just how much you hated and feared them.
The really scary thing about that statement was what it implied: that you never knew when they might be listening. They could be anywhere. Even on a noisy smelly bus full of chattering adolescents. And like some invisible carcinogen, they might bide their time for years before deciding to strike.
Unconsciously, Dora clutched her backpack hard to her chest.
-o0o-
For the rest of that day Dora tried to forget all about the fairy, or whatever it was. She sorted the mail; she washed dishes; she even vacuumed, for the first time in months, and found the missing half of her favorite pair of green socks under the couch. But when the sun went down she made sure the door was locked and kept the lights on and the curtains shut tight.
She went to bed at ten. But at 10:57 she was still awake. Finally she could bear it no more. She kneeled on her pillow and peeked through the curtains over her headboard, peering across the parking lot.
At first she saw nothing unusual, but then as she sighed and started to let the curtain fall she thought she saw movement. Clutching the curtain, its rough weave harsh against her cheek, she blinked hard, then looked again.
Faint, bluish-greenish lights. Not just one. Dozens.
They were moving toward her.
“Oh shit,” she whispered, and pushed the curtains closed.
She clutched herself into a little ball with her back against the headboard of her bed as the sounds started. Faint but undeniable, tiny scratching scrabbling sounds that she felt as much as heard through the wall behind her back.
It’s mice, she told herself over and over. Mice mice mice.
But she knew it wasn’t mice. She knew it was malevolent little inhuman claw-hands, and faces with huge black emotionless eyes and mouths full of teeth.
Finally she had to do something. She jumped from her bed, turned on the bedside lamp and the radio and the overhead light and the desk lamp. Twisted the desk lamp to shine its seventy-five watts out the window. Flung open the curtains.
There was nothing there. Nothing but the reflection of a terrified sixteen-year old girl.
But in the morning she found hundreds of tiny scratches on the aluminum window frame. Right next to the latch.
-o0o-
Mom didn’t look too good herself, but Dora didn’t mention that. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Bad dreams.” She had sprayed bug repellent all around the window, and that seemed to slow them down some, but they still came every night.
“I’m sorry.” Mom reached out a hand. The hospital bracelet was loose on her thin wrist, and catheters were held in place with hospital tape that pulled at her pale skin. “C’mere, honey. Let me give you a hug.”
Dora took the hand, but she knew that any contact or pressure hurt terribly, aggravated the pain of the cancer that scraped at the insides of her bones and veins and arteries. She didn’t squeeze the hand, didn’t move any closer. “I’ll be OK, Mom. Don’t worry about me. You need your strength.”
“I do worry about you, you know. I can’t help it. It’s part of my job.” Mom tugged at Dora’s hand, urging her closer, but Dora stood her ground. She didn’t want to give her any pain, didn’t want to risk infecting her again with some simple little virus that could kill her. A glance passed between them—a brief complex moment of defiance and concern from Dora, of release and resignation from her mother—and the tugging stopped.
“I’ll be OK,” Dora repeated, though she wasn’t at all certain of that.
Mom gripped her hand tightly. “If there’s anything I can do, you just ask.”
-o0o-
Dora was sorting the mail again. Junk mail. Bill. Letter from Aunt Jacquie. Junk mail. Bill. Junk mail. What’s this?
It was junk mail, no doubt, with a bulk rate stamp and addressed TO OUR FRIENDS AT Dora’s address, but the colorful envelope caught her eye. It bore a cartoon of a grinning ladybug and the words DEVOURS UP TO 60 APHIDS A MINUTE! ONLY $24.95 PER PINT! FREE DELIVERY!
Dora smiled at the cartoon, and at the thought of buying bugs by the pint. She briefly imagined ordering a pint of them, setting them free in her drainage ditch. The cheery red-and-black insects would swirl around her like the little plastic flakes in a snow-globe, beneficial predators to eat aphids and other harmful pests.
Not that aphids were her problem.
But...
She set down the rest of the mail and sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the envelope in her hand.
What if...?
-o0o-
She attacked the library books again, with a new agenda. Reading between the lines. Searching for the deeper truths beneath the myths, the legends, the Disney versions. Looking for the manatees behind the mermaids.
There were many kinds of fae creatures, she learned, with different names in different cultures. Fairies. Pixies. Goblins. Leprechauns. Each had its habits and habitats, its preferences and weaknesses.
Its predators and prey?
The information was sketchy, contradictory, unreliable. But there were certain themes that cropped up over and over. Goblins were malicious. Pixies were self-centered and fickle. Fairies could be helpful or hurtful, and appeared at times of transition: birth, puberty, marriage...
And death.
No!
But there was another type of fae, called a hob—a guardian earth spirit, protector of the home, drawn to generous and caring people, and fond of a saucer of milk.
If she just put out a saucer of milk, the only thing she would attract was the neighbors’ cat. There had to be something more directed, more concrete.
Most of the spells in the book of Faery Magick were inapplicable, or vague, or unreasonable—where was she supposed to get garnets, or a dram of dragon’s blood? But here and there she found a paragraph or a sentence that made sense, a rhyme that resonated with something inside her, a list of ingredients that she could obtain. From these she cobbled together a ritual that felt right.
She couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t much to go on. But she had to do something.
-o0o-
Dora stood barefoot at the edge of the drainage ditch, wearing only a clean cotton nightshirt and carrying a shoebox. The cold mud squidged between her toes, and the light of the full moon rippled on the water.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever done, she thought.
She set down the shoebox on a rock, and from it she drew three shot glasses. She’d found them way at the back of a cabinet and she hoped they wouldn’t be missed. Squatting down, she placed them in an equilateral triangle at the water’s edge, pressing each one into the mud so it wouldn’t tip over. Then she brought a Tupperware container from the box, containing a few cups of milk with several tablespoons of honey mixed in. As she poured an equal quantity into each shot glass, she hoped that 2% milk would be good enough. Finally she poured a line of salt around the three glasses, forming a triangle, careful that it be continuous and connected.
She folded the little metal spout back into the canister of salt and put it back in the box. She stood, facing the moon, and drew in a breath. Then she let it out again.
This is ridiculous, she thought. I can’t do this.
But she took another breath, licked her lips, and read from a square yellow Post-It:
“Guardian spirit,
Gentle one,
To my aid
I bid thee come.
Share your wisdom
And your power,
Seek the evil
And devour.
By the Moon’s
Magick light,
Come to me
This long sweet night.”
Her voice quavered a little, especially on the part about the Moon’s Magick light, and she hoped fervently that none of her neighbors could hear or see her, but she got all the way through without stumbling over any words.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
Finally she blew out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Well, that was stupid, she thought; I should get inside before I catch my death of cold. She bent and picked up the box.
She was about to gather up the shot glasses as well. The book said they should be left out overnight, but at this point it just felt like compounding her own foolishness. At the last moment, though, she decided to leave them. What harm could it do?
And then, as she was walking away, the asphalt rough under her dirty bare feet... the frogs began to sing. It was a thin chorus, to be sure, but still stronger than she’d heard in a week or more.
Dora washed her feet, put away the Tupperware container and the salt, and crawled into bed.
She fell quickly asleep, and slept undisturbed all night.
-o0o-
One of the boxes at Mom’s bedside was beeping when Dora and Dad arrived, a high harsh tone, and Nina was fiddling with her catheters. Finally she did something that made the box shut up. “Thank you,” Mom mouthed, but no sound came out. Nina smiled and touched Mom lightly on the shoulder as she left the room.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi.” She had to try a couple of times, and even then it was little more than a croak. “Sorry. I had a rough night.” Dad took her hand.
Dora sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what to say. Finally she asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just be here with me.”
The three of them sat together, watching clouds scud by over the city outside the window and talking about nothing in particular, until suddenly Mom lurched upright, reaching past Dora for the dish on her bedside table.
I coped with fairies, I can cope with this.
Dora grabbed the dish and gave it to her mother, then held her shaking shoulders while she vomited. Dora was shaking too, but she thought over and over: Guardian spirit, gentle one, to my aid, I bid thee come. It helped, a little.
Eventually, the episode passed. Dad took the dish away, and Dora brushed the wispy hair from her mother’s cold and sweaty face. Her eyes stung with tears, but she sniffed them back.
“Thank you,” Mom said after a while. “Thank you for being here.”
“It’s part of my job.”
-o0o-
After that there were good days and bad days, surgeries and therapies, a new school year to prepare for, dishes that still had to be washed... Somehow, life went on. But the frogs’ song grew stronger and stronger. And once, just once, as she was setting down a paper cup of milk at the edge of the water on a moonlight night, Dora saw something. It was toadlike, a brown and hairy thing the size of a football, with large black eyes and a broad mouth. It smiled at Dora and slipped silently into the water.
She remembered what she had read about hobs, and so she did not thank it.