Blue Light (23 page)

But now there was a different light, the blue light. It was, I believed, my job to conserve that light and to help my people feel its brilliance.

While Reggie snored and Wanita and Alacrity giggled in the tent next to ours, I found a direction for my life. I had been following the path for some years, since Ordé saved me from suicide, but now I was aware. Now it became my choice. I could feel it in my heart and lungs and liver. I knew that my duty was more powerful even than the visions I was allowed to see. Even the thought of Gray Man could not deter me. I would give everything to make my blood count for something beyond rutting and the piling of bones.

In the morning nothing seemed the same. I was lying next to a full-grown man who had been a child two days before. But as much as Reggie had changed, I had changed more.

The girls made breakfast for the camp with Addy’s help. I ate the baked beans and canned black bread with no taste or hunger. I ate because I needed strength.

The numbness that followed my convictions left my mind unencumbered. Freed as I was, I could remember what we saw without being overwhelmed by the trappings of fear or awe.

The first five or so miles through the woods that morning were not very different. The road had been torn up and blocked by trees, and we hoped that this was why Reggie had deemed the place safe. I couldn’t see how, but maybe the inaccessibility made it partially secure from Gray Man.

By afternoon, however, the changes became more spectacular.

“Look at those leaves up there,” Addy said, pointing to the roof of pine forest. We were in a large clearing. “They’re like a rainbow.”

And big. Some of the blue and yellow and orange leaves were as large as serving platters. They seemed to be blowing in the wind, some floating on currents of air and others falling lazily to earth.

“Them’s butterflies,” Wanita said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, God.” That was me.

The cavernous roof of leaves above us must have held hundreds of thousands of them. Many had wingspans of nearly two feet, some even larger. We were all stunned into silence by the beauty. In that hush we heard the soft fluttering of their wings. The sound was like the thrumming of a fast-pumping vein. It was exciting and a little bit scary.

A giant orange-and-black monarch with iridescent blue eyes etched in its tail sailed down, landing on Reggie’s shoulders and back. Its wingspan was almost a yard. The impossible insect unfurled its tubular tongue, gently lashing the young man’s small Afro.

“It tickles,” he said.

Alacrity giggled, and Addy and I smiled.

“We better run,” Wanita said.

Just then the butterflies overhead formed into a great multicolored blanket that began to descend.

“Let’s go!” I shouted.

Reggie took off, leading us down a corridor through the trees.

The thrumming of butterflies became so loud that it was almost a rattle. They were very fast, coming quickly and intently through the leaves and branches.

We made it through the corridor and into a dense stand of pine. The butterflies kept coming, though. Three ivory-colored ones grabbed on to Wanita. They seemed to want to lift her off the ground. She screamed, but Alacrity killed them with a branch.

The children were beset by butterflies.

We all took up branches, swinging about our heads as fast as we could, smashing the rainbow fliers into the same trees that impeded our escape. Addy and I could more easily kill the creatures because the butterflies didn’t want us. Once in a while one would land on me with feet that felt like grasping Brillo pads. But as soon as that long tongue tasted my skin, it was off after the kids.

The touch of the butterflies’ tongues had the tickle of mild electricity or the beginning of an acid burn.

We kept swinging and trying to run. The butterflies died easily enough. Their wings ripped from the slightest touch and their soft bellies came open, shedding thick green blood.

We were overcome by the crush of butterflies. Choking on the dust that rose from their battered wings. They came on in a flood of color and dust. The girls choked and cried. Reggie fought hard but was covered by tongue-lashing insects. I jumped on top of the boy, using my body to crush the insects as well as to protect him.

The butterflies’ touch seemed to sap the children’s strength.

The thrumming rattle of insect wings overwhelmed our cries. The crush of bugs stopped our advance completely and slowly pushed us downward. The children and Reggie were already on the ground. Addy and I stood above them, on our knees, beating off our attackers with thick branches.

And then came a thump in the air. It was the sensation of a sudden and powerful vacuum. I lost my balance and consciousness at the same moment.

“Chance! Chance, wake up.”

Alacrity was shaking me by the shoulder. Reggie was trying to prop up Addy into a standing position. She was unconscious, or mostly so. The forest floor was littered with the bodies of brightly colored butterflies. They weren’t dead, only stunned like I had been. Their giant fanlike wings waving slowly. A few of them were standing on weak, shivering legs.

“We gotta go, Chance,” Reggie pleaded.

In my stupor I was still amazed by the size and nature of the beautiful predators.

“C’mon, Chance!” Alacrity yelled.

Her voice was strained and commanding. I jumped up and took Adelaide from Reggie. If anyone was going to lead us away, it was him, and his pack was already large enough.

As soon as I hefted the swooning woman over my shoulder, Reggie was off. When I turned to run, Addy’s head slammed into a tree. It was a hard knock, but there was no time to stop.

He took the lead, zigzagging through the trees ahead. The waist strap of his pack had loosened, and the load pounded up and down loudly against his back. Alacrity ran behind Reggie, wielding a long branch like a sword. She turned full around every now and then, still running, looking for danger.

Wanita shadowed Alacrity, moving more like a normal child, slipping and wavering as she went.

We didn’t have the strength to run for very long — no more than ten minutes. I fell to my knees, exhausted. When I laid Addy out on a bed of pine needles, I saw that her head and face were lacerated. She was bleeding pretty hard.

“Come on, Reggie,” Alacrity said, throwing him a branch the size of a cartoon caveman’s club. Then she pointed to where he should stand for defense.

I took the gauze bandage from my first aid box and pressed it hard against the long cut down the side of Addy’s face, cursing myself for being so rough and careless.

“I don’t hear anything coming,” Reggie said.

“Nothing?” asked Alacrity.

I was trying to hold together the flaps of Adelaide’s skin under the bandage. The thought of the butterflies’ coming through the dense woods and the feeling of the blood slipping between my fingers somehow increased my feeling of numbness. The breath in my chest felt like a cold breeze through a deep cave.

For the next hour we sat there: Alacrity and Reggie on the ready for any attack; Wanita hugging on to Reggie’s leg; and me pressing on the big white bandage that I had tied around Addy’s head.

The forest was unnaturally quiet except for an occasional moan from Addy.

“I don’t think they’re gonna come,” Reggie said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“No, I’m not sure,” he said petulantly. “What do you want me to do?”

Night fell and Addy became delirious. She went out of her head with fever and nightmares. We huddled around her in the tent, trying, I guess, to press her back to health. I dissolved aspirin in water and made her drink, but she was still burning up.

“Why not?” she begged some unseen torturer. “Why can’t we? No. No. We love the children. We love them.”

She begged all night, thrashing and crying.

I stayed up as long as I could, but sometime in the early morning hours I dozed off.

In the dream I met a man who wore a one-piece suit that sheathed him from head to toe; only his red-brown face could be seen under a hood of woven branches and fur that had flowers nestled within. The flowers, asters and small yellow daisies, seemed to be rooted there, growing out of the man’s head. The rest of his costume was no less unusual. It was a loose-fitting patchwork of cloth and skins, metal and wood, ceramic and bone. From the belt looped over his shoulder hung a large wooden knife, a dark quartz crystal, a small hide sack, and a handmade wooden mallet with a tree branch for a handle.

His eyes were small and very dark. His smile was permanent. And he smelled of the forest: strong, acrid, and sweet.

“Chance,” he said. “Is that your name?”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I call myself Juan Thrombone, but don’t ask me why. I don’t have use for names much. They seem like the juggling balls in the circus.”

“What?”

“I throw you the yellow ball that I call Chance and then you throw back the red one — Thrombone.” He grinned and I did too. I had to.

“Like a baby duck,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Like baby ducks,” he said. “All of you here are like baby ducks following their momma up into the woods.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” I was nearly in tears at my own stupidity.

“But I’m not your momma, little one,” Juan Thrombone said. “I’m the Big Bad Wolf and you were just dreaming about your mother. You’re lost in the woods, Last Chance. Go back.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to save the children.”

“Save them? You can’t even see them. Can’t you see that, little man? Can’t you see?” With that, the many-textured man held his hands over his head.

His gesture compelled me to look up.

Suddenly I was in the center of a dark web. All around me there were large spiders slowly moving closer.

“They aren’t coming for you,” Thrombone, now disembodied, whispered. “Jump, little man. They’ll bite you just to spit out your blood.”

I thought that they’d have to swallow a little bit of that blood. I thought it, but I was too scared to talk. The spiders were big and scaly; they smelled like the foulest infection.

I
AWOKE TO THE
sun shining brightly on the yellow fabric of our tent. My senses were alive with the world around me. The crystal-clear cold of the morning waited right outside. I was happy, ready to jump up and go exploring.

But when I sat up I saw the girls and Reggie sleeping. In their midst was Addy. She was pale and fragile-looking. I moved as quietly as I could, reaching around the sleeping girls to remove the day-old dressing.

The wound underneath was a spectacle as amazing and terrifying as the butterflies the day before. It was a long and jagged gash, white down the middle, bordered with bright red. The skin around the sides was darkening, not the blue of bruises but the black of deep infection.

“How is she?” Reggie asked. I could hear him stirring behind me.

“We’ve gotta go back, Reggie,” I said. “She’s real bad, man.”

He leaned over to see the deep cut down the side of her face. His eyes, I knew, were looking for some kind of path even down that infected valley. He saw none, though, and nodded.

When he stood up I noticed that he had an erection straining underneath his boxer shorts. He might have been inhabiting a grown man’s body, but he was still a boy who had to pee bad in the morning.

We left everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. The second tent, two sleeping bags, pots, pans, books, and extra clothing. Reggie and I tied Addy’s arms to his shoulders. He carried a leg under each of his arms and hefted her as if she were a living backpack.

Alacrity and Wanita were quiet. Alacrity walked close behind Reggie and stroked her mother’s leg now and then.

“Will my mom be okay, Chance?” she had asked that morning with tears in her eyes.

I said that she would be, that I’d make sure of it. And for the rest of the morning I found myself, now and again, wondering if it was a sin to lie to that child.

“Reggie, are you sure this is the way we came?” I said.

It was about noon and we were descending a fairly steep hill toward a quiet stream. The pine needles were slick under my hiking boots, and I was trying to remember having scaled the side of that particular valley.

“I don’t know,” the boy/man said. He was breathing hard. “I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?”

Reggie was always sure of where he was going. Ask anything that had to do with a direction or a place, and Reggie knew it. He could walk through the deep woods blindfolded and never hit a tree.

“I mean I’m lost.”

“Lost?”

“Look, Chance,” Reggie said. “I don’t know what’s happening. It’s like I’m not anywhere at all, like there aren’t any rules anymore.”

We stopped at the bottom of the valley. The stream was burbling and sunlight winked down through the branches and needles. We were lost in paradise and Addy was dying.

“Well, you can see by the sun that we’re on the west side of the range,” I said. “So that means if we follow the stream down, we’ll get to the lake sooner or later.”

“What difference does that make?” Alacrity asked.

“At the lake is a road. We can get a ride and get your mom to a doctor.”

It seemed like a good idea. Reggie hunched his shoulders, hitched his living load up a few inches, and groaned. Addy was deadweight; she hadn’t even opened her eyes that day.

We made it about a half a mile before coming across the bear. Big and black, he reared up in the middle of the stream and roared. I moved quickly out in front of the children. I waved my hands and yelled, “Ho! You big ugly bear! Get! Get away!”

As if he were mimicking me, the bear waved his great clawed paws and roared again. Then he charged.

“Run!” I yelled, pushing my arms behind me as if I were performing some underwater swimming maneuver.

Then I was flying. Up in the air and in a small arc until I hit the stream, and the hard stones therein, with a loud splash. The girls were screaming. Reggie had pulled a large stone out of the stream and was ready to throw it like a medicine ball.

“Drop it, Reg!” I shouted. “Run!”