On Shadowed Wings (An Ash Grove Short Story) (5 page)

As soon as they had climbed to a relatively
clear space near the top of the ridge, they stopped to get their
bearings. As she had hoped, from that elevation they had a good
view of much of the campus. The light-spangled windows of the gym,
the dark shapes that were the other buildings. The dusky expanse of
field stretching out like a starless sky.

“What’s
that?
” exclaimed Jim beside
her.

Tucked away well behind a building that Gail
knew to be the dining hall, a faint circle of light glowed. It
looked like hundreds of tiny stars clustered in a ring. Gail felt
the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She thought of the Celtic
legends of faery, of moonlit dances by the fair folk that left
circles in the dew the next day.

“Is that a construction site, down where all
those fireflies are?” asked Jim, bringing her back to earth. “I
think I see a bulldozer.”

“That must be the old amphitheater that Dr.
Sumner said they were tearing down.” Her heart thudded under her
ribs. If they’d already started digging up the old stone structure,
there might be pits where a child could fall and hurt herself.
Could even be smothered by a cave-in.

And what Jim had called fireflies didn’t look
right. If they were lightning bugs, she’d never seen them act that
way. They weren’t that
organized.
A shiver crept up her
spine and made her shoulders tense.

Jim had gotten his cell phone out. “Dr.
Sumner?” he said. “It looks like something’s going on in the
amphitheater. Gail and I can meet—Gail, wait up!”

She was already running down the hill toward
the lights. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew that if
something happened to Joy and she could have prevented it, she’d
never forgive herself. Rocks and twigs jabbed painfully at the
soles of her feet, and her tulle skirt caught on branches and
ripped, but she kept running. She pictured Joy’s sweet, serious
little face, saying,
Gail told me.

When she emerged from the trees and onto the
top level of the broad stone steps, what she saw brought her to a
halt.

Joy sat cross-legged in the grassy center of
the old amphitheater, surrounded by tiny moving lights. Not
fireflies, but butterflies, whose pale wings reflected the
moonlight as they hovered around the little girl.

Jim drew up beside her, and she silently
pointed.

The mass of butterflies grew denser until
they seemed to form the shape of a woman, solid white like a ghost.
It had to be an illusion, but Gail instantly recognized the long,
curly hair, the oval face, even the smile. How could a bunch of
butterflies possibly replicate Anna Sumner? Gooseflesh prickled her
arms as, drawn in iridescence against the night, the white figure
seemed to kneel next to Joy and put her arms around her.

The illusion must have been visible to Joy
too, for the little girl looked up at the phantom face and smiled.
Gail’s breath caught, and any notion of rushing in to draw Joy away
vanished. Vision or visitation, whatever it was, Joy looked happier
than she’d been for a year now. The white woman seemed to kiss the
little girl’s forehead.

A gasp nearby made her head whip around.

Dr. Sumner had caught up with them and stood
breathing hard at the top tier of the amphitheater. “Joy!” he
shouted. Then he plunged down the steps, and in seconds the
illusion shattered as the cloud of butterflies dispersed, the tiny
bright forms fluttering off in all directions. Alighting in the
trees, on the ground, they starred the darkness like fairy
lights.

He dropped to his knees next to Joy and
hugged her tight. “You scared me,” he said gently. “Going off alone
like this. Why would you do such a thing?”

The amphitheater’s perfect acoustics meant
that the little girl’s soft voice came to Gail’s ears as if she
were standing next to her. “I had to,” she said simply. “If I
hadn’t, I would always have wondered.”

Her father held her close and kissed the top
of her head. “I should have been with you,” he said, half to
himself. “Next time ask me first, kittycat. Why didn’t you just get
me to bring you?”

“You would have said you were busy.” Her
voice was wistful. “You always do.”

He shut his eyes briefly, in pain or guilt.
“From now on I won’t,” he promised, with new purpose. “Things will
be different from here on out. No matter how busy I get, I’ll never
be too busy for you.”

Joy’s freckled face beamed, and she threw her
arms around his neck. The sight of father and daughter holding each
other so tightly made Gail smile. But then something else caught
her attention.

Some of the butterflies had come to rest on
the branches of trees at the edge of the wood, like ghostly dogwood
blossoms. But others were on the wing, flying lazily off in all
directions. Gail laughed in astonished delight as some of the
lovely creatures came fluttering near her and Jim. She reached out
to catch one in her cupped hands, feeling the delicate edges of its
wings just grazing her palms, and carefully opened her hands so
that she could see the beautiful bright creature.

Its luminous white wings bore faint markings
like the surface of the moon, but the light they cast was so
brilliant it was like a tiny sun. It fluttered there in the shelter
of her hands for a moment, as she scarcely dared to breathe, and
then it was off again into the darkness.

Beside her she heard a long intake of breath,
and when she looked around she found Jim gazing at her with an
expression that made her insides flutter.
Butterflies in my
stomach,
she thought.
Butterflies everywhere…

She thought she heard him mutter, “I would
always have wondered.” Then thinking stopped as Jim took her face
between his hands and kissed her.

Sensory fragments winged through her mind:
warm, persuasive lips. The feeling of t-shirt fabric under her
hands, and strong muscle beneath. The scent of spicy aftershave and
rowan blossom and night air. A breathless feeling as if she were
falling, with only his hands to hold her.

And then a tugging at her skirt, and a
fatherly voice saying, “Excuse me, kids.”

She broke away from Jim, her heartbeat
hammering at the base of her throat, her eyes opening to meet his.
He looked as dazed and delighted as she felt. Almost reluctantly
she dropped her hands from his chest and looked around to find Dr.
Sumner and Joy standing there.

It was Joy who had tugged at her skirt. Her
other hand was clasped firmly in her father’s. “Dad and I are going
home now,” she informed Gail, and Dr. Sumner smiled at his
daughter’s self-important air.

“Thank you both so much for finding her,” he
said. “I don’t know what I would have done without your help. I was
at my wits’ end.”

“You would have found her eventually,” said
Gail, since Jim didn’t look as if he could form sentences yet.

“Perhaps. The fact is, I haven’t been very
present for Joy since… since her mother died. And that needs to
change.” Joy was leaning against him now, her head starting to nod,
and he freed his hand from hers and stooped to pick her up. She
nestled into his arms sleepily, her eyes drifting closed as she
snuggled her head onto his shoulder. “I’d better get her to bed
now,” he said more softly. “We’ve both had an exhausting evening.
Thank you again, Gail. Jim.”

“I’m glad we could help,” said Gail. “Good
night.”

Jim finally came to life. “You’re welcome,”
he said to the professor’s retreating back. But that seemed to be
the limit of his conversation.

Then something struck her. “Did you get any
pictures?” she asked. “I hope you got the proof you needed of those
butterflies. Moths. Whatever they were.”

A stricken look came over Jim’s face, erasing
the rapt daze of a moment before. “I forgot,” he said, staring at
the camera suspended from his neck as if it were an alien
technology. “Completely and totally forgot.”

“I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed. “And that was
the one thing you really needed to do.”

He looked up from his sad contemplation of
the camera, and she felt that quick internal flutter again as his
eyes locked onto hers. “Not the only thing,” he said slowly. “Maybe
it wasn’t even that important after all.”

She felt suddenly awkward, and busied herself
smoothing down the rumpled layers of her tulle skirt so that she
didn’t have to meet his eyes. “Well, there’s always next year. Now
that you know that, you know, they’re here. But right now I think
I’ll head home myself and get out of this dress.” Too late she
realized how that might have sounded. Hastily, she added, “I mean,
I’d like to change into something more comfortable.”
Crap!
What was wrong with her? “I mean…”

“So you’re not going back to the dance?” he
asked, before she found a third way to embarrass herself.

She shook her head. She had no desire to
resume her fight with Darryl. The idea of having to explain what
had happened this evening—the search for Joy, at least—was
draining. And irritating. She suddenly realized how much justifying
of herself she had to do with Darryl, and she was tired of it.

“Darryl can fend for himself,” she said
shortly. “I want to go home.” Where she could think. Which she
found she was having difficulty doing so close to Jim, so aware of
him now. His lips, which she still felt with dizzying vividness on
her own. His hands with their deft blunt fingers, which she could
still feel lightly cradling her face, as if she herself were some
delicate butterfly that he wanted to hold without crushing.

A cloud passed over the moon, and all around
them the bright spots in the darkness began winking out. Their
magical brightness must only have been temporary, something that
only lasted when they were first hatched. Or a reflection of the
bright moonlight. As one by one the glowing butterflies went dark,
she sighed involuntarily at the loss of such loveliness.

But it had served its purpose—hadn’t it?
Bringing a lonely little girl the illusion that her mother was
still present, still watching over her.

If it
had
been an illusion.

It was too much to process, especially with
her mind still whirling and her lips still tingling from Jim’s
kiss. Maybe in the morning, when the world would seem more logical,
she could think about what had happened here. But not now.

“Good night,” she said. “Oh, wait, your
jacket—”

“Keep it,” he said absently. “Gail, listen,
I—”

“I’ve got to go.” She would do something
crazy if she didn’t get away now. Run wild, or turn cartwheels, or
fling herself on him to kiss him again. “We’ll talk soon, okay? But
later.” She scarcely knew what she was babbling, only that she had
caught up her skirts and was darting away toward the parking lot,
sensing that Jim watched her without once looking away. She felt
like Cinderella fleeing the ball. But the magic had already ended
for the night, and without midnight having struck.

* * *

It was afternoon when he found her the next
day. She was sitting on one of the large rocks at the river’s edge,
where the canopy of tree branches fended off the sun and cast a
tranquil shade. The river chuckled by softly, foaming white around
the rocks in its course. The rushing of the water was a soothing
background for her thoughts.

“Mind if I join you?” Jim asked. His eyes
looked a little heavy-lidded, and she wondered if he’d had as
little sleep as she had. But besides that he looked fantastic. He
was wearing a blue chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and
she thought she’d never seen sexier forearms in her life.

But she couldn’t let herself start thinking
that way—okay,
keep
thinking that way—until they got some
things settled. She scooched over to make room for him next to her
on the rock. “Dr. Sumner said he didn’t need me today,” she said,
even though he hadn’t asked. “We had a standing arrangement for me
to sit with Joy Sunday afternoon, but he’s taking her to the park
himself. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot less babysitting this
summer than I’d expected.”

“So what happened last night really did get
to him,” Jim reflected. “I’m glad for Joy’s sake—and for mine.”

She wasn’t ready to pursue that angle just
yet. “Do you think what we thought we saw was really there?” she
asked instead. “That some kind of—of magic brought Anna back to Joy
for a moment?”

He plucked a blade of grass and turned it
thoughtfully between his fingers. “Magic or something close to it,”
he said. “Joy and her dad seemed to believe it, and that’s the
important thing. You knew her mom—did it look like her, last
night?”

She nodded. “So you think Dr. Sumner saw
Anna?” she wondered aloud. “Or do you think he just saw Joy
surrounded by butterflies?”

“Either way, it seems like it helped. If he’s
going to be there for her now a lot more than he was. So whether it
was or wasn’t magic may not really be important.”

She envied him for being able to talk about
the strangeness so matter-of-factly. She felt awkward and lame, but
at the same time it was too important not to say. “I’d never
experienced anything magic before,” she said. “But I think last
night was some kind of supernatural thing. It felt… different. Not
like everyday life, but like something really unusual and—and
wonderful was going on. You know?”

“I definitely felt like I was in the presence
of something extraordinary,” he said gravely, but when she looked
into his eyes she knew he meant something else.

“It felt so unreal,” she said. He could
interpret that any way he wanted to.

But he didn’t take the out. “Kissing you felt
real,” he said quietly. “Felt fantastic, if you want to know.
Pretty much the highlight of my week, honestly.” He thought for a
moment. “Maybe even the whole year.”