Heartlight

by T.A. Barron

Cumberland whimpered and sniffed the chair. Then he turned his soulful eyes toward Kate, as if to ask: “Where is he?”

  Betrayed, Kate cursed the air and sat down dejectedly. “Grandfather!” she cried, hoping against hope that he would hear her and come back—from wherever he was.

  There came no reply.

  “I should never have trusted him,” she moaned. “I never imagined he’d really break his promise … not that kind of promise.”

  Her eyes fell upon the beaker, still holding a small supply of the mysterious green fluid. She glared at it angrily, then turned toward the astro-vivometer. There it sat, clattering away relentlessly, oblivious to all the distress it had caused. It was as if nothing at all had changed, nothing at all had happened, as if Grandfather had just gone out for a little Sunday stroll around the moon, or maybe Mars.

  At that instant, Kate had an idea.

  Maybe Grandfather had another ring! He said he’d planned to take her with him—to the moon or to Mars. Maybe … maybe that was why he made so much extra PCL! Enough for two rings! If only she could find it—but where could it be?

  Kate scanned the ruins of the lab. If she were Grandfather, where would she keep something so precious?

  She thought hard. The telescope? No, he uses that too much … The freezer? No, that sometimes freezes shut and can’t be opened for days. Where in this mess could anyone find anything? Maybe it’s not even in the lab at all … There are so many places to hide things in this old house!

  Then his words came drifting back to her: The best way to hide something special is to make it look as ordinary as possible. Was there a clue in there somewhere? But what could it mean? It isn’t possible to make a butterfly ring look ordinary!

  Kate shrugged her shoulders in discouragement. Then, by chance, her eyes fell on the old wooden bureau against the wall. The top-most of its slim drawers was slightly ajar.

  “The butterfly bureau!” she exclaimed, darting over to it. Cumberland followed her eagerly.

  As she drew open the drawer, a pale turquoise band flashed in the light.

  Her heart leaped, and she started to reach for the ring. Then suddenly she drew back her hand.

  What if it doesn’t work? she asked herself. What if Grandfather didn’t want to use this ring for a good reason? What if he didn’t go to Trethoniel at all? She could never hope to find Trethoniel anyway. She could imagine it, but she had only seen it once. And even if she could find the star, she might never be able to locate Grandfather, or persuade him to come back home with her, let alone save him from whatever dangers awaited him.

  Suddenly, the air in the lab became chilled, as if an arctic wind had blown through. The desk lamp started to sputter, and Cumberland growled deeply.

  Kate froze.

  “Wwwherrrre iisssss iittttt?” crackled an otherworldly voice from somewhere in the hallway.

  Kate turned to the door, and again to the ring sitting in the drawer. Hurriedly, with trembling hands, she took the beaker, lifted the top, and poured in the precious green fluid. The ring snapped closed.

  “Ggggiiivvve iittttt tttooo mmmeeeee.”

  She stared at the ring, but sheer fright kept her from putting it on. The ghost was back! The empty beaker fell from her hand onto the floor and splintered into pieces.

  The lab grew quickly colder as a wisp of white vapor appeared in the doorway.

  “Iittttt iisssss mmmiinnnne.”

  Then everything became a blur of motion as the ghost sailed through the door, Cumberland leaped, and Kate reached for the ring.

  IV

  The Wings of Morpheus

  A heavy blue-green mist submerged Kate’s vision and swirled about her like a cyclone, carrying her into a state of being she had never known before. There was no sound: only motion, motion, motion. Warm electric sensations coursed through and around her; she felt lighter, lighter than a bubble on a breeze.

  Slowly, the blue-green color began to deepen, to thicken, until strange shapes began to form out of the wisps of mist surrounding her. On either side she could see the shimmering colors solidify into large, iridescent platforms. Could they be wings? Then she felt herself seated over a sleek black body with a round head directly in front of her. Simultaneously, two delicate antennae began to unfurl from the top of the head, quivering with new life.

  “A morpho!” she cried, nearly falling off her perch. “I’m riding a morpho!”

  As if in answer, the great flashing wings began beating in a mighty rhythm. Kate suddenly felt like a jockey astride a colossal racehorse. But there was no saddle to hold her steady and no bridle to guide her course.

  “No!” she cried. “Stop moving! I’m going to fall off!”

  But the powerful wings continued to beat. Kate clasped her arms tightly around the butterfly’s neck, as the colored mist was swiftly replaced by thick white clouds.

  In a dazzling burst of light the clouds parted and Kate could see the buildings of a town far below them. Her own town! There was the tower of the university chapel, and there was Grandfather’s house. I never did like heights, she thought. A sudden wave of nausea passed through her, and she hugged ever more tightly the neck of her butterfly steed, pressing her face against its thick black fur. She shut her eyes, afraid to look down again.

  Borne on brilliant blue-green wings, she rose swiftly through the clouds. Higher and higher she climbed. Eventually, she opened her eyes, just in time to see a group of snow geese emerging from a lumbering cumulus cloud ahead. She forced herself to glance downward at the hilly countryside fast receding in the distance. There was the Connecticut River … and were those the White Mountains in the distance? They seemed so small!

  It dawned on Kate that she was climbing fast—at least ten thousand feet already—and yet her ears hadn’t popped at all. This ride was far smoother than any airplane: She hadn’t felt even the slightest jostling from air currents. Her eyes fell to the powerful pumping wings and she recalled the gentle touch on her arm of the morpho in the garden.

  Without thinking, she glanced at her wrist. Curiously, the cut from the broken glass had disappeared; no sign of it remained. Even the small bloodstain on her sleeve had vanished. The butterfly ring sat securely on her finger, its miniature wings pulsing with luminescence.

  Then Kate remembered the horrible sight of Cumberland trapped beneath the collapsed laser, and she shivered. Poor Cumberland! I hope he’s all right.

  Kate’s grip loosened a notch, as she felt increasingly secure on the back of the smoothly soaring butterfly. At that moment, the snow geese passed beneath them, honking loudly. She watched in awe as the perfect V-formation sailed into another cloud.

  More quickly than she would ever have guessed, the clouds themselves began to disappear. The surrounding atmosphere gradually grew thinner and darker. She leaned forward on the butterfly, straining to see, as the first small pinpoints of light began to emerge in the sky. Soon, the morpho wings began to glitter faintly with starlight.

  Higher and higher they flew until finally, without warning, the butterfly’s ascent slowed, then halted. Kate realized that she was floating freely, without the aid of any manmade machinery, at the outer edge of the atmosphere.

  As she peered over the wide wings, Kate could see a deep blue planet, enrobed with white clouds, spinning far below them. It glowed like a sapphire, a delicate blue jewel both firm and fragile. From this perspective, Earth was more than the endless variety of settings and species that she had read about in books. It was a single, unified organism, a lovely island of life drifting in the silent sea of space. It was home.

  She turned to face the familiar yellow star that had radiated sunlight for years numbered in the billions. It looked as constant as ever, ferociously hot, and powerful beyond anything she had ever known. It was difficult to the point of incredulity to imagine this fiery furnace ever going dark. Then again, she knew that before Copernicus it was difficult to the point of incredulity for anyone to imagine that the Sun, which swept across t
he sky each day for all to see, did not rotate around the Earth! Grandfather had once said that the Sun’s energy output was the same as a hundred billion hydrogen bombs exploding every second; that it had delivered a hundred trillion kilowatt-hours of energy constantly to the Earth for several billion years. Could such fantastic power really be on the verge of dying? If so, how could Grandfather—one tiny human—possibly do anything to stop it? What if Trethoniel didn’t show Grandfather the cure? What if she couldn’t find him at all?

  “Your questions are many and difficult, Kate,” said a strange voice.

  She looked frantically behind, above, and below the butterfly to find the source of the deep, melodic voice.

  “And the answers may be as elusive as I seem, or as near as I am,” spoke the voice again.

  It was the butterfly itself!

  “How do you know my name?” she cried, both amazed and afraid. She grasped the butterfly’s neck more tightly. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “You do ask many questions, Kate.” The butterfly laughed, and it reminded Kate of a rolling wave booming on the ocean shore.

  “How do you know my name?” she repeated.

  “Because your ring, which has freed your heartlight, has also brought me to life. I know more about you than you realize.”

  “Do you have a name yourself?”

  “I am Morpheus,” the butterfly declared. “My brother, Orpheus, is carrying your grandfather.”

  “Really?” Kate exclaimed, so excited she nearly lost her balance for an instant. “Your brother? Then you must know where Grandfather’s gone!”

  “I am afraid not,” answered the butterfly. “Orpheus and I were created from the same materials on the same day in the laboratory—but I have no way of knowing where he may have flown. They could have gone anywhere in the universe.”

  With that, Morpheus turned his head sideways so that one of his two great green eyes, honeycombed with hundreds of facets, gleamed at her. For a moment, she gazed into the eye, captivated by its prisms within prisms within prisms.

  “I never would have—” she began, then suddenly stopped herself. “I’m speaking without moving my mouth!”

  “Quite right,” replied Morpheus, with only a slight quivering of his antennae. “Now that you are made of heartlight, you no longer need your former voice. You can communicate with your thoughts alone, at least over short distances.”

  “This is a lot to get used to,” replied Kate in disbelief. “Here I am floating on the back of a giant butterfly, miles above the Earth, and speaking telepathically. It’s not possible!”

  The long antennae waved in response. “So it seems to you, Kate, only because you have not experienced it before. There are wonders even more amazing on your home planet that you fully believe, simply because they are familiar to you.”

  “Like what?”

  Morpheus slowly blinked his great green eyes. “Like the transformation of a wingless, earthbound caterpillar into a magnificent butterfly. Who would believe that such a thing could happen if it were not common knowledge? Who would predict that such an unimposing creature could construct a cocoon, exchange its worm-like body for another one of dazzling design, and fly off into the forest without a second thought?”

  “I know that’s amazing,” said Kate, shaking her head, “but this is still too much to believe.”

  “More so than the tadpole who somehow becomes a frog? More so than the trees who manufacture food from beams of light? More so than the flowering spring, which follows the frozen winter? More so than the human child, once smaller than the smallest speck of dust, who comes to learn language, make tools, and bring forth a child of its own?”

  “This is still more than I can handle,” Kate replied. “How a simple ring could—” She halted, gazing at the butterfly ring on her finger.

  “Something’s wrong!” she cried. “It’s damaged!” Indeed, the rim of the ring’s left wing was roughly tattered, as if it had been eaten away by a powerful acid.

  “Nothing is wrong,” answered Morpheus calmly. “Your ring has begun to deteriorate, that’s all.”

  “Deteriorate?” Kate clasped the butterfly’s neck firmly. “What do you mean by that?” Then she remembered: Four minutes … that’s what Grandfather said was the limit …

  “The process of deterioration began the instant you put on the ring, and it will continue until the ring has disappeared completely.”

  Kate stiffened. “You mean I can tell how much PCL is left by watching it, like the fuel gauge in a car?”

  Morpheus waved his antennae in assent. “Except with this kind of car, running out of fuel would be fatal.”

  Gracefully, the butterfly spun his body around so that, instead of facing Earth, they were facing a dark sector of space. Dark, but for one pinpoint of reddish light that sparkled like a distant ruby.

  “Is that where we’re going?” asked Kate. “It looks so far away.”

  “Is it your desire to go to the star Trethoniel?”

  “My only desire is to find Grandfather!” she exclaimed. “To make sure he’s safe and to bring him home again. I have this dreadful feeling that somehow he’s in much more danger than he realizes—from what, I don’t know. If finding him means we have to go all the way to Trethoniel, then I guess that’s what we’ll have to do.”

  “I don’t know where Orpheus has borne him, Kate, although my inner sense tells me it is someplace very distant. All I know are the instructions your grandfather programmed into the ring. You see, like you, this is my very first journey. But I can tell you this: Trethoniel is much farther away than it appears, and the journey there and back could be much more dangerous than you realize. I don’t know whether your ring will last long enough to do all that.”

  Kate looked anxiously at the distant red star. “We have four minutes of Earth time.”

  The butterfly cocked his head pensively. “Four minutes of Earth time is not a great deal.”

  His repetition of those words struck Kate, to her own surprise, as vaguely comforting. After all, how much could go wrong in only four minutes? Even in the expanded time of interstellar travel, four minutes didn’t feel like very long. The real risk was that it wouldn’t be enough time to find Grandfather, and she would be forced to return to Earth empty-handed.

  “You must remember one cardinal rule,” declared the great butterfly in a tone of voice that suddenly reminded Kate of her fears. “Never, but never, remove your ring.”

  She shuddered. “What would happen if I did?”

  Morpheus studied her gravely. “If you should take off your ring, even for an instant, you would immediately revert to your normal human form. And in the realms where we are traveling—that means certain death. You could be vaporized by the fires of a star, suffocated by some poisonous atmosphere, or instantly frozen—but your ultimate fate would be the same.”

  “All right, all right!” exclaimed Kate. “I’ve got the message. I won’t take off my ring.”

  “No matter what,” emphasized Morpheus.

  “No matter what.”

  “The only environment where you might have any chance at all to survive would be a planet with an atmosphere much like Earth’s—and I don’t have to tell you how unlikely that is.”

  Kate twisted the ring on her finger, making sure it was attached securely, and surveyed the endless darkness of space extending in all directions. “What if I fall off your back? The ring won’t stop that from happening, will it?”

  “It should,” replied Morpheus. “I am the product of your heartlight reacting with the pure condensed light of the ring, and I am part of you now. As long as you’re wearing the ring, I will remain tied to your heartlight. I will hear your every thought, sometimes even before you do. My guess is there’s only one way you could leave my back, Kate: If you choose to.”

  “Fat chance of that happening,” she replied, nervously biting her lip. It felt the same as her old lip, even if it were only made of whatever Morpheus
said it was made of. “But won’t we get burned by the heat of the star? We’ll be going awfully close to it, won’t we?”

  “No, we won’t get burned. You’re now made of heartlight—and I’m made of pure light. You have no skin to be burned, and no eyes to be blinded by the brightness of Trethoniel.”

  “But I can still see you,” objected Kate. “How can I see you if I don’t have any eyes?”

  “The same way you see in your imagination.”

  Kate turned to face the blue planet beneath them, silently spinning in space. She could see the thin, wispy edge of what must be Cape Cod, protruding from the body of North America like the prow of an ancient ship. So many shades of blue were there, they could not be counted; the whole planet gleamed with a luster more luminous than dawn’s first light. Then, with a start, Kate realized how perfectly round is the Earth: Indeed, it felt as though she had never before understood the true meaning of the word. That very roundness seemed to emphasize the planet’s vulnerability. Like a delicate bubble, its sweeping blue curves caressing the sea of outer space, the fragile Earth floated—helpless, lovely, and alone.

  “I can feel pain in my imagination, too,” said Kate quietly.

  “Yes,” answered Morpheus with a stirring of his wings. “You can feel anything you could feel with a body—and probably a few things more. You can feel warm or cold; you can laugh or cry. The only difference is that you lack a physical body that would be destroyed by the elements and forces of space travel. You will even continue breathing—although it’s not air you will breathe, but light from the stars around us. You are in some ways physical, and in some ways metaphysical. You are part light, and part beyond light. You are heartlight.”

  Kate gazed thoughtfully at the iridescent wings. “Do you think there could be something out there—some kind of force or something—that’s dangerous to heartlight?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Morpheus gravely. “There is much that I don’t know. That’s why you must be very sure you really want to travel all the way to Trethoniel.”

  For a few moments they drifted in silence at the edge of outer space. No snow geese honked; no winds whistled. Kate felt all alone, poised at the boundary between the known and the unknown.