Scarlet Discovers True Strength

by Ahmet Zappa

  Between them, Arden slowed until her own swing was barely swaying. “What do you mean they’re broken?” She gave Scarlet’s chain a little tug, then peered behind her at the seat. “It looks okay to me.”

  “Oh, that part’s fine, yes. It’s the swinger,” explained Scarlet. “It’s not working.” She lifted her feet again. “See? It doesn’t fly like yours. It just sits here. Whatever.” She shrugged. “It’s no big…what do they say…deal?”

  “You know, you have to pump to swing,” said Arden. “You know…like this….”

  Scarlet watched Arden lean back and kick her legs out, exactly as Ophelia had done. But unlike Ophelia, Arden didn’t stop there. That was only the first step, it seemed. Arden next swung her body forward and sharply bent her knees. Scarlet watched the swing respond by gliding backward, at which point Arden leaned back again. As she kept going like that, whipping herself back and forth, she made her swing fly higher…and higher…and higher still!

  Who would have ever thought that Wishlings had to power their own swings? thought Scarlet.

  Fortunately, this “pumping” wasn’t half as difficult as it looked. Even Ophelia was successful almost immediately, much to her delight. Scarlet could have used a push to start, but after a few rough kicks and bends, she quickly began to catch up.

  They all stopped at just about the same time but for different reasons: Ophelia because her Star-Zap fell out of her pocket when she practically flew upside down; Arden because she saw it fall and wanted to stop and help; Scarlet because as soon as she saw Arden reach for the Star-Zap, she knew she had to grab it—fast!

  “Cool phone!” said Arden, who was already out of her swing and running her finger along the Star-Zap. Instantly, the top flipped up.

  Scarlet’s heart nearly stopped as she stared at it, terrified that a holo-something would suddenly appear. Only after a moogle did she remember that it had no energy. Lucky stars! she thought with a sigh of relief.

  “It’s actually a Star-Z—” Ophelia started to correct her.

  “A Star-Zee?” Scarlet cut in, laughing. “Honestly, Ophelia. You make up the funniest names.” She took the Star-Zap from Arden and handed it to Ophelia with a tight, open-eyed smile. “Here you go. Maybe put that in your backpack, why don’t you. And keep it there. You’d hate for your phone here to break.”

  “Right…” said Ophelia. “Right! My phone!” She ran over to her backpack and dropped it in. She returned to the swing set, out of breath. “Better?” she asked with a grin.

  Scarlet nodded. “Much better. Now.” She sighed. “I think it’s time we talked, don’t you?” She turned to Arden and put her hands on her shoulders. “Here,” she said. “Have a seat.” Gently, she guided her back into her swing, then sank into her own. She didn’t have to look at the Countdown Clock on her Star-Zap to know that there wasn’t much time left in their mission. She could see the sun drifting steadily down toward the treetops. That meant there wasn’t a moogle to waste.

  “We’re going to help you get over this fear of yours,” she told Arden. “But first you need to talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Your fear,” said Scarlet. “When it started. Where it came from. All that good stuff. So go ahead. Fire away.”

  Arden’s face, which had been so warm and open, seemed all of a sudden to hang a CLOSED sign. “My fear of butterflies…oh, no…I don’t want to. It’s too hard to talk about. I just can’t.”

  “But…” Scarlet paused to check the sun again. “But you have to talk about it,” she blurted.

  Scarlet could feel her own face getting hot and probably red—especially when Ophelia spoke up from the next swing: “That’s okay. We understand.”

  “Thanks.” Arden twisted her swing toward Ophelia.

  “I know what it’s like not to want to talk about something,” Ophelia continued. “You probably do, too, Scarlet. Right?”

  “No.” Scarlet frowned impatiently. “Well…okay…yes, maybe. Sometimes.”

  “It’s just so embarrassing,” said Arden.

  Ophelia nodded. “You don’t want to be reminded of it. I know.”

  “It was literally the worst day of my life,” said Arden.

  “I can only imagine,” said Ophelia gently as she rocked her swing from side to side.

  Scarlet’s eyes, meanwhile, flashed from Ophelia to Arden, as she observed their exchange of trusting smiles. Arden was actually about to talk, Scarlet realized—thanks to Ophelia, no less!

  “I was at my grandparents’ house—they live on a big farm. And I was little. I’d only just turned five. It was before dinner. I was playing hide-and-seek with my older cousins out in the fields around the barn. We used to do that all the time. So I see this big tree out at the edge of the meadow, and I decide to go hide behind that. The trunk was literally this thick.” Arden held her arms out wide. “I mean huge. Big enough to hide three or four kids…I don’t know, maybe more. And so tall that when you stood under it and looked up, you couldn’t see the top at all. My grandmother says it was a big tree even when she was a kid, so you can imagine how old it must be now.

  “Anyway, I ran up and stood there, hiding behind it—all by myself—while my cousin Jason ran around with no idea, busy finding everyone else. And then…I started hearing this kind of rustling sound all around me…kind of like a cat purring, only really loud. And the next thing I knew I was covered, I mean literally covered, in all these”—Arden shuddered—“all these butterflies! Evidently, they were roosting there—thousands of them—on their way to Mexico for the winter. My grandmother says they migrate through her farm every year. Which is why I refuse to go back there, by the way.”

  “But the butterflies aren’t there all the time, are they?” asked Scarlet.

  “No. Just the fall, when they’re flying south. But just the thought of being there…” She winced and shivered again. “I love my grandparents…but it’s just too hard. I get nauseous just thinking about it.”

  “So what did you do when the flutterfo—I mean butterflies landed on you?” asked Ophelia.

  “I screamed. Like crazy,” Arden said. “I mean, I was five and all alone. Sure, I realized pretty quickly that they were butterflies, but I still thought they were going to eat me alive. I couldn’t get them off. It was like they were stuck to me with pins. They wouldn’t let go with their little”—she cringed—“feet. I tried to brush them and shake them and knock them off, but they were in my hair, my clothes, everything, refusing to let go. Then, finally, I tried to run. But of course I couldn’t see. So I tripped…and fell…and landed on the ground, on, like, a hundred of them.” She paused to take a breath. “Basically killing them all. So there I am, lying on all these dead butterflies, covered with hundreds more. All by myself. Screaming. Crying. Oh—and I wet my pants, I was so scared. Did I happen to mention that?”

  “Aw…” Ophelia patted her shoulder.

  Scarlet leaned forward. “So what happened next?”

  “Finally—after what literally felt like forever—my cousins and my grandma found me. By then, the butterflies had gone back up in the tree—except for the ones I murdered, of course. When they found out what happened, my cousins laughed and called me ‘butterfly bait’ for the rest of the weekend. In fact, they still call me that today. It’s become a little family joke, that nickname.”

  “That’s terrible!” said Scarlet.

  Arden nodded. “Yeah, it is.”

  “I hope you call them something back!” Scarlet said. “I know some good names, by the way, if you need any suggestions.”

  “Oh, but I’m sure they don’t mean to be mean,” said Ophelia. “They probably just don’t understand.”

  Arden hung her head, shaking it slowly. “They sure don’t. Nobody does.”

  “We do,” Ophelia said softly. “We know exactly how you feel.” She glanced over Arden’s shoulder at Scarlet. What should I do next? she mouthed.

  Scarlet tried to think….

  Just k
eep going! she told Ophelia—not with words but by rolling her arm.

  “You know what I think?” said Ophelia.

  Arden waited to hear.

  “I think…I think anybody would be scared of butterflies after that happened to them.”

  “Thanks,” said Arden. She smiled a little. “And thanks for this….”

  “For what?”

  “For letting me talk about it. To be honest, it feels kind of good. Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that story before? Never, in all these years. And in a way, I think the story I actually remember was a little better than the one I was trying to forget.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean, the butterflies were scary—for sure. But for some reason I’d remembered them biting me, like they had little teeth. Now, though, I realize that they didn’t do much more than tickle me.”

  “Hey! It’s our turn!”

  Scarlet turned, along with the others, to find a long line of young Wishling children standing behind them, looking as if they might bite.

  “You can’t hog the swings!” said the first one.

  “Yeah! No hogging!” chirped another. “Besides, you’re too old. My mom said.”

  “Swings are for kids!” they started chanting. “Swings are for kids! Swings are for kids!”

  Ophelia shuffled her swing toward Arden’s. “Um, can we get out of here? They scare me.”

  Arden laughed. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” said Arden.

  Behind her back, Scarlet and Ophelia leaned in to share a smile of so-close-they-could-taste-it success. They were standing on the path that led to the butterfly exhibit, in front of a sign that read BUTTERFLIES! 200 FEET AHEAD.

  “My stars,” Ophelia whispered to Scarlet. “Did you know butterflies had two hundred legs?”

  Scarlet studied the sign. “I didn’t,” she whispered back. “It’s kind of starmazing that they can fly….”

  The wooden sign also had a carving of a butterfly, which Arden was regarding with an anxious expression.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ophelia. “Like we said, if you don’t want to go in, you don’t have to.”

  “No, of course not….But let’s keep going,” Scarlet said.

  The path turned, and as it did, the exhibit itself came into view.

  “Ooh! It’s such a pretty structure!” said Ophelia.

  Scarlet had to agree. The side they could see had multiple rising and falling arches, almost like the curves of a cloud. The walls appeared to be made of some kind of netting and were decorated with large colorful pictures of butterflies. No two were the same. Through the net, it was easy to see a veritable jungle of trees, vines, and blooming bushes growing inside. What they couldn’t yet see—from such a distance, Scarlet figured—was any butterflies.

  “Just imagine if that place glittered!” said Ophelia. “How stunning it would be!”

  “I think they might light it up at night on the weekends,” said Arden.

  “Really?” Ophelia’s face brightened at the thought (as much as a face on Wishworld could).

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure. I’ve never actually seen it. It’s just something I’ve heard.”

  “Ooh! I’d love to stay and see it. Scarlet, do you think we can?”

  “Why couldn’t you?” asked Arden.

  “Let’s just keep going,” said Scarlet. “Shall we? I mean, if that’s okay?”

  Arden nodded. She took a deep breath and moved forward, ever so slowly. Her feet seemed to fight her for every step. Scarlet could hear Arden telling herself, “I can do this. I can…” between rapid shallow breaths.

  Yes, Scarlet thought. She was going to do this. She was going to overcome her fear. Scarlet looked at Ophelia and pointed to her bracelet. Be ready! she mouthed. What was crazier, Scarlet wondered: that Ophelia’s mission just might be successful or that Scarlet just might be happy for her?

  As they got closer to the exhibit, they found themselves walking among dense vibrant flower gardens dotted with butterfly-shaped signs bearing various facts.

  One showed the process a caterpillar went through to become a butterfly.

  “‘Metamorphosis,’” read Arden. “That’s what our project is about.”

  “Wait? Is that really how butterflies are made? They start out as those?” Ophelia pointed to a caterpillar, then to a butterfly. “You’d think something that delicate and pretty would be made of flower petals and stardust.”

  “You’re funny,” Arden said. She suddenly looked more relaxed.

  Scarlet could see how Ophelia had taken Arden’s mind off her fear—without even meaning to—so she decided to try it herself. After all, she was there to help.

  “This is interesting,” she said. “Did you know butterflies don’t eat? They can only drink. And they taste with their feet. That’s uncommon, right?”

  Arden laughed again.

  It worked! Scarlet could practically feel the wish energy ready to come out of this Wisher, and she could tell that Ophelia was sensing it, too.

  “Oh,” Ophelia went on, not really getting the humor in anything but still happy to play along. “And look here. This says that they have four wings, two on each side, and only six legs. Not two hundred?” She paused to frown, seriously confused.

  “Two hundred! You’re so funny!” Arden giggled. “Both of you.” She stopped in front of another sign. “Ooh,” she said. “Check this out. According to this, butterflies can see ultraviolet colors. It helps them know which flowers have the nectar they want. Hmmm. What’s so special about seeing ultraviolet colors?” She grinned. “I mean, can’t everyone?”

  “I don’t get it,” Ophelia whispered to Scarlet.

  “You don’t have to,” Scarlet murmured back. “Just so it works. How about this one?” she said more loudly, pointing to another sign. “This is also about what butterflies see. It says butterflies are attracted to bright colors, especially yellow and red. Hee-hee!”

  She waited for Arden to laugh…or chuckle…or at least smile. Instead, though, she looked over to see Arden staring down at her bright yellow T-shirt. She touched the hem of her ruby red skirt.

  “Er, what’s wrong?” Scarlet asked.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “But you have to—I mean…yes, you can.”

  “Maybe. But not today. Not dressed like this. What if they land on me? Uh, I thought I was ready. I did. But I’m not. I’m really not.” She held out her hands. “Look.” They were trembling like leaves in a solar storm.

  Scarlet looked over at Ophelia. Did she have an idea? Any idea at all? Scarlet had done everything she could think of to help grant this wish in time, but it just wasn’t enough in the end.

  With the tiniest nod, Ophelia lowered her eyes back to Arden’s hands and gently picked one up. “You know, you’re not alone. We’re here for you. Whatever you need. Would it help at all if Scarlet and I stayed right by your side and maybe held your hands?” She looked back at Scarlet warmly, clearly expecting her to reach out and take Arden’s other hand. “Scarlet?”

  “Well…I don’t know. Here’s the thing. Would it help?” Scarlet was skeptical at best. She’d never bought into that whole Starland hand-holding-all-the-time thing. What was the point? She didn’t know. To other Starlings, linking arms and holding hands came as naturally as glowing, but to Scarlet it always felt forced. In fact, getting that close to others just made her feel more alone.

  But Ophelia wasn’t letting go, and neither was Arden.

  Oh, why not? Scarlet finally thought.

  She reached out and put her hand lightly on Arden’s, surprised at how warm and soft it felt. Arden squeezed, and Scarlet nearly jumped. Instead, though, without even thinking about it, she flashed Arden a smile and squeezed back.

  “You know…it’s so weird how I met you today,” Arden said with a small but grateful smile. “It’s almost like a fairy godmother sent you or something.”
/>
  “Well, that sure didn’t happen,” Scarlet said.

  “Close, though.” Ophelia grinned, then caught Scarlet’s “Really?” face. “What? Oh. That’s a joke.”

  “So, shall we try this again?” Scarlet said. “Together?”

  “Okay.” Arden took a deep breath. “Just…don’t let go.”

  Hand in hand, they walked down the last bit of path toward the butterfly building and up to the wide glass door. Inside, they could see the stars of the exhibit: hydrongs and hydrongs of butterflies. Some were tiny, no bigger than a pinky. Others were almost as big as a hand. Some were yellow and black, some were orange, and some were all white. And some were the exact same blue as Vega’s hair!

  “Now, just so we’re clear, if I start to scream or faint or anything like that, we’re coming right back out.”

  “Of course,” said Ophelia.

  “We’ve got you,” said Scarlet. She placed her other hand on Arden’s, as well.

  “Okay.” Arden took a long and slow breath in, held it, then let it out quickly. “I think I’m ready.”

  “Wait…what? Oh, no…” groaned Scarlet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We have a problem, I’m afraid.” Scarlet nodded toward the door—to the sign hanging in the middle, right over the handle, where it was impossible to miss. In the most unsparkly black block letters, it read very simply CLOSED.

  “What? What does that mean?” said Ophelia as she read it. “Does that mean we can’t go in?”

  “That’s totally what it means,” said Arden. “Look.” She pointed to another sign to the side of the door that listed the operating hours. “They’re closed every Thursday. Oh, well. I guess this fear just wasn’t meant to be conquered all in a day. But at least I got a little closer to facing it, right?”

  “Right,” Scarlet sighed.

  A little closer. Great, she thought. If only energy could be captured from that.

  But no. They needed a wish to be fully granted. And they needed it granted soon. Not the next day or that weekend, when Arden suggested they return.