Dust (Of Dust and Darkness)

by Devon Ashley

  I pluck the stinger free from the flower and flick it into the river rippling just a few feet away. That’s one stinger she’ll never get back. I retrieve my seed from the ground, dusting it clean, but I leave the moist berry for the ants. I return to the anther and successfully sit down atop the flower. The others stop laughing but Meg still wears a smug grin. Flippin’ pranksters. Yeah, I enjoy a good laugh, but I don’t go around setting up booby-traps just to get them.

  My molars crunch down on the corner of the sunflower seed, cracking the shell, and I dehull the exterior for the edible kernel within. As I nibble on my prize, I grimace as Meg slowly saunters her way toward me, hands on hips with a wicked half smile. “So how’s the rump, Rosie?”

  “Just fine, Meggy.” She scowls at the cutesy use of her name, but she can hardly say anything since she did it first. To bug her just a little more, I add, “Mustard sure is having fun with Poppy today, huh?” Her smile drops, her head whipping so fast you’d think it would snap off, just in time to see Mustard collecting a white flower that landed atop Poppy’s head. Poppy smiles as he gently tucks it behind her ear, his arm lingering longer than necessary. “I know you like both of them, but don’t you favor Mustard over Tin?”

  Annoyed, Meg returns her attention to me, eyes pinched hard enough for skin to crease across her forehead in several waves. She swoops in fast and rams me, scooting my body sideways involuntarily. Taken aback, she squeezes beside me atop the anther before my defensive maneuvers can kick in. Now she’s sitting comfortably and I’m only half way on.

  “You really shouldn’t be eating that, you know?” She says it with an annoyingly sweet voice, but her tone is smothered with snobbery. Meg crosses her legs and lays her hands on her knee, one atop the other, kicking out the upper leg rhythmically. “Two of us should easily be able to fit on this flower. And out of the two of us, you’re definitely winning in the hip department.”

  Ugh! She doesn’t even see my evil glare because she’s so wrapped up in watching Poppy, but I know she feels my scowl when the corners of her lips slowly creep upward.

  I need air. And not the air every living thing around me has choked on the past few minutes. Real air – fresh, from Mother Wind herself. I leap off the coneflower so abruptly it bounces Meg up and down, and a few of the purple petals break free. My wings take flight and I shoot through the air, dodging trees and swaying branches until the evil laughter coming off Meg fades away. Only then do I slow my flight and head for my place of comfort.

  I burst through the treetops and my jaw drops in awe at the beautiful sight before me, immediately calming my irate manner. The coming storm creeps along the horizon, painting the sky with shades of grays and blues, the clouds tumbling toward me over a neverending floor of luscious greenery that dance and twirl with Mother Wind. Bright streaks of white light skip sporadically across the sky and I see a flock of birds in the distance take flight, spooked by the thunderous roar above them.

  As I hover over the forest canopy, I inhale several deep, cool breaths. The rain coats the land before me, saturating the soil, leaves and flowers. The earthy smell hitches a ride with the wind and makes its way toward me. It fills my nostrils and lungs, and quiets my mind. I slowly descend atop a leaf on one of the emergent trees that poke above the canopy, leaning back on my elbows and crossing my legs. The leaf sways back and forth, and jerks me occasionally when a gale passes, but I don’t mind. The movement is almost hypnotic.

  I sigh with content. This is why I love my tree house near the canopy. The air’s more alive up here, continuously circulating around you, prickling your skin with goose bumps, swaying you gently back and forth, as if Mother Wind herself is rocking you softly in her arms. The others just don’t seem to get that, happy enough with the musty air expelled by the life at the bottom of the forest strata, where fungus and decaying matter pad the forest floor. But not me. The higher up the better.

  Between cool breezes, I hear a rustling in the tree beneath me, but the massive number of leaves protect the sound’s maker. I startle when a figure punches through the canopy, but calm when I realize it’s just Tracker. His skin the same hue as mine, his muscles curve subtlety along his arms and legs, his body lean for quickness but not built for strength. His eyes are tan, similar to the color of dried moss that hangs off this very tree, and his hair a light shade of brown too. He pauses momentarily to take in the skyline, as enthralled by the sight as I am. “Wow. I rarely come up this high. And never when it’s about to storm.”

  I softly murmur mmm-hmm as I return my attention to the clouds swirling in the sky.

  “You mustn’t let Meg upset you,” he says softly. I turn to see his kind, tan eyes gazing down at me.

  I huff. “I promise you she didn’t. I couldn’t care less about her little antics. I just felt suffocated down there.”

  “You seem suffocated with this place in general. I rarely see you in or around the Hollow anymore.” Tracker circles me a few times, inhaling a few deep breaths himself. “But I can see why you prefer the air up here. Less…saturated.”

  “How did you find me?” I ask, because only Poppy knows I come here, and because I had dipped and swayed so much through the forest I should’ve been impossible to follow.

  His eyebrows lift with amusement. “They don’t call me Tracker for nothing.”

  Impressed, I reply, “I had heard that you were good but I didn’t realize you were that good.”

  He chuckles and nestles atop the leaf beside me, swaying in rhythm with me. “I’m not really. You were easy to follow. You left the scent of peppermint behind.”

  I smile. I had completely forgotten about diving through the peppermint patch this morning. I certainly don’t smell it when I inhale anymore. I lift my arm to my nose, and sure enough, a whiff of peppermint cools my nose again.

  “To be honest, I’m a little surprised you’re still here.”

  My forehead scrunches. “What do you mean? I don’t care that pixies like Meg play stupid games. I’m not going to hide from them or anything.”

  “I wasn’t referring to Meg. I meant the Hollow. I’m surprised you haven’t left like those before us. You seem just like them.”

  The wind suddenly whips our leaves, so I doubt he notices my body snap in reaction to his words. “How so?”

  “They were all loners that preferred to get lost in the forest. Pixies in general are in tune with Mother Nature, but you particular pixies are more so.” I didn’t like the way he said you particular pixies – my nose actually wrinkles – like I was similar to those that abandoned our village and never came back. “I’ve seen the way you look at our surroundings, Rosalie. It’s like you see something the rest of us don’t, and your wings glow yellow like those before you. Like you know there’s more to life out there than what rests within our Hollow.”

  On the contrary. I am completely content with my surroundings. With my little tree house all to myself, the small watering hole at the edge of the Hollow that only I seem to know about, with all the types of bugs sharing the resources around me. I’m happy here. I like simplicity.

  But I certainly never knew the pixies that left before me had wings that developed a yellowish glow like mine.

  “Do you think the reason none of those pixies have ever returned is ‘cause they’re dead?” I ask, the whistling wind competing for Tracker’s attention.

  “Some of them, yeah. But not all of them. No, I think they just found something this place lacked for them. What that something is though, I don’t know.”

  “And you think I may know what that something is?”

  He turns and scans my body with his eyes, like he’s trying to analyze me, like I’m some weird creature he’s never seen before. “I don’t know. No one really knows you that well. Not even Poppy. We sometimes wonder if you’re the next to take flight.”

  My neck snaps faster than one of those snapping turtles I came across in the river bed last week. “Just ‘cause I like to keep to myself and stay in a di
fferent stratosphere of the forest doesn’t mean I’m itching to get out of the Hollow anytime soon.”

  “See? Right there!” he bursts.

  Surprised, I stammer, “See what?”

  “You just said anytime soon. No other pixie in the Hollow would have said that.”

  Flabbergasted, I’m left speechless and just stare at him in disbelief. Not that he notices…it seems his attention is more interested in the impending storm. I had no idea I came off that way to the others. I have no desire to the leave the Hollow. I’m happy here and I know what I really want, so I’m not going to start doubting myself over two little words now.

  I sit up and curl my arms tightly around my legs, resting my chin on my knees. We sit in silence for a few moments, rocking back and forth with the breeze, listening to the harmonic hums of the hissing winds, before Poppy pops up beside Tracker. She’s as surprised as I am that he made his way up to my special little place in the canopy.

  “Oh, I’m sorry you guys. Did you want to be alone?” she asks with a suggestive, hopeful, smile.

  To her utter disappointment, I quickly shake my head. Tracker has the same thought and tries to stand the moment a rough breeze whips through. He and Poppy avoid being swept away by snatching nearby stems, most likely receiving a few painful stings for their effort as the tree’s tendrils lash about. “No, it’s alright,” he replies, once grounded. “It’s a little windy up here for my taste.” He looks to me and softly says, “Bye, Rosalie.” I force a smile as his body descends from my view.

  Poppy’s expression is the opposite of mine. She flops down on the leaf Tracker abandoned and looks at me all wild-eyed and giddy. “So…” she says, cocking her eyebrows suggestively, “Tracker, huh? Is that who you meet every time you disappear into the forest?”

  Her eyes, the shade of darkened bark, are greedy with the idea of me having a secret lover. “No. I have no idea why he followed me up here.”

  She waves me off and puffs a burst of air through her thick, sunset red lips. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Rosalie. If you’d just spare some time from your nature flights and get to know some of your fellow pixies, you’d find that several may be interested in courting you.”

  I look to her curiously. Not likely. Not if there’s any truth to what Tracker just said. I always figured my loner ways made me a bit of an outcast, but I never realized the others thought that too.

  “Oh, don’t look so surprised. You’re cute and you know it. You seem to be good at all the tasks our elders ask us to do. You connect with the creatures on a level beyond any pixie in the Hollow. And you’re smart. But I won’t lie, Rosalie. You’re a little standoffish, so it’ll be hard finding someone willing to break down these barriers you’ve constructed. You’ve got to learn to let a few pixies in.”

  I release a long, deep sigh but the wind howls over it. I choose not to ask Poppy about her opinion on the subject, as I’m already a little depressed that my fellow pixies may think I’d up and bail on the village. If Poppy thought that way about me too, I’d really be depressed. Maybe this is why she gets annoyed when I don’t come home to sleep sometimes. Maybe she’s afraid she’ll awake one morning, come to look for me and I won’t be there anymore. We’re closer than most pixies think. She’s always been kind to me, even though I do seem to be a little different than the rest. But I have no interest in changing who I am or how I live. I always thought she got that about me, even when the others didn’t, but now Tracker has me wondering.

  “Assignments for this month went up,” she says, breaking the lull between us.

  Grateful for the change in thought, I say, “Oh yeah? What did we get?”

  “You got seeding. I got cross-pollination, thank Mother Nature. Four weeks of fertilizing has totally singed my nose hairs, but the stench did keep me from eating so I dropped a quarter of an ounce.” That last part makes her scrunch her nose playfully and smile brightly.

  I’m happy I got seeding. I enjoy plucking seeds from plentiful areas and replanting them in the more desolate areas of the forest. Not only do I get the satisfaction of knowing a seedling that wouldn’t have had room to grow in one area will grow abundantly in an area that really needs life, I also get to spend time in areas that are pixie-free. There’s nothing but bugs and small creatures to observe and learn from. I find the solitude peaceful.

  Hmm… Maybe Tracker and Poppy are right about me being standoffish towards my fellow pixies. Truth is, I’m happiest when I’m out on my own, getting lost in nature.

  Poppy shivers as the wind blows a fine mist our way, and little bumps speckle across her pale reddish-orange glow. The storm is approaching fast and her eyes fill with concern. She stands and shakes the miniscule drops of moisture from her wings. “I’m going back to the forest floor. Will you come with me?” There’s doubt in her voice because she already knows my answer.

  “Nah. Think I’ll stay up here a little longer.”

  The wind blows harder, bringing more mist this time. Poppy doesn’t wait. She drops beneath the canopy and the sound of her wings is lost instantaneously in competition with the howling wind. I inhale deeply and savor the smells of wet earth. Tiny specks of rain fall diagonally in the air and splash against my skin. Most pixies hate being caught in the rain because of the way it clings to our wings. Taking a bath and shaking the water out is one thing, but constant rainfall makes it nearly impossible to dry our wings. Just a single drop landing on a wing is enough to throw off our sense of balance. Saturated wings can weigh us down and make it nearly impossible to keep flight, stranding us where we land until the weather clears.

  Me? I love the rain. And I don’t mind if my wings get a little wet. It’s not too hard to navigate once you learn how to compensate the weight of an unexpected raindrop. But for some reason, most pixies refuse to allow themselves to be put in that position to begin with. I know I’m not the only pixie in the Hollow that can fly in the rain, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that intentionally gets caught in it. Practice makes perfect, and I can fly with quite a bit of water on my wings, if needs be.

  The wind picks up and swirls around me dramatically, whipping my hair loose from the strands of braided moss securing it back in a ponytail. The rain is heavier now, and stings when it strikes my delicately thin wings. Now is the time to go, before the storm escalates into something even I don’t want to get caught in. I stand upright, fighting the force of the wind smacking against me, trying to throw me around involuntarily. I startle as a group of birds take sudden flight just three trees away. Curiously, they head directly towards the storm instead of my way, towards safety. I watch in wonderment for a moment, then analyze their tree, seeking the reason of their quick abandonment. The storm makes it impossible to hear anything, and the erratic swishing and swaying of the tree limbs make it just as difficult to spot any anomalies within the trees.

  I decide the reason isn’t worth getting caught in the storm for. I redirect my gaze to the sky and bend my knees, preparing to bail on the canopy myself. I feel a sharp prick against the back of my neck and instinctively smack it, thinking it’s a mosquito. They’re the only bug in the forest I have no scruples over killing. All they do is take and never give back (unless you count disease). But what I feel against my hand isn’t the squashed, broken body of a mosquito. It’s a splinter, or a stinger, and it’s embedded deep inside my skin. So far in I dare not pull it out without help.

  A move I instantly regret.

  My eyes begin to blur and my body collapses as it’s flooded with extreme exhaustion. All my facial muscles slacken, and now I can’t speak. All my mouth can do is separate my lips slightly and release a moan. I lose complete control as the numbness spreads over my limbs and now lay lifeless, leaving me completely at the mercy of the storm. I’m powerless when a large raindrop splashes on my face, invading my throat and choking my lungs. I lay there, spasms thrusting my chest in a desperate effort to expel the water. Fighting the drowsiness with all my might, I force my
aching eyelids open. Everything blurs, but I see a dark shadow nearing, my terrified heart beating in painful bursts against its cage, more so as my vision slowly fades to black.

  I wake up on my stomach gasping. I can’t breathe, my inhalation so rough and deep and painful. It takes me a split second to realize the pain I’m feeling isn’t because of the water that was in my lungs. It’s my wings! It feels as if they’ve been cruelly ripped from my body. And there’s something heavy digging into my back. I reach around and feel something cold: steel. I feel to assess its size and a sharp pain shoots through my spine. I scream with all my might but only a mere whisper makes it past the constricting muscles in my throat. It’s not until I finally manage to gasp a deep breath does sound come out and echo through the cold, eerie darkness.

  “Oh-my-Mother! Oh-my-Mother! OH-MY-MOTHER-NATURE!” I scream. And gasp. And scream. And gasp. “Please Mother! My wings!” My breaths quicken as I panic, and my heart pounds against my chest, desperate to break free from its prison of ribs.