Beyond the Firefly Field

by Munzing, R. E.

  Beyond the Firefly Field

  Book 1 in The Last Elfairian Series

  by

  R.E. Munzing

  Beyond the Firefly Field

  © 2011 R.E. Munzing. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic,

  mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a

  review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First edition.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations,

  and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author's imagination or

  are used fictitiously.

  Published in the U.S. by BQB Publishing Company

  www.bqbpublishing.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-0-9831699-3-2 (p)

  ISBN 978-1-937084-43-1 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011940785

  Book cover by Sharon Grey, www.shadesofgreyillustrations.com

  Book interior by Robin Krauss, Linden Design, www.lindendesign.biz

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Marjorie Ann Kast,

  who was the inspiration for the story and one

  character in particular.

  Acknowlegements

  I would like to thank:

  Terri Leidich

  Alice Eachus

  Allison Itterly

  Joyce Curtis

  for their aid in making this novel

  presentable and published.

  Prologue

  Bradley Curtis had decided that berry picking would be the easiest chore on his long list. He loved wandering the woods, searching for the enchantment that was always rumored to exist in this rural setting. The tales came from Native Americans living in the area—and who would know the lore of the woods better than they? Ancient enchantments, they claimed, and spoke only in whispers and riddles, as if unwilling to share their secret. But nothing strange or exciting ever happened in this particular piece of nowhere. Even the events in the news, on the radio, the Korean War, rockets going into space, and inventions like television seemed to have no effect on this forgotten Northern Michigan town.

  Usually his friends joined him on these berry excursions, but not on this steamy, August afternoon. Every day, he went further into the woods to find the meadows he hadn't picked yet.

  He was well over a mile from his house when he found a field with an abundance of berries growing along its edge. The field seemed strange, messing with the new compass he'd recently gotten for his twelfth birthday. The compass said north, but he knew it was wrong. The nearby lake was to the north. But his compass pointed to the north, insisting that a large, partially dead tree was the North Pole. As he walked around in tighter circles, the compass circled wildly, always pointing north to the dead tree. Realizing he had wasted a lot of time, he shrugged his shoulders and set to the task of picking.

  Hours had passed as his bucket became full of juicy, black nuggets. Then he saw fireflies lighting up for their nightly glow fest. He panicked. It would be dark soon. He stood, after being bent over for hours, and turned to see that the field was filled with fireflies and fast becoming as bright as a beacon. Without warning, he became lightheaded, dizzy, and faint, collapsing to the ground. Heatstroke, he thought. Mom always warned me. He had drunk all of the water he brought, and now he craved it, his throat parched. With a pounding heart, he realized he would never be able to walk back home in the dark. He lay deliriously, thinking half thoughts of trying to make it to the lake as fireflies danced around him. He struggled to move off a stone that dug into his back, but barely accomplished that. Then blobs of strange colors swirled above him, moving when he raised an arm to touch them. The steam on his glasses blurred his vision, and he passed out from heatstroke.

  When Bradley awoke, he was lying in a dark field at the edge of the woods, but thankfully he felt much cooler. He felt around for the berry bucket, then sat up to search his surroundings. From the woods behind him, people were calling his name in the distance, and way across the field, he saw the lights from his house blazing a welcome. He must have walked through the dark woods somehow, though he knew that was impossible in his weakened state. Teasing his mind were vague memories of floating, drinking cool water from cupped leaves held by colorful butterfly blurs, and soothing voices assuring him that he was on his way home. But that wasn't possible either.

  “I'm over here!” he shouted. “I'm over here!”

  He thought he saw a flash of color stir behind him, but when he turned around, there was nothing there except the glints of flashlights now pointed his way.

  The Tree House

  In the stillness of the summer evening, as the breeze was leaving with the setting sun, Clayton started to feel the heat again.

  With the work on the tree house finally finished, he also started to feel bored again. He dreaded spending his teen years in the country and wished that his family lived closer to Lansing, where there were always cool things to do.

  All summer long, a sense of anticipation, often tinged with anxiety, filled Clayton's mind. Maybe it was the unusualness of meeting new friends from the subdivision being built close by. So many new students would certainly change the quiet country school he was used to.

  As he sat waiting on the lower tree house roof deck, he was relieved when he finally heard the voices of his new friends, Ron and Brian. The two fourteen-year-old boys had recently moved into the area, and they would be in his classes when school started. They had lived in the city, and Clayton envied their stories of the exciting adventures that once filled their lives.

  “I'm telling you, the glowing field is probably a beacon for aliens so they know where to land,” Clayton heard Brian insist as he walked with Ron under the tree.

  “No spaceship landed, dummy, the field just glowed. If you hadn't left early, you would have seen it too. Clayton will know what it is,” Ron retorted.

  “Hey guys!” Clayton shouted. “What took you so long to get here? It's going to be dark soon.”

  “I think it might have been the three-mile shortcut through the woods,” Brian said sarcastically as he climbed the rope ladder.

  “Living in the country wouldn't be so bad if everything wasn't so far apart,” Ron complained as the two joined Clayton on the benches built in to the deck's railing.

  “Well, when you don't have a lot of houses, there's a lot more space between them. You guys were just too used to living in Lansing where strip malls were plopped on every corner.”

  “I didn't know living in the country would be so boring, that's all I'm saying. For two months, we worked on the tree house, but now, after a week of nothing to do, we're going crazy. You don't even have one decent mall where we could go hang out,” Ron complained.

  Clayton chuckled. “This whole area is mostly forested state land or national forest, so malls are illegal. Sorry about that,” he retorted, suddenly feeling defensive.

  “The twins aren't coming?” Brian changed the subject, referring to Paul and Phil, Clayton's combative next-door neighbors.

  “No. They don't believe that the field was glowing. Paul thinks Ron is plain crazy, and Phil thinks Ron was hallucinating.

  Personally, Ron, I think you had spots floating in your eyes from looking at the sun too long.”

  “So, where's our little Einstein anyway?” Brian asked.

  “Karl usually doesn't come out here unless the twins walk a mile to his house to get him. He got all scientific-sounding when I told him you claimed that the field was glowing in the woods last night. He talked about dead, yellow marsh grass refle
cting light on the field. He's probably just going to stay home and read another college book.”

  “He's only twelve. What's his problem?” Ron demanded.

  “Toomanybraincellitis,” Brian diagnosed.

  “Hey, where's your little sister, Clayton? I can't believe the Queen of the Universe won't come out to see the mysteriously glowing field that might even be glowing in her honor,” Ron said, acting disappointed.

  “Queen Penny is not going to come out here to feed the mosquitoes when she can stay home and be pampered by our mom. But if aliens were really landing in the field, she said she would come out to meet them.”

  “I still can't believe Her Highness didn't fall out of the tree when we were building this place,” Ron said.

  “Yeah, it made me nervous every day, especially when we built the mid and upper tree houses,” Clayton agreed. “I worried I'd have to rush home and scream, ‘Hey, Mom! Penny fell out of the tree and broke some stuff!'”

  “Well, your mom is the one who ordered you to watch your sister when no adults were around. But anyway, she's only ten, so she still has rubbery bones and would've just bounced when she hit the ground,” Brian joked.

  “Or, if she really is the Queen of the Universe, she probably would have majestically floated down anyway,” Ron offered.

  “No girl would be so pampered if she wasn't the Queen of the Universe,” Clayton insisted as he watched the sweat drip from his friends' faces. Their brown hair slicked back and shone black from sweat as drops channeled down their cheeks. Cooling off was impossible.

  “What's with all this heat?” Brian demanded, wiping his forehead.

  “It's the country version of global warming. We sure won't get any sun or heat this winter when we really need it.”

  Clayton looked through the branches at the large stone house that would be keeping him warm when winter eventually returned. Though appearing tiny from three hundred yards across the oat field, his new friends saw Clayton's house as a castle, though he feared it would become his prison. Built as a two-family home, generations of Clayton's family had passed it along to their children.

  Clayton's older brother Dillon was already making plans to move to a big city, any big city, leaving Clayton stuck with the house and a boring country life. Long ago, Clayton gave up wishing something exciting would happen in his life, and now his formidable, old house seemed more a dungeon than a castle. He had to admit that he was looking forward to sitting by the kitchen fireplace when winter snows blew; it was the perfect place to warm up after school and devour his mom's freshly baked pie and cake.

  His heart suddenly felt heavy at the realization that his grandfather wouldn't be around to share treats any longer or spin his tales about the good old days. His Grandfather Bradley had died last spring. Grandfather claimed that everything was better back then. The air was fresher, the water was cleaner, and even fruits and vegetables tasted better. Grandfather told how the snow was whiter, rainbows brighter, birds ate seeds from the palm of your hand, and fairies danced in the air at sunset. His grandfather claimed to have actually seen fairies, but the rest of Clayton's relatives said he was just delirious from heatstroke.

  “Let's go to the observation deck,” Ron said, interrupting Clayton's memories.

  “I'll see you when you get there,” Clayton challenged as his friends started climbing the stairs. “I'm taking the fast way up the trunk.”

  At fourteen, Clayton had just blasted through a growth spurt, allowing him to climb places on the tree that he couldn't reach earlier that year. At five feet seven inches, he was an inch taller than Ron and an inch shorter than Brian. Since they both had stocky builds, he could easily run faster. Now he would prove that he could climb faster. His limber body propelled him quickly up the trunk, his tanned face and short, dark hair brushed the leaves and small branches along the way.

  When he reached the deck, which was as high in the tree as they dared make it, he gazed at the old saw mill on the far side of Marsh Lake. His eyes drifted south to the camp where new owners would be bringing busloads of so-called “troubled” city kids next summer. Clayton worried that the kids would find a way to cause trouble for him and his friends. He better not find any of those kids messing with his tree house!

  Suddenly, a slight breeze picked up from the south, and Clayton turned to cool the back of his neck. Looking north, he could barely make out the roofs of the new houses through the trees in the distance. At first, nobody wanted a new housing development nearby, but Clayton was happy to find new friends moving in. His old friends had become too predictable, each knowing what the other would say, do, or think. Things had just gotten so boring. He was also glad to have the endless supply of scrap lumber scavenged from construction sites to build the great tree house complex he had always fantasized about.

  As the swaying ofthe platform announced his friends' arrival, Clayton backed into a corner to give them room to maneuver. The platform was only three feet wide by four feet long, and it seemed crowded and shaky with three people clustered on it.

  “I'm still not sure this is safe,” Ron muttered under his breath. Not trusting the railings, he hugged the biggest of the three branches closest to the deck.

  “You saw Karl's extensive drawings: the lower house, middle house, upper house, and this platform. Then the stairs, deck, and railing.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we saw the drawings,” Brian said. “I think the little brain wad only drew pictures to show off his stress calculations.”

  “Someone had to figure out how much support we needed for all this weight so far out from the tree trunk,” Clayton said thankfully. The tree house was safe; it was held firmly in the old tree's sturdy grip. “It's a good thing Karl helped us. Before he got involved, the twins and I just had a bunch of unleveled platforms to sit on, with wobbly two-by-fours for steps. Karl made us tear it down and start over. You guys didn't show up until a week after the reconstruction, and you only saw the good stuff, so you thought we knew what we were doing.”

  “So now you tell us the story? How convenient to have a miniature Einstein around when you need one,” Brian agreed.

  “Hey, I see the field!” Ron shouted, still hugging the branch as he bent over to look through his binoculars.

  “You can let go of the branch now,” Clayton taunted as he grabbed the binoculars.

  “I'm fine just like this, thanks. You can see five meadows in the woods, and it's only the last field that glows at night,” Ron said.

  “The one closest to the lake?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It's not dead marsh grass, that's for sure. That field is the same color as the others, so Karl's theory is out,” Clayton admitted. “But, you still might be crazy with hallucinations about all this light stuff. The North Pole is supposed to be over there somewhere. Maybe it makes the field glow at night.”

  “Uh, I have some bad news for you, Clayton. They moved the North Pole to the top of the world and covered it with ice a long time ago,” Brian said.

  “No, really,” Clayton insisted. “We have our very own little North Pole right here in Marsh Lake, Michigan! Compasses point to it, and that's why cell phones, the Internet, and satellite dishes don't work. It puts out an electromagnetic field for miles around, and every twenty years or so, scientists come out and take readings. The Pole is supposed to be somewhere close to the south side of the lake.”

  “Geez, I didn't believe my dad when he said we were going to live so far in the boonies that cell phones wouldn't work because of some electromagnetic field. And no cable!” Brian said woefully.

  “How long are you going to hold onto that branch, Ron?” Clayton asked as he handed the binoculars to Brian.

  “About another ten minutes. Then it should be dark enough for me to prove to you that the lighted glow in the field really does exist. I'm glad Mike didn't join us when we decided to help build this tree house,” Ron mused.

  “Who's Mike?” Clayton asked.

  “Some big kid who
just moved in, and he wants to be the boss of everything. If he was in charge of building things, this deck would collapse for sure.”

  “Yeah,” Brian quickly agreed. “I didn't see any of little Einstein's calculations for anyone over two hundred pounds. Mike's staying close to the ground with the shack he's building. We saw a path off the logging road on the way here and thought it might be a shortcut. Then we discovered that it led to the secret location of Mike's clubhouse. He's still mad at us for joining you, so we doubled back and walked the long way around to avoid him.”

  “I hope he's not going to be trouble when school starts,” Ron worried.

  “Don't say that word, you jerk!” Brian chided.

  “If Mike is trouble at school, my brother can help us handle him,” Clayton assured them.

  “Where is Dillon anyway? He hasn't been around lately,” Brian noted.

  “Now that he's sixteen, he's working part-time jobs to make money to spend on girls and fix up that old Mustang in the barn. He's working with some new kid named Wayne, doing landscaping.”

  “That must be the Wayne who lives down the street from me,” Ron said. “His sister is our age, and she's epicly cute.”

  “I know. Wendy. I met her a couple times and was, like, totally tongue-tied,” Clayton lamented. “I stammered some words and turned red. I hope I wasn't drooling. She must think I'm the village idiot.”

  “No dude, you're cool,” Brian said in a mocking tone.

  “Yeah, really,” Ron insisted in the same manner.

  “Thanks for boosting my confidence, dudes,” Clayton muttered.

  Since he'd first seen Wendy in town, the image of her long, black hair with its blue sheen paired with her blue-grey eyes stayed in the back of his mind and quickened his heartbeat whenever he thought about her.

  “You're a lovesick puppy,” Brian teased. “Invite her to come up here. She'll think you're cool then.”

  “I can't. I'm still trying to say her name without slobbering all over myself.”

  “There will be a lot of cute girls in school, so I think it's a little early to get hung up on just one,” Ron advised. “And I think Mike is already claiming Wendy.”