Kat stared at the fire. “I was so jealous. He got to see one, and I never did.” She exhaled out her nose. “Then a few years later, he was the one doing the disappearing.” Her chuckle was forced. “Just like the moon dog. Now you see him, now you don’t.”
The atmosphere in the clearing sharpened. Stars brightening, mist evaporating.
They were going into places they had never been before.
“And he didn’t — he never said —” Miranda couldn’t figure out how to phrase this exactly.
He never said when he was coming back?
He never said when he would come for his daughter?
He didn’t leave a note for me explaining why he had to leave? The words formed in Miranda’s mind, but refused to leave the station.
Her mother, gratefully, understood. “No,” she said. “When he said good-bye, it was for forever.”
Inside, Miranda’s stomach hollowed itself out until it was so empty, she could’ve dropped a penny down into it like a wishing well, and the coin would bounce off the sides with an echo.
“Well,” Miranda said. “I don’t believe that.”
“Oh, Bean.” The tenderness in Kat’s voice was like a knife in Miranda’s stomach. “It’s not something to believe in or not believe in; it’s the facts. He gave up custody. He wouldn’t even hire a lawyer.”
“Maybe he knew it was a lost cause.” A flame grew in Miranda’s chest. “Everyone I know with divorced parents say the moms always get custody. Everyone knows it.” It was true. A boy in her math class had divorced parents, and even though his dad had paid eleven grand to hire the best lawyer in the state, his dad only got joint custody. Every other Thursday, and one weekend a month — that was how often he saw his dad.
Still, Miranda wanted to scream every time that kid complained about having to split the time between his parents. At least you have a dad! she wanted to scream. At least you’re not scouring the Internet to see if he’s changed — grown a goatee, gotten a piercing, changed his signature shirt color from blue to green. At least you’re not scraping for details about your father between the couch cushions, details you desperately need because even though they are small, you can use them to build a larger picture — use them as proof that he’s real, that he exists, that he’s out there, and he’s coming back for you someday.
“I’m so sorry, Bean.” Kat opened her arms wide. “So, so sorry.”
“Why do you always call me that?” Miranda said. “Why’d you name me Miranda if you weren’t ever going to use it?”
“Miranda,” Kat said, and the name in her mouth was a fresh downy quilt, a sunny meadow, a mother’s heart in sonic form. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry. I was sorry the day he left, and I was sorry yesterday, and I’m sorry today. A girl deserves to have her dad in her life.”
“Then why did you let him leave?” Miranda burned as soon as this question left her mouth.
How horrifying, to expose herself like this — but the more skins she shed, the quicker they flew off. She was pink and raw and blood and guts and veins and all her wiring exposed — and she was electric. She was not to be touched. She fired the questions at Kat like cannons. “How could you let him do it, Mom? How could you push him away? Was it all this — all this Bigfoot stuff?”
Your fault, your fault, your fault . . .
“That had nothing to do with it.” How could her mother say this so calmly, so easily — as if she really believed it? What else could it have been?
“How could you let him go, Mom? How?”
Target hit. “What was I supposed to do, chain him to the house?” Kat said.
“Yes!” Miranda cried. “Or throw your arms around him, or cry, or threaten to follow him wherever he goes —” She choked on the last of her words. These were the things that she would have done, if she had known what was happening.
In a flash, she saw it all happening again, an instant replay:
Her father, waiting patiently at the end of the driveway for Kat and Miranda to get home from their errands. Kat saw him, his packed car, his suitcase, and swore under her breath. Why was Miranda remembering that now?
A hug for the bean, a whispered good-bye in her ear. . . .
“You should have stopped him,” Miranda said to her mother now. “When he told you he was leaving, you should have —”
“I didn’t even know he was leaving, okay, Miranda?” Kat shook as she said this. “He waited until I was gone for the day, and he packed his things. He had been planning to leave for months and never said a word to me.” Her chin trembled. “Like he had to escape from me.”
Maybe he did, Miranda thought.
Maybe it’s the only way I’ll be able to get away, too.
“You think I didn’t do anything, but I did. I begged him to stay. Then I called him after he left and begged him to come back.” The fire lit the tear that streaked down past Kat’s glasses; Miranda ignored it. “He wouldn’t even take my calls. I called him for years. But he left. And he’s not coming back.”
Miranda’s head shook; her heart pulsed shock waves through her body. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong!”
But Kat’s comments had broken on the ground, spilling everywhere. “He didn’t fight for us. Not for me, and not for —”
“You’re lying!”
“I pushed for joint custody, and he said no. He relinquished his rights.” Kat was still quiet, still unbearably composed, but Miranda couldn’t listen to any more. She stood up and walked away from the heat of the fire.
“Bean, I’m sorry!” Kat called. “If I could change it all, I would.”
Miranda heard this, and even though the truth of it — the rightness of it — burned into her like a brand, she didn’t stop, didn’t turn around.
Kat stood up. “Miranda, come back!”
Miranda’s mind was a black scribble as she walked into the deepening cold.
“It’s too dark! Miranda! Stop!” Kat shouted.
But Miranda didn’t stop. She took off at a run, scampering over bushes and fallen trunks like she had been born and raised in this forest.
Born and raised to be alone.
Kat chased after her but Miranda soon lost her, and in the darkness, her hair blended into the shadows as a cluster of storm clouds passed in front of the full, fat moon.
If she ran fast enough, she could outrun the truth.
With every step she took, her mind recited it, a spell to make the hurt go away:
All her mother’s fault.
Her fault, her fault, her fault.
The forest, at night, looked like a completely different land — a fairytale landscape, something from one of her old encyclopedias of fantasy animals that lived on her nightstand when she was little.
Before she knew any better.
Back when she could still believe in things like fairies and mermaids and Bigfoot — before everything got complicated.
When did it get so hard to believe?
Exhausted, hands trailing at her sides, she stumbled through the trees like she was midfall, but she never went down. Her legs kept carrying her farther and farther, her mind spinning a web of the same two thoughts —
She’s wrong.
What if she’s right?
She’s wrong.
But what if she’s right?
She’s always wrong.
Not like this.
She’s always wrong about everything.
What if he left on purpose? Left knowing he would never come back?
What if he didn’t just leave Mom . . . What if he left me, too?
Her heart pounded so hard, it made her cough — a flutter in her chest that rolled and tickled up her throat. Tears fell, and she couldn’t find her breath — so her body sobbed to get it.
The darkness was oppressive, sticky. The trees’ shadows crisscrossed the earth in strange nets. Beside her, the sound of hooves thundered — some great animal, running parallel? But it was only a white hare, she saw, who
dove into its burrow beneath a spruce and watched her pass, ears trembling.
She slowed near a grove of cedars and scooted to a sitting position, letting her back scrape down a crooked trunk, her face wet. Cold air sank its fangs into her skin.
The night cry of a bird echoed around her.
An ordinary owl?
Or a giant owl, screeching for dinner?
Anything seemed possible now, the forest opening wide as if she had stumbled through a portal into a new world, anything but the thing she wanted most of all. Anything but him.
The dam that held back the ridiculous creatures of the cryptozoological world had burst, levee gates busted from their hinges and washed away in the force. Every beast Kat had ever mentioned, every monster ever whispered about in the depths of the Internet flooded into the open field of her mind.
They could be behind any of these trees, dragging knuckles, and tails, and webbed feet —
Miranda shook her head, shook out the impossible. They’re not real, she reminded herself. Not real. Not real.
That wasn’t phantom growls, or sniffles, or breathings or rustlings, only the collective sound of the leaves shifting.
“I don’t believe in you,” she whispered aloud.
And then she heard another sound. A quiet, collective whistle.
Like the forest was breathing.
In the bushes ahead, a faint light flashed.
Back and forth it darted, winking at her.
She wiped her eyes and watched the light dance around the leaves — what was it? A firefly?
Another light joined, and another. Soon she counted more than twenty of them. They moved through the bushes, their pathways smooth. Warmth surged in her cheeks, her nose, her fingertips — as long as she was watching the lights, she was warm.
She was okay.
Just a little closer.
She stood, took a step forward, and a twig snapped beneath her feet.
At once, all the lights extinguished, blinking off like they were timed with a switch.
“No!” Miranda whispered, her body plunging back into the cold. She held perfectly still, pleading in her mind for the lights to please, please come back, please . . .
The lights appeared again, one at a time.
This time, when she followed the lights into the bushes, she made her footsteps silent as a ghost’s, creeping along behind them, deeper into the forest. She couldn’t see her mother’s glowing campfire anymore, or the clearing. The lights led her deeper into the darkness, glowing so brilliant, they could be confused for the stars themselves.
Miranda watched the lights, hovering in that place that exists between dreaming and awake. She rubbed her eyes, and suddenly the forest brimmed with new colors. Were the pines always this green? Was there always an amber glow between the limbs of the trees? Was Mount Draco always furiously purple, its white cap of snow visible even in the shadows?
The lights doubled, then tripled, until an entire congress of them flashed in front of her — how many of them? At least a hundred, and now in different colors — neon greens, hot pinks, tails streaming like sparks off a comet.
Maybe even a thousand? Miranda couldn’t tell. Her mind was so far away from numbers, from counting, from the mechanical things she could usually rely on to calm herself — instead her mind was gloriously blank, empty in the most peaceful way. All that existed were these lights, and these trees, and her feet to follow them.
The lights congregated around a tree, a huge, massive yew with a split trunk that twisted up and braided together, like two people dancing and reaching for the moon. The lights swarmed around, swirling and swirling . . .
Then the tree swallowed the lights whole. The forest plummeted into darkness. For three horrible, terrifying seconds, Miranda was in total blackness, and so very cold, and alone, and sad. The lights had taken her will to be happy, her ability to smile, even her desire to breathe.
And then it was over, and the tree exploded with light. Light shot out of every patch of bark, every split in the tree, every knot and wormhole, everywhere.
Miranda had to see what was happening. She had to get closer. On toes that barely kissed the ground, she moved to the tree, and when she leaned over the broken trunk to peer inside, she held in a gasp.
The word popped into her mind, and she wanted to fight it away, to disregard it, to explain it with other things, other logic. She wanted to deny it so badly, but there it was, right in front of her eyes.
Where she could see it.
Fairies.
They were as real as she was — she could see them, each about three inches tall, and she drank in all the small details. The little bends in their wrists. Their elbows, smoother than any human flesh. The curl of their hair, the way the slightest breeze blew their clothing, their dresses and loose flowing shirts — what were their clothes made of? Feathers and leaves and cobwebs, truly? Miranda took in the delicate crispness of their wings, camouflaged as autumn leaves, and her mind twirled.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. It was a hallucination, a trick of the light, a figment of her imagination. The mulberries — she’d eaten too many. They were giving her this reaction, weren’t they, they were firing this dream into her brain.
But when she opened her eyes, they were still there. Still so . . . alive.
She stared and stared until she could see their veins, their wrist joints, their collarbones — the lights around their heads pulsed, as if their hearts were beating and the light was just a visual manifestation of this fact.
The fairies lined up in rows, and Miranda finally saw that they were in a little ballroom, made here in the hollow of the trunk, trimmed in gold. Not exactly like the illustrations in that book she’d had as a child — different details, but the same feeling.
Somewhere from the forest, music began — not the tinkling, mechanical music-box music she’d heard, but a robust minuet. And not from the forest itself, but from a fairy band there in the corner, playing doll-size instruments — fiddles with bows made with the tiniest of twigs and flutes made of reeds and drums made of mushroom caps.
Everything glowed in goldenrods and warm silvers, undertones of that same brilliant, beautiful white, and Miranda’s eyes again filled with tears.
They were happy, warm tears — or were they sad ones?
The fairies danced, lining up and switching partners, impossibly light on their feet. Sometimes they let their gorgeous wings unfurl and they lifted off the ballroom floor, spinning. Their dance lines then had texture not only in their symmetrical lines, but also up and down in the air.
Miranda didn’t know how long she stood there, watching and listening. She didn’t know if the fairies were aware of her, or if they cared about the giant human face, wide as the sky, leaning over the tree trunk as if it were a wishing well. But she watched them dance until a pair of brass trumpets sounded and the music died away. The fairies turned their attention skyward, where a lone fairy descended, perhaps from the moon itself.
This fairy wore a white dress, much simpler than any of the other fairies’ gowns, with a rustic leaf crown around her head. Her wings were a monarch butterfly’s, harvest gold and webbed in black, pointed and beautiful.
The queen.
Miranda’s books had been relocated to the garage years ago, but she hadn’t forgotten — she could never forget.
The queen floated down and a whole fairy cavalry followed from the darkness, a group of ten fairies in chestnut armor and acorn helmets.
The fairy queen lifted a drum and beat it.
Again, she beat it, and this time, the ten armor-clad fairies pulled out their own drums and beat on them, their own wings spreading long and wide against the stars. Over and over they beat the drums, faster and louder and faster.
They all rose in the air together, following their queen, who still beat her drum as steady as a heartbeat, and they flew in a great circle, dashing away from the tree.
And Miranda raced through the darkness
behind them, greedy for their light, hungry for their warmth. She couldn’t stand to be alone. As they flew in their strange single-file parade, every leaf that their light touched turned gold, or red, or orange, and crisped until it curled on its branch.
The fairies were doing it, she realized as she crashed through the understory — changing the seasons. They were responsible for every gilded leaf Miranda had seen in the forest, every reddened vine, every fallen beechnut . . .
Maple leaves turned scarlet, spruce needles shriveled and fell off the trees, pinecones dropped to the forest floor like grenades. And suddenly Miranda was no longer rushing along the ground to keep up; she was swept up above with the fairies, lights swirling around her — Miranda was the light. Drums beating around her — she was the drums.
She closed her eyes for a moment — the light was too much — and she laughed.
Her hair — it swirled up above her head. She was no longer shivering, no longer lonely, or scared, or sad, or angry. She was floating, flying, falling — did it matter which one? Her body shook, her teeth chattered — but it was warm as summer here with the lights, with the fairies.
Did she fly through the entire forest with them, watching them turn every plant to autumn? Or was it all in her mind?
At some point the drums faded, and she was brought down to a bed of leaves. More leaves were placed on top of her, a patchwork quilt of fall colors. A music-box melody tinkled, faint as chimes in a wind-choked thunderstorm, and she snuggled down and fell asleep.
The forest gave her dreams of white lights and feathers as tall as she was and gauzy wings and packed suitcases and bowls of milk on windowsills that were drained and lapped up, empty by morning.
Miranda was a girl who was so very good at reading shadows.
She could tell from the hallway, even without the light on, which shadows belonged to which things in her bedroom.
She knew the short, scalloped shadows that grew from her shelf belonged to her fairy figurines, the ones she’d collected from yard sales and thrift shops and who watched over her as she dreamed.
The Bigfoot Files Page 19
