The Time of the Fireflies

  Miss Anna nodded primly. “Grandmother Sophronia said it was because the barges and ships could come right up the Bayou Teche. We had a good dock back then. Before the war, they loaded sugarcane right down at the water. After the war Grandmother said they had to sell off some of their land, just to keep body and soul together.”

  Mister Lance clucked his tongue and tried to hide a smile at her little speech. “Is that right?”

  Miss Anna nodded from her makeshift bucket stool. “See all that land across the bayou where the road leads into town? Used to be owned by our family.”

  “I surely did know that, Miss Anna. Been working for your family since I was a youngster myself.”

  The girl in the blue dress and white pinafore ruffles composed her face into a regal expression. “That’s why we simply must find the buried treasure — I mean, the silver. It will save my family from going to ruin.”

  “That ain’t likely, Miss Anna.”

  “But the silver will make certain we have security for generations to come.”

  “You’re probably right about that. But ain’t it about quittin’ time, Miss Anna?” Mister Lance hinted, shading his eyes.

  Miss Anna spun on her patent-leather heels as she surveyed the yard. “It’s just got to be here, Mister Lance. Let’s do one more tree. Mind you, just the oldest ones. The newer trees weren’t even here fifty years ago, so they couldn’t have hidden the family silver there, of course.”

  “Smart thinkin’,” the old man said, smothering a yawn. “But how come you’re so sure it’s still here? Maybe your grandpappy already found it and used it up after the war.”

  Miss Anna widened her eyes. “I believe I’d have heard the story from Grandmother Sophronia. But perhaps the person who buried it died during the war and the secret location died with them? That’s my theory.”

  The old man pursed his lips. “Hmm. Could be, I guess.”

  “Besides, if they’d found it, they wouldn’t have had to sell off all the sugarcane fields.”

  Mister Lance considered this. “You’ve got it all figured out, Miss Anna. You’d probably do something mighty splendid if you went to university when you get all grown up.”

  Miss Anna primly placed her hands in her lap. “This is 1912, you know, and ladies are getting more educated all the time. Mamma says women will soon get the vote, too.”

  I almost fell straight into a patch of weeds. Did that girl say 1912?

  Time seemed to stand still. It was peculiar. More than that, it was downright spooky. My ears heard Miss Anna say the words, but I was hoping I hadn’t understood her correctly.

  Nineteen twelve? Really? This was the year 1912?

  Impossible! That was over a hundred years ago!

  I shook my head, reflecting on how much she reminded me of Tara Doucet from school. The same way of carrying herself like she owned the world. Miss Anna was a plantation girl just like Tara was. Well, like Tara’s ancestors. The Doucet Mansion wasn’t a working plantation anymore, of course. No fields, just the regal mansion house still standing on the Bayou Teche where it curved on the far side of town.

  My mind whirred. This island used to belong to my mamma’s family … but who was Miss Anna? And what happened to this beautiful columned home? When my mamma lived here as a girl with my grandparents, there wasn’t any fancy plantation house.

  Mister Lance mopped his face with a handkerchief, then stuffed it into his pocket. “All righty, Miss Anna. We’ll do one more dig. Lead the way.” He picked up two shovels and a spade, gave the hot sun a grimace, and then looked longingly into the thicket of trees where I crouched.

  I froze, my legs fixed to the earth. I swear he was staring right at me. Could he see me in the shrubbery? I didn’t move a muscle, not even an eyeball.

  Finally, Mister Lance shook his head, wiped at his eyes with the back of his shirtsleeve, like they were watering, then trudged after Miss Anna.

  The girl strode to another towering cypress tree about twenty feet from where I was hiding, her skirts flouncing, ringlets bouncing in perfect rhythm. “I’ll bet this tree is a hundred years old,” she pronounced, running a hand along its gray, stringy bark. “Which means it was planted long before the Yankees invaded Louisiana.”

  “You’re probably right, Miss Anna.” The gardener exhaled noisily as he surveyed the ground. “Looks rock hard,” he muttered, stomping on the shovel. The sharp edge bit into the thick grass.

  I sat stone still, wrapping my arms around my knees to make myself as small as possible. Was there really buried silver on the property? I felt like I was watching a movie right in front of my eyes. The sun lowered, and I kept an eye out for alligators and wasps and stinging ants.

  While Mister Lance dug, sweat dripped like rain down his face. Miss Anna peered into the growing hole. Cicadas buzzed in the trees, and I flinched as one dive-bombed straight for me. Don’t move, I told myself. But the cicadas with their hard shell bodies made such a racket I was pretty sure Miss Anna and Mister Lance would never hear me even if I wiggled or crunched a twig accidentally.

  Crazy thoughts bounced around my brain. How in the world did I get here? Why was I here?

  Find the fireflies.

  Trust the fireflies.

  The voice on the phone knew something I didn’t know.

  I saw myself walking step by step across the broken bridge inside the swarm of fireflies. I saw the bridge shimmering in front of me, rock steady — as if it had miraculously fixed itself.

  But nope, that hadn’t happened at all. I’d actually slipped back to the time before the bridge had been struck by lightning and broken into pieces. I’d passed into a time when the bridge was new and whole and horses and buggies probably crossed it to drive into town.

  My eyes flew wide as a new voice entered the yard. A boy’s voice with a thick Louisiana accent.

  “Miss Anna, Miss Anna!” he called. He was wearing cotton work overalls, too, but without a shirt, and his dark skin glistened with sweat as he came running around the back of the house.

  Anna walked briskly forward, shading her eyes. “What are you hollering about, T-Paul?”

  The pile of soft black soil had grown, and the way Miss Anna walked, her spine rigid, I knew she didn’t want the boy to see what she and Mister Lance were doing.

  “Miz Normand’s come home! Back from New Orleans!”

  “Oh, drat!” I heard Anna exclaim softly, quickly smoothing at her dress. “I mean — how wonderful that Mamma is home!”

  T-Paul halted on the lawn, his feet bare. “Carriage arrived not ten minutes ago, and she’s brought your uncle with her, too!”

  Miss Anna gasped. “You mean Uncle Edgar? He’s really and truly here? How marvelous! There will be games and talk tonight. You know he’s just returned from his trip to New York City. I’ve saved all his postcards from around the world.”

  “I’d love to see those international stamps, Miss Anna, if you’ll oblige me sometime,” T-Paul said shyly.

  Miss Anna didn’t hear him. Or pretended not to, as she inspected the dust on her shoes and retied the sash at her waist.

  “What’s your mamma ordered for supper?” T-Paul asked. “Bet it’s something special — one of Mister Edgar’s favorites.”

  Anna waved at the boy to go on to the house. “I hope you already unpacked Mamma’s trunks from the carriage. Have the horses been seen to?”

  “Yes, miss!” I heard T-Paul shout as he ran toward the back porch.

  Anna glanced over her shoulder at Mister Lance, who straightened, staring after her. She gave a quick furtive wave to tell him to put away his tools and get out of sight.

  I could hear the gardener’s bones creaking as he rubbed his spine, then flexed his fingers, pulling off a pair of gardening gloves.

  Miss Anna’s and T-Paul’s voices faded as they scampered up the steps to the house. I’d never seen anything as lovely as that back porch. It boasted beautifully polished pine planks. White wicker chairs were placed strategically al
ong the length of it. Tubs of summer flowers bloomed in colors of pink and yellow and purple.

  “No silver here,” Mister Lance said out loud to no one, startling me. He stuck the point of the shovel inside a hole about two feet in diameter. “But I’ll bet my last dime she’ll be wanting me to dig ’round the whole tree tomorrow. And every tree in the dadgum bayou.”

  I covered my mouth to keep the laugh from slipping out.

  His head shot up as if he’d heard me, and I shut my eyes so he couldn’t see them glittering in the sunset. I prayed the shadows would hide me. Guess it worked, because Mister Lance pushed the soft dirt back into the hole, picked up his tools, and made his way back to the shed in the far corner of the property.

  Aware of all the dark, empty windows of the house, I got up, too, hurrying back to the bayou while keeping under cover of the trees. Branches scratched at my arms, and I skirted a red-ant hill swarming with the lethal creatures.

  A whirl of thoughts crashed around my mind. Miss Anna Normand lived right here in this very house in 1912.

  I had to find out who she was — and why I’d slipped into the past in the first place.

  Yellow light lit up the windows of the mansion house as I took the path back to the dock. I tried to imagine the Normand family inside. Candles on the dining table? Servants dishing up plates filled with delicacies? Polished sideboards with ceramic hot plates from Europe? It was a life I could only dream about. A life long gone into history books.

  The fireflies were miraculously waiting for me at the bank. They rose into the air in a golden swarm of light, escorting me back across the bridge.

  As I stepped onto the firm, muddy earth, I got chills realizing that Miss Anna was a girl who had already died. If she was about twelve in 1912, that meant she was born in 1900, right at the turn of the last century. I wanted to know a whole lot more about Miss Anna and her family. There must be a reason why I’d been able to walk across that broken bridge.

  I’d seen a different time period — without a time machine, or a special potion, or a magic set of shoes. Maybe time was constantly going on all around us. And we could catch tiny glimpses now and then.

  From what Anna had said, her family was the original owners of the plantation, back before the Civil War. I wondered if my Grandma Kat knew who Anna Normand was. ’Course, my grandmother lived on the island fifty years after Anna’s time, and Mamma’s maiden name was DuMonde. The Normand family must have lost the house or had to sell it.

  * * *

  Later that night while Mamma was doing the dishes and Daddy was in the storage shed searching for candlesticks for a customer, I locked up the second floor by myself.

  I straightened the baskets of old Life and National Geographic magazines. Got out the Pledge and a dust rag for the bookcases. Then the window cleaner to wipe customer fingerprints off the glass cabinets of china and figurines and mantle clocks and dolls.

  I froze when I heard a phone ring behind me. I tried to ignore it. Mamma would get it any second now. But the ringing kept on, and Mamma did not answer it.

  I knew the ringing was closer than the kitchen downstairs. Much closer.

  I stared at the back wall of phones, my pulse thudding in my throat. This time it wasn’t one of the farmhouse phones with its clanging old-fashioned metal bells. It was one of the Princess phones. The pink one.

  After ten rings, I finally snatched it up.

  I’d barely said hello when a girl’s voice said, all in a rush, “You have to go back….”

  I could hardly swallow. “Go back where?”

  “To 1912. You must follow Anna Normand.”

  “You mean stalk her?” I thought about how I’d hid in the woods secretly watching the girl and the gardener. “But I wasn’t purposely spying on her! And how do you know her?”

  “I don’t know her exactly,” the girl admitted, her voice low.

  The phone crackled. I switched hands, but it wasn’t much better.

  “I don’t have much time,” she added. “This connection is always tenuous, you know.”

  “Actually, I do know that,” I said. “After all, the phone line isn’t even connected to the wall! And why should I go back? What if I get stuck?”

  “You’ve got to. Remember, it’s a matter of life and death.”

  Those words made spiders crawl up my neck.

  “And find the Bible,” she added.

  “What are you talking about? This is crazy. You’re crazy!”

  “Am I crazy?” she said, not taking offense. “But — La — Larissa, think about it.” She stammered as though it was difficult to say my name. “Haven’t I been right so far?”

  It was true, she’d been right about the fireflies. But why was I supposed to go back to 1912? What was so important or special about Anna Normand? So I could know how awful my own life was? So Anna or somebody like Alyson Granger could rub it in for the rest of my life?

  But I had to admit I was curious. And this girl on the phone seemed so serious when she talked about life and death. “Where do I find the Bible?” I asked.

  All of a sudden I realized I was talking to myself. The phone had stopped working. The girl was gone.

  * * *

  The next day was Sunday. I pulled on my church dress and nicest sandals, melancholy rising. Birds were singing in the cypress on the side yard. I was missing Shelby Jayne. Two weeks without my best friend loomed like a giant black hole.

  It was time to search for the Bible.

  As I searched the second floor, my bare legs brushed the hem of my dress. The hair on the back of my neck rose like fingers crawling along my skin. Eyes seemed to follow me, but I sucked down a whimper. With my other hand I rubbed at the scar on my cheek. It felt twitchy and achey.

  The afternoon sun glinted off the glass of the doll case, and in the halo of light all those blue and green eyes sparkled like real eyes and not glass. “Aah!” I choked out. The dolls appeared alive sitting behind the glass. “Jeepers,” I finally breathed, trying to get my heart to stop racing.

  We had tons more bookcases than I remembered. They seemed to have multiplied like rabbits. There were ten bookcases on the second floor and five more on the main level.

  It took an hour to scan all those books.

  The cases contained old classics, books about budgeting your money or quilting or the Civil War. There were a few children’s picture books, like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and Goodnight Moon; the whole collection of Louisa May Alcott novels; plus the set of Anne of Green Gables; and books by the author Elizabeth Goudge. My favorite of her books was The Little White Horse, even though I’d never had a horse and probably never would.

  Finally, I checked the bookcases downstairs. Dull science books. Fat novels like War and Peace. A few Sherlock Holmes books. Agatha Christie mysteries. And two full shelves of Nancy Drew that I’d read twice through already.

  I plopped into an armchair, yawning so hard my jaw ached. Instead of giving up, I rose once more and maneuvered through rows of dishes and tea sets, skirted the staircase landing, and then wiggled through the stacked desks and furniture until I reached Daddy’s office.

  It was more like a closet than a real office. A rickety table where he did paperwork and invoices. There was also a swivel chair, dust everywhere, and filing cabinets that never quite closed. A second door led to a small space where my parents spent an evening twice a week boxing up items for shipping.

  The office was tight, and the smell of turpentine clogged up my nose. Sometimes Daddy refinished pieces of furniture when they were particularly scratched up or peeling.

  I lifted the lids of the boxes, peered at the labels, and found only two boxes with books that hadn’t been inventoried yet. Bending back the flaps, I lifted out stacks of used and new books and laid them on the floor, my knees getting dirty from the dust. Sticky spots from old duct tape pinched my skin.

  I scanned the spines with my finger. Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein science fiction, and somewhere
Mamma had found a set of Harry Potter novels, mostly in good shape. Those would probably sell fast.

  After reading each book’s title and placing it back into the last of the boxes, I became aware that I was done. There wasn’t a single book that was remotely a Bible. What if we’d sold it? What if I was too late? If that was true, then the girl on the phone was too late.

  Was I reading book spines and poking through boxes for absolutely nothing?

  “Larissa, you are plumb stupid crazy,” I muttered as I went into my bedroom to check my own bookcase. It was only four shelves, and I’d never seen a Bible there, so the task seemed futile, but I figured I could check it off and know I’d tried my best.

  Daddy always let me have first pick of the kids’ books when he bought them for the store. After I was done reading, Mamma would get after me to let her stick price tags on them and bring them downstairs.

  “What’s the point of reading a book twice?” she’d say. “We could make some money off those.”

  “A few quarters ain’t gonna break the bank,” Daddy would argue back.

  “I want to keep my favorites,” I’d try to explain to Mamma.

  Pretty soon she’d forget about it. Until we had a few days without any real sales and the cash register was getting empty.

  * * *

  All during church services, my mind raced. I even flipped through the Bibles stacked in the Sunday school closet. They were all alike, no markings, nothing unusual.

  On Sundays the antique store was closed. After we ate a big Sunday lunch, Mamma put her feet up with a book, ice cubes clinking in a glass of lemonade, while Daddy went over the accounting ledgers.

  I ate so much lunch my stomach was full and I got super sleepy. I curled up on one of the Victorian settees on the second floor and read The Little White Horse until the book dropped and my eyes closed.

  Not five minutes later, I felt eyes burning into the back of my head.

  I rolled over, my pulse pounding in my ears. Goose bumps broke out on my arms.