DRAGONFLY

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

            Fran Dressel squirmed in her seat. The Reverend Horace White had been speaking for an hour and forty-seven minutes with no sign of wrapping things up. The un-muzzled dogwood bench she sat on felt like it was biting her butt. It was like a stovetop inside the church. One of the choir members had got up and opened a window a few minutes ago, a slight breeze had drifted in and the entire congregation took a deep breath but stern faced Verna Dern had jumped up and quickly closed it. There wasn’t enough loose skin on the bent old woman to produce sweat. The sermon was about judgment, damnation and the Devil’s relentlessly thrusting pitchfork for those who courted sin and the furious old spinster must have decided that the intolerable and sweltering heat in the chapel helped drive the barbed points home. The reverend had smiled at Verna and nodded as she sat down; they were of the same mind.

            A tiny dragonfly, no more than an inch long, swooped past Fran’s nose and buzzed around the closed window. The poor thing must have flown in while the window was open and was now trapped. Sunshine from outside projected through the glass and reflected off the translucent wings, sending rainbow bridges of blue and red dancing across the glass. Fran relaxed her eyes and allowed her gaze to drift anywhere but toward the pulpit. The thick lenses on her glasses acted as a kind of magnifying glass and when the dragonfly swooped past her again she imagined that she saw the outline of a tiny rider on the back of the flying insect. As if it could read her thoughts it flew closer and hovered right before her nose. Long golden-green hair flowed from a miniature female face, a curved longbow was held in one tiny hand and a quiver of arrows was strapped to an arched back covered with what appeared to be woven thistledown. Then it was gone in an instant. Fran felt a faint tickling against the lower part of her ear but she dared not scratch it. She almost came up out of her seat when she heard a tiny voice yelling in her ear. “Please you must help us!”

Fran sat up and adjusted her glasses. The flying insect that she’d originally noticed was still at the window … so there must be more than one! And on the outside what looked like a swarm of black wasps was chasing a lone dragonfly attacking it mercilessly as it swooped and dodged. Fran watched as the injured creature struggled to survive. Samuel Dodge nudged his stepdaughter hard with his elbow. His cold black eyes promised there would be a whipping with a willow branch behind the woodshed later if she didn’t sit still. Her mother’s new husband tolerated no nonsense when it came to religion, work or anything else for that matter. While her own father had on occasion gone fishing on a Sunday instead of giving himself completely to the Lord, Samuel was violently adamant that no member of his new household would tread the stony pathways to hell.

The tiny voice was back at her ear. “Please! The Boog will kill Lendoria unless you free us to help her!” The speech was English but the accent was one she’d never heard before.

She turned and could see the helpless look on the tiny creature’s face. Just outside the glass one of the wasps had stung the injured dragonfly and it fell fluttering helplessly on the window sill. No one else in the room seemed to be aware of what was going on. This friend of Lendoria was right, she was their only hope.

Fran jumped up from the hard bench ran to the window and opened it. She felt the swish of fragile wings brushing her neck as three dragonflies swooped past flying against a cooling breeze and to freedom outside. Fran watched as the three lifted the green-haired creature from the back of the broken dragonfly fluttering on the window sill and then zoomed off toward the woods, pursued by a swarm of angry wasps.

There was the silence of a tomb inside the church. The Reverend White had stopped his sermon and was staring, his face as stony cold as the Ten Commandments. The entire congregation watched as Samuel Dodge stomped across the room, closed the window, secured the lock and then dragged his stepdaughter with a firm hand back to her seat. They didn’t see the tiny creatures riding on the backs of the insects … the green hair … the tiny bows and arrows. Samuel was pinching a bit of loose skin just under her ear with his pudgy fingers and it hurt so bad she wanted to scream. I was the only one. Why did these creatures choose me?

 Fran’s mother put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder after the girl sat down. She would come to Fran’s room and rub cold dairy cream on her cuts and bruises when they returned home from church and after Samuel had administered his punishment. She would whisper to the twelve year old that life was hard but it was the only way … Fran’s real father was dead and was never coming back … there were bills to be paid …

-------2-------

Fran lingered inside the church hoping Billy Martin would notice her and perhaps say something. The handsome boy with the golden hair and the spray of freckles that ran across his nose was at the back talking to his friends and didn’t even look her way. He liked her; she could tell even though he’d pulled her hair before and once even chased her with a garden snake. Fran hated to go outside and face her stepfather but it had to be done. Samuel and her mother were already seated in the buckboard when she went outside. She started to climb in the back but Samuel stopped her. “I think it would be best if you and your sin walked home together,” Samuel said. “It will give you time to think about the iniquities you have committed … and the penalties still to be remitted.”

Fran watched as the wagon being pulled by her father’s old mare, Callie, rumbled away from the church. The sky was a clear blue, but in the distance dark clouds could be seen moving closer. Fran thought that’s how life always was - sunshine seemed to be always followed by rain. One didn’t exist without the other. Voices from inside the church grew louder; Billy and his friends must be almost at the exit. Fran hurried from the churchyard.  She’d feel humiliated if Billy saw her standing here and realized she had been left at the church by her stepfather. Fran ran toward the woods. She knew a shortcut home … and wasn’t this the way the dragonflies had fled being pursued by that black cloud of wasps? They were in danger, but then so was she … perhaps she would see them again.

-------3-------

The woods were shaded, deep and dark. A green canopy of September leaves blanketed the tree-tops allowing widely spaced beams of filtered light to descend like marble columns supporting a natural and majestic cathedral. A grassy path littered with smooth river pebbles led past clumps of mulberry, lotus vine and hack-no-more. Her father’s house sat almost on the edge of Motha forest.

Only one dwelling was closer to the forbidden timberlands… the dilapidated and moss-covered house of long-dead Bonetta Sharpstone. Not even armed hunters dared venture into that particular abandoned farm to recover a wounded deer. Folks said the old woman even though dead was still in-league with the Devil and that her spirit roamed the fields and the banks of the Cottonmouth River after dark searching for the lost and those who soon would be. Fran shivered, she wouldn’t go near the spooky place either. She had been in these woods many times and could slip from the woods unseen and come out behind the woodshed and her mother’s house. A wasp nest hanging like a paper ball near the top of a rotted oak made Fran remember the dragonflies and the creatures who rode them. They had come this was she was sure … but why?

If Samuel was taking his afternoon nap before the next series of Reverend White’s sermons began at four perhaps she could slip in the back door unnoticed. If she was especially good during the next four-hour session perhaps he would forget where he left the willow switch. Fran could hope.

Fran had almost reached the back door when she heard Samuel’s voice, strangely sad as if what he was about to do did not give him an elated kind of satisfaction. “Get over here girl!” He stood by the woodpile staring at her and rubbing bacon drippings into a cinch-strap cut from an old saddle … there would be no willow-switch lashing on this day. There was a wild light in her stepfather’s eyes and a strange stiffness in the way he walked. “… and you take that dress off. I’ll not see your mother’s fine needlework ruined just because you were bad!”

Samuel wrapped one end of the oiled leather around his hand and cracked the free end in the air …. it sounded like a gunshot.

Suddenly Fran was terrified; she turned and ran back into the woods. She could hear Samuel’s booming voice as he followed. “You come back here now … By the Gods!  I swear to Jesus and Heaven above that I’ll whip every inch of skin off your sinful bones!”

There was no place left to go where he would not catch her. Fran left the path and ran through heavy brush toward the Sharpstone farm.

            She didn’t know the uncovered well was there until she felt her feet no longer making contact with the ground. The deep hole was hidden in a tall patch of Russian thistle. The purple flowers surrounded by spines seemed to be moving. It was at least two seconds before her surprised voice could make a sound. By then she had fallen almost twenty feet and the ground around her absorbed her scream. High above, Samuel thundered right past the hidden opening thinking only that his sinful stepdaughter had somehow disappeared. Fran lay unconscious far below on bits of rotted wood, chinking stone and various debris. And the sun slowly crossed the sky.

-------4-------

Fran thought it was night when she opened one eye, but after a few moments her eyes adjusted. It was still daylight … somewhere. The tiny creature she’d seen in the church riding on the back of a dragonfly stood on a rusted tobacco tin making her almost eye-level to Fran. “We’ve been trying to wake you up,” the tiny creature yelled. Her voice sounded like the tiny pitter of grains of sand striking glass. Fran tried to lift her head but there was pain.

            “My name is Siltlin,” she said then pointed to two other creatures hovering nearby on the backs of dragonflies. “This is Gebae and Danone. We can help you with your injuries,” Siltlin yelled again, “but you’re far too large for us to move.”

Fran gazed up at the tiny circle of light far above her. “I’ll never get out of here,” she moaned.

Fran felt the dragonflies brush past her cheek as they landed beside her. Gebae and Danone were prying opened her clenched fingers. Fran allowed her hand to relax and made their job easier. She stared as they removed several tiny berries from packs on the dragonflies and dropped them in her hand. The berries were red with a green dot in the center of each. “What are these?” Fran thought they looked like poison.

            “Sinkers,” Siltlin said. “Three or four should make you just as small as we are.”

From far above, Fran could hear Samuel calling her name. His voice was like thunder and his threats were like lightning bolts.

            “How long will I stay small?” she asked.

            “Eating three berries … no more than one moon cycle,” Gebae told her. “But there’s no guarantee that you’ll live to be large again.”

            “We are at war with the Boog,” Danone explained. “They have slain us by the thousands and have vowed to eradicate us completely.”

            “You helped us today with Lendoria,” Siltlin said. “Now is our chance to repay the favor.”

From far above Fran could hear Samuel’s voice coming closer … what if he discovered she was in the well?”

Fran quickly swallowed three of the berries … and then added another.

            Everything about her appeared to be growing larger. The tobacco tin Siltlin stood on was now as large as an outbuilding. Fran found herself lost in the lace of her own dress. “Hurry,” Siltlin said. “We have less than an hour until the sun drops!”

            “What happens then?” Danone was helping her mount the back of a dragonfly. Fran was naked.

            “The Boog come out in force thousands of thousands,” Gebae said. “They consume every living thing they can find … and they are most fond of our children.”

            “You creatures have children?” Fran gasped.

Siltlin, Donone and Gebae all laughed as the dragonflies bore them out of the well. “All living things must start somewhere!” Donone yelled between giggles.

Samuel was leaning over the well peering down and slapped with his leather strap at what he thought were gnats emerging from the deep pit. “Girl, you are in a world of trouble!” he yelled at no one in particular.

Fran was amazed at how quickly they rose. She could see the tops of the trees and then their farmhouse. The town of Cloverdale appeared in the distance. Every place she had ever known now looked tiny. “I hope so Samuel … I hope so,” she whispered.

To be continued ….