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A Fairy Kind of Light

Bob Strother

    He felt the warm and gentle pressure of her hand sliding into his, and wondered if the joy flooding his senses might be common to grandfathers everywhere or if his was somehow special. Twilight descended as they meandered down the sidewalk, manicured yards on their right deep in shadow, the sky marbled with purple and red clouds. He would’ve been content to stay in the moment forever, but she had other ideas, looking up at him as the westering sun cast luminous reflections in her serious, pale-gray eyes.
    “I may not be here when you wake up in the morning, Papa.” At seven years old, Carly still slept with him and her grandmother when she visited. He knew it wouldn’t last and dreaded the day she outgrew them in more ways than one.
    “Oh, where might you be?”
    “In Overland, I hope. I believe I’ll pass through the portal tonight after I go to sleep.”
    “And where is this Overland?”
    “Well, it’s a whole different world.” She bit down on her lower lip, apparently giving his question considerable thought. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s very beautiful, filled with great forests and lots of magic places.”
    He smiled, marveling, as he often did, at the reaches of her imagination. “How long will you be gone?”
    After a few seconds, she said, “I don’t really know, maybe for a while.”
    “I’ll miss you very much if you’re not there when I wake up.”
    Carly nodded as they continued to stroll toward one of the neighborhood’s several parks. Then she looked up at him again, this time with a measure of excitement in her eyes. “You believe in fairies, don’t you, Papa?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “And you’re a nature lover, aren’t you?”
    “You know I am.”
    “And you believe in Snowflake, too?”
    Snowflake, a small, stuffed white dragon of unknown origin had become Carly’s beloved companion during the past several months. While he didn’t know how the dragon came into her world—probably from some very mundane source, likely his daughter or son-in-law—Carly remained convinced it derived from some other time and place. He wasn’t about to dissuade her of the notion.
    “I do believe in Snowflake.”
    She squeezed his hand, smiling. “Okay then, maybe you can go to Overland, too.”
    He returned her gentle squeeze. “I would love that.”

     Lying awake in bed the following morning, he listened to the rhythmic breathing of two of the people he loved most in the world. He reveled in simply watching his granddaughter as she slept, sometimes allowing himself the privilege of stroking her smooth cheek or pushing a tendril of copper-colored hair off her forehead and behind her ear.
    Some minutes later, Carly’s eyelids fluttered and finally opened. Her gaze bounced quickly around the bedroom before coming to rest on his face. Her mouth curled down at the edges. “Well, shoot. I didn’t go.”
.....
    He hadn’t thought about the episode in years, nor would he have fifteen years later, as he once again held Carly’s hand in the funeral home where his wife of nearly four decades lay in repose on white satin. Though still in pre-med studies at Emory University, Carly had been almost as attentive during his wife’s illness as he had, spending hours at her bedside, holding her hand, speaking to her quietly while they all awaited the inevitable end.
    Now, as Carly rested her head against his shoulder, he thought she must sense the utter despair and loneliness he seemed unable to shake—the feeling that his life no longer held purpose.
    “She’s going to be fine, Papa. She’s in a better place than we know.” Carly’s eyes still held the same pale gray light they’d had as a child, and the seriousness, too, when she felt strongly about something.
    “I know,” he said, blinking back another onset of tears. “She never feared dying. It was one of the things I admired most about her during the past few months.”
    Carly shook her head. “No, Papa, Grandma’s not dead. She’s in Overland.”
    He frowned, incredulous at his granddaughter’s suggestion. How could anyone of her maturity and intelligence hold onto such a juvenile fantasy? Still, he found himself unable to suppress a smile as he recalled their exchange from more than a decade before.
    “No, really,” Carly said, “She is. We talked about it a long time ago, the same way you and I did. She believed—just like you.” Her eyes went serious again. “It’s important that you still believe. You do, don’t you?”
    To him, she’d always seemed imbued with a profoundness of thought and logic well beyond her years. Even so, he knew people dealt with death in very different ways. As foreign as this notion might be to his sense of reality, if it helped her accept her grandmother’s passing, then so be it.
    “Of course, Carly, Of course I do.”
.....
    He slipped into a shawl-collared sweater—seemed every year he advanced toward eighty grew a little more chill—and sat down on his front porch swing. December had brought with it ever-shortening days, as he now imagined his own to be. But he had always loved this time of evening when he could look out onto the neighborhood common as the sun infused the sky with a last pulse of color before dying.
    Dying had been on his mind a lot lately. What made him even sadder was the knowledge he’d not be dying here, in this house where he’d lived with his wife and raised a family. Instead, in the morning, the Peaceful Meadows Assisted Living van would arrive to collect him and the few personal items he’d be able to take with him to the facility.
    Earlier that day, in a mostly futile effort, he’d gone through his belongings, trash and treasures accumulated and somehow clung to through at least five moves. In the back of one closet, he’d found a box of Carly’s childhood things—books, art supplies, an old CD entitled The Cyclops Has Three Eyes—and halfway down, under a kitten-faced, woven purse, the white, stuffed dragon, Snowflake.
    How it had gotten there remained a complete mystery. In her youth, Carly had thought of the dragon as an appendage to her body, carrying it everywhere. But then, he guessed—as the old saying went—eventually, children put away their childish things.
    He’d placed Snowflake on the top of his dresser, thinking he might send it to Carly as a nostalgic surprise—if he could determine her current location. After finishing medical school and a residency, she’d joined her parents in service with Doctors Without Borders. Her last letter had been postmarked from somewhere in Africa. As proud as he was of her and her chosen career, he missed her terribly.
    He stretched as the last sigh of the sun disappeared over the horizon, and decided to take one more stroll through the neighborhood. Streetlights glowed above the sidewalk leading down to the community swimming pool and the woods beyond. He and Carly had spent considerable time in both places when she was young, either frolicking in the water or holding hands as they explored the woods’ depths.
    He rested one hand on the cold wrought iron fence surrounding the pool, its water still and black, not yet suffused with the moon’s glow. Overhead, a breeze blew softly through the long-needled pines and the few parchment-like leaves still clinging tenaciously to the river oaks—a hushed sound, like schoolgirls whispering in the night. He’d taken in a long deep breath, thinking of how much he’d miss this place, when he first spied the tiny light floating out from behind the pool house and low across the water.
    Two notions popped into his head simultaneously—the ember from a distant blaze, then a firefly—and he dismissed them just as quickly. Embers didn’t float against the wind—he could feel the breeze on the back of his neck—and the fireflies had been gone for months. Still, the light moved higher and toward him with purpose, or so it seemed, stopping in place a few feet away, level with his face, in much the way a hummingbird might.
    Though he felt a niggling sense of concern he could be experiencing the beginning of a stroke or some type of aberrant brain synapse, he was nonetheless intrigued. Even more so when the tiny dot of radiance moved toward the corner of the fence and paused again, as if beckoning him to follow. And why not, he thought. He’d seen a great many things during his lifetime, but nothing like this.
    So he did—around the fence and into a small clearing just before the entrance to the forest, where he slowed and unexpectedly found himself saying, “I’m not sure I can follow you into the trees. I don’t see so well anymore, and I’m not as nimble as I once was.” As he stood there, the forest trees began to glow with more tiny lights, their luminescence beginning softly, then—like an energy-efficient bulb—growing in intensity.
    He felt the warmth of the radiance on his face as he moved out of the clearing and onto the mossy, needle-covered forest floor. Several yards in, somehow suspended a few feet off the ground, a blue-green orb rotated slowly in place. A faint humming filled his ears as the orb began to pulse, and great warmth filled his body. He closed his eyes, and upon reopening them, found himself floating slowly forward in a sea of blue-green light, below the still-radiant trees.
    He thought of summer evening years before, being with his wife and granddaughter in the pool while reflections from the underwater lights slow-danced to the rhythmic motion of the water’s surface. It felt much the same now.
    While soft, warm waves nudged him ever closer to the pulsing ball, he thought of Carly’s serious pale-gray eyes, her conviction as she spoke of the Overland portal, and of Snowflake, the dragon who’d somehow reappeared in his closet. He chuckled to himself remembering, and couldn’t keep from smiling, even as life—as he’d known it—ebbed away.

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