The Light of the Fireflies

by Paul Pen

A door loses its meaning if you don’t ever go through it. It becomes a wall.

There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light.

There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light.

Right then an unknown emotion was set off inside me. A spark that fought to catch fire.

“Take me away from this darkness.”

The unknown spark that had caught light inside me became a little flame. A flame that burned.

At that moment, the fireflies in the jar came back to life to glow brighter than ever.

Her father’s hands closed around her ankles. He remembered lifting the missing girl’s body in the same way.

“I knew it,” I said. I tried to get up, but she trapped my legs with hers, like Dermaptera shut the pincers they have at the end of their abdomens.

I looked at Grandma on the sofa. I remembered the words she’d said to me when the cactus appeared in the basement. While this cactus is OK, we’ll be OK. I picked up a piece of the pot and ran to my room.

I observed the two bits of important things in my life that had broken. Something much more important had broken inside me.

I crossed the hall in the direction of the window with the bars, the one that most of the fireflies had come in through.

But I couldn’t leave the basement without my fireflies. I’d always imagined that they’d be the light that would make me visible to the world.

I no longer needed their light, because the wardrobe door opened behind me. The glow from the Cricket Man’s oil lamp was bright enough for me to see the dark wall that stood in my way.

I didn’t want to leave the basement without my fireflies. They had to glow to show me the world with their light. To

I was forced to leave the fireflies on the ground. “I’ll be back to save you,” I whispered as I crouched down. “You and the baby.”

“Son, you’re going to have to forgive us for many things. I just wanted you to stop liking this place. So that leaving wouldn’t be so difficult.”

My father fought to control the raging insect that my sister had turned into.

The firefly lamp smashed on my sister’s face. Her nose caved in, turning her profile into no more than a right angle. Like they’d always told me it was. A new mask of hair and blood covered her face. All the fireflies flew out into the room.

While I tried pointlessly to reconstruct the jar, we waited for my parents to return.

“It’s just a stone,” he said. He dropped it. It rolled along the floor.

I looked up to the ceiling. I followed the flight of one of the fireflies until it vanished in the air, disappearing in front of my eyes. Like the chick that never existed had disappeared from my hands that night. Because the fireflies had never existed, either.

“I gave you a very special power the night you brought me the egg. I taught you to see things like I have to see them,” she said. She laid a wrinkly finger on my forehead. “Imagining them. And I see you’ve managed to make good use of that power.” I let out a sigh of wonder. “There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light,” Grandma went on.

“Come back,” I said. The fireflies swirled in a cloud of light, a galaxy of flashes, before returning to the container by themselves.

Mom contained a sob. Her fingers separated from the baby like the legs of a butterfly taking flight. Then she hugged my brother.

“Can you take the jar?” I asked Grandpa. “I want to go out with my fireflies.”

“Glow,” I told them. “We’re outside.” The lamp lit up more brightly than ever, illuminating everything around me. Showing me at last the world that was up above the basement.

The fireflies flew up into the sky, free. I watched them until I could no longer tell them apart from the stars.

I like leaving the lighthouse when the sun disappears but it’s not yet night.

It’s the only time of day when the world has no shadows.

My sister directed her last look at my mother, who asked for forgiveness as the light of life in her daughter’s eyes went out in front of her.

The finger now points at the empty jar I left on the ground when I crouched down.

He likes to think that he lives in a lighthouse, that there are still ships that need to be guided by its light.

I struggled to forgive my family when I learned what they did with the girl. But when I look at my own son, walking with his legs arced like a cowboy’s, laughing as he discovers the world and its dandelions, I wonder whether I’d have done the same thing. Whether I wouldn’t do anything in my power to protect him. Anything good. And anything bad.

when I returned from the greenhouse where I work controlling insect infestations,

Each step we take makes the nearest crickets fall silent. The rest continue their singing, encouraging the moon to appear, perhaps.

A cloud of fireflies hovers over the blades of grass swaying in the sea breeze.

They’re real fireflies, not like the ones in the basement. The moon has answered the call of the crickets and is beginning to tinge the sea’s surface with

Maybe the day has come when his desire to know is stronger than his fear of the unknown. I

They’re the same fingers that grabbed at the darkness on the other side of the bars the night I imagined that we’d gone out, looking at our reflection in the window.

Emotion blurs my vision when I see him advancing with his arms outstretched to touch the fireflies, a miracle happening for the first time in front of him.

Because I know the light will always belong to people like him. And those unwilling to look beyond their own little world will be left in the dark.