Will-o-wisp

A Flash Fiction Friday story

Another Flash Fiction Friday story, from the 4/18 prompt list.

"What did we come all the way up here for?" I asked as I crested the hill.

The lip of the last step, carved from the sticky clay soil and flint rock, caught my toes as I stepped, and I stumbled forward against Grandda's back.

Solid and still as a rock, even at ninety.

He half-turned, catching my arm and patting me on the shoulder. His wrinkled, age-spotted hands felt dry and papery. His white beard was still so thick and full that the only way I knew he was smiling was because the beard bunched where I assumed his mouth was, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. "You all right?" he asked, voice old-man hoarse from years of smoke--pipe and gun and camp.

I nodded, straightening my shoulders as I stood upright, supporting myself on my walking stick. Then I remembered I wasn't in the military anymore, and neither was he, and I let my shoulders slump with a poorly concealed scowl. "Why did we come up here?" I asked again.

His hand patted my back now, nudging me along the top of the rolling hill. I turned with him, hitching myself forward. My stick thumped into the half-dried pieces of clay, shattering them away from the little path of rock and into the yellow tallgrass on either side of us. The tallgrass tugged at my sleeve, and I tugged back, irritation twisting my stomach as it left behind clinging seedpods.

"Grandda?"

He paused, hand still patting me forward until I stood at his side. We stood at the edge of a steep drop now, the hill eroded away to reveal the yellow-gray face of chert and clay.

"I forgot," Grandda admitted quietly.

I stood beside him, stunned, my mind immediately whirling back to our little cabin and all the chores still left to be done.

"Grandda," I said again, a sigh pushing the last syllable past my lips in a huff. I turned, shuffling my walking stick against the ground in order to steady myself.

His hand caught mine, and his bright blue eyes flickered under his bushy eyebrows. It made me catch my breath again--to realize that he no longer had to tip his head down to look at me, to realize that we stood on eye-level. Since when had he grown so old that his bones had shrunk that much?

"Stay," he said.

The dinner dishes left in the sink. The chickens, still needing to be put in the coop for the night. The wood stove that needed wood brought in and banking for the night. All the things that we needed to do before bed, the things that my missing leg and his shuffling steps made slow and difficult.

"Stay here with me for a while. Stay with your ol' grandda." He smiled again and lowered himself creakily to a little lump of rock that, I saw, was worn smoother than the other jagged bits of flint sticking out of the tallgrass around us.

I huffed out another sigh and down sat him, stretching out my leg and my walking stick. The tallgrass tickled the back of my neck. Below the eroded bluff, the gentle rolling hills swept downward into a river valley, the actual river itself obscured by the purple-and-orange-tinged leaves that told me fall was well on its way to our prairie. The sun was falling away, already half under the horizon.

I sat, fidgeting. Grandda had trekked up here every evening that I'd lived with him--only a few weeks now--and tonight was the first night he'd invited me to go with him. It felt strange sitting here this long--I felt like I should be up, moving, doing something. I reached down and picked up a piece of flint, turning the sharp shard back and forth in my fingers. A weird restless energy that had possessed me since I'd been released from the healer's house, as if I had to prove to myself that I could still do something worthwhile. I thought here, on Grandda's little farm, there would surely be enough work to do to keep myself occupied so that I didn't have to think anymore.

I'd spent six months thinking.

I pressed the edge of flint to my finger and drew it downward. The flint wasn't quite sharp enough to cut through my skin, but it did leave a white line down the side of my calluses.

Grandda's hand closed around my fingers, and he patted the back of my hand with his other one.

I looked up. At some point, the sun had completely set, spreading a haze of yellow and orange across the wispy clouds at the horizon. Above us, the first evening stars twinkled overhead in the velvety night sky, and below us in the river valley... I blinked. What I had at first thought to be stars resolved into little glowing glimmers of blue floating above the treetops. Will-o-wisps. As I stilled my fidgeting, a few of them drifted closer, and I could see the jelly-blob shape of the creature as it bumbled its way through the darkening night air.

Grandda held out a finger, tapping the little blob. It emitted a tiny squeak and curled in on itself, the glow around it going from bright blue to dark purple. The motion sent it quickly spinning away, bumping into tallgrass seed-heads and other blobs, making them squeak in indignation.

Grandda chuckled, deep in his chest, the rumble startling several more will-o-wisps into curling up. He planted his hand on my shoulder and used it to lever himself up off the rock, his back crackling as he straightened up. I followed, planting my walking stick and getting up without much trouble, but an almost equal amount of crackling joints. Grandda chuckled again and patted my shoulder, then turned and began making his way back along the path along the crest of the bluff.

I stood for a moment longer, watching as the will-o-wisps slowly recovered from the chaos Grandda had introduced into their group. Some of them began darting back and forth across the prairie, colors turning a contented green as they gobbled up tiny bugs. I chuckled and shifted my weight, realizing that my neck and shoulders no longer held tension in them.

"C'mon," Grandda called back to me. "We got chickens to put up."