Chapter Twelve
~Kyra~
Kyra's screams died down, dust clouded her vision like thick smog. Coughing, she peeked her eyes open once the dirt curtain fell away. A couple of things cleared in her mind. First, Rusty was still tightly in her arms. Second, she just fell down a mineshaft. Third, her bag and the hunter's bow fell on the ground and, last, she was hanging upside down with her legs entangled in roots like some jumbled marionette!
Her breath hitched into hyperventilating gasps. She stared at the complicated knot, kicking only to find her lower half immobile. No matter how hard she tried, Kyra could not free herself from this net she fell in when she submerged beneath the sea of grass.
"It's okay, Rusty," Kyra whispered, reassuring the fox as he started to whimper. "We're gonna be fine."
They jerked downward as the root loosened.
"Maybe!" Deep breathe.
Something purple caught the corner of her eye and she turned her head to look. Carrying a pickaxe over his shoulder, Dopey strolled not far off from where she was, an oblivious joyful attitude shining off him. He froze in his step when he heard his name called.
"Dopey!"
The dwarf snapped his head to the left, then to the right, searching for the source. When he couldn't spot it, he lifted up a leg to check underneath his shoe.
"Up here." Despite how uncomfortable Kyra felt from hanging upside down too long, she couldn't conceal the small smirk forming at her mouth. Dopey gaped at her, letting a silent yelp escape his mouth. The faint blue light that emitted from the upside-down girl frightened Dopey. He had scampered away before Kyra had had the chance to calm him down with an explanation. That's when the entanglement let loose and she fell the rest of the way to the ground.
A veil of dust filled the air, irritating Kyra's lungs every time she inhaled. Coughing, Kyra lay on her side, Rusty held tightly in her arms. Teary-eyed, the girl cracked her eyes open to see she was trapped under rock and debris. She tried to move, but couldn't. The lower half of her body was more immobile than her upper half. A tightness constricted her chest as she took in her situation.
She was barricaded under a fallen ceiling, bruised and stuck. Her head grew dizzy and everything went dark again.
When she came to, she heard noises. The sound of a man's voice and whimpering. Something wet slid across her forehead, repeatedly licking it. It was Rusty. He stared at her with a concerned look, like he wanted her to wake up and not be dead. He let out a whimper and licked her cheek.
"Okay, I'm fine," Kyra croaked, voice sore from coughing. She reached out a hand to the fox and scratched his cheek, noticing the glow gone from her skin but barely reacting to this change.
Just then, Dopey returned with a second dwarf, Doc. Doc was the one Kyra heard talking as Dopey pulled him along by his sleeve.
"Dopey, D-duh-Dopey! What this of meaning, uh, meaning of what, uh, meaning of this—" Doc froze when he saw Kyra, who gave him a small wave.
"Hi?"
Dopey stopped urgently pointing to Kyra when Doc called out for the other men. The others came, quite surprised to see a strangely dressed girl half buried in debris. They went to work right away on freeing her. It didn't take long for the seven of them to lift the wreckage away and pulled her out.
Once out, Rusty immediately went to her. His furry face nuzzled the bottom of her chin; bring a smile to the girl's face.
"Okay, I'm fine," she laughed. Rusty sat down in her lap as Kyra turned her attention to the dwarves surrounding her, concern and curiosity etched into their faces. "Thanks for getting me out. I'm glad you guys showed up when you did."
"Oh, it was nothing," Bashful said, being—well, bashful.
"Are you dirt—uh, I mean, hurt?" Doc asked, hovering nearby.
"Just slightly bruised and filthy," Kyra assured him. "Nothing serious."
"What were you doing here anyway?" Grumpy demanded, moving up in front. "Don't you know no one's suppose to be in here?"
"Well, there was probably a sign somewhere outside, but I didn't have much time to read it before falling down through the ceiling!" She pointed a finger directed to the hole above, rays of sunlight spilling into the dark, damp mine.
Grumpy opened his mouth to retort, but Doc stopped him. "Grumpy, now please, she just fall down here and got buried under trouble—uh, rubble. She didn't mean to trespass, I'm sure."
"Or maybe she did!" Grumpy countered. "Meant to sneak into this place and still our treasure!"
"I'm not here to steal anything," Kyra defended, standing up. "I'm trying to find someone."
"Who?" Sleepy yawned.
"A dwarf named Randy. Gwydion said he would be—"
"The Prince?!" Happy interrupted.
"Yes? He said that Randy would be with you guys."
"What do you want Randy for?" Grumpy interrogated, arms crossed.
"For help," she emphasized, throwing her hands out. "I got separated from my brothers and I need him to find them."
"What about your parents?" Sleepy questioned, yawning.
Kyra's eyes cast downward, face filling up with sadness. She rubbed her arm but it did nothing to warm up the now cold chill running down her skin. "I-I don't really have any. My brothers are kinda all I've got left."
Several faces softened up around her, feeling sympathy for the girl. Doc gestured for the other men to step away and huddled together, talking in hush voices. After a minute, they broke away and turn their attention back to Kyra. Doc cleared his throat.
"Randy is away right now, but he should be back in a few days. So, us can stay with you until then. I mean, you can stay with us."
She exhaled, but straighten up. "Okay, thanks. At least I have a place to stay."
After the discussion was over, they decided to call it quits early and take her to their nearby cottage. She ate supper and went straight to bed, not realizing exactly how exhausted she was. Her and Rusty fell asleep instantly in one of the spare beds upstairs.
.oOo.
Kyra slept in later than she would have liked the next morning. She awoke to find herself alone except for a sleeping Rusty who was entangled in the white sheet aside her. She stroked his red fur affectionately, deciding after all she was going to like having the playful fox accompany her on her journey. He shuffled in his sleep, slowly becoming aware of Kyra's hand on his head. He opened his eyes and let out a yawn, standing up now on all fours to stretch.
"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," Kyra teased the pup. He looked up at her with a naif expression, his round eyes still glassy from sleep.
Kyra, followed by Rusty, got up off the bed and descended down the wooden staircase. The first floor was completely deserted, with used plates and coffee mugs still scattered across the kitchen table. The dwarves, not wanting to wake the tired guest, quietly ate their breakfast and went off to work hours ago. They, of course, left her something to eat: a cup of orange juice, a gooseberry muffin, and a green apple. Skipping the apple for obvious reasons, she took a few bites out of the muffin and chugged down the juice before clearing the table, sending all the dirty dishes to the sink. Once she finished, her and Rusty left the cottage to explore their new surroundings, and to bond with one another by taking a walk through the woods. Before they left, Kyra searched the cupboards for a piece of paper and a feather quill to write out a quick note for the dwarves, telling them where she had went so they wouldn't become anxious.
The girl and the fox made their way through the forest and eventually found themselves in the middle of a clearing. At first the clearing looked like one you'd expect to see in a fairytale, full of roses and daisies and petunias. Birds were singing and butterflies were drifting through the air. Morning dew stuck to the grass, giving the illusion of an atmosphere full of diamonds. There was a faint flapping noise, like a flag on a pole. Kyra glanced up to see that trapped in a tree was a white bed sheet, moving in and out as the breeze bumped up against it. Kyra ventured forward, the serenity she felt melted away with each step. Kyra and Rusty stopped in front of what looked to her like a mediocre playground, one that was very minimal in appearance; consisting of a small sandbox and a single wooden swing, worn out from years of neglect and abandonment. Rusty leapt on to the seat of the swing, causing it to release an eerie creak.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kyra could see that there was something written on the trunk of the tree that carried the swing. Clumsily carved into the wood were two words: the word "Firefly" and the word "Night Light."
'Huh?' Kyra stared in confusion at the writing. 'Why would somebody write that into a tree? Is it some sort of code for something?'
Of course, these were just more questions for her that came without answers. She shrugged to herself and left to investigate the rest of the playground. The sandbox was just as worn and neglected as the swing. The deteriorating wood was nailed together in an amateur fashion and suffered from water damage. The sand inside the rotted rectangle was clumpy and discolored with a few scattered beetles rummaging through it. Something was poking out that was the same color as the grayish-tan sand. Kyra only saw it because of the sunlight that it reflected in a burning glow.
She leaned over and extended her arm, carefully avoiding the bugs as her hand enclosed around the mysterious object. She held in it her palm, realizing that it was an old brass locket, greening from oxidation. Holding it between her thumb and forefinger, she brought it up to her face to examine. She pushed in a small button on its side and it clicked open, showing a small, black and white, rounded picture of two kids, one of a boy and the other of a girl. Kyra judged they were younger than her maybe by a year or two, give or take.
Raindrops started to drizzle down from the sky, splashing the picture she held. Startled, she shoved the locket in the pocket of her trousers and motioned for Rusty. The two crossed the clearing, heading the way they came back into the woods. The rain started to fall down on them at an increasing rate, despite the protection from the branches above. Kyra was jogging now in a rush to get back to the dwarves' cottage before she caught a cold. As she moved through the forest, zigzagging around trees when needed, her mind wandered back to the locket and the words etched in the tree trunk.
A shrill scream pierced her ears, causing her to automatically swing around in search of the source. Her face was dripping and her bangs stuck to her forehead, but her eyes were alert as she scanned through the rain, examining every tree trunk. Her eyes moved chillingly over the horizon, then stopping abruptly in terror. Not too far behind her was a single white bed sheet caught on a low-hanging branch, taunting her as it flapped hauntingly in the wind. Kyra's entire body filled with heat as she recognized it as the same sheet from the clearing. She took off in full sprint, feeling light headed from the fear that pulsed through her. Her eyes couldn't focus on anything, making the scenery blur past her in a daze. She stopped to catch her breath as the dwarves' cottage came into view. Panting, she looked over her shoulder, the feeling of distress melting away and replaced with a sense of security. She released a sigh of relief just before hearing a small click echo behind her, like the sound of a twig being snapped. She jerked her head back to the front just in time to see a white sheet fly into view and encase her. Her muffled screams went unheard as she thrashed her arms and legs out in a panic.
.oOo.
Kyra woke up to the familiar room of the dwarves' cottage, finding the smell of the oak bed frames soothing. She felt oddly uneasy, her head swimming as she tried to recollect her thoughts. As she became more alert, memories of the terror she went through while in the woods returned and she sat up rigidly in the bed. To her surprise, she wasn't alone. Fourteen eyes stared back her, concern apparent in them, belonging to the seven little men that resided in the cottage. Kyra blinked, and then relaxed her shoulders a bit.
"Ugh, what happened?" she asked, putting a hand up to her neck.
Doc was the one to speak up, "It would seem as though you fainted while out balking in the woods—out walking in the woods." He quickly corrected himself. "We found ya just outside the card—uh, yard—lying in the train—rain." Kyra thought to herself, stunned by this news.
"I…I fainted?" she asked, confused. She replayed the moments in her head, remembering the clearing, the white sheet, the fear…and the locket! She reached into her pocket and pulled out the rustic chain with the locket still dangling from it. She fumbled to open it and, when she succeeded, saw the old photo of the two kids. Kyra was relieved. 'See, this is evidence that I'm not insane. That what happened really happened.'
Another dwarf started to speak and Kyra looked up to see that it was Bashful. Red-faced, he was saying, "Maybe it's a good idea if you come with us to the mines."
Doc reinforced the idea by adding, "Yeah, that way we can keep you on an eye—keep an eye on you." Kyra didn't like the idea of needing to be looked after so much, but she agreed for the sake of the dwarves, imagining the worry they must have experienced when they found her unconscious in the woods. So out of guilt, she agreed to spend the next day with them.
.oOo.
Kyra found herself in a bad mood the next day. She was pretty grouchy on the account that she didn't get a good night's sleep. After the little incident the prior day, and once the dwarves left her bedside, Kyra tossed and turned in her bed all night. She dreamt of the clearing, only in her dream she was a child. She wasn't alone in the dream either, but accompanied by Luke, her mom, and her dad. Similar to herself, Luke had becomeabout ten years younger than he was in reality. The clearing in her dream looked exactly like the one she had discovered; the same sandbox, the same garden of colorful flowers, and the same swing that hung off the big oak tree. On the swing was where Kyra found herself sitting still and quietly. The only differing aspect of this pseudo-scene to the real one was that a small log cabin rested just a few yards away. Her mom and dad stood on its front porch, talking cheerfully as they would glance over at their children playing. Kyra caught her mother's eye and she smiled.
At that moment, Luke strolled over and stood directly behind her.
"Want me to push you?" he asked her.
"Yes, Lukey," Kyra replied, and then braced herself as the swing began forward. She let out a shriek when it fell backwards towards Luke who immediately pushed it again, harder this time. After a few more gentle pushes, Kyra urged him to make her go higher.
"Higher! Higher!" Young Luke huffed as he exerted more energy, making the swing go as high as he could. But that was still not high enough for the little daredevil.
"HIGHER!" She yelled in between laughs. She let out a yelp as the swing jolted to a stop. Confused by the sudden change, she looked back at Luke to see what was up, and saw her dad there instead while Luke was standing off to the side.
"You want higher, Kyra?" The familiar sound of her dad's voice was soothing to her.
"Yes, Daddy," she answered enthusiastically.
"All right, here we go." He began to pull her back to him, holding her up above his head. She giggled as she ascended into the sky. He was about to let go when he whispered, "Hang on, my little Firefly." Kyra stomach did a somersault as he released her and she fell down into an endless dark hole.
That's when she woke up in a cold sweat and grabbed the brass locket off the nightstand next to her. She opened it up and stared at it while she traced the edges with her thumb. She stared at the two kids in the photo and they stared back at her with the smiles permanently etched across their faces for all eternity.