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  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE: I Could Fly That High?

  CHAPTER TWO: If Crickets Could Catch

  CHAPTER THREE: The Last of the Legendary River Voles

  CHAPTER FOUR: In Search of a Cricket

  CHAPTER FIVE: Psst!

  CHAPTER SIX: How Brave Are You?

  CHAPTER SEVEN: The Miniature Giant

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Could He Actually See Them?

  CHAPTER NINE: I Knew You Were Out Here

  CHAPTER TEN: Vole Remembered Everything

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Fork in the Path

  CHAPTER TWELVE: If I Could

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Wouldn’t It Be Amazing?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Why Did You Leave?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Let’s Not Go Back

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Paper Boat

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Let’s Build a Raft

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: You Did It!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: She Just Wanted to Keep Going

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Everything Goes Somewhere

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Something New

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Watch Me!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The New Giants

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: What Do They Do in Giant School?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: School, School, School

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: A Lonely Feeling

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: We Have Come in Search of Cricket

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Onward

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Distant Voices Were Calling

  CHAPTER THIRTY: Hang On!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Is She Breathing?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: The Grinding Sound of the School Bus

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: A Kindred Spirit

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Where the River Meets the Sea

  About Alison McGhee and Christopher Denise

  For Kathi Appelt

  —A. M.

  For my friend Brian Jacques—Airíonn muid uainn thú

  —C. D.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible were it up to me alone. Thanks to Christopher Denise, for his beautiful artwork; Julie Schumacher and Kathi Appelt, for their insightful suggestions; Raquel Briskin Counihan, for the loan of her peaceful lakeside writing retreat; and Holly McGhee, for her unflagging support. Finally, deepest thanks to the lovely Caitlyn Dlouhy, whose editing skills were, and are always, invaluable. —A. M.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I COULD FLY THAT HIGH?

  Swoop!

  Firefly flitted through a knothole in the hollow tree, straight out into the clearing and straight back in again. The night air outside the hollow tree was cool, and the air inside was warm. She whooshed back and forth from cool to warm, outside to inside, faster and faster and faster until—yikes—she accidentally sideswiped Elder.

  “Whoa!” he said. “Watch where you’re going there, Firefly.”

  His tone was stern. But when no one else was looking, he blinked their secret code at her: three fast and two long.

  “Sorry, Elder,” said Firefly, and she blinked the secret code back.

  Most of the other elders viewed Firefly as slightly crazy and a clear threat to the safety and well-being of the youth of the firefly nation, but not Elder. He had been her hero since the night when she, as a one-centimeter-round baby, long before it was time to learn to fly, rolled right out of her spiderweb hammock and flung herself off the edge of her cubby.

  “Careful there, little one,” Elder had said, swooping underneath her just in time.

  “Yeehaw!” she had yelled. “Higher! Higher!”

  And she had waved with one wing to the other baby fireflies, who were gaping from their spiderweb hammocks, as Elder piggybacked her around and around the inside of the hollow tree. He finally returned her to her cubby and tucked her in, pulling the milkweed blanket up to her chin.

  “Will you teach me how to fly by myself, Elder?” she had whispered.

  “Soon,” he had said. “When the time is right.”

  “But I want to learn now.”

  “Soon,” said Elder again, and he smiled.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Before she fell asleep that night, she turned her head so that she could look out the knothole into the dark night sky. There were the moon and the stars, shining high above.

  “They’re so beautiful,” she whispered.

  “That they are,” agreed Elder. “But don’t let the others hear you say that.”

  And he blinked an hypnotic pattern to lull her into sleep.

  Elder kept his promise. Eventually she and all the others learned to fly. None of the other little fireflies flew as well as Firefly did, but at least they flew.

  Firefly spread her wings now and zipped back outside. She loved the feel of the wind whooshing her up into the air. Imagine if she had to plod along the creature path on her spindly legs. Imagine not being able to fly, when flying was all she had ever wanted to do!

  Midair flips, loop-de-loops, figure eights—all these were moves she had made up and practiced, at first in a corner of the clearing with Elder hovering nearby, ready to catch her if she fell, and then right in front of the others. The other little fireflies were too scared to try. Rules had been drummed into them in Air Safety class since they were tiny: Don’t fly beyond the clearing; don’t fly higher than the first big branch of the white pine; don’t fly in the rain.

  There was Air Safety class, and there was Basics of Blinking class, in which the baby fireflies learned how to signal left, right, straight, and right of way. But nothing compared to Fear of Giants class. All small fireflies were required to recite the three Fundamental Rules of Giants at the start and end of every class.

  1. Giants are to be feared.

  2. Giants are the enemies of the firefly nation.

  3. Giants are to be avoided at all costs.

  But it was hard to avoid giants entirely, because three of them lived in Firefly Hollow, in a house at the bend of the river: mother giant, father giant, and the miniature giant they called Peter. That was how it was done in their world—miniature ones lived with their parents in houses separate from other giants—unlike young and elder fireflies, who all lived in the same hollow tree, sharing their cubbies and eating their snails together. The mother and father giants were dreadful creatures. When they tromped about, their enormous weight shook the very earth.

  TROMP. TROMP. TROMP.

  “The giants are out!” the young fireflies would shout to one another when they were playing Death by Giant. “Flee!”

  Something else that all the fireflies lived in fear of was the Jar.

  The Jar was kept in a special roped-off corner at the Museum of Giant Artifacts, just down the trail from the neighboring School for Young Crickets. The museum held objects that had washed ashore from the giant nation:

  A blue knife with a terrifying serrated edge.

  A spool of yellow thread, thread that could be used for any number of evil purposes.

  A huge red shoe, which, if tromped down on a resting firefly, would mean certain death.

  These were just a few of the items in the Museum of Giant Artifacts. There were sections devoted to various other terrors of the giant world, among them games. Games with names like baseball and basket
ball and kickball and soccer, games with balls that could roll right over a resting firefly and crush it dead then and there.

  But it was the Jar that was especially horrifying to the firefly nation. The Jar! It contained actual firefly corpses! Once viewed, the Jar could never be forgotten.

  “This is what will happen if you ever get too close to a giant,” the elders said, pointing with one wing at the dreadful object.

  Oh, the poor lost fireflies who had met their end inside that jar. What a hideous fate: caught in midflight by giants, giants with their long legs and their reaching arms and their glass jars with the holes punched in the lids. The Museum of Giant Artifacts filled with screams during this portion of every field trip, screams so loud that they drowned out the constant, robotic chirping from the School for Young Crickets.

  Despite the shrieks, the elders hovered grimly. The young ones had to learn what would happen if they got too close to a giant. Giants are the enemies of the firefly nation. All it took was one visit to the museum, and all the young fireflies accepted the wisdom of the elders: Stay far, far away from the giants.

  All but Firefly.

  The truth of it was, giants fascinated her. Unbeknownst to anyone but Elder, she sometimes snuck out of the clearing to spy on the miniature giant, the one called Peter. At first she spied on him playing catch with another miniature giant. The other miniature giant was gone now, but Firefly still spied on Peter from afar, as he sat on the sand or perched in the branches of a white birch by the water.

  Was he really that terrifying?

  Secretly, Firefly thought that there was a lot to admire about giants. They were the ones who had invented spaceships that flew them to outer space—poor wingless creatures that they were—and Firefly loved outer space. Sometimes, when she was out practicing her aerial maneuvers, she turned on her back and stared up. The vast darkness held the moon and the stars.

  When she was tiny, Elder used to sneak her outside after bedtime, so that they could look up at the night sky together.

  “Are you sure the stars are really that far away, Elder?”

  “I’m sure.”

  There were thousands of them, tiny pinpoints of light, shimmering down on the two of them as they hovered on their backs in the clearing. They didn’t look that far away to Firefly.

  “Double sure? Triple sure?”

  “Quadruple sure.”

  Firefly sighed. She lay on her back for a while, fluttering her wings just enough to stay aloft. She had a question for Elder, a question that she was scared to ask. Gradually, she worked up her courage.

  “Elder?”

  “Yes?”

  “What if you were a little firefly, and you, you . . .”

  She trailed off.

  “You what?” he prompted her.

  “You wanted to see what it was like beyond Firefly Hollow.”

  There. She had said it. She wanted to know what it was like beyond Firefly Hollow, something that went against every rule of the firefly nation.

  “Are you that little firefly?” Elder said.

  She looked around to make sure that they were the only ones out, then nodded.

  “Well,” said Elder, “I’m going to tell you a secret.”

  He floated close so he could whisper in her ear. “Maybe someday you’ll get a chance to see.”

  “Really? When?”

  “When it’s time.”

  Argh! That was Elder’s answer to everything.

  “How about now, Elder? Right now!”

  Elder just smiled and shook his head. He blinked their secret code—three fast, two long—a code that could mean any number of things, such as Are you hungry? Or Do you want to sneak out and practice aerial maneuvers? Or Want to come look at the stars with me? but in this case meant I know you want to go right now, but you have to be patient. Firefly turned over on her stomach and tried to ignore him. Elder kept on blinking, though, and eventually she blinked back.

  But when she returned to her spiderweb hammock, Firefly thought about it some more. If someday she was really going to fly beyond Firefly Hollow, then she would need to build up her strength. That was something she could work on right now, wasn’t it? So she practiced her aerial maneuvers over and over, over and over, hoping that one day they would come in handy. And she timed herself for nonstop flying. Her best time so far was three hours, twelve minutes, and seven seconds. Without one single break.

  Swoop!

  “Firefly!”

  “Firefly!”

  “Firefly!”

  Her friends were gathered by the lowest branch of the white pine that stood in the center of the clearing, waiting for her.

  Firefly spread her wings, did one of her famous loop-de-loops, and landed in their midst. Around and around the white pine they flew, sparkling and blinking. The moon hung round and yellow, and the night sky shimmered with light from the stars.

  “Imagine flying up that high,” said Firefly, pointing with one wing.

  “Are you kidding?” said one.

  “No, thank you,” said another.

  “I’ll stay right here in the clearing,” said a third.

  “The giants flew up there, you know,” said Firefly. “Straight up to the moon.”

  Giants? All around her tiny firefly bodies shuddered in midair at the very sound of the dreaded word. Firefly ignored them.

  “Imagine walking around on the moon,” she said, “the way the giants did.”

  That did it. The very idea of walking on the moon was so shocking that—THUD—one of them forgot to keep his wings in motion and fell right out of the air. Good thing the pine needle floor of the forest was soft. The fallen one shook his wings and hauled himself back up through the air to the first branch.

  “Fireflies aren’t even supposed to go beyond the clearing,” he said.

  “We’re not supposed to fly any higher than the first big branch,” said another.

  “We’re never, ever supposed to fly beyond Firefly Hollow,” said a third.

  “I know,” said Firefly. “But the giants did.”

  Thud.

  Another one down. The air vibrated with worried wings and firefly shrieks.

  “Just imagine it,” said Firefly, spinning up and around the rest of them. “Just imagine looking down on Firefly Hollow from outer space.”

  “No!”

  “No!”

  “No!”

  Yes, thought Firefly. Sometimes it was fun to shock them.

  On that night, after her tired friends returned to their cubbies in the hollow tree, Firefly stayed outside. She flipped onto her back and hovered in midair, looking up at the moon. Cricket music rose all around her. Since they were young, girl crickets set the beat and boy crickets stroked their serrated wings against each other, chirping songs about marsh grass waving in the wind, and white puffs of dandelions, and pine needles on the forest floor. These were the things that crickets always sang about. Nice, but boring.

  Why don’t they sing about the moon? thought Firefly. Or the stars? Or flying? Or something exciting, like . . . giants?

  But none of them did. The young crickets were just like the young fireflies, thought Firefly, feeling cross. They too were afraid of everything beyond Firefly Hollow. She raised her wings high, ready to return to her spiderweb hammock.

  But wait.

  What was that?

  A single cricket out there was singing a song she had never before heard any cricket sing. She flitted to the left side of the clearing, then to the right, trying to be sure she had really heard what she thought she’d heard. Was that it? Over there on the far, far left? There—yes! There it was.

  “Take me out to the ball game

  Take me out with the crowd.”

  This was not a typical cricket song!

  Firefly floated closer.

  “Buy me some peanuts . . .”

  Wow.

  This cricket had a beautiful voice. He was singing alone.

  “and Cracker Jack .
. .”

  Firefly floated closer still. This song was not a cricket song at all. Firefly could hardly believe it, but this song was, in fact, a giant song. It was the same song that the miniature giant used to sing, back in the days when his friend was still there and they played catch on the shore.

  “I don’t care . . .”

  This was a song about forbidden things: giants and ball games and crowds. Firefly fluttered her wings just enough to stay aloft, trying to be as quiet as possible, so that she wouldn’t disturb the unknown cricket and his song.

  “. . . if I never get back.”

  Somewhere out there was a cricket who snuck off at night to sing about something forbidden, something dangerous, something that none of the other crickets wanted. Somewhere out there was a

  cricket

  like

  her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IF CRICKETS COULD CATCH

  Cricket lived down the path from Firefly’s hollow tree. He was one of many students in Teacher’s class at the School for Young Crickets, where the walls were made of twigs and the roof was made of leaves and the floor was smooth dried mud.

  Teacher taught all three classes considered essential for the proper education of a young cricket:

  1. Telling Temperature

  2. High Jumping

  3. Fear of Giants

  She hopped about sternly during Telling Temperature class, one wing counting out the seconds against her leg.

  One, two, three.

  She hopped about equally sternly in High Jumping class, inspecting each and every student for proper height, speed, and quality of leap.

  The young crickets followed her lead in everything. All of them, that is, except for Cricket and his one friend, Gloria with the blue-green eyes, who sat by herself in the far corner. Cricket was good at Telling Temperature and High Jumping. But he was bad at Fear of Giants, and Teacher—who was strict and keen-eyed—knew it.

  This very evening, she had called the young crickets together for a refresher course in danger, meant especially for Cricket. They gathered together on the outskirts of Firefly Hollow, not far from the clearing where the young fireflies were beginning to emerge from their hollow tree.