The Legend of Butterfield Farm

Chapter Eight

TREE WRECKAGE WAS scattered all over the place.And the place was a glen.  Surrounded by forested mountains, it looked a lot like Blundell Hollow in many ways.  Except there were no houses, no barns, and no petting zoos. There were no split rail fences or telephone poles. No roads, either. In fact, there were no manmade things of any kind.

But Holly did not know any of this yet. She thought she was in her bed, waking up from a vivid dream in the farmhouse, one that felt all too real.

When she opened her eyes, all she could see in the darkness was a bunch of orange dots. She blinked hard hoping they’d go away, but they didn’t.

Something was wrong with her eyes. But her nose was working just fine, thank you. It was pleased to make the acquaintance of some freshly baked cinnamon rolls, the perfect reason to get out of bed. This morning, however, it was not the only reason. Something was very wrong with her bed. It was not nearly as comfortable as it was when she climbed into it last night. It felt bumpy and hard, a lot like lying on the ground. 

She heard the sound of water and assumed her mother was running the bath for her. She reached out to turn on her bedside lamp, but it wasn’t there.  Maybe I knocked it off the nightstand during my nightmare. Suddenly, Holly got the odd feeling that someone was watching her. “Mom, is that you?”

Just then, a shaft of light came into the room. When she looked up, she saw a huge double-winged creature with big bulging eyes staring at her through a gaping hole in the roof. Big and bulging was putting it lightly. Its eyes were really, really big, way bigger than the face they were attached to. She had never seen a creature like this, except maybe in a scary movie about giant insects. It looked like a monstrous dragonfly.      

“Oh my,” said Holly, and she braced herself for an attack.  

The startled creature opened its big, bulging eyes even bigger. “Oh my!” it said, and then it took flight. The oversized dragonfly hovered over the hole in the roof for a few seconds. “Oh my!” it repeated and then flew off in a flash. This let in even more light.

“Did that giant dragonfly actually speak?” Holly said to herself, and that’s when she looked at her surroundings. “Uh-oh.” She had not awakened from a nightmare in her bed, in her new home, with her family all around her. Holly had crash-landed for real. She was lying on the ground in a bed of wildflowers inside a large fragment of the flying tree, but who knew where?

The cinnamon roll scent was coming from the fragrant flowers all around her. Their aroma reminded her how hungry she was. She wondered if they tasted as good as they smelled. In a way, they resembled huge daisies. Except these petals were copper-colored and very fuzzy. Their round centers put off an orange glow, much like the solar-powered lights alongside the stone path to her old house.

Glowing cinnamon roll flowers and a huge talking dragonfly were strange enough in their own right, but Holly saw that the sky was very unusual, too. Granted, a section of it was blue, but there were also tons of other brilliant colors stacked up side-by-side. They completely lit up the whole sky. It was breathtakingly beautiful. For a blissful moment, she smiled and forgot all about the awful crash landing. She even felt hopeful.

“A rainbow-colored sky is a good sign,” she said. “All we have to do now is find our way back home. Guys, isn’t the sky awesome? Guys?” She looked around. “Oh no.” Her head had cleared enough for her to realize that Henna and Gordon were no longer with her. 

She quickly stood up but could not quite reach the jagged edge of the tree’s broken top. So she used the footholds to climb higher until she was able to pull herself up and peek over the edge. She couldn’t see Gordon and Henna out there, but she could see what was making the water sounds. Nearby, there was a big fountain of water shooting into the air from a see-through boulder. As the water hit the ground, it formed a stream that flowed down a grassy slope.

Farther downstream, there were big ferns and lush, exotic plants on either side. Along the way, there were many other clear boulders, each with its own fountain of water shooting into the air. In the distance, the stream got bigger and bigger, eventually turning into a river and disappearing into the forest surrounding the glen.

She climbed up and straddled the edge of the broken trunk. This gave her a better view, but still no sign of Henna or Gordon. She called out for them. No one answered.

After jumping to the ground, Holly sat among the hundreds of wildflowers and breathed in their wonderful cinnamon sweetness. She bent over and put her nose very close to one of them. Her face lit up in orange from the flower’s luminous center. It smelled soooooo good, and she was soooooo hungry. She opened her mouth, ready to take a big bite out of it, when she heard something. 

Holly left the flower and went to where she thought the sound came from. “Henna? Gordon? Is that you?”

No, it was a pair of bunnies at the edge of the stream. They were adorable pink bunnies, and their mouths were in the water taking a drink.

She heard something else, this time from the other side of the stream. And that’s where Gordon stepped out from behind a bush. Actually, the bush stepped out with him. Well, part of it did. He had camouflaged himself by attaching a cluster of leafy branches to his body.

A big grin splashed across Holly’s face. “Oh, thank goodness you’re all right.” She couldn’t help chuckling, mostly because she was happy to see him, but also because he looked so ridiculous.

“I’m all right, alright,” Gordon said, as the barrel of his rifle slowly emerged from his portable bush. “But you, you are in grave danger.”

“Don’t be silly.”

Gordon’s eyes narrowed. “I’m serious, dead serious.” He drew a bead on the bunnies. “I sense they are about to attack.” 

Holly gasped.

Gordon bellowed, “Take this, you nasty vermin!”

Holly screamed, “Noooooo!”

Gordon ignored her plea and let loose with a hail of bullets. One after another, they hit the bunnies, sending them spinning and hurtling into the air.

When the clip was empty and the shooting stopped, the pink bunnies landed near Holly.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” Gordon said. “This is my land now. And if you ever set foot on it again, you’ll…you’ll…you’ll wish you never set foot on it.”

Holly rushed over to check on the defenseless creatures. “Gordon, how could you?” When she got to them, they weren’t breathing. Wait a minute. “Oh…of course.” She looked down at her bare feet. Gordon had taught a lesson to her pink slippers.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said as she put them back on. “I thought you had lost your mind shooting innocent bunnies like that.”

Gordon pretended to blow smoke off the tip of the rifle’s barrel. “Just keeping my shooting skills sharp, that’s all.”

“And what were you talking about ‘this is my land’? We don’t even know where we are; let alone whose land it is.”

“Well, I’m just saying.”

Holly scanned the area. She spotted a nearby outcropping of see-through boulders and began climbing them. It was the highest point on this end of the glen, perfect for locating her sister.

Upon reaching the summit, she slowly turned around, looking everywhere for Henna. She called out to Gordon, “Have you seen her?” 

“Not yet,” he said while re-loading his long-range dart blaster rifle for the next battle. “It’s only a matter of time, though.” He nodded his head with such enthusiasm he looked like a Gordon the Adventurer bobble head.

“I certainly hope so,” she said while climbing down from the outcropping.

“Operation Recon Mission has officially begun,” said Gordon. “We need to section off enemy territory in grids, split up, and with an eye on possible attacks from our flank, we’ll search every inch of ground for—”

Gordon kept going with his plan, but Holly wasn’t listening. She’d caught a glimpse of something purple in ferns farther downstream. It was a very familiar shade of purple. She ran toward it. 

When she got there and saw what it was, her face turned ashen.