The Book of Riddles

One year ago…

On a moonlit June night in the California Delta when the window screens still hold the sun’s sting, Kady hears her cousin Felicity’s hoot-owl call, a low humming ‘whooo-ee,’ drifting across the shared grape-stake fence between their gardens.

Tiptoeing into the shadows dancing among artful hedges and sweet clusters of wisteria, Kady whispers, “But you’re grounded!”

Felicity grins, and moonlight shimmers off her hair, soft and shiny as corn-silk.

“Riddles can be playful or profound, poetic and probing, or enchanting with trickery and misdirection. Every play of words that relishes sense and sound appeals to our innermost feelings.”   A Brief History of Riddles (The Society of Classical Poets) by Manfred Dietrich

This night the concrete sidewalks press the heat into the bare feet of runaway girls, so they race across acres of connecting lawns, Kady trailing her cousin until they reach Rose Park where the petals of French, Cabbage, China and Just Joey roses bless the earth.

They sprawl like snow angels on the warm grass, staring up at the sky where the Milky Way gradually appears—and then bursting across darkness, one at a time, the shooting stars.

“Like fireflies,” Felicity whispers, “the ones we saw in Ohio last summer.”

And Kady remembers that the fireflies almost swallowed the world with their glow, and she couldn’t bear capturing them behind glass the way the other kids did.

And it was Felicity who ran through those fireflies so they tangled in her long, golden hair.

And this night as they watch meteors shooting across oceans of sky, Felicity laughs, her laughter so filled with joy and mystery and contagion that Kady joins in. Hands stretched overhead, fingers entwined, their shivering bodies imprinting grass, the moment becomes etched forever in the firefly synapses of memory…

Less than a week later, the girl with golden hair rides her bike into the failing dusk along the American River. She rides on the less-traveled sandy trail avoiding the last of the sunburned swimmers waving away clouds of evening gnats and tiny darting bats, and the families heading back to their cars, their homes.

She peddles wildly, face flushed with heat—as her tires hit ruts and roots, gaining air in jolts. Her pink backpack rises, too, and in it her diary overflowing with her hopes and dreams; her Book of Riddles almost filled to the last page because her birthday is mere days away; backpack slapping ribs and the smacking sound almost a song. While across the river startled quails flush, disappearing into the shadows—and a lone egret calls to its mate….