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I’m at the kitchen sink rinsing dry milk from my daughter’s favorite cup when my ears start to prickle. My breath catches in my throat. I fumble the water off, grip the edge of the counter, and brace myself. It’s like waiting for a labor contraction. I breathe hard through my nose, staring at the window sill above the sink cluttered with my children’s sacred debris: smooth pebbles, flowers floating limp in mason jars, a tiny cicada shell.
And then the prickles explode, a pulse of pins and needles from toe to scalp. It sweeps through me, leaving behind a premonition. Flotsam from a sudden wave. I squeeze my eyes shut and look at the new information. Black wings. Screams. Fire. Running.
Okay.
I suck in my breath hard.
Okay. So.
They’re coming.
The premonition fills me with fear, but there’s a foam of annoyance on top. Some people have dreams of the future months in advance. My psychic moments are always late, barely giving me enough time to put on tea for an unexpected guest.
I can see my kids in the backyard through the window above the sink. The twins are doggedly practicing their levitation. Bixby is wary, wobbly, his sneakers hovering just inches above the grass. Hestley leaps off an elm branch, appears to catch an invisible rope, then yelps as the spell snaps and drops him to the ground with a thud. Shilo, my littlest, is digging in the soil by the honeysuckle bush with a silver serving spoon she covets. A shadow flits over the dry grass. Then another. The sirens start.
I find myself in the backyard running across the grass, little stones jabbing my bare feet. I’m pretty sure I didn’t teleport. Transport magic leaves a lemony aftertaste in your mouth. I’m still gripping Shilo’s cup.
More shadows flit over the grass and I freeze, craning my neck up. The Red Wave is flying in tight formations over the village, screaming like mad kestrels. Curse the elders! They swore we’d be safe here. We wove those shield spells around the town for weeks and the Wave has shattered right through them.
The kids are staring at the sky. I watch their terror bloom and throw out a fast freeze. I hate doing it, but I’m panicked. They each stop in mid-stride, their minds sliding into sleep that will evaporate in about three minutes.
Okay. I breathe into my nerves. List the options. Transport? No time to weave a portal. Fly? Be seen, get caught. Hide? I could conceal us so well the Hawks would never even smell us. But I hear a low boom and the ground trembles from a magical energy pulse. No good hiding from explosions.
Another boom, closer.
A cicada, utterly oblivious to our drama, begins to sing its rasping metallic whine from the elm tree. Above the scream of my panic, I numbly think, You poor critter, dozing in the dirt for a decade only to emerge on the eve of a civil war. Another cicada begins to buzz. Then another until the sound is so loud it drowns out the distant booms.
And then the clockwork of the spell is shaping in my mind. The way out. The ridiculous, beautiful, horrible way out.
I run past little Shilo, crouched like a statue in the dirt with her big spoon and dusty purple socks. I dive into the honeysuckle bush that is her special hideout and find my old potions box. Inside are a hundred tiny compartments for herbs and roots. She has packed it with her treasures, pebbles and pinecones and–yes– a dozen pale cicada shells. I pluck them out delicately and drop them into her cup, loving Shilo with a surge and wondering if her premonitions are stronger than my own.
As I crawl out from the bush, the kids are starting to wobble and rub their eyes. I gather them onto my lap, their limbs nap-soft. It’s a tight fit. I breathe into their hair while we cling together.
“Hey,” I say into the knot of arms and heads around me. My voice trembles, fake-okay. “I know this is really scary. I’m scared, too. But we’re going to be smarter than the bad guys.” The ground rumbles.
I place a tiny, chitinous exoskeleton into each soft, sweaty palm. The mad hawk cries send shivers over my skin. Shilo burrows her head against my chest. The twins are stammering questions.
“Babies, listen. We don’t have time to run and Mama can’t weave a transport fast enough. So we’re going away. Far away. It’s going to be dark, it’s going to be very strange, but we’ll be together and we’ll be safe.” I squeeze them with my big mom arms that feel like they could circle the world. I kiss each one. "Are you ready?” They nod, eyes wide, silent. “Now, repeat after me.”
My voice is warm. The magic steadies me. The words taste like cinnamon in my mouth, so I know it’s working. My children mimic my words, cicada shells clasped between their fingers. Any other day this could be a game. We get to the middle of the spell and Bixby’s eyes widen with realization. Hestley nods to him with a lopsided smile. One twin is terrified, the other is thrilled. Shilo stares hard at my mouth, saying each syllable carefully. She doesn’t know many spell words yet, but she knows it’s serious business.
We must say the spell four times, once for each of us, before I knot the weaving and push it into motion. The shadows are coming faster. Another explosion thrums through the ground. On the third round we smell smoke, on the fourth our eyes start to sting. As we reach the end I am memorizing the exact curves of their round cheeks, the precise gold highlights in their messy hair.
I say the words that knot the weaving, give an energetic shove from my solar plexus, start the mechanism. I know it’s coming, but I still gasp when it hits. The lumpy lawn grows into mountains around us as we plummet down into tiny new bodies. I feel my body logically compartmentalize itself, folding whole organs away with origami creases. My thoughts simplify. I’m seized by an overpowering hunger to dig. I have to flee the light, the yawning brightness of the sky.
My cicada mind feels the bomb shake the ground with the violence of an earthquake. I cannot believe the power of my tiny body. I dive into the earth, down into the safety of the darkness and the earth.
Deep, deep below, the world stops shaking. I can sense the others. I tunnel toward them until we are all bunched into a tiny space, our many legs whispering together. We wait with the cicada’s seventeen-year patience.
…
Time unspools. The darkness is safe. We are far below the frost line of winter, below the boiling of war that burns itself out. Moss grows on the rubble above. Trees sprout. We drink the water from their roots.
And then a dream of light, of colors. I stir, craving it. We dig, tunneling up. I feel others in the soil climbing upwards, too. There are thousands of us.
The darkness crumbles away into the ecstasy of light. We climb the enormous trees, yearning to get higher, finally resting in branches, exhausted, exuberant. My pale nymph shell itches fiercely. As I wriggle from my skin and test my damp wings, I see that I am changing more than the others. I flutter to the ground as my body unfolds, the transformation reversing with clockwork precision as lungs, cuticles, heart chambers, follicles and freckles rearrange themselves into their exact positions from seventeen years ago.
I sit squinting in the sunlight, taking huge breaths with lungs both new and familiar. My eyesight begins to clear, the pupils remembering how to adjust. Three small people crouch near me, staring at their fingers, flexing their limbs with wide eyes. As the transformation hums to its end, a reflexive surge from my belly unlocks the human memories and brings it all back in a flood.
The children. My children. The danger. Has it gone? We sit in a young forest that had once been our backyard. There is no sign of the house. The littlest one – my unfolded mind tells me she is Shilo – is glancing nervously at the sky. The twins, who are so different from one another, are trying to stand on wobbly legs.
The forest is quiet. My vision blurs as I pull the children fiercely to my chest, sobbing very quietly into their hair. They peer over my arms at the sky and into the trees with wary, newborn eyes. Already the cicada time in the world below is fading from our minds.
“It’s okay,” I murmur. The words feel strange in my mouth, but become more familiar as I speak. “I think we’re safe now.”