The One Who Hides The Weapons

“Darn it! Where are those fly swatters I just bought?” Grandma rolled up a TV Guide and smacked at the kitchen counter. A fly buzzed away from her.

“I thought you put them on top of the fridge, Mom,” Sophie’s mother said, checking up there herself and then shrugging.

Grandma glared around the kitchen. “I don’t understand it. Those things disappear faster than I can bring ’em in.”

Sophie sat at the kitchen table, trying to make herself as small as an eight-year-old could get. She knew exactly where all Grandma’s fly swatters were. They were in a plastic bag under Sophie’s bed.

Sophie liked flies. Their bodies looked green and shiny and pretty in the sunlight, and their wings sometimes reminded her of rainbows if the light hit them right. And she thought their buzzing noises sounded happy and friendly. Why would anyone kill them?

Because everyone else hated them. Grandma liked having fly swatters handy in as many places as possible. Sophie hated hearing the plastic “smack!” sound, especially if it was followed by “Gotcha!” The gross smears of fly guts on the swatters made her feel sick.

She’d tried to tell everyone that she thought flies were neat, and they’d all laughed at her. And then her dad had lectured her about how flies were filthy and full of disease.

Sophie refused to believe that. And whenever Grandma brought home new fly swatters from the store during the summer, Sophie would wait until nobody was around and sneak them to her hiding spot. She had ten of them under the bed on the day she met Musca.

During one very hot afternoon towards the end of summer, Sophie sat in the backyard under a tree, reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

A loud buzzing noise made Sophie look up, and she nearly dropped her book.

A girl stood over her. She had short spiky black hair, narrow lips, and huge eyes that were a deep red color Sophie had never seen on a person before. She wore a dark green sundress that shimmered blue and gold in the sunlight.

As Sophie stared up at her, the girl curtsied.

“Greetings!” she said in a high voice. “You are the one who hides the weapons.”

“The … weapons?” Sophie had no idea what the girl meant.

The girl thought for a moment and then smacked one hand against her other arm in a swatting motion. “Those.”

“You mean the fly swatters?” Sophie felt nervous. Had someone figured out what she’d been doing? Was she in trouble?

“Is that what those horrible things are called?” The girl wrinkled her nose, and Sophie nodded.

The girl bent over Sophie and smiled.

“Do you think you could bring them to me? We’d like to dispose of them properly.”

Sophie hadn’t had any idea how to throw all the swatters out without someone noticing them in the trash. The idea of making them someone else’s problem sounded fine to her.

“You bet!” Sophie jumped to her feet, ran into the house, and headed for her room.

“Sophie? Lunch is almost ready,” Grandma called.

“In a minute, Gran.” Sophie took the plastic bag out from under the bed carefully so it wouldn’t crinkle too much.

The girl was still waiting outside. Sophie handed her the bag of fly swatters.

“Thank you!” She carefully tucked the bag into a pouch on the back of her dress and then favored Sophie with a huge smile. “What is your name?”

“Sophie.”

“Sophie, my people owe you a debt of gratitude. If you ever need help, please call upon me. My name is Musca.”

Musca curtsied to Sophie once more. And then she leaped into the air and disappeared. A fly buzzed around Sophie’s head for a few seconds and then flew off. Sophie was still standing in the backyard staring after the fly — after Musca — when Grandma hollered at her to get in the house already.

Sophie never quite forgot Musca, but at some point she convinced herself that she must have fallen asleep outside and dreamed it all. She couldn’t account for why the flyswatters under the bed were gone after that, but maybe Mom had found them.

*****

Seven summers later, Sophie and her friends were at the beach. The day was hot and dry, and although Sophie wasn’t a big swimmer, she decided to take a quick dip in the ocean. She waded into the surf and then paddled out. She was doing fine until she stepped off a sandbar she didn’t know was there.

The water closed over her head and filled her nose, burning her nostrils. She couldn’t make herself stay above the water long enough to get a breath, much less struggle back to the sandbar. She wanted to call for help, but her mouth kept slipping underwater. Her hair covered her face. Her arms stuck out uselessly.

As she slid under the surface of the water she tried to say “Help me,” but the word that came out was “Musca.”

The surface of the water looked murky and green. Just before she faded away, Sophie saw a dark shape breaking through it.

*****

“Oh my god. Is she …”

“It’s OK. She’s waking up. Look.”

Sophie slowly opened her eyes to see her friends, the lifeguard, and several beachgoers crowded around her. The sun made her squint.

“What happened?” she said.

Her best friend burst into tears and dropped to her knees beside Sophie. Sophie gazed around, feeling nauseated and dazed. And then she saw her.

A young woman in a shiny bottle-green bathing suit stood off to the side, away from the others. She had spiky dark hair and enormous reddish-brown eyes. She smiled down at Sophie and gave her a quick curtsey.

Musca.

“Thank you,” Sophie whispered.

Everyone else was paying attention to Sophie, and thus Sophie was the only one who saw the young woman walk away from the crowd, leap into the air, and vanish. Sophie heard a friendly buzzing around her head for a few seconds, and she smiled.