The Legend of Butterfield Farm

Chapter Six

ANNIE’S WHININGWOKE Holly up.She cracked her eyes open to get her bearings. Except for the pale moonlight coming in through the open window, it was very, very dark in their new bedroom.Henna must have forgotten to plug in her enchanted castle nightlight.

The moonbeam cast a bluish glow on Annie as she looked out the window. The dog stood tall on her hind legs, with her front paws perched on the windowsill. She whimpered louder.

“Quiet, Annie,” said Holly, still half-asleep. She squinted at the clock next to her bed. It was 4:47am.

Annie ignored the command and whimpered again, this time adding a couple yips for good measure.  

“Annie, lie down,” said Holly. “It’s not time to wake up yet. Lie down.”

This time Annie took notice. She looked at Holly and then plopped down on the hardwood floor right under the window. 

“You awake, Henna?” There was no response. “Henna, you awake?” Again, no response. How can she sleep through all this?

Holly’s eyes followed the moonbeam from the window over to the opposite wall where it gently spotlighted a bunch of photos in a big picture frame. The pictures set off a flood of memories, all reminders of happier times. There was the one with Henna playing a toy saxophone, her red hair aflame in the afternoon sun. Another one captured the two of them and Annie, all smiles in the sandbox. Others showed the pair in a joyful mid-air jump above their backyard trampoline; Henna in a vampire costume pretending to take a bite out of Holly’s witch on a Halloween hayride at the Afton pumpkin patch; and the one with them floating down the James River in inner tubes alongside Grandpa’s johnboat.

Everything was so good; why did we have to move? Why did everything have to change?  Why?

And that’s when her wistful trip down memory lane took an abrupt turn. A shadow rose up from the floor and swallowed the moonbeam. Now the room was completely dark.

An odd, faint sound entered through the open window. Annie quickly jumped up and put her paws back on the windowsill. Her whining picked up where it left off.

Holly realized something was definitely going on out there. She turned on her bedside lamp and looked at Henna’s bed. It was empty. She must have gone and climbed into Mom and Dad’s bed for the night.

She pulled off her covers and placed her bare feet onto the cold hardwood floor.  They did not stay bare and cold for long, though. A nearby pair of fuzzy slippers put an end to that. They were of the pink bunny variety, complete with smiling faces and big rabbit ears. If her friends ever saw her in them, she would never hear the end of it. But in this moment, on this cold floor, they were perfect—even though they clashed with her Rubik’s Cube pajamas. 

She put her glasses on and shuffled over to the window. Once there, Holly saw why the moonlight had disappeared. A big cloud had come between her and the moon. If she were to play the game of coming up with what the cloud looked like—as she and Henna used to—she would say that it looked just like a tree. Probably a fruit tree, because some kind of fruit was hanging below a limb.

“That’s odd,” she said. The hanging fruit was wiggling all about. She wanted a better look and remembered that Henna had played with their telescope earlier. She found it nearby and put it in position to get a close-up view of what was wiggling.

“Oh, my—this can’t be,” she said with a shudder. What she saw in the magnified circle was not a cloud tree with a wiggling cloud fruit; it was a real tree way up high in the sky. And Henna was struggling and holding on for dear life.