The String Bean And The Firefly (The Year Of The Firefly Book 1) - GeAnn Powers

The String Bean And The Firefly (The Year Of The Firefly Book 1) by GeAnn Powers

Book excerpt

What was done could not be undone.

She’d broken the knife. She hadn’t intended to, and the whole fairy colony was staring at her.

It wouldn’t have happened if Dragon hadn’t wanted a kiss! she grumbled, but it was too late.

In the half-light of early morning, the adult males of the tribe gathered in the middle of their barn home, forming a hunting party. As they prepared to leave, they each wanted good luck kisses from their women. Unlike kisses of affection, these were more about ownership. A reminder that the males were the ones in charge, with all the power, and the women better do as they were told.

“Give me a kiss, Ariel!” Dragon barked at her.

Ariel stood outside the group, holding a spear of her own. Of course, she wasn’t going with the hunting party because she wasn’t a male. She was only fifteen and not yet an adult. Still, she planned to hunt for herself after they left.

She glared at Dragon. At six inches, he was half a head taller than her, but she wasn’t intimidated.

“I’m not your wife,” she reminded him.

“You will be soon enough. So, you’d better get used to doing as I tell you.”

“I’m not your wife.” They weren’t betrothed, but everyone expected them to be. Dragon acted like they were.

He wasn’t pleased with her response. “Give me a kiss!” he demanded.

Ariel glared at him, defiance pulsing in her every fiber. She was NOT his property. Not yet anyway. She shook her head.

That didn’t improve Dragon’s attitude, but it did get him moving. He charged at her, determined to catch her and force her compliance.

She dodged out of his way and darted around behind some of the others. He followed and the cat-and-mouse game continued. But when Ariel dove behind her father, she accidentally knocked his arm hard enough to send his knife flying from his hand of its own accord.

The glass blade, formed from a shard of a blue bottle, was very rare. Her father took great pride in that knife. In hitting his arm, Ariel sent the knife on an unfortunate journey into the one hard object in the area: a cement block. The blade tip snapped off on impact, rendering the shard useless.

Now, the whole hunting party and their women stared.

Dragon smirked.

Ariel really didn’t care about him at the moment. What she did focus on was her father. At first, he looked surprised as his weapon unexpectedly escaped his grasp. His expression turned to shock when the instrument betrayed him by breaking. But now, now that the full implications of the tool’s uselessness sank in, anger quickly sprouted, and he turned accusing eyes on his youngest daughter.

Ariel shrank under his glare. Being caught by that look was never a good thing. She turned and ran. Past her father, past Dragon and the other hunters. As soon as she was out of the cluster, she spread her wings and took to the air. The girl flew over the other flyer fairies, gathered in their groups on the floor of the old barn, nesting in the tools and instruments rotting where they hung forgotten on the walls and perching among the weakening rafters. Up to the top of the hayloft, wings beating rapidly, and out the opening where the door had rotted away long ago. She paused in her flight then, wings spread wide and still. There was a second of freefall before the wind current caught her and lifted her up and away from her barn home.

The barn sat forgotten in the back field of a small Kansas buffalo ranch. The fifty temperamental bison that called the ranch their home, were lazing their way across the twenty-acre meadow to where their owner’s pickup slowly bumped its way to their feeding area with a load of hay. There was little chance of the driver seeing one sparrow-sized girl, but she avoided heading his direction anyway.