He extended his groundsense to its full range and found no menace for a mile, just the small nesting life of the grass: mice and shrews and rabbits and sleepy meadowlarks; above, a few fluttering bats, and the silent ghostly passage of an owl. He drew his net finer still, filling it with tinier life. Not a bounce, but a persuasion…yes. This still worked. The tree began to throng with his invited visitors, more and more. Beside him, Fawn’s face slowly emerged from the gloom as though rising from deep water.

“Can I open them yet?” she asked, her eyes dutifully scrunched up.

“Just a moment more…yes. Now.”

He kept his eyes on her face as she looked up, so as not to miss the best wonder of all. Her eyes opened, then shot wide; her lips parted in a gasp.

Above them, the leatherpod tree was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of—in Dag’s wide-open perception, slightly bewildered—fireflies, so dense the lighter branches bent with their load. Many of them crawled inside the white blossoms, and when they lit, the clusters of petal cups glowed like pale lanterns. The cool, shadowless radiance bathed them both. Her breath drew in. “Oh,” she said, rising on one elbow and staring upward. “Oh…”

“Wait. I can do more.” He concentrated, and drew down a lambent swirl of insects to spiral around and land in her dark hair, lighting it like a coronet of candles.

“Dag…!” She gave a wild laugh, half delight, half indignation, her hands rising to gently prod her curls. “You put bugs in my hair!”

“I happen to know you like bugs.”

“I do,” she admitted fairly. “Some kinds, anyhow. But how…? Did you learn to do this up in the woods of Luthlia, too?”

“No, actually. I learned it in camp, back when my groundsense first came in—I was about twelve, I guess. The children learn it from each other; no adult ever teaches it, but I think most everyone knows how to catch fireflies this way. We just forget. Grow up and get busy and all. Though I admit, I never collected more than a handful at one time before.”

She was smiling helplessly. “It’s a bit eerie. But I like it. Not sure about the hair—eh! Dag, they’re tickling my ears!”

“Lucky bugs.” He leaned in and blew off the wanderers from the curve of her ear, kissing the tickle away. “You should be crowned with light like the rising moon.”

“Well,” she said, in a gruff little voice, and sniffed. Her gaze traced the bending lantern-flowers above, and returned to his face. “What do you want to go and do a thing like that for anyhow? I’m already as full of joy for you as my body can hold, and there you go and put more in. Downright wasteful, I say. It’s just going to spill over…’’ The light shimmered in her swimming eyes.