The Tartan

By Javier Hayes

Annalise Providence, a bright and young New England girl, skipped merrily through an elegant garden. She kicked away brick pebbles and stomped over weeds like a giant flattening towns underfoot. With eyes as green as her thumbs, she scanned each patch of flowers and listed them out loud, although she knew them all by heart. To her, each one was a precious and colorful child. 

Miss Providence was one of those strange little girls who unsettled adults — mostly because of her uncanny expertise in plant life at a young age and her general eccentricity (usually reserved for retirees). Nonetheless, her parents doted on her almost excessively. 

She took after her mother, a botanist with a twitch in her right eye who left her daughter two heirlooms: a love for reading and stray horticultural textbooks that sat gathering dust until small hands knocked them down from their shelves. 

Her father, less of an inspiration but just as loving, was the one who bought her the garden for her seventh birthday. The brick walkways, the plots, the seeds, and the whole nine yards were paid for by his generous salary from a massive business conglomerate. He almost installed watering machines, too, in case his daughter forgot to take care of the garden. But Annalise would rather live 100 lifetimes in 100 ages before forgetting about her flowers, which were almost as much of a part of her as her own hands.

“Daylily, zinnia, dianthus, marigold, snapdragon, lavender…” she idly listed in a light and airy voice, like a flute. “…And strawberry bush. Hi, strawberries,” she waved. The strawberries, talkative as ever, did not respond.

As she leaned away from the plot, she noticed a scuttle of movement underneath the strawberries. Her curiosity drew her back in, her lips turning to a focused pout. Leaning down, she fell on all fours to peer at the world hidden beneath the leaves. Piercing the scattered shadows with sharp, young eyes, she made out a tiny shape. A beetle, pulling one of the baby strawberries off its stem with its tiny mandibles. She watched it struggle for a minute, enraptured: its little armored body, the stubby legs flailing about as its mandibles failed to grip the pink-red fruit in slow and jaunty movements. While it was still, the beetle looked dead, and in movement, it was a flurry of panic.

Against what would be the better judgment of anyone else, Annalise reached out and unceremoniously snatched the beetle into her palm, taking its meal with it. She sat back on her knees, bringing it out into the light and watching it thrash around with morbid intensity. It was a rhinoceros beetle: she knew from the tiny little horn on its head. She thought the insect looked just marvelous. 

Little Annalise briefly felt like a god with the beetle in her hand, or as much of a god as a nine-year-old can be. A strange sense bubbled to the surface within her, like she had just taken a breath of fresh air after a long storm. She tapped the beetle, and it scrambled about before nearly falling off of her fingers and clinging for dear life, cutting her fantasy short. Suddenly preoccupied with frantically scooping the bug back to safety, she was interrupted by the sound of the backdoor of her house closing shut. Her head perked up with sudden fear and surprise at the unmistakable sound of her mother’s high-heeled footsteps into the garden. 

Ceaseless reminders about keeping certain bugs out of the garden flashed through her mind. She dropped back down and as gently and quickly as she could, placed the beetle back in the dirt, gave it two taps on its shell, and jumped back up. The beetle, not one to stick around, immediately skittered away. Discombobulated but alive, it fell back into the darkness.

The Providence family’s keeper marched over to her daughter who was covered in dirt. She sighed.

“Annie, darling, did the bus already leave?” Annalise shrugged, her demeanor shifting dramatically. Her mother sighed, and made a face halfway between a loving smile and a disappointed frown. “Okay, well, wash your hands at least. Get your bag, meet me at the car. Alright, pumpkin?” Annalise nodded. Her mother scooped her up into a tight hug before walking  back into the house. Annalise took another sweep of the garden and then fished a miniature silver whistle out of her pocket. She ducked down again and quickly placed it underneath the strawberry bush as a gift to the beetle.

“Stay safe,” she whispered to him, before running off. She imagined that the beetle had heard her blessing.

Deep below the ground, the beetle tumbled down through soil tunnels and over roots. After many minutes, it rolled out into a larger tunnel, and slowed to a stop.

A tunnel of tightly packed dirt and stones yawned out before the little beetle. It righted itself and looked out into the darkness. The beetle looked down to see the bit of strawberry it had been wrestling with roll out of the same hole and stop at its feet. The tiny red fruit began to lose color and wilt under the beetle’s gaze; its once beady black eyes buzzed with dim golden light, still reflecting the face of God.