Time Traveler

Hughie was sure that his neighbors were all wrong. He was always trying to convince them that it was their duty to grow as many glowing sunflowers as they could, so that the flowers would be widely spread in time for the next year-long period of constant shade from their biggest moon, which was due in about 95 years. These periods of darkness that lasted for an entire year were the most inconvenient thing about their planet, but fortunately it only happened once every 1000 years. Unfortunately, since it was so infrequent, they didn’t have much experience in how to best prepare for the darkness. Historical records from the last period of darkness were very vague about what it was like and how the people had managed so well. Many people had ideas about how to prepare for the next period of darkness, but Hughie felt that his plan was the best.

Hughie’s human neighbors were quite interested in Hughie’s ideas, but they also were excitedly working on their own theories. It was not every generation that got to prepare for a period of darkness, after all. Hughie’s fairy neighbors, on the other hand, were getting tired of hearing him lecture on the same thing over and over again. The people fairies and most of the animal fairies were so tired of all of Hughie’s gloomy predictions that they all went off on a vacation to sometime in the distant past. Fairies get anxious if they don’t hear enough hopeful things.

That is why, by the time that Hughie thought about asking a fairy to send him to the future so that he could prove his theory right, he couldn’t find any fairies. His idea was that if he traveled 100 years into the future, he could find out if the people there had taken his advice and were doing well because of it; or he could find out if the people hadn’t taken his advice and were sorry because of it. For some reason, it didn’t occur to him to ask a fairy to tell him what would happen in the next period of darkness; fairies were such accomplished time travelers that they could have easily answered his questions, if he had asked politely while he was in an optimistic mood.

Finally, after Hughie had been going around for a week, telling everyone what a pity it was that the fairies were all gone before he could ask for their help, a cricket-fairy hopped up to him while he was taking care of his glowing sunflowers one day. He could tell that it was a cricket-fairy and not an ordinary cricket because she was light blue and glowed gently, and she spoke in a voice that echoed a little bit.

“I am the fairy Jacquelin,” said the cricket-fairy. “If I send you 100 years into the future for five days, will you start talking about something more cheerful after you’ve told everybody about what you see?”

Hughie was very excited and willingly agreed to the cricket-fairy’s deal.

So, Hughie gathered together all his neighbors in front of the town library, and told them all about Jacquelin’s promise. They were all very much interested. Jacquelin, on the other hand, got tired of Hughie’s long speech full of gloomy predictions, and she sent him into the future while he was in the middle of a sentence.

Hughie found himself in front of the library in the middle of the autumn, even though it had been the springtime a moment ago. There was no crowd listening to him, and the library seemed to have been newly painted. “I must be in the future!” Hughie thought.

He walked up to a young man who was walking past. The young man was wearing strange purple clothes.

“I am visiting from 100 years ago,” said Hughie. “I wanted to find out what the future was like, so a fairy named Jacquelin sent me here.”

“In that case, please come home with me. My family would like to meet you,” said the young man. “We would love to help a fairy by showing hospitality to the person that she sent to us.”

The young man’s family were called the Digbys. He was Papa Digby, and his wife was Mama Digby, and there was also Baby Digby. Baby Digby liked Hughie right away, being much interested in his strange green clothes, but Baby Digby wasn’t old enough to explain that he thought it was a nice color. He had only ever seen people wear purple before.

Hughie told Papa Digby that he was curious about what happened in their recent period of darkness. Mama Digby and Papa Digby looked at each other and smiled.

“That was a pleasant year,” said Papa Digby. “Nobody knew what to expect, but the fairies had been telling us for the five years before that point that there really wasn’t anything to worry about.”

“So, what happened?” asked Hughie curiously, because he hadn’t expected something like that.

“Well, it turns out that during the year of darkness, all the fairies from the past and present and future all like to gather together,” said Mama Digby. “It was an incredible sight. They had a year-long celebration, and they all glowed so much that it was as bright as daylight all day and all night, for the whole year. Everybody had to put up extra-thick curtains so we could sleep at night, but the fairies were so pleasant and so helpful and cheerful that nobody minded that. All of our crops did fine, and the animals were never happier.”

“Oh,” said Hughie, wondering whether to feel hopeful about the future, or whether to feel disappointed that it all happened so differently than what he thought, and with such a simple solution. “I have been growing glowing sunflowers because I thought that they would be useful to have around during the period of darkness.”

Mama Digby smiled at this, and led Hughie to their back garden, which had a big bed of  glowing sunflowers right next to the house.

“We all love them because they remind us of the constant light from the fairies,” she said, “so everybody grows some.”

This was a new idea to Hughie. He supposed that they did give a rather fairylike glow.

The Digbys kindly invited him to stay with them for the rest of his five days. Baby Digby was especially excited. At first he was excited because the interesting green man let him play with his jacket, but later he found that Hughie could also make silly animal noises and build tents out of blankets.

Hughie was enjoying himself so much that he quite forgot to watch what time it was after it had been five days, and Papa Digby had to tell him that it was time to go back to the library, where he first appeared in their time; they weren’t sure whether Jacquelin would bring him back to the library in Hughie’s time if he was somewhere else when the five days were up. Papa Digby and Baby Digby walked to the library with him.

“Say bye to Hughie,” Papa Digby said. Baby Digby waved to Hughie, and just as Hughie was waving back, he disappeared. Baby Digby was very disappointed until Mama Digby made him a Hughie doll wearing nice green clothes, and Papa Digby made silly animal noises for him and built a blanket tent. Still, Baby Digby would have liked to see his friend Hughie again.

When Hughie disappeared from the future, he felt very bewildered to find himself in front of all of his own neighbors all of a sudden, and he felt odd to find himself waving at a tree to the side of the crowd. His neighbors had gathered again in front of the library after five days, and they were eager to find out what he had learned.

“I was completely wrong,” Hughie told his neighbors. “The future was great. They didn’t have the smallest trouble during the year of darkness because all the fairies gave them all the light that they needed. The people of the future grow glowing sunflowers because their light reminds them of the kind fairies.”

“Now can we have more cheerful conversations around here?” asked Jacquelin, hopefully.

“Yes, yes!” said all the people, excitedly.

“What can we do to thank the fairies for the kindness that they are going to show the people who live through the year of darkness?” Hughie asked the cricket-fairy.

“Well,” she said, thoughtfully, “we do enjoy glowing sunflowers. It would be nice if more people grew some.”

And everybody was so excited about growing their new flowers that nobody remembered to write down the story of Hughie’s time travel adventures, so that when the time of the great darkness came along, nobody knew anything about what would happen except that the fairies told them that they always helped out everyone whenever it was a year of darkness.

And when the town’s fairies came back to Hughie’s time from their vacation, they were excited that the town had become a much more cheerful and glowing place. They loved having so many glowing sunflowers around.

As for Hughie, he became the town’s favorite babysitter, and he started to always wear purple instead of wearing green like everyone else.