Elsie skipped over the bridge in the yard, the tiny thing constructed for rabbits and mice. She pinwheeled to a stop, then dashed back over it and told her mother about the ‘black fairies’ she’d found.

Her mother pulled a weed out of the flower bed, then regarded her daughter, who stood arms akimbo. “Fairies aren’t black.”

“These ones were,” Elsie said, with all the confidence and seriousness of a witness in a murder trial.

“Fairies aren’t—” Her mother sighed, tugging off her gardening gloves, and waved at a pair of bumblebees hovering nearby. Several more hummed in places around the yard. “The bees help with the flowers. Just the bees. Fairies aren’t real, dear.”

“These ones were. And they were black. Like Deirdre and Davis. And they had little flowers for shoes.”

Her mother clenched her gloves in one hand. “Have you been playing with those kids?”

“No. No, even though Deirdre came over and asked. I told her I can’t.” A pause. “Mom, you have to come see the fairies.”

“Honey, they’re not real.”

“Come on! Come on, come on, come on—”

“Okay, okay, let me get up.”

Her mother groaned and cracked her back. Elsie held her hand, scampering over the bridge. They broke through a kind of film, a spider web–thin bubble, and there in front of them, bees with human faces, and skin instead of fur, buzzed around the yard. Their yard. Some perched on the car, some sipped from the flowers, and a few on the railing stirred a thimble filled with something that may have been soup. They all had black skin.

“Oh!” Elsie’s mother said. Then, “Oh!”

Elsie beamed. “Aren’t they pretty? They’re the bees!”

“Get out of here!” her mother said. “Get out!” She ran forward, brushing the couple off the railing and spilling the soup. She waved her hands at the ones drinking the flowers.

“Mom!” Elsie pulled on her mother’s shirt. “Mom! Wait!”

The bees buzzed, hands on hips. A few of them flew over to help those that Elsie’s mother had swept off the railing.

“Mom! They’re the bees! They’re good for the flowers!”

“They’re stealing from us!” Her mother power-walked towards the ones on the car. They flew off into the bright blue summer sky.

Elsie bit her lip. “Mom! Come back! Come back or I’ll—I’ll go and ask Deirdre to play!”

Her mother stopped, then wheeled around. “Elsie Agatha Hartman!”

Elsie tore towards the bridge. Her mother marched across after her, huffing and shouting. They passed through the thin film.

Elsie stopped in front of the flowers. “They’re the same,” she said. “See? They’re gone. You scared them off.”

The happy humming had stopped over the flowers, and the bumblebees, the ones with fur and stingers, had disappeared.

Her mother leaned against the porch, breathing hard. “You’re grounded, little lady.”

Later, in her room, a bee tapped against Elsie’s window. She waved at it. It meandered down near the bridge, the bridge that let them be bees.

Her mother had been wrong about the fairies. Maybe she was wrong about Deirdre, too.