“The Keeper of Dragonflies” is the initial work in my online short story collection of the same name.
It’s the tale of a Japanese girl who sets her sights on securing a foreign boyfriend. As a child, she had trapped blue dragonflies by the river near her home. Her goal now is to snare a blue-eyed male.
The story has Gothic overtones but was inspired by someone very non-Gothic, one of my university students, a freshman in a compulsory English class.
Early in the term, I had students make a presentation. I gave them a time limit, but not a topic. That, they had to craft on their own.
The girl was new. When it was her turn to stand and speak, I had no idea as to what to expect.
Here is what she said:
As a child, she’d grown up by the Tama River, which curves its way through the southern sections of Tokyo. The riverbanks are spacious and green. And home to all kinds of critters.
In the summertime, that includes dragonflies -- which dart about the tall grass and flat rocks along the river.
The girl would creep into the grass and wait until she could net a single dragonfly.
She would then force the captive insect to ground with her palm. With her other hand, she would loop a string around the dragonfly’s twitchy abdomen. A string she knotted tight.
The string’s other end she had already tied to a single chopstick, the cheap version presented in many restaurants, what the Japanese call “waribashi.”
With both ends thus secure, she let the insect loose.
The dragonfly buzzed off – only to be leashed in by the string.
Thus, with waribashi in hand, the girl – my student –walked her dragonfly up and down a riverside path, the way one might lead a dog.
She kept going until it broke away. Or her arm grew tired. There were always more dragonflies to net.
Now, I do not know how common this is. Japanese kids don’t have bug phobias. They hunt down kabuto beetles and cicadas and keep them in cages as pets. Maybe catching and walking dragonflies is the cool thing to do for boys and girls by the river. Could be.
But I had never heard of this. Her polished delivery and pantomimed dragonfly walk earned the girl an “A.” And marked her as someone special.
The term ended and I wrote my story, spurred by this presentation. The work was accepted for publication by Wingspan, the inflight magazine of All Nippon Airways, Japan’s top international and domestic carrier. “The Keeper of Dragonflies” toured the world with ANA the following summer.
As for the girl, I never saw her again. Until…
After graduation, she was hired by the university to work in the school office. For the next many years then, her humor highlighted my every office inquiry. Ms. Dragonfly, I called her.
Yet, life can indeed mimic art. That she captured and walked dragonflies became not her only bond with the conniving girl in my short story.
For Ms. Dragonfly one day caught herself a beau from abroad. She then left the university to make a home with her new husband.
I’ve heard nothing from her for over a decade, but wherever she is… I bet her kids walk dragonflies.
An additional tidbit:
Wingspan was constructed by a Tokyo-based company independent from ANA, but – of course – under ANA direction. ANA had final say over all content and might kill a story or article if it felt it did not match its image or somehow crossed an ANA sponsor.
“The Keeper of Dragonflies” almost got the ANA axe. Why?
The ANA guy in charge at the moment was a dragonfly nerd. No kidding. Dragonflies were his hobby.
He felt it important to include the species of the captured dragonflies. Without that, he argued the story lacked accuracy. What if some passenger should ask questions? How could the airline respond?
The Wingspan editor argued eloquently in my place. By stating:
Fictional dragonflies cannot be categorized by species. They hover free and unfettered by human machinations.
The dragonfly lover was touched. And my short story rode ANA jets from the following month.
One more final note, the original title was “The Keeper of the Dragonflies,” with two “the’s.” But in designing the ebook cover, artist and good buddy Tim Ernst couldn’t get the words to fit.
So he took that second “the” and sliced it off. Rarely have I been edited so well.
The Keeper of Dragonflies includes ten short stories in total – some dark; some silly. Most contain elements of East/West romance.
You can get it on Amazon for only five bucks. Cheap.
Plus, Kindle ebook readers download for free, on almost any device.
© Thomas Noah Wood
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