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help!” Rainey walked over some boulders and into the water with her shoes on, scrambling and picking up bugs. She splashed and cradled them in her shirt.
    â€œRainey!” Mama hollered. “Don’t go in there. Come on out this minute!”
    â€œShe’s a real good swimmer, Mama,” I said.
    â€œI can swim, Mama.”
    â€œI know it, but you don’t know what all’s in there. There could be snakes! I don’t like snakes. Now your shoes are all wet, I declare!” Mama moved next to Rainey and leaned head and arms out over the lake, careful not to get her feet wet. I guessed I wouldn’t worry anymore about Mama drowning in that lake if she didn’t want to get her feet wet even. “Would you look at that?” she said. “My goodness. Cicadas.”
    â€œThey sure are, Priscilla,” said Poppy, coming to us from over a little footbridge. His face was glowing in the reflection of the sun off the water. Behind him, the peaks of the Seven Sisters fanned out like a peacock, blue and grand.
    â€œLook at ’em all!” I said. “Hundreds!” At my feet I saw cicadas lying on their backs or right-side up, walking slow. A couple flew by me all in a tither, trying to land on anything solid. “But don’t they usually make noise? They’re so quiet. I’ve never seen this many before.”
    â€œPoor thing,” said Rainey, still working on pulling out the drowning bugs. The ducks looked at her like she’d lost her mind.
    â€œThese are special cicadas, girls,” said Poppy. “They’re magicicadas.”
    â€œMagic cicadas?” I said.
    â€œSomething like that. They come out by the hundreds, the thousands even, all over the place. But they only do it once every seventeen years.”
    â€œI seventeen,” said Rainey with pride.
    â€œThat’s right honey,” said Mama. “Did you know these bugs were out like this the very year you were born? I’ll never forget it. I thought it was a sign from God. Or a plague . . . like the locusts.”
    â€œThey’re not locusts and they’re not a plague,” said Poppy.
    â€œSo what are they doing?” I asked.
    â€œThey’re dying,” he said. “They mate and they lay their eggs in the shoots of new green trees. Then they live for about a month or so. And then they die.”
    â€œBut that’s so sad,” I said.
    â€œMaybe,” said Poppy. “But it’s nature. It’s how God designed them.”
    â€œBut they only live a month. Can you imagine if you only had a month to live?”
    â€œActually, honey, at my age, I can imagine it. But cicadas live longer than most other insects. See, when the eggs hatch, they drop off the trees as larvae—sort of like caterpillars if you want to think of it that way. Then the larvae burrow down deep into the ground. They live that way, eating the roots of the trees like the big old maple over there. Then, after seventeen years, they all rise up at the same time, turning into adults with wings and big red eyes and such—like they are now.”
    â€œHow do you know so much about them?” I asked.
    â€œBack in the day it was my job to know about bugs like these. All kinds of bugs and plants and animals. It was my job to help the crops grow. Farmers would hire me to help them get over droughts and infestations and such.”
    â€œPoppy?”
    â€œHmm?”
    â€œHow do they all know when to rise up at the same time?”
    â€œThe magicicadas? I don’t know, sweetie. It’s a mystery. Something only God knows.”
    I thought on this some and watched the hundreds of millions of bugs all over the lake, the ground, and I thought, my goodness, y’all were under our feet all along and nobody even knew it.
    â€œPoppy!” I said, excited I’d figured something out. “These magic cicadas are just like the baby in Mama’s tummy! ’Cause