Witches had many superstitions, and one of them was this: crossroads, nearing All Hallow's Eve, were a place of mischief.
I stood for a long moment, the earlier security I’d felt in the forest beginning to wane. I was suddenly feeling…uncertain. There was something creeping just along the edges of my consciousness. I stood very still and listened, listened with my ears, my body, my heart.
The stars burned brightly overhead, and through the trees, I could see the streetlights of Wolf Town winking between the distant buildings.
But down the path and further into the woods, there bobbed…a different light.
I watched it curiously as it drifted closer. It floated, this light, was carried by no creature, no man—it was only the light that came toward me, down the path, hovering in midair like a bumblebee or a bubble.
I had read of will-o’-the-wisps—many cultures have some mention of “witch lights” in their Spooky Literature collections—but I had never imagined that I might actually see one. And what else could this be? The sphere was about the size of my head, and it glowed with the light of a small sun. It bobbed along like a toy boat pulled by a very uncoordinated child, and it swayed this way and that but remained above the path.
As it drew closer to me, I stepped back a little. I thought it might move through me or into me, but it didn’t, instead hovering about two feet away from me as it drew to a slow standstill.
It was just a sphere of light, nothing more, and it was hardly ominous-looking, but I had never encountered anything like it before. I wasn’t fully educated yet in the weirdness of Wolf Town, and the will-o’-the-wisp could turn out to be a not-so-nice creature… Still, it didn't feel like a dark entity to me.
The sphere of light suddenly darted a little to the left, and a little to the right. Then it moved back two feet and remained, hovering.
It repeated that odd little dance move again: a little to the left, a little to the right—back again.
Was it…beckoning me to follow?
Hmm. Didn't every fairy tale or myth or piece of folklore that involved these things end up with someone being lured to their death by drowning in a bottomless bog? Not that there were all that many bogs populating New England, but caution forced me to wonder…
I shook my head—I wasn’t keen on idea of following it—and turned to go, but it darted in front of me, still twinkling.
Again, it edged a bit away, hovered and waited.
I reached out my hand, cocked my head, and it came to me, floating above the palm of my hand.
“What do you want?” I asked, as clearly and loudly as I could. The little sphere quivered and shook, and then it shook again, as if it was a head and was saying no.
How could a sphere of light say no?
This could not possibly get any stranger.
After a full minute of frowning and sighing and deep, soul-searching consideration…I decided to follow the thing. I mean, it was a floaty ball of light—the stuff of fairy tales and ghost stories! My curiosity, admittedly, got the best of me.
But I wasn't stupid. I kept my ears open and my eyes peeled and kept casting about, waiting for a dragon to leap out from between the trees, or for a headless horseman to come galloping in my direction, or for some other supernatural threat that this will-o'-the-wisp wanted to guide me toward, meant to usher in my untimely demise.
We paused for a moment, the orb floating in front of me as if to get its bearings; then it turned to the right, leaving the path. I remained exactly where I was, hands deep in my pockets, watching it as it drifted down toward a valley in the woods.
It stopped, floating, waiting for me.
I drew in a deep breath. And against my better judgment, I followed it off the path.
The wind was cold against my neck. The fluttering of bats along the edges of the treeline was almost like music. I paused, feeling the cool touch of the air along my skin, feeling the touch of something I couldn't see. I closed my eyes for a long moment, drawing energy into me from the woods to form a shield of white light around myself. And then I opened my eyes.
There was a sound, like bells, a crystalline chiming that shone in the air, surrounding me. I opened my mouth and shut it, turning as I stood in the center of that little dip in the woods. I could see nothing, but as I turned, I heard it again and again, heard it come nearer to me from over the hill.
The orb arced toward the source of the chiming. Finally, it paused, simply floating. I passed the orb, climbing the hill and marching up and over the lip of the bluff.
Through the woods moved tall horses, horses I could see even in the darkness, because their saddles and bridles, their hooves and eyes, their manes and tails, glowed with an unearthly light. Tiny embroidered bells of silver chimed along their bridles as they moved, as they tossed their great heads and pawed the earth with massive hooves. As impressive, majestic and fantastical as the horses were, however, they were greatly outshone by their riders.
They were beautiful beyond description; their skin flickered, changing like fire, and their eyes blazed brighter than a star. They wore fine silks, shimmering fabrics that were every color and no color, changing in the light of their celestial mounts. Their faces were long and pointed, with extra wide eyes that glowed brightly.
And streaming from their shoulders and over the backs of their horses, almost long enough to graze the dark earth, lay luminescent, bright-colored wings.
Fairies.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that these were fairies. I had never seen any sight so beautiful in all of my life.
The horse in the lead was taller than the others, the woman (I assumed it was a woman—the only thing that differentiated her from her companions was the outward curve of her chest) shone brighter, a circlet of flashing blue over her hair and the skin of her brow. The others deferred to her as she stood up in her stirrups, sniffing the wind with a distinctly royal nose. A…queen? Was this a fairy court?
I stood on the edge of the bluff as the leader turned—turned and, without a doubt, saw me. Her eyes narrowed. She pointed one long-nailed finger that did not waver. The others turned and stared at me, too.
The little glowing orb darted down the hill and danced above the leader's hand. She plucked it out of the air, and it grew smaller, weaker, until it was about the size of a grape. Then she tossed the orb of light into her mouth and swallowed it, licking her lips with a long blue tongue.
I backed up one step, and then another. She had not taken her eyes from me.
I thought about the story of Tam Lin, and I thought about the old world legends of wicked fairies…and the beauty of this vision before me began to pale a little bit.
Okay, so most people think of fairies as adorable, darling creatures, like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. But if you explore the ancient stories? Fairies are pretty damn awful. They kidnap people all the time, for starters. A lot of the superstitions we use today, like horseshoes above doorways, come from the fact that iron could keep evil fairies out, could prevent them from hurting you and yours. People in Europe believed without a shadow of a doubt that fairies were harmful, evil beings.
And here I was, staring at an entire court of them.
I could never make it to the town if I ran now. I could never outrun these huge, sleek horses with muscles that rippled like satin beneath their fur. I swallowed, and, softly, gently, I imagined a sphere of white light encompassing me again, seeing it glow brighter in my mind’s eye. Not that this shield would effectively deter fairy hunters from tracking me through the woods and subsequently eating me up, like some updated version of “Little Red Riding Hood.” But it made me feel slightly more confident.
Slightly…
The leader dismounted from her beast effortlessly, striding toward me. She towered two feet above me, moved across the forest floor as if it were water and she was gliding over its surface. The earth almost seemed to undulate beneath her feet, the draping, luminous wings trailing along behind her glowing in the dark.
“Can you see us?” she whispered, drawing close. The fabric of her cape shimmered, and her words were so soft, I had to strain to hear her, to understand her. I shook my head, pressed my hands together, my nails digging into my palms as if the sharpness of the sensation could ground me, make me focus. Maybe it did. She'd stopped flickering in my line of sight, at least. She no longer looked liked a mirage.
She was very beautiful. In the creepy kind of way that a perfect, well-made doll is beautiful.
“I can see you,” I replied. I wasn't sure if I should bow or curtsy, so I just stood there and nodded, half-bent over at the waist.
She cocked her head, did not respond, and instead began to circle me, her posture shark-like, predatory.
“You have the scent of wolf on you,” she said, darting close, sniffing my shoulder. She smelled of bonfires and burning. She wrinkled her long pale nose, backed away. “Werewolf.”
I didn't answer her, only straightened and stood my ground, watching her carefully.
“Wolf…wolf…” came the soft chanting from the others. They whispered it amongst themselves, and the horses shifted, bells tinkling, nervous.
“You might be just what we need,” said the fairy woman then, cocking her head the other way. She had not blinked this entire time. “Give me your hand, human.”
I shook my head, backed away, but then I was standing stock still, as if cement had been poured into my veins and instantly hardened.
I couldn't move.
She snatched my fingers up, dropped something cool into them, and stalked back to the assembled horses and riders. When she mounted, her beast reared up, thrashing his great forelegs into the night, eliciting sparks from the thin air.
And then they turned, all of them, and, as one, moved off into the darkness of the woods, their mounts gallopping until horses and riders were gobbled up by the cold October night.
In my hand was an envelope the color of moonlight. “Allen MacRue” was written on it in a looping, cursive hand.
A letter from a fairy queen to a werewolf patriarch.
And I, the messenger witch.
Chapter 7: The Family
“That’s strange,” said Winnie, with minimal helpfulness.
I sighed, took a very deep, cleansing breath, and tried again. “So, what you’re telling me—and I’m repeating this just so that I absolutely, positively have this right—is that there are nice fairies and mischievous fairies in the vicinity of Wolf Town, but there is no impressive fairy-court-type fairies in or around Wolf Town at all, that you know of.”
Winnie thought about this for a very long moment, wrinkling her nose. She crossed her legs the other way, hanging suspended in the air as if she were sitting on an invisible beanbag chair. “That is correct,” she answered me, tilting her head to the side. “But if you like,” she suggested, “I can speak to the other ghosts. I, personally, have never heard of a fairy court located anywhere near Wolf Town.” She glanced at the letter with a suspicious frown, the words Allen MacRue penned across the cream-colored envelope in ornate, glimmering silver paint. Winnie raised a single eyebrow. “She said to deliver it to Allen?”
“Yes.” I turned the envelope over again, staring at the complex, beveled seal on the back. The wax was silver and glittery, and the complex knotwork that had been pressed into the seal seemed to move and shift in front of my eyes as if the knotwork were, in fact, a pair of waxy snakes writhing on the parchment.
“Do you know where the MacRue house is?” asked Winnie, pointing out the window toward the hill at the other end of town. “It’s right on the hilltop. It’s actually very easy to get to. You could walk there. Are you going to deliver it, like she asked?”
I shuddered. I loved a good, cool night walk, but I figured it’d be a long time before I ventured out on a voluntary one again. They had been beautiful, those fairies, but there had been something extremely...uncaring about them. As if they had found me utterly beneath them.
So I was wondering now if a night jaunt was a wise—or safe—idea.
“Don’t you think,” said Winnie reasonably, “that it’s best to get this over with?”
I didn’t have to deliver the letter. There was no law in the universe that stated a random fairy horde could order me to do anything they damn well pleased.
But at the same time…did I want to piss them off?
I sighed for a very long time before I made up my mind.
“Good luck,” Winnie told me as I shut the café door behind me.
I compromised. Yes, perhaps the MacRue house was within walking distance. But I didn’t want to chance another encounter with, well, anything. I unlocked the door to my Subaru, revved the engine, and turned my car’s nose toward the distant hilltop.
There were candles burning in the windows of every house I passed, with orange and purple lights strung along the porch railings. Jack-o-lanterns grinned at me from front steps, and tattered sheets danced in the trees as ghosts. The wind blew puffs of leaves ahead of the car in a steady, colorful procession as I motored up the road in the hillside, winding toward the MacRue clan house.
Winnie had said I couldn’t miss the MacRue mansion when I approached it—and she was right. I passed by a Halloween tableau, complete with bales of hay, about twenty jack-o-lanterns, and handmade scarecrows, all gathered around a beautifully painted wooden sign staked into the ground reading MacRue. A hall of gigantic oak trees stretched down the remaining portion of the road that had somehow turned into a driveway when I wasn't looking. And there, at the foot of the driveway, was the mansion.
The house was bigger than an old Catholic school, with just as many wings. It didn't necessarily look New England-y. More like a castle in Europe. The outer structure of the mansion was built entirely of stone; it stood ancient-looking and imposing, sprawling across the grounds. And there was a candle burning in every one of the dozens of front windows, flickering brightly.
The tableau of hay bales and jack-o-lanterns had been impressive enough, but the Halloween decorations adorning the house itself would have made Martha Stewart herself envious.
There were orange lights strung around the edges of the roof, looping around each window, and the front columns were twined with purple lights. Bales and bales of hay, along with pumpkins and gourds and bunches of cornstalks, covered the porch, all of the pumpkins lit and elaborately carved. There were witch silhouettes in the windows, and the door had a gigantic illuminated sign made out of orange lights: BEWARE.
Honestly, I had never seen a house surpass my mother's obsessive Halloween decorating before. Until now.
I got out of my car and paused for a long moment, fingers on the handle of the car door, my other hand clutching the cream-colored envelope. Allen MacRue. The guy in the grocery store. I bit my lip. I’d gotten a bad feeling from him…but he was Morgan’s father, so maybe my instincts were a little off. Wolf Town had set me a little off-kilter, after all.
Still, as I approached the porch, a small but persistent thought wheedled at me: I really hoped Allen MacRue wasn’t home. I could just shove the letter through the mail slot and be on my merry way.
The porch had those motion-sensor Halloween decorations that cackle and scream boo at you if you’re unfortunate enough to walk in front of them. There were several mannequin zombies sprawled across the hay bales, and one vampire dressed to look like an exact imitation of the Dracula from the old black-and-white movie. He happened to cackle like the Count from Sesame Street, adding his animatronic voice to the moaning zombies as I sighed and—amidst the cacaphony—knocked on the front door.
It was a very light knock, but soon enough I heard footsteps. I took a deep breath, tossed my hair back, squared my shoulders, and glanced up into Allen MacRue’s face as he opened the door.
“Amy!” he said, with a bright smile that flickered a little and never reached his eyes. I saw that flicker in
stantly, even though he tried to hide it by deepening his wide smile. Behind him, further back into the house, I could hear many voices and laughter inside. He kept the door purposefully narrowed as he cleared his throat and said formally, “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“Um,” I said articulately, and gripped the letter a little harder. I opened and closed my mouth, realizing I hadn't thought this through. How exactly was I going to explain this to him? I cleared my throat, tried to simplify what had just happened to me, and settled on, “Did you know that there are fairies in the Wolf Town woods?”
He didn’t even skip a beat. “Of course there are,” he said, grinning indulgently. I didn’t like that expression on his face. It was condescending. “They're quite lovely. They dance in circles, steal things, sometimes eat cats… They're mischievous but don't cause any real harm.”
I bit my tongue over the cat comment (he was a werewolf, after all), and kept going, through gritted teeth. “No… I mean, I don't mean those fairies. That’s nice that they’re there, but I'm talking about…” I trailed off, trying to think about how to describe the beings I’d encountered in the woods. “Larger fairies?” I tried, holding up my hand about a foot or so over my own head to indicate height. “Kind of like a fairy court? On horses? Really big and a little scary, like a fantasy movie gone creepy?”
He watched me with flickering eyes that narrowed as I spoke. He was pinning me in a gaze that was so hungry, so intense, it allowed me to see the wolf sleeping within him. It felt predatory, the way he held me to the spot with those unblinking, slitted eyes.
He cleared his throat then, and leaned forward. “What about those fairies?” he growled, voice hardly above a whisper.
I swallowed. “I went for a walk in the woods tonight,” I said with a frown. “And I…sort of ran into this orb, at a crossroads…”
Wolf Town Page 6