Horses and wagons and a few modern bicycles were scattered to the foreside of the fire, watched over by a pair of young women in tattered jeans and Death Cab for Cutie T-shirts. Five women and a man busied themselves at wooden tables, setting out food and drink. Closer to the fire, at least thirty people stood talking or lounged in groups on rocks or driftwood. The real Main Beach never looked this natural or wild.
He liked it this way.
Mel collapsed on the first rock he came across that had a wide enough space for him, letting out a sigh of relief to have his weight off of his knee. “Stay here,” Jack said. “I’ll come back for you.”
Mel hadn’t been willing to follow up on Jack’s reference to magic with a question earlier, but now that he didn’t hurt as much, he looked around. The people looked pretty normal. No Tolkien elves or vampires or Mr. Spock ears. Although Spock wasn’t really fantasy, was he?
Half the people were dressed in modern clothes and half in a mix of more handmade looking stuff. They seemed to like bright colors. He counted five or six kids.
No one appeared to be wearing Halloween costumes.
Then he saw her.
Justine of the long hair and bell bottoms.
He blinked, sure again that he dreamed. Then the wind carried her laughter to him and he knew it was her. He sat and watched Justine talking in a small circle of other old women, her face glowing in the firelight.
A smile broke unbidden across his face.
They’d never been lovers, but they’d been friends for years. She’d cried on Mel’s shoulder through at least three break-ups and helped him rebuild his studio after a fire in 1987. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed her until her laughter made him feel light again.
He’d wait. His knee still throbbed, and besides, he’d told Jack he’d wait.
Maybe he was a little scared.
It felt like if he did or said the wrong thing, he’d wake up and he’d be in a dream and he’d lose the fire and the clean beach and Justine of the long hair.
Jack worked the crowd, stopping from time to time for a hug or a short whispered conversation. The last of the light faded just as he came up to Justine and planted a kiss on her cheek and pointed at Mel.
She sat so the firelight illuminated half her face as she followed the direction of Jack’s finger. To his utter delight, she appeared as pleased to see him as he had been to hear her laughter, and then she was up and sprinting across the still-warm sand. She smelled of smoke and sea air. Her blue eyes were wreathed in wrinkles, and there was more vitality to her than he remembered. “I never imagined,” she said.
He held at a bit of distance, confused, but still ecstatic to see her. “What?”
“That you’d come here. That you could get through the gate at all. You always made such fun of me when I talked about seeing things you couldn’t see.”
“I don’t remember that.”
She frowned and then wiped the frown away and touched his cheek. “I’m glad to see you.”
“We all worried about you. Thought we’d find you someday.”
“Dead?”
He swallowed. “What else was there to think? You left all your weaving behind.”
“I just decided to stay here. I love the peace here. It’s so quiet.”
It wasn’t. Not at the moment. Someone had started to sing, and three kids were laughing and skipping stones into the dark ocean and squealing from time to time. But there weren’t any horns honking or sirens fading into the distance. He swallowed, off balance again at the strangeness of seeing Justine and at the roaring fire and the time shift. “I don’t understand any of this.”
She reached down and took the broken bit of butterfly from him. “Gisele can fix this.”
“Who’s Gisele?”
“I was just talking to her. Want to meet her?”
He swallowed. “Not yet. I’m not ready to move yet.”
She smiled and put a hand on his knee. He could feel her warmth even through his jeans.
“What are you doing?”
“Just something I learned here. Sit still for a bit.”
Whatever she was doing with her hand, he liked it, so he let her shoulder him sideways to make room for her to sit beside him. She left her hand on his knee, the heat of her penetrating like the heat wrap they’d put on him the last time he let the girl at the doctor’s office do physical therapy on it. “Wait a bit, and then you can get up.”
“You live here?”
“I built a little house. I’ll show you when we go to fix the butterfly.”
“I have to go back. The festival’s open for the holidays, starting tomorrow.”
“I’d hate all that Christmas retail.”
He smiled at how she felt just like he did about the whole thing.
“I still weave. That cloak that Gisele’s wearing, that’s mine.”
He couldn’t see much of it from where he sat. “You do all right then? You have enough?” She’d been like him, always running on the far edge of anything like security, showing up at the free Thanksgiving feeds and sitting through the Hare Krishna temple’s silly dances in trade for hot lentil soup and flatbread one Sunday every month.
“I have more than enough. I miss the modern version, but maybe you pay a price for every good thing in life.” She looked at him, a question in her eyes. “You could stay, too.”
He stared at the fire. “It wouldn’t be any easier to make glass over here. I’d still be old.”
“There won’t be time, now. You can’t stay tonight. But we can take parts of your studio through over the summer.”
“Why summer?”
“The door is open during the festival . . . and this one night. Rest of the year, even Jack can’t come through.” She set her head on his shoulder. She’d never done that in the real world. “I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t realize there was anything . . . anyone . . . I missed from back there.”
For a long time he didn’t say anything and he didn’t move. He just watched the fire and the skipping stones and felt the warmth of her hand. He wanted to hold her, but he couldn’t quite do it. He settled for saying, “I’m glad you’re here, too.”
She glanced up at him. “Do you remember the first year of the festival?”
“And the year off, when I sold stuff in stores, instead, and they took more than half my profits.”
She laughed. “We’d all sworn never to do the festival again.”
“And now look at it.”
Her hair was unbound, and it looked even longer that way than when she braided it. She was still wearing bellbottoms, too. Retro-woman. But he probably didn’t look different either, except older and more bent-over, and of course a little more hairless. He kept what he had left short now.
Jack and Gisele walked over to them. Gisele was an interesting woman, her face marked with sorrow and resolve and covered in more wrinkles than Justine’s. He couldn’t judge her age—she could be sixty or ninety. Her voice was stronger than an old woman’s, and so melodious he wondered if she had been a singer once. “There’s going to be a feast in an hour.”
Justine held up the half a butterfly Jack had been carrying. “Jack wondered if we could fix this, first.”
“Sure.”
Justine had stopped leaning on him when Gisele came up, and now she lifted her hand from his knee and stood and held the hand out to him. “Are you game?” She looked almost like a little girl, excited and happy.
He stretched out his legs before he stood. They felt good. As he and Justine followed Gisele and Jack away from the fire, he leaned over and asked, “What did you do? My knee feels fabulous.”
She grinned. “The small magics are the best.”
He shook his head and kept his silence. The knee moved as well as the other one. No, better.
After a while they were back on the outskirts of the little town they’d come through on the way down, but near a building he didn’t remember seeing. Gisele went through the door and
lit a candle, throwing dim light so that he could make out bulky shapes. Then a light above a workbench bloomed on, making him blink and work to adjust his eyes. They stood in a workshop that smelled of sawdust and paint. Small wooden figurines filled baskets and bowls all over the shop—all animals of one kind or another.
He didn’t see any way to way to heat glass. A regular fireplace sat cold and dark at the moment. He didn’t even see small blowtorches. “How are you going to repair glass here?”
“I don’t know if I am. I’m just going to try.” Gisele reached out for the second half of the butterfly. “What can you tell me about this piece?”
“See that ridge of gold running through both of the wings? I’m trying to preserve that.”
Gisele shook her head softly. She had both pieces now, laying on a high bench kind of like a draftsman’s table. She had a tall chair, but she was standing and studying the glass. She looked more closely at him, and in the brighter light she looked even stranger to Jack, her face dark and the light throwing a halo around her head. “What did you feel when you worked on that piece?”
“My back hurt.”
Gisele frowned, and then touched the break. “And its back broke. What else?”
“I always like to think of little girls liking my lawn ornaments.” The words kind of surprised him, even though they were true. They just weren’t the kind of thing he usually said. He kept going, too. “Everybody buys them, but I’m always happiest when a little girl buys them. Sometimes they walk out of the booth holding them up—they come on sticks, and the girls hold them up and bob them and their mothers tell them not to, but some of them do anyway.”
“That’s better.” Gisele looked away from him and down at the butterfly, and then she opened a jar of paint and picked up a brush. “Watch,” she told him.
She painted the thinnest line of blue along the break on one side, and then along the break on the other, and then she joined the two pieces.
“You should use a vise,” he said. “You can’t just hold them until the paint dries.”
She opened her hands, and the butterfly flapped its wings twice.
He blinked at it. He looked back at Justine of the long hair and the bellbottoms. She was grinning at him, like someone who had just pulled off a surprise party. Jack seemed to be playing guardian of the door, but he looked happy as well.
Gisele just looked matter-of-fact.
The butterfly flapped three more times and turned toward him.
Gisele dabbed black paint where its eyes should be and Jack was certain the butterfly could see him.
She smiled.
He just stood still, the very core of him shaken by the glass butterfly’s move.
Justine prodded him. “You could say thank you.”
He opened his mouth and nothing came out. He closed it and tried again. “Th-th . . . thank you.”
Gisele smiled. “You’re welcome.”
He swayed, feeling dizzy. Dream or not, this had become too strange. “I want to go home now.”
Justine’s face fell. “Don’t you want to sit by the fire some more? Eat with us?”
“I think it’s time for me to wake up.”
She reached over and pinched him.
He yelped and stepped aside.
“Take your butterfly,” Gisele said. “It’s too heavy to fly, even here.”
He picked it up and set it on his palm. It looked big and ungainly there, five inches of butterfly body and more of wing. The gold went through both wings really well now, and flared out at the top. Two gold drops had appeared on the long bottom of its wings.
Jack came up beside him. “You can choose whether to stay or not.”
He swallowed, looking at Justine. There wasn’t anyone waiting for him on the other side. “I might go crazy if I stay.”
Justine looked hard at him, concern edging her mouth. “I didn’t. I like it much better here.”
“I . . . I’m not ready.”
Gisele handed them both flashlights, but didn’t go with them. She waved them off, telling Mel, “Good journey. You’re welcome back if you decide to come.”
“And good journey to you,” he replied, and repeated “Thank you,” because it seemed like that was needed. Gisele headed back toward the bonfire on the beach, and after she’d turned around he realized he couldn’t remember the color of her eyes or how round her face had been (or not).
Jack and Justine walked him back to the cliff face. Justine was quiet until they were already over the wooden bridge, when she whispered, “Will you be back in the summer?”
“I don’t know.”
At the edge of the cliff, she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, her lips warm and a little chapped.
He surprised himself by kissing her back, also on the cheek, although he felt like she would have accepted a kiss on the lips. He was the problem. He always had been. Always had withdrawn.
Of course, he was still her friend, and she’d left all of the other men in her life. Maybe he’d made the right decision. Maybe he’d never know.
“I’ll be here if you come back,” she said.
He nodded, all he could manage. He was blinking and his cheeks had grown hot.
The butterfly flapped in his hand. His grip had grown too tight.
This time he didn’t have a hand free for Jack to take, so he simply followed him though the waterfall door.
On the other side, the butterfly was hard and cold and in one piece. The shape of its wings was entirely different than anything he could have done in his workshop. A water drop splashed from his eyelash onto the butterfly, next the new dark eyes.
“I’m going back,” Jack said. “But I’ll be here in the morning. Before anything opens up. And—happy Halloween, Mel.”
Mel stopped for a moment, and then returned the greeting. “Happy Halloween, Jack.” He watched Jack walk through the waterfall door. Mel put his butterfly down on a nearby bench, then went out to his van and retrieved his blanket. He curled up by the waterfall. Over here, his knee hurt all over again. When he checked the butterfly, it felt as cold and hard as the others, but it still looked alive. He would keep it; it made him smile.
The falling water made good background noise for sleeping. Maybe he would dream of Justine of the long blond hair, and maybe he would dream of summer.
Brenda Cooper is a technology professional, a science fiction writer, and a futurist. Her most recent novel, The Creative Fire, was published in 2012; its sequel, The Diamond Deep, which completes this duology, will be out in October of 2014. Cooper’s short fiction has appeared in Nature, Analog, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, The Salal Review, and multiple anthologies. She lives in Bellevue, Washington with her partner, Toni Cramer, Toni’s daughter Katie, and two dogs. She has an adult son, David Cooper, a firefighter/paramedic with Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue. Cooper blogs regularly at www.brenda-cooper.com and periodically guest-blogs at Futurist.com and other venues.
TRICK OR TREAT
Nancy Kilpatrick
“Malina, despite your resistance to change, I recommend you give the idea a try. Change is what life is all about. The Goddess is here to help and protect you.”
“But, Guin, I’m not sure—”
“You never are! But, think about it. You’ve been coming to see me for a year and while your confidence has increased in certain ways, you’ve taken few risks regarding social contact.”
“It goes against—”
“—the grain. Yes, I know. You’ve said this before, need I remind you.”
Malina felt her face redden. Yes, they’d been over this ground many times, enough that even she was getting bored. Maybe Guin was right. Maybe it was time to find the energy and the courage to try a different approach. Be a bit more open to the world. Wasn’t that why she’d sought out a New Age healer in the first place? A modern witch—oh how Malina’s mother would have laughed at that!
“I think this is why you came to me in the first place,” Guin said, and Malina bo
wed her head in a respectful nod to this wise woman, whose intuition had proven itself time and again.
“It’s a trust issue,” Guin continued, touching Malina’s hand, “and it always has been. You have to trust that all the messages you received in childhood are just the views of people who were angry, paranoid, and resentful. They had only one way to look at life and that was a skewed view. This is a welcoming planet, when the earth goddess travels with you. There are other ways to experience the world and frankly, Malina, the world has changed considerably. It’s a much more open place than your mother, for instance, could have imagined.” She smiled. “You’ve made good progress here. You’re ready for the next step, a practical step in our philosophy: checking out reality!”
Guin raised her eyebrows, lovely reddish-gold brows, perfectly shaped over innocent yet wise blue eyes. So unlike me, Malina thought, thinking of the darkness of her hair and eyes, the olive tint of her skin, of her shadowy soul. Darkness had shaped her view of herself and the world’s view of her. No, she reminded herself, catching that negative thought as Guin had been teaching her to do, not the world’s view of me, what I was taught was how people see me.
Suddenly, Guin tossed an orange crystal and by reflex, Malina snagged it with her hand. “Nice catch!” Guin said, her full lips turned up, nothing like the thin downturned mouth Malina had inherited from her bitter mother and grandmother. “It’s carnelian from India. It will bring you joy. And protect you from demons, in all their forms.”
“How did you—?”
“It was on your face, the instant scowl of disbelief. And in a split second, a flash of understanding that it was just a belief, nothing more, not reality.” She smiled again, her face emitting that glow so like the sun.
Guin picked up both of Malina’s cool hands and held them in her warm ones. “You’ve changed, you really have. It’s time to take another step up in consciousness. Praise be to the Goddess!”
HALLOWEEN: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre Page 29