“Somewhere,” she said. “We don’t make ourselves, aye? But he’s no part of us, really.” Since I didn’t know what to say to that, we sat a few more minutes in silence, watching the trees move overhead—comfortable, somehow, even in our discomfort. I could hear her breathing, a faint, sighing song, same as the wind which scattered dead leaves at our feet.
“I’d help with your sorrows, Nuala, if I could,” Leaf told me, eventually, putting her cold little hand on mine, with an odd gentleness; I remember how overlong her nails were, black at the broken tips, and that they scratched just a bit, for all her restraint. Looking up at me under the shaggy fringe of her hair, her eyes ever-so-slightly a-gleam, and asking: “You know so, don’t you? For you’re my friend, my only.”
“I know, Leaf.”
“Though you have friends elsewhere, now, I hear.”
“What, Grace and Milton, Heather? They’re just kids in my class, like—somebody to eat lunch with, or hang at recess. You’re my best friend.”
“And you, for me, always.” She nodded at the sky, like she saw something floating up there, coming closer. “Will be All Hallows soon. Do you think to guise that night, and walk out begging?”
“Um, not so much. I mean, there’s that thing at school, the costume party. But we’re all a little old for trick or treat, right?”
Her face fell. “I’d hoped you would,” she said, at last. “For my family celebrates that night, and I’d have you meet them, if I may. ‘Tis a great rout, always.”
“Well...” And now I felt bad. “Where do they have it, usually?”
“Oh, hereabouts. The Shore’s ours, to do with as we please.” She gave me a shy glance. “I could come meet you, the night of, at your school. Bring you here.”
I hesitated. “You do that, the guys’ll want to come along too.”
“Then let them. All will have safe passage, so long as I’m near.”
In the trees, a bird sang; the sun was sinking, colours changing. The wind blew a little colder, and I shivered, even in my jacket.
“Sure,” I said, finally. “That’d be good.”
—
Dad was out on a run Hallowe’en week; he’d gotten his passport updated the month before, so it probably involved crossing the border. Which left my grandmother and me rattling around together, me working on my costume, her doing the stuff she usually did.
“What do you know about fairies, Nuala?” she asked me, the night before: Devil’s Night, Mischief Night, when all the older kids were supposedly out egging house and TPing trees. Then continued, not waiting for an answer: “In the old days, my folks used to say Hallowe’en was when they let the ghosts of the damned out of Hell, and that’s why we dressed up—so they wouldn’t know who we were, if they met us out after dark. You go back further still, though, it wasn’t ghosts they meant at all, but the Daoine Sidhe, the good folk. Them under the hill.”
“What hill, Grandma?”
“Any hill, I guess. But ‘round here, they mostly meant Druir Hill, on the Dourvale Shore; don’t suppose you go anyplace near there, do you, when you crawl out under the hedge?” At that I looked up, shocked, which made her give a grim little smile. “oh yes, my girl, I know all about that—think you were the first ever got that same notion? Think again.”
“You did?”
“Many a time. Up the hill, past that table...there was a boy I’d meet there, sometimes, came right out of the woods. Mrs. Sidderstane’s son, from up at the big house, who wrote his name on the table top with his knife.”
Saracen, I thought. Unbeliever, from away.
“Oh, and he was handsome, too, with his blue eyes, though there was something about the way he looked at you...” She shook her head. “Any rate, the Shore’s not a good place, ‘specially at night, though I know you kids think it’s some sort of amusement park. All the things your Dad and me warned you about, they go double up there. And Hallowe’en’s the worst time to go, bar none.”
“Because of fairies?”
“Because I say so, miss. Now promise: you go out in that”—she nodded at my princess dress, my tinsel crown, the little mask of tissue-paper veiling I was pinning to it—“you stay away from there, far as you can get. or you don’t go at all.”
“I promise,” I said.
“I wish I believed you.”
“I promise, Grandma.”
“Well, it’s on you, now. I’ve said what I could.”
And she shrugged, turning back to the stove where she had biscuits baking. But I could see her eyes were wet.