Spectral Evidence

Why wouldn’t you want them to know it was you, though? The fairies? That was what I should have asked—so she could tell me about changelings, or girls caught in rings, boys caught under hills. How time bends in the tunnels, so you might come in one end a child and leave the other an old, old man. How no matter what they serve you, you shouldn’t eat, because then it gives them power over you...and besides, it’s all nothing but dead leaves, really: leaves, and mulch, and bones. Nothing but glamour.

God knows I would have asked, had I only known to; just like I wouldn’t have done what I did the next night, I’d only known it was a bad idea. But I guess you can say the same about a lot of things.

—

Heather was a princess for Hallowe’en too, it turned out—a space princess, like from Star Wars. Grace was a kitty-cat. And Milton was doubling his fun by wearing a werewolf mask on top of his hockey sweater, so he wouldn’t have to choose between the two things he liked best, monsters and sports. “I can play goal for Frankenstein against Dracula, now,” he told us, muffled. “Beat that, Barbies!”

He danced with all of us in turn, though, once the music started—and later we all danced with each other, bopping around in tandem to Men Without Hats while the big kids passed tissue paper in front of the disco lights to make them strobe. Then grabbed a few Cokes and went outside to cool down, chatting our way past the smokers, the neckers and the scrappers, right to the forest’s edge. Which is where Leaf met us.

Not much of a costume, per se—just her usual clothes, threadbare and dusty, so out of fashion they almost looked cool. But she was wearing the best mask I’ve ever seen bar none, before or since: close-fitted enough you couldn’t see any seams, moving with her breath. It had lumpy skin, pale like a potato, a pig’s nose and dim little red eyes, and the mouth stretched so far in either direction that if the corners hadn’t hit its ears—those lobeless curlicue holes, with their flared and pointed upper ridges of cartilage—it almost looked like they might have just kept on going ‘til they met, and the whole top of her head popped off.

“Nuala,” she greeted me, her voice hardly even muffled. “And these your friends, of course: Heather...Grace. Milton.”

Milton didn’t quite recoil. “Uh...yeah, hi. Nuala, who’s this?”

“Leaf,” I said. “You remember. She’s taking us to a party, at her place.”

“Leaf who, though?”

I shook my head, only then realizing I’d never actually asked. But: “Redcappie,” Leaf replied, without hesitation. “Leaf Redcappie, they call me.”

Grace made a little noise. “I have to go home,” she said. “Heather—you should come too.”

Heather snorted. “What for?”

“Redcappie,” Grace hissed back, and Heather swallowed, starting as though she’d suddenly remembered something, while Milton and I just watched, confounded.

“Oh yeah,” Heather said, at last. “Yeah, we—have fun, you guys.”

“Heather?”

She and Grace had already grabbed hands, however, eyes darting, poised to turn. “Have fun,” Grace threw back, over her shoulder.

“And, um, nice to meet you, Leaf. Tell your folks...uh, anyhow.”

“Grace, what the spit, man!”

But they were out of range now, almost out of sight. They didn’t look back. Milton and I swapped glances, then looked to Leaf, who didn’t seem surprised.

“Wish them good even,” she said, “and you two as well, if you’d rather not come with, also. For ‘twas good enough to see you the once this night, Nuala, in your guise.”

I looked back at Milton, who shrugged. “Let ‘em go,” he said. “I’m always up for a party, ‘specially someplace new. This one’s been pretty lame, so far.”

Then he smiled at me, so I smiled too—and from the very corner of my eye, I almost thought I saw Leaf smile, even through the skin of her amazing mask. She reached out one hand, and I took it. Into the woods we went, all three—but when November finally dawned, on the cold hill’s side, only one of us came back.

—

I remember waking up, on my back, covered with dew. I was cold, and my eyes hurt. I think I’d been crying.

I remember stumbling home, through the woods. Crawling back through the hedge, so clumsy I tore myself on its twigs.

I remember what Dad’s face looked like, when he opened the door and found me wavering there. My grandmother sitting at the kitchen table, face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

Heather and Grace came to visit me in the hospital, two days later, and stood looking at me for a long minute, still hand in hand, like they’d never broken apart in the last seventy-two hours.

“We thought you’d be okay, is all,” Heather said, finally. “You guys. Because you knew her.”

“Uh huh,” I replied, voice slow and grating, through my swollen throat. “I...thought I did, yeah.”