Lance slid from the seat and walked to the back. Only once he’d passed all the other kids did he allow himself a tiny smile of satisfaction.
He’d given her a chance, as the gargoyles decreed. And she’d blown it.
Tonight, he would take her stone from the bonfire.
Forthe other kids, tonight was Halloween. It was for some in Cainsville, too. Some of those who wished to celebrate October 31 that way piled into cars to visit family in Chicago and go trick-or-treating. For others, the town elders hired a bus to take them to a nearby town that had agreed to welcome any children of Cainsville who wished to celebrate the more common holiday. The bus left before dinner, filled with kids in costumes, their chaperones bringing bags full of candy to donate to the host town.
Lance watched the bus pull away, and he did not wish for one moment to be on it. Even when he was a little kid, he’d never wanted that. In this, he wasnotthe odd boy out. He wanted to stay and celebrate Nos Galan Gaeaf. If he felt anything watching the bus leave, it was pity for the children on it, noses pressed to the glass, mournfully watching the town fade as the bus carried them away.
Every family was welcome to stay, but Lance had heard it whispered that the newer families were not encouraged to join Nos Galan Gaeaf. Few wanted to—the adults, anyway. What made Cainsville delightfully eccentric most of the year changed at the holidays. Pagan holidays, outsiders whispered. May Day. Solstice. And the most discomfiting of all: Nos Galan Gaeaf. No, they were happy to stick to their modern Halloween, ignoreitspagan roots, and pretend it was all about princess dresses and candy corn.
The first of November was Calan Gaeaf. The beginning of winter. Marking the boundary was Nos Galan Gaeaf or Spirit Night, when the veil between the human world and the Otherworld was thinnest. A night to be indoors. But before that, when the evening was still young, it was a time for celebration.
It began with the harvest feast. Tables were set up all along Main Street, right in the road. Everyone ate for hours, and then the children playedtwco fala,bobbing for marked apples that would earn them prizes. The teens hung around acting bored, but when the elders came by with “extra” candy and trinkets, all apathy evaporated, everyone partaking with, “Thank you, ma’am,” and, “Thank you, sir.”
When the apples were done, the bonfire began. Lance could feel the heat from the massive fire three doors down. Seanna stood less than ten feet away from him, having apparently decided not to enforce her restraining order. He watched the light of the bonfire lick her pale face and imagined it was realflames instead. Imagined her bound to a stake, the fire burning at her feet.
Burned as a witch. An apt punishment. That’s what she was—a witch transformed into a foul, poisonous mist that had insidiously crept through an open window one night to be inhaled in his sleep. Until then, she’d been just another kid, brattier than most, braver than most, but not special. Certainly not special. Then last summer she went away to visit relatives and when she came back, he saw her as if for the first time, and he could not look away, however hard he tried.
She’d bewitched him. That was the only answer. And so burning would be apt. Unlikely, but he could hope.
As the bonfire roared and one elder told a story, another brought around a basket of smooth stones. Lance held his breath as he watched Seanna. She was thirteen, which made this her first time participating in the rite of Coelcerth. She could abstain. Then he’d have to think of another way to rid himself of the witch.
Seanna took a stone without hesitation. She plucked the felt-tip marker from Abby’s hand. Abby only sighed and waited as Seanna wrote her name on the stone and then took the marker back to finish her own. When it was Lance’s turn, he wrote his name in careful block letters.
Once all of the rocks had been distributed, the town elders proceeded to the bonfire, one by one, and laid their stones around it. Then the townspeople lined up. It was a solemn procession, a silent one, but with an air of hope. Come morning, when they found their rock still in place, they’d breath a sigh of relief and hug their family and celebrate, as if life had handed them a guarantee.You will live another year.
Lance waited until all the other kids had set down their stones. He made a mental note of where Seanna put hers. Then he laid his a few feet away. He tapped it to the ground twicefirst. Two for yes. Two for a positive result. If he fumbled, he’d do four. He didn’t fumble. Two taps and down it went, nestled among the others.
When all the rocks had been placed, one of the elders stood before the fire, raised her wrinkled arms and shouted,
“Adre, adre, am y cynta’, Hwch Ddu Gwta a gipio’r ola’.”
It was Welsh, like Nos Galan Gaeaf and Calan Gaeaf and Coelcerth and everything else about Cainsville. Founded by Welsh immigrants, it held on to that identity like the townspeople clutched those rocks—a talisman against the uncertainty of the world.
The old ways always worked for them, so they would continue with them long after others had forgotten their roots.
Adre, adre, am y cynta’, Hwch Ddu Gwta a gipio’r ola’.
Home, home, on the double, The tailless black sow shall snatch the last.
The elder shouted that, and the children squealed with the giddy delight of feigned terrors. An excuse to run as fast as they could. A better excuse waited at home—a bag of candy—and if you had siblings, you’d best hurry because not all bags were created equal.
Off the children ran, shouting and bumping into each other like pool balls. The adults urged them on, laughing and yelling, “Watch out for the sow,” and, “Last one gone will be eaten!”
When Lance was a child, it hadn’t mattered that he had no siblings, that there was no reason to run to claim the best bag of candy. He’d done it for the thrill, to be part of the excitement, part of the crowd. Now he watched as the children raced down the passage beside the bank, and he crowded in to see them reach the end, where a figure dressed in black flew out, waving his arms, a painted hog’s skull on his head. The children shrieked and squealed as if this didn’t happen—in this exact spot—every year.
Lance couldn’t see the children, but he knew the path the brave ones would take. They’d veer to the playground. Then over to the bushes on the left. Past the massive oak. Finally down the east passage back to the street. All places that hidHwch Ddu Gwta—another black sow, leaping from behind bushes or jumping from a tree.
Lance tracked their progress by the shouts. Then he looked over to see Seanna watching them, too, a rare smile on her thin face.
He saw that smile, and he hated it worse than her smirks and sneers. That smile said there was more there, something worth saving.
The smile was a lie.
He escaped down Main Street, stopped in an alcove and studied the bonfire for later, when he’d return to take Seanna’s stone. As he turned, he found bright blue eyes laser-beamed to his, and he gave a start, as if those beams probed right into his thoughts. Which they might have, given who it was.
Rose Walsh might be Seanna’s aunt, but when Lance was little, he’d thought of her as Seanna’s big sister. An easy mistake to make—the families were so close they shared yards, kids running from one house to the next. “Like some kind of commune,” his mother would sniff, and if Lance noticed Seanna at all in those days, it was with envy for that life she had, that family.
