Nos Galan Gaeaf
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.
Lance would not actually kill her. That is, he would not wrap his hands around her scrawny neck, nor fire a bullet through her flat chest, nor slit her pale throat and watch her strange blue eyes bug as her lifeblood soaked the ground.
He thought about that. He thought about all of it, late at night, replaying the fantasies until he lay shivering and sweat-soaked.
But then he imagined the reality of it, and the fantasy became a nightmare, handcuffs clamping around his wrists, his mother sobbing, his father staring, wordless for perhaps the first time in his life.
Of course, it was easy to game the system.
He walked the long way to the bus stop knowing that route would give him five gargoyles, meaning no, he did not need to give her another chance.
He just had to get the right answer. Like he had to check the door four times after he locked it, to be absolutely sure his father wouldn’t come home and find it open.
Check the door four times. Check the gas stove six. Check the lights twice.
Even numbers were good omens. They were safe.
The number of times to check depended on the severity of the transgression if he made a mistake.
Leave on a light, and he’d only get a snarl from his father.
An unlocked door would lead to a smack. Leave the gas on?
Lance didn’t even want to think what would happen if he did that.
Check, check, and check again, so his whirling mind could rest easy. The same went for any question of importance. It had to be checked against the gargoyles.
In cases like this, Lance would walk a route where he knew how many gargoyles he should see.
Yet that was no guarantee in Cainsville, where he could walk past the bank four days in a row and clearly see the gargoyle perched there…
and the next day there would be no sign of it.
Two days later it would reappear, sneering at him as if to say it’d been there all along and he was a fool if he thought otherwise.
Today, all five of the gargoyles he expected to see were there, and on counting the last, he shuddered in relief.
The question had been answered. He did not need to give Seanna another chance.
Then, as he approached the bus stop, he heard Seanna’s smug voice say, “I spy with my little eye, one hidden gargoyle.”
“Where?” Keith said as he peered around. “I don’t see anything.”
“For ten bucks, you will.”
“Fuck you, Seanna.”
“You wish, zit face.”
The other kids laughed. They always did, no matter how unimaginative her insults, no matter how many times they’d been the targets of them. It was as if she held them all under her sway. But none so much as Lance.
“Give you five for it, Seanna,” Abby said.
“Make it six plus your Twinkies.”
Abby handed over the bills and the snack, and Seanna whispered instructions. Abby gave a slow look around, careful not to tip off the others. Then she chortled. “Got it! One more for my May Day list.”
Lance tried not to look for the gargoyle. He desperately tried. But his heart started to pound, his mouth going dry, and he knew if he didn’t look, he’d spend the day obsessing over it. He would give a quick glance, and if he didn’t immediately see—
He spotted it peeking from under a roof edge, its color blending with the stonework, and he could tell himself that’s why he’d never seen it before.
It was the comfortable answer. It was not, however, the truth.
As for what was the truth? He didn’t know.
No one did. No one cared. To them, it was no different than a rainbow, a glimpse of everyday magic.
To him, it was an uncomfortable reminder of factors he could not control, could not predict. The odd boy out, as always.
That unexpected sixth gargoyle meant he had to give Seanna one last chance. He spent the next five minutes frantically searching for another gargoyle to change the answer. When the bus came, he reluctantly followed the other kids on, still gaping about.
No gargoyles were coming to save him. They’d given their answer. One last chance.
He went to slide into the seat with Seanna. She thumped her backpack down on it and gave him a sneer.
“As if,” she said. “Back of the bus, loser Lance.”
He took the seat behind her. A couple kids chortled. Abby jerked her chin, warning him to abandon his course.
“Excuse me,” Seanna said. “The restraining order says fifty feet.”
“You got a restraining order?” Keith said.
“I wrote a restraining order. Either this loser leaves me alone or I kick his ass. Again.”
More chortles.
“I’ll move,” Lance said. “As soon as you give me back my money.”
The chortles turned to open guffaws.
“You’d have more luck getting blood from a gargoyle,” Keith said. “If Seanna conned you out of your pocket money, consider it payment for a lesson learned: don’t mess with a Walsh.”
Seanna settled into her seat with that smug smile. A few other kids high-fived each other. Walshes, all of them. One of the oldest families in Cainsville. And not an upstanding citizen in the lot of them.
Seanna and her kin proudly claimed an ancestry of con artists, pirates, and thieves, and in Cainsville, Walshes were treated with as much respect as doctors, lawyers and priests.
Don’t mess with them, and they wouldn’t mess with you.
It was the barest whiff of a moral code, and somehow, that was good enough.
“She didn’t con me,” Lance said. “She picked my pocket.”
“Because you were stalking me again,” Seanna said. “Violating the terms of my restraining order. Consider it a fine. If you don’t want to pay, don’t get close enough.”
Even Abby nodded at that, giving Lance a look of mingled sympathy and exasperation. The boy who kept sticking his finger in the electrical outlet and expecting a different result.
“So you won’t return the money?” he said.
“Hell and no. Now get your skinny ass to the back of the bus before I kick it there.”
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.
For the 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 was not the 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, ignore its pagan 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 played twco 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 real flames 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.