Nos Galan Gaeaf #2
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 twice first. 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 hid Hwch 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.
Rose was about eighteen, built sturdy like most Walshes, with the kind of chest that magnetized his gaze if he wasn’t careful. He stood in no danger of that now. He could only stare at her eyes, desperate for a sign that she didn’t actually know what he had planned for Seanna.
Rose Walsh had the sight. That’s what they called it in Cainsville, and they said it no differently than they’d say someone had a knack for baking pies or playing piano.
“Too old to run home?” Rose said.
He started at the sound of her voice. Her lips curved in just the faintest smile as she wished him a good Nos Galan Gaeaf. Rose Walsh wasn’t given to smiles, but she had always been kind to him, steady and unflappable, and her expression bore no sign that she’d foreseen his plan.
“Too old to run home?” she repeated.
“A bit.”
“But old enough to join the mari lwyd. I bet if you asked, they’d let you go along.” That faint curve of her lips again. “It’s a fine excuse for underage drinking.”
He smiled at that, and at the thought of joining the revelers, but he shook his head, saying, “I’ll wait. Thank you, though,” and then slipped off. He felt the weight of Rose’s gaze following him.
Lance poked around Main Street, scoping out the area for his return. He kept an eye on the dwindling crowds, not wanting to be noted as among the last to leave.
He was walking past the fire when one of the elders fell in beside him. He didn’t know her name. To him, they were just “the elders.” Old people. Gray-haired and wrinkle-faced. A homogeneous lot of senior citizens.
This one was a woman with long graying hair. Short and stout, like the teapot in the rhyme. Despite her obvious age, she fell in at a perfect pace with him. He slowed, though, out of respect. Even Seanna treated the elders with respect.
“Rose tells me you might like to join the mari lwyd,” the woman said.
Lance shook his head. “Not this year. Thank you.”
“Are you sure? I can make a place for you. I think you’d enjoy it.”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Well, then, best run along home. Before Hwch Ddu Gwta comes out to play.”
She patted his back, and he felt the weight of her gaze, too, watching as he headed for the side street.
On the walk home, Lance heard the mari lwyd making the rounds from house to house. The gray mare.
He heard the chatter and laughter grow louder, and he turned onto his street just as the mari lwyd left a house. He saw it, and for one split second, he was a child again, getting his first look.
After his parents thought Lance had gone to bed, he’d snuck out to see the mari lwyd. One glimpse, and he’d run home so fast his lungs burned, and he’d lain in bed for hours, reciting multiplication tables, his talisman against the night and its horrors.
He shook his head at his younger self. Sure, it was a spooky sight.
A hooded figure wearing a mare’s skull, white garments flowing, an equine specter.
But the men and women with the fearsome creature were laughing, halfway to drunk, jostling like kids as they made their way up the steps to the next house with its light on.
One of the men rapped at the door. It opened immediately and someone inside let out a cry of feigned terror. The group shouldered their way inside, where they would tell a story in exchange for a “tipple” of whiskey and then bless the house against the coming winter.
The front windows were open, and through them Lance heard the story start, and his steps slowed. He thought of Rose and the elder and their invitation.
Join the procession of the mari lwyd. You don’t need to be the odd boy out. It’s Cainsville, where gargoyles appear and disappear, where a teenage girl can see the future, where the mari lwyd bestows her blessings for the winter ahead.
Come and join us.
He wanted to. He desperately wanted to.
Next year.
Tonight he needed to kill Seanna Walsh.
Sneaking from the house was easy. His parents barely noticed he’d come in.
The hardest part was going out his window.
That was not difficult in itself—it opened easily.
The problem was it was bad luck to exit through a different door than the one you’d entered.
He gritted his teeth and went out his window.
Then he checked it four times to be sure it was closed.
Lance counted steps to Main Street. Another talisman.
Get an even number, and everything would go well.
Of course, it was easy to get an even number—just take an extra step if it came up odd—but it was the mindfulness that mattered.
It also helped quell his anxiety over not exiting through the proper door.
As for any anxiety over what he was about to do? He was afraid of getting caught. That was all. Seanna Walsh had earned her fate the day she’d bewitched him. He could not rest while she lived, so she could not live.
Main Street was dark and deserted, leaving only the embers of the bonfire to guide him.
It was enough. He went straight to Seanna’s stone.
He snatched it up and put it into his pocket.
Resisting the urge to run, he backed against the brick wall of the bank.
Then he pushed one trembling hand into his pocket and found the smooth stone. As his fingers caressed it, he smiled.
Come morning, the townsfolk would gather early, stomachs too knotted to drink their morning coffee.
One of the elders would go around the dead fire, collecting stones, one by one, and calling out the names.
If any were missing…well, they all knew what that meant.
At next year’s Nos Galan Gaeaf, that person would not lay a stone at the fire.
They’d be dead under one, rotting in their grave.
Or that was the story. But there was a trick, and Lance knew it.