Chapter Text
Brian Seabury glared at the surface of a brackish pond while he waited for an imaginary creature. His eight-year-old sister slept in tall grass beside him. A line of thick trees muffled the rumbles of a nearby interstate, and red dusk and summer heat beckoned them home. Out from the woods trudged a girl holding three paper bags and a rotten walking stick.
“Where have you been?” Brian stood. Alexandra’s short black hair was speckled by broken leaves, and her calf had a red scratch along its side. His sister, Bonnie, sat up behind him.
Alexandra said, “Getting lunch.” She held up three brown lunch bags she’d left for hours earlier. “But there were some other things. You won’t believe it. I think I almost caught that gnome in my backyard.”
“Gnomes?” Bonnie said. “I thought we were looking for naiads.”
Brian took two of the offered lunches. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.” He passed one to Bonnie. “Eat that, then let’s go.”
“What? No!” Bonnie said.
“Yeah, what? I just got here.”
“We have to get back before dark,” Brian said, then told Alexandra, “You know how my mom is.”
“But dusk is the most likely time to see a naiad! You can’t leave now.”
Instead of arguing, which would only end by staying another hour, Brian gave her an exasperated look. He sat down next to Bonnie and dug into his lunch bag.
Alexandra sat for their picnic, but she kept talking, “An Encyclopedia of Spirits, Sprites and Faeries says naiads might even grant you a wish if you catch them in the right mood.” She took a bite of a sandwich from her own bag. Around her mouthful, she said, “Just no one insult her dwelling or brag about marrying her, okay?”
Bonnie snickered, but Brian only sighed. They’d spent the whole day at the pond with nothing but the drone of cicadas. Brian didn’t want to ask about the gnome, another magical creature seen by Alexandra and no one else, like the bird the size of an airplane, or the ghoul hidden behind the broken windows of the abandoned Third Street Regal Royalty Sweets and Confections warehouse.
“Don’t you want to hear what happened?” Alexandra said. “I was coming back right away, but then Archie stopped home for lunch. I had to wait until he left for patrol, because don’t you know”–she lowered her voice with a frown and wagged her finger–“Kids have drowned in that nasty little pond.”
Bonnie laughed again at Alexandra’s impression of her stepfather, while Brian held back his smile for the rest.
Alexandra huffed at Brian, then continued talking faster. “Anyway, by the time he left, your mom was out on your front porch, and so I couldn’t go out that way. An–”
“Why not?” Bonnie said.
“Because she’d see me, and if she talked to my mom, she’d know I wasn’t where I said I was. So anyway, I had to sneak out the back, and that’s when I saw the gnome!”
“A gnome! What do they look like?”
“Like a stray cat,” Brian said.
“No, the encyclopedia says they look like rocks in the dirt until they stand, and have two arms and two legs like a little man. I saw something run by the fence on two legs.”
“That’s so cool,” Bonnie said.
“So what happened after you chased it around and didn’t catch it?”
Alexandra frowned at Brian. “After that I was coming here and saw Billy Boggleston in the park.”
Bonnie said, “The worm boy?”
“Oh no. You didn’t go near him, did you?”
“He came up to me! He had his friends with him, so he wasn’t afraid of me, and he tried to take my lunch!”
Brian leaned forward, glancing at the scratch on Alexandra’s leg. “Did Billy do that?”
Alexandra waved him off. “No way. That’s later. When he took the bag, I pulled it back, but it ripped, and I just got so angry that I–”
“What happed after?” Brian said, making eye contact then glancing back to where Bonnie sat enraptured. “Is that when you got the scratch?”
“Don’t skip!” Bonnie said. “Did you make worms come out his nose again?”
Alexandra glared at Brian, then leaned closer to Bonnie as if she were telling a secret. “I pushed him.”
“You pushed a boy?” Bonnie said.
“He’s shorter than me,” Alexandra insisted. “And it worked. He left right away, and so did his friends.”
Bonnie’s eyes lit up, so Brian hurried to say, “They could have pushed her back.”
“Not Billy,” Alexandra said. “He thinks I’ll curse him if he does. He only tried something because his friends were with him.”
Brian quieted again. Unlike magical creatures, he’d seen magic. Alexandra had conjured worms, made things move without touching them, and disappeared toys, ever since she’d moved in down the street when they were six. However, keeping most occurrences to themselves had spared Bonnie from a lot of broken bones and groundings, and Brian didn’t want Alexandra to change her mind about it. His best friend never seemed to care that her magic protected them erratically, probably because it worked more often for her than for them both.
“Okay, maybe next time I’ll hand over the lunch,” Alexandra said, too sarcastically to give Brian hope. “But since this time the bag ripped, I had to go all the way back home to get another, and run all the way back here. I scratched my leg on a shrub or something while I was running.”
“That’s it?” Bonnie said. “I thought there was a story for it too.”
“Brian was the one who made it seem like a big deal.”
“Next time say you ran into a mouse with a sword,” Bonnie said.
“Hey, no. I don’t just make stuff up,” Alexandra said. She looked to the side a moment. “Most of the time,” she clarified.
Brian stood, collecting the forgotten scraps from their lunches. “That was a good story, Alex. But now we’ve really got to go.”
“We have to stay ‘till after dusk! The naiad will be used to us by now. It’ll come out for sure.”
“I don’t want to stay here after dark,” Bonnie said, glancing around at the greying forest.
“Bonnie doesn’t want to stay after dark,” Brian said. “And anyway we’re going to have to run home as it is. Come on.” He helped Bonnie up, then extended his hand to Alexandra.
She turned away from him and wrapped her hands around her knees. “You go. I’m staying here.”
“Alex–”
“Go. Take Bonnie home. The naiad will probably not like so many people seeing her anyway.”
Loyalty to his best friend warred with responsibility for his sister. The mile and a half between the pond and their neighborhood would be creepy at night, but that wouldn’t deter Alexandra. They’d explored abandoned buildings in Old Larkin before. “Promise you won’t stay out much longer?”
Alexandra stretched out in the grass. Mud caked her yellow shirt and jean shorts as she rested her chin on her hands and stared out at the murky, greenish-brown water.
“Alex?” Bonnie said.
Brian led his sister away. Alexandra could keep peering through the rushes. They made their way into the tree line and back towards Sweetmaple Avenue.
Alexandra didn’t try to fall asleep, but when she blinked, her eyes opened to shadowed skies and a crescent moon. Neither sounds from town nor the usual rush and roar of freeway traffic filtered through the woods. Alexandra sat up with tingles running up her back and down her arms. She slapped at a mosquito. From there, her hand moved to her left wrist to rotate the thin gold bracelet she wore. Even if she wasn’t in danger, the trickle-fed pond smelled of old boots, not much of a lair for interesting creatures. She’d told Brian she’d seen a face in the water once, but it could’ve been a log. She had to get home. She stood.
A crinkle in the grass made her freeze. Something farther along the pond’s edge shifted through the reeds. Whether she wanted to sneak away, stand her ground, or run, the disturbance pressed closer. One trail split into at least six.
Low voices began a sing-song chant:
“I smell mortal flesh, I smell blood.
I smell a little girl, Up to no good.”
Alexandra ran.
She turned and took two strides before she bowled into someone. She tumbled head-over-heels across the grass. The obstruction made a nasty squawk, while she landed with a thud in soggy ground right by the water’s edge. Alexandra scrambled to her feet. In the dark around her, grass and reeds swished against elongated triangular shadows. The creatures appeared short, but Alexandra couldn’t make out anything more. She didn’t try to.
“Who are you?” she yelled, trying not to sound like a frightened child.
Chuckling responded, along with the gnash of teeth. The creatures emerged from the grass. At arm’s length, they looked like children or dwarves, and their odd shape came from something pointed on their heads. They closed in and reached out with gnarled fingers.
Alexandra backed one foot over the other. Pond mud sloshed at her heels, but a protrusion tripped her into shallow water. She scrabbled in the muck. Her palm smacked the hard bark of a walking stick.
She sprang up swinging at the nearest laughing creatures. She was dripping and muddy, and had been chased, laughed at, and worst of all frightened. “Leave me alone!”
The end of her branch erupted with bright blue and yellow sparks, which whipped through the air and illuminated the heads of the gathered men. Each wore a dark wet pointed cap over wizened faces. Their sharp teeth glinted dully for a moment before their ugly glee morphed into alarm.
With another frenzied slash, little balls of fire erupted outwards. One struck the nearest little man right in the chest; he howled as he was knocked off his feet. Another man screamed and turned and fled, snatching his cap off to beat one that singed his cheek. Alexandra swung again. Fireballs spun crackling through the air, hitting the muddy shore with a wet pop followed by an awful stench or shooting amidst the ugly little men in caps.
As they ducked and fled, making croaking, squawking, panicked noises, Alexandra clenched the branch and rushed back onto shore. The first few steps were painfully slow. Mud sucked at her feet, almost taking her shoe. Out of the water, she ran loopy zig-zags. Every swing with the branch spat bursts of sparks or wild fireballs.
Alexandra ran away, through the woods and up a hill, until she got to the top and could see the lights of the highway. Only then did she look over her shoulder. There were no little men in sight, but a tiny ripple in the surface of the old pond disturbed the moon’s reflection. She went on through the interstate’s shadowed underpass. Soon she was back into town. As shabby and suspect as the dingy streets might be, Old Larkin felt welcoming in comparison.
At the corner of Sweetmaple Avenue, she took a breath and reached to twist her bracelet. She wasn’t wearing it. Somewhere between there and the pond, it had slipped off.