“The jack-o-lanterns haven’t spread up as far as Lakemoore, not yet at least. And the way was clear through Dreary Drive, thank the All Father.” The mail courier leans on the cobbler’s counter, hands cupped around a mug of steaming cider mulled with cinnamon, clove, and other warding spices. A troupe of feral jack-o-lanterns lumbers past the window, jagged teeth gnashing, rolling vines smearing streaks of decaying leaves across the window glass. The courier watches them pass and takes a long drink.
Jude the leprechaun spits on his cloth and rubs it into the leather boot in his hand. “Well good, count your blessings, boy. Damned jacks are running the streets down these parts, as you can see. They say that’s what got the Nightengale, say they ate her alive in her bed, nightgown and all.”
“Eaten? Didn’t…didn’t she have wards?” The courrier indicates the bundles of herbs hung on the door, the spray bottles of repellant, and his steaming mug of potent spices.
Jude the leprechaun shrugs, bouncing the boot in his hand. “That’s what they’re saying is all I’m saying. But now we’ve nobody to be the Voice, nobody to sing in the seasons, sing down the Winter…freeze the spit and vinegar right out of them feral jacks. Without a new Voice, we’ve got no Winter…”
Jude slams the boot on the counter and leaps to his feet. “No! No, no. Damn it. Just when you think the day’s gone sour enough…”
The courier cranes his head around to see what has Jude the leprechaun cobbler in such a tizzy. He squints. “You don’t mean the girl outside, do you?”
“That ain’t no girl, son. That’s the banshee. Drifts in from Hollow Tree Swamp to cause trouble. Nasty old thing…creeping around, breaking windows with its terrible wailing…”
Through the door of the shop, the two men watch the slender grey figure inspect the will-o-the-wisp housed in the porch lamp. The luminous sprite curls and coos and blinks its huge wet eyes as the banshee brushes a sleeve over the dusty glass.
The courier frowns. “She doesn’t look none too old. How bad can she be?”
“Don’t be fooled boy, you know nothing of banshees. A blight they are, and this one’s no exception. Shouldn’t even be here in Elderburry by rights. It ain’t no faerie, after all.”
“Isn’t it? Um, isn’t she?”
“Death omen’s what it is. Bad luck, bad for business…”
The bell above the door ting-dings as the banshee pushes inside. A greyish mist spills in with her and she sniffs the bundles of cinnamon sticks, cloves, and nutmeg strapped to the door. Taller than most creatures in Elderburry, the banshee holds the frayed ends of her sleeves together over her heart as she floats toward the counter. A partially crumpled tube of paper pokes out from the cobweb fabric. Even with the complexion of pea soup watered down with tule fog, she doesn’t look old, as the leprechaun said. Spindly, bony, hair the color of coffee sludge and copper wire drapes down around the entire narrow height of the banshee and bobs over the floorboards, she leans on the counter, head cocked to one side. She lowers her face to sniff a bottle of jack-o-lantern repellant and lifts both eyebrows.
Jude’s face flushes all the way up to his knobby ears. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, banshee, unless you’re buying, you’re not allowed to lurk, especially not here.”
The banshee blinks her dark, nocturnal eyes at Jude and unrolls the crumpled paper with her sleeves. A black and white image depicts a pair of human men in corpse paint. Spiky, nearly illegible font reads: TRYOUTS FOR VOCALIST. DANCOSTER, TOWN HALL.
The banshee pokes a cloth-covered finger at the boots worn by the men, glossed black leather, buckles, and spikes.
“What the devil you want with those?” balks Jude, clutching the boot to his chest like a shield.
The banshee drops a heavy sack of gold on the counter, eyes fixed on Jude’s spectacles.
“Am I supposed to believe you didn’t steal that gold, banshee?”
The banshee pushes the gold and the poster closer to the leprechaun while the courier devotes himself to his cider and leans out of the way.
The banshee taps the bag of gold with her sleeve and stares at Jude. “Pact?” she whispers in a voice quiet as bat wings.
“Transaction’s not a Pact and I’ve no obligation to take your gold, banshee,” Jude pushes the gold and the flyer back across the counter. His fingers linger a hungry moment on the gold though, before the banshee plucks it away.
The banshee looks down at the flyer then rolls it back up.
“Head on back to your swamp then,” Jude makes a shooing motion as the banshee drifts to the door. He glares at the floaty bottom of her ragged robes. “You don’t need no shoes anyway, you’ve got no feet!”
The banshee makes eye contact as she closes the door behind herself.
The courier hunches around his mug. “I mean…she had gold…” A long pause. “You are a leprechaun…”
“What of it? We don’t encourage the banshee in Elderburry,” Jude finds a new boot to polish. “More we humor it, more it hangs around. It wants to sing, can you imagine? Carries on and on about the Voice and wanting to sing for us…a banshee!”
“And that’s bad because…?”
“They scream, postman! All Father spare you, let it visit Lakemoore why don’t you? See how you like cleaning the busted windows off the streets.”
Outside Jude’s Custom Shoes, the banshee waits on the porch as a flock of slobbering jack-o-lanterns slumps past. The ambient plants leave a trail of pith and seeds down the cobbled street. Skeletal trees lean around the gingerbread storefronts, leaves long swallowed by the endless autumn, the sky the steely grey of an old battle-axe between the hazy granite mountain peaks that form a bowl around Elderburry.
The banshee watches a will-o-the-wisp press its glowing sea horse body to the glass of the lantern and coo. Reaching up, she flips the latch and lets the pane of the lantern pop open. She gives the cobbler a final hard stare through the window before heading down the street, face down and shrouded in hair, gold dangling from one sleeve.
Snapping up a roasting moth and crunching it like a gooey potato chip, the will-o-the-wisp scuttles after her.
The elf with the fox tail finishes her song and Mr. Mayor rolls to his feet to clap. “Brava, brava! Wherever did you learn to sing like that, my dear girl? I simply must know. Are you free for a luncheon tomorrow…?”
Mr. Mayor’s assistants, Cassie and Rhodes, quickly spritz the elf girl with pumpkin pie spice for protection and shuttle her out of the office.
“She’s not good enough to be the new Voice,” states Cassie, a gnome in a knit cardigan.
Mr. Mayor, a stumpy green frog in a waistcoat and top hat, takes a seat behind his desk and selects a cigar from a dish. As round as he is tall, if not rounder, his girth holds him far enough from the desk he strains and grunts to reach the cigar cutter. “Nonsense! She was quite good! Cassie, do schedule that luncheon.”
“She’s an elf from the Wayward Wood, very likely a spy for the All Father,” states Cassie.
Mr. Mayor waves the idea out of the air as he puffs the cigar over a candleflame. “If the All Father can send spies, he can bloody well send himself and Winter with him! Now, is my two o’clock open…?”
“I’m just saying…it wouldn’t be the first time an elf from the Wayward Wood ate someone…we can’t exactly prove it was the jack-o-lanterns who killed the Nightengale…”
“Oh, Cassie, listen to yourself. That sweet summer thing? Eat the Nightengale! Ha!”
“Mr. Mayor, we have another suggestion for your consideration,” Rhodes, a rather strapping young brownie, pretends to look at Cassie’s clipboard over her shoulder. “What if we open public tryouts? Instead of reaching out to people we know can sing, what if we made it available for the townsfolk of Elderburry…”
Mr. Mayor huffs smoke. “Can’t do. The moment you open a stage to the riffraff, you know who shows up like a rat to refuse?”
Rhodes sighs and rubs his eyebrows. “Right, I forgot about her…What if we…can we ban her? No banshees allowed?”
“We know she can’t sing, right?” asks Cassie, startling a little as a jack-o-lantern lunges the window, licking the glass with a pulpy tongue. A candle stump still glows in its maw, even with Halloween a month past. Cassie returns her focus to the room. “I mean, we know for certain we wouldn’t benefit from letting her try out?”
“Oh, I’m sure she can sing,” Mr. Mayor props his webbed feet on the desk. “If you’re willing to sacrifice your eardrums, your windows, your sanity. I’m sure it’s just lovely, too.” He peers over his shoulder into the private courtyard of Mayor Mannor where wrought iron and armed guards deter wandering squash. A decorated Yule tree waits beside a festive altar, a holly crown adorned with candles ready to rest upon the head of the new Voice.
“Well, we need a Voice, and soon,” states Rhodes, spritzing himself with pumpkin pie spice as the jack-o-lantern slides off the window and continues down the street. “And not just to get rid of the jacks. They’ll be calling in Spring before you know it, then Summer. Wouldn’t be surprised if Elderburry voted to skip Fall next year, but the point is, we can’t summon the Patrons of the Seasons without the Voice to call them…and we’re living in the results of that. Wandering jack-o-lanterns are fun and cute until they start eating people in their sleep, All Father rest the Nightengale’s soul.”
“Yes, yes, Autumn must end before more innocents perish,” Mr. Mayor taps ash off the cigar as an enormous jack-o-lantern outside snaps up a pixie child. “They’re dreadful for business, too. Elderburry should be bathing in tourist revenue from the Harvest Festivals about now…” He lets the cigar smolder between two webbed fingers as other pixie children jump the jack-o-lantern and attempt to pull their friend to safety.
“Mail…” gasps the breathless courier, stumbling into the office with his mail bag and reeking of cinnamon. He stomps moldy pumpkin vines from his boot and passes a letter to Cassie. “Gods, it’s a free-for-all out there…”
Cassie tucks her clipboard under the arm of her cardigan and opens the letter. A squeaky little gasp escapes her. “Sir, sir, Mr. Mayor, look here! It’s from Lakemoore! They say a siren came in from the lake and has offered to sing for us. A siren! A real siren! Surely, they’ll be able to sing down the All Father!”
“A siren!” Mr. Mayor drops his cigar and comes all the way around the desk to snatch the letter. “My word, a lake siren! Are they the ones of unparalleled beauty or am I mistaking them with mermaids…? Which one looks like a wet bird?”
Cassie blinks.
“No matter, no matter at all! Ready my carriage, I’ll pick her up from Lakemoore myself! Mark my words, Cassie, by tonight, we’ll be celebrating Yule!”
A snarling jack-o-lantern drooling pulp and seeds crawls like an octopus as a cluster of crying pixies cling to it. A pair of feet kick from the side of its maw. Catching a glimpse of this, the banshee pauses at the edge of Elderburry before dashing back. She snatches the kicking feet and pulls the slimy pixie child free. The slimy little pixie girl gasps and her crooked little wings shiver.
“Help?” asks the banshee in a raspy whisper.
“Ahh! Banshee!” wail the pixie children. Shrieking and tripping over each other, they bolt into an alleyway and out of harm’s way.
The jack-o-lantern growls and snaps at the banshee. The banshee makes eye contact with the empty triangles on the jack-o-lantern’s orange head. She scowls and makes a sound like claws on a chalkboard. A quiet sound, a subtle threat. Just enough effort to show her sharp teeth.
The jack-o-lantern backpedals and scuttles off to hunt some other prey and the banshee continues on her way.
She doesn’t return to Hollow Tree Swamp, not yet. The banshee takes a seat on the little stone wall dividing Elderburry from the world beyond and stares into the distance. The dusty dirt path rolls off over gentle hills, shrinking and shrinking until it becomes nothing more than a line through dead grass against the backdrop of hazy granite mountains and a sky piled with gloomy clouds.
Dancoster sprawls just over that last hill, the banshee knows, the human village, blissfully unaware of the goings on of Elderburry and the jack-o-lantern infestation. Their crossroads are paved highways and electric stoplights, a faster neon world of bars and nightlives and drive-thrus.
The banshee stares into the dry grass hills, imagining Dancoster. Unrolling the flyer, she traces the snarly lettering and then the buckled leather boots and her eyes narrow to scrunched half-moons as tears squeeze out.
The will-o-the-wisp darts around snatching mosquitos from the air but eventually settles onto the banshee’s lap, flattening out and chirping as the banshee rubs its firefly green back.
The unseen town of asphalt and streetlights, what is it like there? How do fries and burgers of the fables taste? And what of the hazy mountains? Is there more world beyond their jagged spires? What sort of places do the men on the flyer in their corpse paint see?
The banshee tucks up her knees and stares down at the floating fabric of her robes, a ghostly mist where feet should be. She looks again to the road, a road made for booted feet and more tears fall, splotching onto the flyer and blotting the photocopied ink.
Back in Elderburry, screams and shattering glass denote a jack-o-lantern running amok. More screams, more breaking glass. A musket shot.
Rolling the flyer once more and picking up the heavy, worthless bag of gold, the banshee wipes her tears on a sleeve and turns for the dark smudge on Hollow Tree Swamp and home.
She stops at the little figure blocking her path.
Minty stares up at the banshee, knees shaking, still covered in pumpkin pulp. “H-hullo…” squeaked the little pixie.
The banshee blinks and whispers back, voice raspy as a rusted gate. “Hello…?”
Minty flushes, face hot, and looks away. The banshee won’t hurt me…she reminds herself. The banshee won’t hurt me…no worse than the pumpkin…
“I just…just wanted to say thank you…for rescuing me back there. I’m sorry I ran off like that…it’s hard…hard to say thank you with all your friends around…”
The banshee blinks her reflective eyes.
“I mean…we’re scared of you…you’re scary…I’m not supposed to be here, but you saved me, so…” Minty forces herself look up into the banshee’s sharp face. Her little wings quiver now, squeaking together like cricket legs. “Thank you, banshee.”
“You’re welcome,” whispers the banshee in return.
“I get picked on, too!” Minty blurts before she can stop herself. Her eyes well up. “Pepper pushed me down when the jack-o-lantern came! Said she didn’t mean for me to get eaten but…but I know she did it on purpose. I know she did it because I can’t fly!”
The banshee blinks again and sits back down on the wall. After a moment, she pats the stone beside her and Minty creeps over, taking a hesitant seat.
They don’t talk, Minty cries and the banshee listens, one wispy sleeve resting on the kid’s back as she hiccups and dribbles snot and pumpkin slime.
When the kid quiets down, the banshee reaches into her bag and passes over a gold coin. Minty’s eyes widen in awe. “For me?”
“Ice cream,” whispers the banshee.
Taking the coin, Minty seems to remember herself and scuttles back to town without another word.
The banshee watches her go before floating into the shadows of the swamp.
“And we’ll have to house the lake siren somewhere in Elderburry. Mayor Manner does have those twelve empty suites, doesn’t it? Yes…yes, that will do nicely. I hope the siren isn’t one of those ugly[MF4] , feathery ones…”
Cassie sits opposite Mr. Mayor in the jostling carriage, staring out the window as the round frog carries on and on. Rhodes drives the carriage, drawn by a pair of sturdy goats, a crossbow resting on the seat beside him and a dagger on his hip. Even with all the cinnamon bundles, one cannot be too careful.
Dusk draws a blanket over the land and the bare, leafless trees squeeze around the carriage as they head deeper and deeper into Hollow Tree Swamp. Soon, the only light comes from the two lanterns and rusty glimpses of sky through the branches. Owls call back and forth and crickets saw slow, swaying melodies as the mist gathers.
“What a miserable place,” Mr. Mayor unfolds a travel blanket to wrap around himself. “When we’re back in Elderburry, remind me to drain it. Make a note of it, Cassie.”
Cassie scratches her pen over her clipboard but keeps her eyes unfocused and gazing out the window. “Does anyone else live here? Besides the banshee, I mean…”
“Who in their right mind would live here?” scowls the mayor.
“I thought your grandmother did,” Rhodes calls in from the driver’s seat.
“Grandmother!” blurts the mayor. “She most certainly does not, Rhodes! She lives on…oh, what is it now… Dreary Drive. She lives off Dreary Drive.”
“What do you think this road’s called, Mr. Mayor? Dreary Drive’s the way to Lakemoore.” deadpans Rhodes.
The mayor sputters a little. “Well. Well…I’ll just have to put her up in a condo then, won’t I?”
The carriage nearly topples as something large, something strong and gurgling in a thick, wet snarl collides with the side. Hungry, mindless.
Cassie and Mr. Mayor scream and Rhodes curses as he crashes into the spongy earth beside the road, crossbow sinking into the muck. Rotting vines lash in through the doors of the carriage, twisting around Mr. Mayor’s leg as he tries to make a run for it, and pinning Cassie to the wall of the carriage.
Cassie grunts and struggles as the slimy vines tighten and tighten and soon only a weak hiss of breath makes it past her lips as the rogue jack-o-lantern crushes her, pumpkin spice and all.
Mr. Mayor squirms and writhes, slippery frog skin lending him no advantage against the rabid pumpkin vines. His eyes bulge as the carved teeth chomp in through the swinging door and the carriage crashes to its side.
Rhodes rolls to his feet, dagger in hand and throws himself onto the bloated, warty back of the gourd. The flash of the blade buries itself into the rind and sticks tight. Rhodes yanks on it, teeth bared in a snarl of desperation, sweat streaking his face. A vine whips around and slaps him to the road, the air leaving his lungs with a small huff and the crack of a rib. The pumpkin holds him pinned as it tears off a panel of the carriage in its teeth, slobbering and gibbering as it pulls itself, octopus like, into the carriage and towards its prey.
A terrible sound splinters the night, slicing down through the carriage and the jack-o-lantern. A glittering spray explodes outward from the carriage as the windows shatter and the jack-o-lantern writhes backwards, screeching in anger and then agony as the sound carries on and on. A sound like tearing paper, like nails on chalkboard, a sound to send thorns through eardrums and make teeth ache.
My. Mayor slumps out of the carriage and rolls down the road a few turns as the vines release him and Cassie gasps in hoarse gusts of air. Rhodes crawls to Cassie and scoops her into his arms as the jack-o-lantern flails back into the marshy water, thrashing and howling, mayor forgotten. They huddle together, hands pressed to their ears.
Foam bubbles from the jack-o-lantern’s gaping maw and the candle glow within snuffs out a moment before the gourd splits open, pulp and seeds and slime spattering out over the skeletal trees. Silence smothers the swamp.
A floating grey figure creeps out of the darkness and onto the road, lit only by the greenish aura of the will-o-the-wisp flitting round it. The banshee cranes her neck to inspect the survivors, then the splattered jack-o-lantern. Stooping, she picks up a chunk of orange pumpkin meat and bites into it, nodding to herself as she chews.
“You!” flubs Mr. Mayor, still on his hands and knees in the dirt. “You! Banshee!”
“Mm-hmm,” nods the banshee, taking another bite. Her nocturnal eyes shine yellow as they stare at the mayor.
“You! You saved me! Saved my life!”
The banshee tilts her head to one side, eyes unblinking.
Standing and huffing, and mayor straightens his torn waistcoat with shaking hands and rolls his head back to peer up at her. “Banshee…thanks are in order, surely in order…I am sure there is something you want, whatever you want, banshee…” his hand extends to her, and she clasps it in her frayed sleeve.
Keeping his hand, the banshee leans down, the copper highlights in her draping hair glints in the night. She whispers in his ear: “Sing. I will call the All Father.”
Mr. Mayor balks and tries to withdraw his hand. “Sing? What? No. No, surely not…banshee, be reasonable…!”
The banshee keeps his hand fixed in hers and leans closer still. “Pact.”
The mayor goes quiet, the whites of his eyes rolling as he stares at his captured hand. “A Pact…a faerie Pact…”
“Just…let her,” rasps Cassie, sitting up and inspecting the blossoming bruise under Rhode’s shirt. She coughs. “So, she breaks some bloody windows. So what? Her voice can kill the jack-o-lanterns, you’ve seen it yourself.”
“Would say windows are a fair price,” winces Rhodes.
“Fine! Fine,” the mayor stomps a webbed foot and glares at the pair of goats as they chew on the pumpkin carcass. “We have a Pact, banshee. I hope you’re happy.”
The banshee releases his hand and nods.
They leave the carriage and walk back to Elderburry together, Mr. Mayor grousing the entire way and his assistants doing a swell job ignoring him. “Blast these rocks! Why are there so many rocks…?”
Once back in Elderburry by light of the streetlamps, Mr. Mayor pinches the bridge of his nose. “Rhodes, Cassie…please summon everyone for a town meeting. Make cider if you must to lure them out. Pumpkin pie spice in spray bottles…just…just make it happen.”
While Elderburry rouses itself from sheltered inside activities away from the prowling jack-o-lanterns, the banshee hovers behind Mayor Manner, beside the decorated tree, eyes following assistants as they spruce up the Yule wreath worn by the Voice.
When Elderburry gathers, curious whispers pass from pajamaed citizen to pajamaed citizen, intonations rising with hope. Did the mayor come through? Will a new Voice emerge to call down the patrons of the seasons?
“The banshee!” squawks a pixy in a nightcap. “You’ve brought the banshee to sing?”
Outrage. Revilement. The courier, still stuck in Elderburry with the jack-o-lanterns, leans around a badger, curious to see how things will play out.
“Truly, you’ve lost all sense, frog!” wails the constable. “The bloody banshee?”
Mr. Mayor sweats under his top hat. “Now…now see here, I’m in a bit of a pickle…and the banshee…the banshee can stop the jack-o-lantern ! Her voice renders them into slop…!”
Shouting drowns him out as the citizens of Elderburry clamor and crowd around the mayor. Unnoticed, the banshee approaches the Yule wreath and lights the candles, one by one. If she feels sadness, if the blatant rejection of her bid to help Elderburry causes her pain, she keeps it ironed off her face as she lifts the wreath, offers it to the North Star, and places it on her own head.
And then she begins to sing.
“…Pact! It was a Pact! Tricked me!” bawls the mayor as the crowd shouts him down.
“You damned good for nothing amphibian…!” hollers the constable.
“I just put in new windows!” yells the baker.
“Listen!” pipes up the courier. “All of you, kindly shut up!”
Nobody pays him much mind, what does the mail courier know? But then, the voices quiet, one by one, as they notice the song.
“What…what is that?” the constable looks over his shoulder to the slender grey figure in the burning wreath. “By…by the All Father…It’s not…it can’t be…”
“That’s not the banshee…” the baker drops her rolling pin on her own foot.
“Is this a joke…?” asks Rhodes, staring a hole through the sweating mayor.
A joke it is not. Adorned in the Yule wreath she lit herself, the banshee sings in the voice of a flute, a sunset, a shiver in the autumn leaves. A deeper voice than expected, rich as home-brewed cocoa and haunting as the moon cresting over the purple granite mountains.
Elderburry falls into an enraptured silence as the song washes over the citizens. The banshee lifts her voice to the stars, holds out her arms in their tattered sleeves, and brings the melody to a close. Someone in the audience begins to weep.
Opening her nocturnal eyes, the banshee looks from face to face as whispers turn to awe. Then, she turns her eyes to the sky as the dark figure of a horse descends.
“Look!” someone points. “It’s the All Father! It’s the All Father!”
The black, arachnid figure of the horse settles onto the cobbles of the town square with nary a sound. The proud creature stands at the ready on its unlikely eight legs as the All Father himself slides from the saddle.
He towers over the little sprites of Elderburry, one eye a luminous star, one covered in a black patch. A crimson coat made from a bear pelt and trimmed in white sheep’s fur hangs to his boots, and he lowers the bear’s-head hood from his grey head.
A familiar elf girl with the bushy fox tail perches on the back of the saddle, one knee crossed over the other, smirk huge as she bites the tip off a candy cane and crunches it. When the mayor gapes at her, she winks. Two black ravens emblazoned with glowing green runes land on the rooftops and leer down at the gathering.
“So, you have summoned me at last, Elderburry,” rumbles the All Father. A twinkle of the first snowflakes of Winter flutter down around him and his eight-legged horse. Elderburry inclines their heads.
“All Father!” Mr. Mayor gasps and sweeps the top hat from his head. “Yes, Elderburry has called you to deliver us from the jack-o-lanterns of Autumn! Our Voice was sadly eaten, you see, but I was able to…”
The All Father extends a palm toward Mr. Mayor’s wide froggy mouth and steps past him toward the banshee, who lowers her eyes to the cobbles.
The All Father uses a gloved finger to lift the banshee’s chin so they may look each other in the eye. “What is your name, spirit?”
“Nym,” whispers the banshee, cheeks blushing a dark grey green.
“Nym. Your song, your voice, they warm the frozen edges of my heart. You chose to sing. Even after being turned away from every doorway, you still chose to sing for them.”
A pair of tears slide down the banshee’s cheeks, but she does not deny his claim.
“Nym, I wish to give you a gift,” rumbles the All Father. “On behalf of myself and all of Elderburry,” he turns a slow circle to meet the eyes of all present before turning back to the banshee. “What is it you desire, child?”
With trembling sleeves, the banshee pulls a tube of crushed paper from her belt and smooths it as best she can. Holding her breath, she indicates the buckled boots. The ravens caw from the rooftops.
“An excellent choice,” purrs the elf.
The All Father leans down to better see the flyer before stalking to his saddle bags. The eight-legged horse tosses its bridle, and the elf girl pats its side.
Reaching into the saddle bag, the All Father returns with a pair of black leather boots, the silver buckles glinting in the streetlamps.
More tears fall down the banshee’s face as she accepts the boots, then a small dagger from the All Father. Backing away from the crowd, Nym the banshee takes a seat on a wooden bench and places the boots where her feet should be. Holding another breath, she grasps the hem of her tattered robes and pulls them up. The small gust of her breath becomes a gasp, and then a laugh as the misty robes reveal shins vanishing into the boots. Using the little blade from the All Father, she begins to cut the robes off at the knee. Her mouth opens wider and wider as the fabric falls away. Next, she begins to cut at an elbow, freeing a slender grey hand.
The All Father returns to his horse and swings himself into the saddle. “I bless Elderburry with Winter!” he announces, and with a wave of his arm, away he flies. The ravens spin off into the sky with him and the elf girl blows Mr. Mayor a kiss before they disappear.
Up, up, the horse flies into the sudden billows of clouds as snow bursts from the sky and falls with a hush over Elderburry. Shrieking and gurgling echoes down the streets as the jack-o-lanterns finally molder into their own decay.
The faeries dance and weep and laugh as the snow falls, clasping hands and twirling in the silver flakes and the mayor claps the constable on the back while congratulating himself.
Nym cuts off her other sleeve and admires her new buckled boots. Her eyes shine as she traces a finger over the flyer and taps the location of the tryouts, Dancoster Town Hall. Standing, she folds the flyer and turns toward Dancoster.
“Banshee, banshee!” the mayor whirls over in a tizzy. “Banshee! It is my honor, and I am sure I speak for all of Elderburry as I declare you the new Voice!”
Cheers erupt.
The banshee gives the people of Elderburry a polite smile and shakes her head. Smiling at her new boots, she hands the wreath to the mayor and starts off toward the road through the wall.
The mayor sputters. “Banshee! Where are you going? Didn’t you hear? You’re our new Voice! Your beautiful singing will call down the Patrons of the Seasons…!”
Still walking, the banshee simply shakes her head. Eyes on the border between the world of myth and the world of man, she keeps walking.
Mr. Mayor gasps and runs after her, feet sinking in the piling snow. “Banshee, you have to call the seasons! Without you, we will be stuck in Winter just as we were Fall! You have to be our Voice! You must, banshee!”
“No,” replies the banshee as she reaches the wall. She pauses to look back at the gingerbread facades and festive Yule tree. She searches until she sees the round shocked eyes of Minty, the pixie kid. “And it’s Nym. My name is Nym.” With the paper flyer clutched in her hand, and the will-o-the-wisp on her shoulder, she gives Minty a wink and steps across the wall. As her feet carry her into the crickets, she doesn’t look back again. Looking forward and only forward, she smiles.
Image: “The Banshee Appears” (1862) R. Prowse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons