Lawrence Bluewell

2006 Years After Novus

River Colony, Joint Province of Campora, Woodlands, and Claymoore

Stories were pretty commonplace in our household.

Mama had all sorts of them – tales from long ago about heroes, beasts, magical creatures called Fairies. Every night before bed we’d get some variation of the same stories that all her siblings were telling their own children, passed down from their own mother, who heard them from her mother and her mother before her.

But in our family and to those that told those tales, they weren’t just stories. They were warnings, instructions on how to avoid all things evil and painful, and so the storytellers were always insistent that those they passed these stories down take them very, very, seriously.

In short, the women in my mom’s family were freaking crazy.

Normal people would hear the stories and think, gee, what an interesting fictional story, but not my Mama’s family.

They actually believed all of it.

All of it.

Like it was all factual with no room for interpretation.

It was…

So stupid.

I myself loved stories. I loved reading, writing, and deconstructing stories. They were a great way to be able to share with others feelings and thoughts that you might not be able to easily communicate, but even I was able to figure out early on that Mama’s stories were just folk tales that were used to teach us some sort of lesson.

Like…

Little Red Cloak, or Hans and Gretel.

But not to Mama and her family.

Or my sisters.

And to my annoyance, even my father, who didn’t freaking believe in it either, would sit there and play along with Mama when she’d do her stories with us before bed.

They happened less and less now as we got older, but since Mama and Dad were starting to try and have another baby because we had finally moved into our own house, they were falling back into old habits of telling stories before bed.

But tonight, the story was different.

It was a story that was a prelude to tomorrow's big show-

My birthday.

My twelfth birthday.

But because my family was completely crazy, it didn’t get to be a normal birthday. Instead, it was the introduction to adolescence that everyone else in Mama’s family got, and I was in no way interested in participating in their crazy. I would be getting the heck out of here to hide out my birthday in Riverside and deal with the repercussions later because while my Dad was happy to let Mama and my sisters be crazy, I wasn’t going to participate.

Screw that!

If it had been something small and stupid like we usually did on birthdays – like refusing to accept gifts from anyone I wasn’t blood with and wearing a crown of fragrant flowers – then fine. Whatever. But I wasn’t going to go through the obnoxious and somewhat painful ceremony that was planned. I’d seen it dozens of times now with my cousins, and I refused to take part in it.

I would buy my time until Mama was asleep, and then I was getting out of here and running like hell to Riverside. I couldn’t make it all the way there by foot, but the hope was I would catch a mail wagon. They used fast horses and if I pretended to have a delivery, they almost always would give a lift if I provided my town’s codeword, one that I knew after having served as an official delivery boy for our town (up until I got tired of people complaining about crumbling their stupid letters and quit).

But until Mama was asleep, I’d play along and listen to her stories.

Plus, story time always had candy and cookies, so.

After a long day and a good meal, we all gathered in the living room in our pajamas as Mama and Dad sat on the couch. My sisters sat around the table in front of the couch, working on weaving flowers into crowns for tomorrow while I sat in front of the fire.

I wanted to be nice and toasty before I ran into the night to get out of here. We weren’t far into spring just yet, my birthday toward the end of April, but the nights were still kinda cold. My mother and sisters were all Snowflakes, or women that preferred the winters, but I hated the cold. I liked the heat, the blistering sort that made you feel like your entire body was alive, when all of the flowers were open and the air was heavy with fragrance.

But I would brave the chilly nights for sure to get the heck out of here.

I looked over to where my youngest sister was, Mimi the sixth born of my siblings.

Well. Technically she was the seventh born, but my Mom considered Mimi the sixth born because she didn’t count me, since I was unregistered, but also a ‘boy born with the moon in his eyes’, so to her and her family, I never counted in the official counting of children.

Since according to legends, I would be taken by a fairy.

That’s how crazy my family was.

Mimi stared at me with a knowing look and I lifted my eyebrows at her. Though parents said they didn’t have favorites, I think Mimi was Mama’s. She was in pretty much every way a complete copy of Mama’s personality and tastes, but she favored Dad in her looks, much like how I strongly took after Dad in personality, but I favored Mama’s family in appearance, mostly.

Mimi’s gaze dropped to where I subtly stretching my calves like she knew I was prepping for the run of my life and I scowled, curling my legs back before I reached over to the table to grab a candy from the dish at the center.

Mama and Dad finished their whispering to each other and Dad stood to come over and grab a handful of what Mama called ‘story dust’, Dad reaching down to grab the front of my shirt to drag me further away from where I was sitting right in front of the fireplace so he could throw the dust on the fire.

The yellow, red flames turned a bright violet and I scooted further away from it to sit at the table between the couch and the fireplace with my sisters, Dad going into the kitchen while Mama clapped her hands from the couch to get our attention.

“We do not walk this earth alone.” Mama started. “Spirits are with us at all times – good ones, bad ones. All sorts. But the ones you have to be conscious of at all times are the most clever of them all. The Woodland Spirit. They might weep or scream, lie, and beg to get you to come with them into the shadows, to reach your heart so you love, admire, or pity it enough to go to it. They can leave you beautiful gifts of gowns, or jewelry – a musical instrument you always loved to play or a book of stories you always wanted to read, all to win your favor. It can be a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, but they all want the same thing from you - to lure you away forever to live with them in the darkness of the woods where your loved ones can never find you.” She clapped her hands together to hold her fingers to her lips. “How do you get away?” She looked around at my sisters before her gaze found me.

I popped a candy into my mouth, raising my eyebrows at her in question. Her eyes narrowed a fraction. She wanted me to respond. “Run or fight?” I suggest, though I knew that was the wrong answer.

“The Woodland Spirit is much faster than you – stronger too. You can never outrun it or fight it off. Ever.” She looked at my sisters. “And it’s is far more intelligent than you as well...so what do you do to avoid being stolen away by them?”

“You identify it as a Woodland spirit.” Mimi piped, Mama pointing a finger at her.

“That’s right! The first step is to identify who is a Woodland Spirit, and who isn’t so you avoid interacting with them.” She tossed a satchel to Mimi. I sat up a little to see her open the satchel and see it was a special lemon and raspberry-flavored candy from Riverside we all loved. I deflated, frowning, perking up when Mimi delicately placed a candy in front of me before giving one each to the twins when they put out their hands. “The problem is that they can look just like normal people. They aren’t born that way – they have...sharp teeth like wolves, and cat-like eyes and claws.” She held up her fingers to hold them like talons, scratching at the air in front of my sisters’ faces. “But what can’t they do?”

“Go into the light,” Mimi said with a mouthful of candy.

“That’s right!” Mama cried with a happy clap of her hands, “They can’t go into the light!”

“What’s the difference between the Woodland Spirits and the nightwalkers?” I asked with a little smirk.

All the stories of the woodland spirits, after all, were just cautionary tales about nightwalkers and how to avoid accidentally mating with one. The struggle between nightwalker and daywalker had been there right from the start, but once nightwalkers figured out they needed a daywalker to survive, they grew increasingly craftier in the techniques they developed to get one.

So daywalkers made stories like these to teach children how to avoid being stolen by nightwalkers.

Because once a nightwalker stole you, you’d never see your family again.

At least, not for a very, very, very long time.

“Oh, there aren’t too many differences, but there is one big one – Woodland Spirits don’t want to hurt you like Nightwalkers do.” Mama said with a wave of a finger, “Woodland Spirits aren’t protecting you or a specific territory like nightwalkers must. Woodland Spirits just want to take you away and they will use any method possible. But unlike Nightwalkers, Woodland Spirits do not rely on brute force to steal you. Sometimes a Woodland Spirit hides behind a nightwalker mask since neither can go in the sunlight, but when you meet their gaze, a Woodland Spirit takes it as encouragement that they can take you while a nightwalker perceived eye contact as a threat.”

“Are Woodland Spirits evil?” Mimi asked.

“Evil?” Mama frowned at that, shaking her head. “No, not evil. Just…” She lifted her gaze, her lip twitching a little before she looked around at my sisters. “Just...different. They don’t take you away because they are evil. They do so because they are drowning, and the only way they can survive is if they grab a hold of you and never, ever let go. It’s just in their nature. We don’t hate the wolf for killing the lamb, nor do we hate the scorpion for stinging the frog. You accept them for what they are.”

“But you don’t go picking up a scorpion and expect it to cuddle you instead of stinging.” Dad drawled as he sat down next to my mom with a plate of sliced candy apples, my sisters all lurching for a slice and grabbing one before I could get up from my chair. My dad lifted the plate so I could get one of the last of two slices, and when I took mine, he then brought the plate to Mama, who smiled at him before she took the last one.

“So why am I telling you this story tonight?” Mama asked. The twins both turned to look at me, Mimi pointing to me with a grin and I chomped on my apple slice obnoxiously before Mama looked at me. My other sisters giggled by kept their gazes down on their work. “That’s right – because Lawrence is turning twelve years old tomorrow.”

My sisters started clapping and I clapped a little as well, licking the bright green sour sause that had been on the apples off my fingers then.

“And what is twelve the start of?” Mama asked.

“The fairy years,” Mimi said, Mama nodding with a little laugh and a big grin.

“That’s right – the fairy years. You are no longer a child anymore, but not yet an adult, and so you are most vulnerable to the Woodland Spirits. They see you so much more clearly starting when you are twelve,” She said, her eyes widening as she looked over my sisters, “And your scent is easier to track for them as well. The older you get, the easier you are to track and the more drawn to you they become. Your fairy years growth years end at twenty and after that, you will stay very bright in their eyes, which is why it is most vital to be married with children before then. Woodland Spirits won’t be able to take you if you are mated. It’s in their unbreakable code of honor.” she waved a hand in the air to make the sign of the cross at the center of a heptagram, the seven-pointed star used in folklore to signal the seal of fairies. “They don’t have many rules to follow, but the most important is to never take a married daywalker. If they do, they invite the curse onto them and they are terrified of the curse. It makes them stronger and faster, but they lose their mind and they rot from the inside out because of it.” She said sternly, “So they never, EVER try to lure away a married daywalker.”

She and Dad suddenly held up their right hands to point to the wedding rings on their index finger, Dad’s hand dropping his hand to his lap while Mom twisted her hand around to open her palm, tracing a line she called her heart line across her palm to her index finger.

“The vow of eternity is in our skin. Once you make the vow and seal it with your symbol of love,” Mama held up her index finger and turned her hand around while Dad lifted his own again. “The Woodland Spirit will fade away forever from your life.”

“So now Renny is in the most danger ever.” Simone, the technical fourth born of our siblings said.

“Wrong!” Mama and Mimi said with a gasp, “So wrong! That doesn’t start until he is thirty years old!”

“Thirty-five.” Dad interrupted, Mama snapping her finger and pointing to him in agreement, the two exchanging hard nods and looks before they looked back to my sisters.

“Daddy’s right, thirty-five technically for men in my family, thirty in general,” Mama said lowly with a bowed head before she lifted her chin and continued. “That’s when you start true adulthood and your body and mind and soul begin to live as their truest form and you start to look and smell your best to them. That’s also why you live with Mama and Daddy until you are in your thirties, even after you are married with children. To protect you. That’s why we all lived with granny and grandpa until for so long – until Mommy and Daddy were old enough to set out on our own.”

“Right down the street.” Dad said with a nod.

Mama nodded as well. “And why you all with either live with us or the parents of your spouses until you are close to thirty.”

“Except for your Lawrence,” Dad said, “You get to stay until you are thirty five.”

“You need extra protection.” Mama agreed, pointing to me while I heaved a silent sigh.

“But while they can still steal you in your thirties – and beyond! - you are no longer as vulnerable like you are in your fairy years, so winning you over is a thousand times sweeter,” Dad said with a little shake of his head as Mama nodded, the two exchanging looks again before Mama look over us.

“They want to take you away, but the hunt is what makes capturing you most exciting to them. An easy win is for a weak Woodland Spirit. A hard-won hunt brings them status and prestige. They want to impress their fellow Woodland Spirits, and the best way to do that is with fantastic tales of how they won their mates.”