Audrey Wilson About 1000 words

audreygw@ou.edu

A Crown of Thorns

By Audrey Wilson

Halloween in a graveyard, how original. Kids these days just had no respect for the dead.

They stomped around, crushing flowers, knocking into gravestones, screeching and shouting,

and Dain had had just about enough of it. Shrouded in fog, she was invisible to them. She was

invisible to them without the fog, too, but weird things tended to happen on Halloween, so she

decided it was better not to push her luck. She swept her gauzy robes about her, which drifted

and blended with the mist, floating thin as spiders silk. A wisp stretched away from her, a

shadow under the moon.

The teenagers stopped. Their flashlights barely pierced the fog, so they switched them

off, apparently content to sit in the misty half-light of the moon. One of the boys sniffled, eyes

wide, trembling fingers worrying at the hem of his sweater. Dain watched her shadow creep

slowly closer, nudging it towards the crying boys foot. One of the other boys shouted. Dain
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couldnt hear the words, but the tone sounded harsh, derisive. He reached out and shoved the

Sniffler, his voice turning sharp, suddenly angry.

Dains shadow stopped, changed its course. The Angry One stood up, towering over the

Sniffler. The Angry One was lanky, scrawny, really, but compared to the cowering Sniffler he

looked like a giant. Their third companion remained silent, staring up at the barely-there sky. He

held something in his hands, twisting and fiddling with it. Dain caught flashes of red, but she

couldnt quite see the thing clearly.

How old are these boys? Dain wondered. She didnt age, never had. For her, mortal

things came in four stages: stumbling babies, fumbling children, bumbling adults, and crumbling

elders. These boys were at the edge of their second stage, as far as she could tell. The Angry One

shouted again, and the Sniffler looked even more frightened. Dains shadow slipped between

gravestones, up the hill towards the Angry One.

The dark branch of shadow reached up around the Angry Ones ankle, twisting around his

leg, up his torso. His glare was fixed on the Sniffler, unaware of the darkness staining his body.

The Sniffler stumbled backward, his mouth gaping. He pointed at the Angry One, eyes wide.

The Angry One looked down at his red sweatshirt, now slowly bleeding black. His shriek

echoed through the stones, bouncing back to Dain. She shifted in the fog again, moving under

the shadowy branches of a dying tree.

The Silent One looked on, eyes wide, still unmoving as the Angry One stripped off his

jacket. The dark stain bled on to his shirt as well, then his skin. He swatted at it desperately,

wiping and scrubbing with his now unstained t-shirt. The Sniffler hid behind the Silent One,

holding tightly to the other boys hood.

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Dain snorted. These boys were too easy to scare-- one shadow and they cried like infants.

She looked up and saw the Silent One staring at her. She towards him. She had no eyes to meet

his, only empty sockets in a skinless face. She stilled, her robes drifting in the fog around her.

The shadow retreated from the Angry One, sliding into a puddle in front of the boys.

Slowly, it shaped itself. Wispy shapes, drifting, small feet, a slender neck, the elongated shape of

a deers skull, and finally, twisting from the top of the skull, antlers, elegant, proud. And then she

was there, standing in front of them.

The fog played in her robes, twisting their shadowy edges. Her skull face turned to the

Silent One. The Sniffler let out a whimper and crouched closer to the other boy, staring. The

Angry One smelled distinctly of urine.

Why? Her voice was rough and low, but her question was a request, not a demand.

None of the boys answered. The Angry One shook violently, staring into her empty eye

sockets. Her head swiveled towards him. He stumbled backwards, fell, scraped across the

ground, and finally took off, looking behind frantically. He tripped over a headstone, and Dain

snorted again. Perhaps this one was closer to his infant stage than shed thought.

She turned back to the other two. They stood now, several heads shorter than her. As she

gazed down, the Silent One bent at the waist, dragging the Sniffler, still clutching his hood, down

with him. They turned and followed the Angry One down the hill. Neither of them looked back.

They passed through the graveyard gates, metal creaking as the hinges swung open and

shut. The night was growing old and the fog was dissipating. She huffed out a breath. They never

answered her question, but still she let them go.

I should have taken them, she murmured. Getting soft or something.

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She took a step forward and felt something prickly under her foot. She looked down and

saw what the Silent One had been holding. A crown of roses. Her skull was always smiling, but

at this moment, it actually meant something. She knelt and picked it up gently, the petals soft

against her fingertips. Above her, her constellation twinkled, its eye flaring bright and red.

No one remembered Dain. She was old, older than any of the graves around her, older

than language written on the stones, probably older than the stones themselves. She missed the

days when people knew her name, when they gazed at the heavens and saw her in the stars. She

had a feeling that the Silent Boy came from a time like hers. His spirit was something like hers,

old, forgotten, tired.

Dain had no idea where he came from, but weird things tended to happen on Halloween.

She settled the thorny crown around her antlers and let herself fade away with the last wisps of

fog.