A Circle of Celebrations: The Complete Edition by Jody Lynn Nye

Author:Jody Lynn Nye [Nye, Jody Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781614752875
Amazon: 1614752877
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2015-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

Halloween

Trick

Creak’s bright-yellow eyes slewed desperately around the twilit lawn. His shroud was gone. He should never have turned his back on it for a second, but that brackish puddle full of icy cold water and decaying autumn leaves had been just too tempting. Without hesitation, he’d slipped off the shining white cloak and slid into its depths. Once he’d finished reveling in its delightful chill sliminess, he had discovered the shroud was missing.

What could he do? Without it he was a pair of disembodied eyeballs in a blob of invisible ectoplasm floating about three feet off the ground, unable to groan, shriek, fly, or cause mischief. Not properly terrifying for Halloween. Which this was.

Creak rolled his eyes about again, scanning trees, bushes, houses, and cars, in case his shroud had only fluttered to the ground. Wait, there it was! On the other side of the hard path mortals called a “street.” The wind must have picked it up. He glided across, passing through automobiles, giving minor hallucinations to the humans within, and swooped gladly on his cloak. But it was not his! The one he had doffed was moonlight spun into fine silk by silver spiders and woven by witches adding spells to the weft as they went. This was coarse, wrinkled cloth, only called white out of courtesy. And the eye holes! Crudely hacked into the cloth, two gaping wounds, not the round wells of loss, fear, and despair through which Creak gazed at the world. Some being, he was now sure, had seen his beautiful shroud and stolen it, dropping this in its place.

Creak felt outraged. He must find the thief and punish him!

But where to begin? Now that Creak concentrated, he perceived that both sides of the street were filled with mortals. As was proper for the sacred day, the short ones were clad in outfits to mimic the beings who crossed freely between the worlds of the seen and unseen: goblins, witches, vampires, even a blue and red outfit meant to represent a spider … but mortals had an odd perception of reality, after all. And many ghosts. Creak flitted after the first one. Its cloak was not his, but rather like the one he had found on the ground. Grumbling, he scooted back to the discarded shroud, looking for clues.

A child dressed as a pink fairy spotted his glowing eyes and screamed. Creak was gratified. Even without his mystic cloak he could still inspire awe and fear. Her father, clad in a warm jacket and the ubiquitous leg coverings mortals called “blue jeans,” shot over to see what had frightened his offspring. Creak stood his ground, but suddenly noticed a religious emblem about the man’s neck. In the possession of a true believer, amulets had the power to banish his kind to the unseen world for a hundred years. Without his shroud Creak was vulnerable. Quickly he snatched up the crude cotton robe and put it on. The man saw him embodied and stopped short.

“Oh, honey,” he said to the girl, “it’s just another kid dressed as a ghost.

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