“I don’t know.” A dragonfly began buzzing around my head, and I swatted it away.
“That couldn’t have been her,” Matilda said.
“It was her, I’m sure.”
“That was an old woman.”
“It was her.”
I reached to the ground and picked up the cloak. “This is Ma’s cloak. See this tear?” I pushed my finger through a small hole in the right sleeve. “She told me she caught it on the cellar door about a month ago.”
Tears began to well in Matilda’s eyes. “I don’t want Nanna Ellen to die.”
“I don’t think—” The dragonfly returned and flew directly into my eye. I slapped the air but missed. When a second flew from the woods at our left and darted between us, I ducked out of the way, my hand covering my injured eye. I turned to find Matilda fighting off three more.
Across the bog came a buzzing noise. Faint, but quickly growing in intensity. I peered into the haze at the far end and didn’t spot anything at first; then the white mist parted, and a black cloud came bellowing out from the center. The hum grew louder as it approached.
“What is that sound?” Matilda asked, slapping at the dragonflies circling her head. Two more joined the original three, and four others darted past me on the left. One landed in her hair, wings flapping incessantly as they became entangled. She cried out in disgust and tried to pull the insect free.
My eyes fixed on the black swarm drifting over the bog. Hundreds more, possibly thousands. I snatched the dragonfly from Matilda’s hair and thrust it to the ground, grinding it into the dirt with the sole of my shoe, before I pulled her from the water’s edge. “Come on, we need to go—”
As we darted back into the woods with the swarm at our backs, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye that haunts me to this day. A hand reached up from the bog, snatched a dragonfly from the air, and returned to the water.
* * *
? ? ?
I SAT UP IN BED. I was somehow back in my bed, the room’s dark marred only by a sliver of moonlight. I couldn’t recall returning home; the memory of the dragonflies was still fresh in my mind. I could still smell the bog, the musky scent of the peat-filled water.
I crawled out of bed and went to the window.
I was wearing my nightclothes yet had no recollection of changing into them.
Staring out into the night, my eyes found the tower of Artane Castle and the forest beyond. I tried to peer past the forest to the bog on the other side, but the distance proved to be, even for me, far too great.
Had I dreamed it?
* * *
? ? ?
MY ARM began to itch.
It was then that I spotted my shoes in the far corner beside the dressing table, caked with mud, glistening in the dim light. I had just started towards them when her voice scraped against the silence.
“You should not leave your room, Bram, not at night. Bad things happen to little boys who wander the forest in the dark.”
I spun around, expecting to find Nanna Ellen standing behind me, but all I found was my closed door and the twisted sheets of my bed.
“The forest is full of wolves. They’d tear the flesh from your bones. They’d dig their muzzles into your belly until their hungry tongues found your heart and liver, then they’d gobble them with a smack of their lips. At last, they’d suck your eyes right out of the sockets. Have you ever seen a vulture do such a thing? It’s an amazing thing to witness. Just a quick little pluck, and there is nothing left behind but a gaping black hole.”
* * *
? ? ?
NANNA ELLEN GIGGLED, a childish little laugh reminiscent of Matilda playing hide-and-seek, in the moments before I discover her beneath the bed. She always hid beneath the bed.