You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,10

windowsill and the cold night air hit my skin. Pepper-Man crouched there, with me on his back, then he swung us both into the night.

* * *

A word on faeries, because I think you might be confused: they are not what you think they are. It always baffles me to see faeries in films and recent novels. Either they are happy elementals, strolling about in the woods looking after all living creatures like guardians of the earth, or they’re an alien race living among us since time immemorial, hiding behind some veil or deep underground; monsters, pagan gods, and stuff of nightmares. The latter is the more correct approach, of course. People used to be afraid of them; they stole milk and children, abducted brides and handsome men, tricked and cursed. Nothing to love. Fairytales were warnings, not an invitation.

Faeries are neither alien nor truly inhuman, though. They are just no longer alive.

Not that all dead people are faeries. I have come to believe that it’s all about the will to life, the strength of the Ki, the power of one’s essence. They are not the walking dead of movies, either, but spirits that have transformed and morphed into something new, a different kind of being. Faeries rarely remember ever being human; some barely look like people anymore. They live in the wild and feed off the land, attach themselves to life like leeches. They adopt traits and manners from their sources of life: trees, brooks, animals, us. They are a ragged band; some ugly, some strange. None of them are shimmering, unless they live near water, few of them have gossamer wings, unless they feed off dragonflies. I have never experienced them as particularly wise or kind. How clever can a farmer from the seventh century be, even after some hundred years living as a fox-hugging faerie? Still, they retain some humanity, a root. Desire, for one, a drive to reproduce—hence all those stories about faerie children and maidens lost. Hunger for riches is a human thing too, and vengeance is another. Those who live on humans are of course better at acting—and looking—like one.

Knowing what living humans want.

My Pepper-Man claims to have lived mainly on birch trees and ash before he found me. It was through his transformation that I realized how it all had to be. I will tell you more about that later, but for now, let’s continue further into the woods.

VI

That first time I slipped into the woods with Pepper-Man, I thought it all such a grand adventure. I felt proud to have escaped Mother’s punishment and her unfair accusations. I can’t recall being afraid at all, though the woods were dark and the destination unclear. I did have faith in my Pepper-Man, though. He walked beside me like a graveyard wraith, his dry hair whipping my face when the wind caught hold of it, his tattered clothes coiling and writhing around his skinny legs. I remember the full moon hanging in the sky, its pale light filtering through the branches. Even though I had known the trees in those woods my whole life, climbed them and picked their leaves, they looked like strangers to me now, draped in darkness and icy light. The path before us—one I ought to know like the back of my own hand—curled like a black snake through the underbrush. Even though I had no reason to think so, I sensed somewhere deep inside that it would lead me to places unknown.

And it did. Or it forked. And suddenly my path was no more.

The shift was subtle, like the beginning of a rainstorm with oncoming mist. My trees gave way to strange ones, taller and wider, older by far, thick roots curling at their trunks. Their branches brushed my head as we walked beneath them, felt like fingers with very long nails. The path beneath my feet shone dimly in the faint light, scattered with fist-sized leaves, it was like walking on glass or silver, or on a frozen stream. Toads appeared on the path, singing toad songs, loud and croaking. They scattered as we passed through, jumping in among the ferns. An owl hooted somewhere nearby, and I squeezed Pepper-Man’s hand when the bird suddenly appeared in front of me, large wings chasing the air. Its eyes shone when it looked at me, just for a second, before it flew away.

“Nothing in here will hurt you,” Pepper-Man said.

“Where am I, then?”

“Visiting with friends.”

“Are they like you?” I felt my