Demon Boy – Excerpt 1 — “Haunted House in the Sandbox” (Chapter 1)
Thelsenica stepped away from the car and hovered but didn’t help a five-year-old boy climb out of the back seat.
Azalea’s carnation crown turned fiery pink at discovering Thelsenica had brought her son to the park.
Jack Brantree looked like his mother in his little black suit with an orange cravat, shiny black dress shoes, and his pale-white skin hiding beneath Thelsenica’s umbrella. His large black eyes scanned the park, the details taking him captive. To Jack every crack in the sidewalk was a concrete canyon, each blade of grass a yellow-green brushstroke, and in his mother’s cold wind the leaves whispered around him like a thousand chimes.
The park’s sights and sounds stole Jack’s attention, until his mother’s cold wind carried a kind of magic he had never smelled before, like sunflowers dripping with honey. Jack’s eyes landed on the girl with a golden glow watching him from the sandbox.
Jack looked up at his mother. She silently looked down at him. With barely a nod she tilted her umbrella, its shadow slipping off Jack.
Jack bolted down the hill as if he too would leap into the sandbox, but he hesitated at its wooden border. He tugged his long sleeves over his bony wrists.
Azalea stared at Jack like he might be venomous.
Feya crossed her arms over her sandy lap.
“Come and play with me already,” Feya said.
Jack stumbled into the sandbox, the tip of his shiny shoe catching on the frame.
Feya dumped the sand from her dress, throwing handfuls to make a pile. The sand tried to take Jack captive, each pebble an ugly, gray snowflake. He crouched beside Feya, sprinkling sand onto her pile from his palm.
Thelsenica stepped up to the sandbox across from Azalea. Her t-strap high heels slightly sinking in the late summer grass.
“Mrs. Green,” Thelsenica said.
“Ms. Brantree,” Azalea replied. “Isn’t it a little early to be leaving the office?”
“Tis late in the season for a summer park visit.” Thelsenica lowered her glasses and gazed down at Azalea’s bare feet.
One glance from Thelsenica’s crypt-black eyes and Azalea felt as if frost grew over her skin. The wind thrashed her dress’s heart-shaped bows. Azalea clasped her waist, with fingernails painted in bright spring colors, and refused to shiver.
“How is the magic-stealing, I mean, magic insurance business going?” Azalea asked.
Thelsenica returned her glasses, holding her umbrella high.
“Perfectly, thank you,” she said, tasting the bitter tang of her lie. Thelsenica wasn’t about to tell Azalea Green that the magic recession was worse than ever for her clients, her people. But in the hollow cavity inside Thelsenica’s chest, which held no beating heart, she still felt a spasm of betrayal. She and Azalea had once worked tirelessly together to find more magic.
“How is Mr. Green?” Thelsenica asked.
“My human husband,” Azalea emphasized. “Is wonderful, thank you. We own the loveliest bakery in Brantree, in all New England.”
Thelsenica didn’t smell a lie in Azalea’s words, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t being tricked.
“Congratulations.”
“Taking our magic back one cupcake at a time.”
“Of course.”
Culver settled in an oak tree near the sandbox, in the middle of gray clouds and blue sunshine. On the border between summer and autumn, the human-looking mothers stood glaring at each other, unaware of how well their children played together in the sand at their feet.
“I want to build a haunted house,” Feya declared. She claimed their sand pile, stabbing it with the broken twig. It looked like a dead tree on a distant hilltop.
Jack didn’t look at the little girl’s face, but he listened to her. He placed his hand atop the sand pile, struggling to speak the single word spell his haunted library had taught him.
House, he thought, but he couldn’t drop the word onto the sand. Jack withdrew his hand, ducked his head, but the pile began to quiver. The sand pile tightened into a crooked square with doors and windows made of black pebbles, a triangle roof shingled with yellow willow leaves, and Feya’s twig for a chimney.
“You’ve got magic!” cried Feya. Jack dared to look at the little girl’s face. Her beautiful golden eyes glistened.
Feya jabbed her finger at the twig. “Come on little chimney, smoke, SMOKE!” A smile quivered on Jack’s lips. He gently guided Feya’s finger to the gnarled twig. His black eyes met her golden gaze and with their fingers touching they said the word together.
“Smoke.”
A birthday-candle plume of smoke, blooming from their chimney twig, laced itself around their touching fingers.
Feya giggled. Gold dust from her braided hair fell twinkling onto the sand. A giggle fell effortlessly from Jack’s twitching smile.
Their laughter rose with the tickling smoke above the glittering sandbox, echoing around the park, and bouncing off the round, tree-covered mountains. The empty swings started swaying against the wind. The oak tree where Culver perched shivered as if trying to shake the crow and every leaf from its branches. Culver clung to the branch with his claws. Every tree in the park quaked until their green leaves flipped over and changed colors. The trees turned red, their leaves like rubies burning in the sun.
The children’s laughter startled Thelsenica and Azalea out of their glaring contest. Azalea gaped at the burning red trees, her scalp tingling. Inside Thelsenica’s heartless cavity, she too sensed something very powerful was happening. Strong magic smelling like bonfire smoke and apple honey rose from the sandbox.
Thelsenica drank in the sight of Jack laughing with another child, but her dark gaze shifted to the little girl, giggling and gritty with sand. Like the highest, brightest apple in a tree, the little girl was full of magic.
Thelsenica pointed at Feya. “Is she yours?”
“Of course she is,” Azalea hissed. “Unlike you, Thelsenica Brantree, I would never steal a child for their magic.”
Demon Boy – Excerpt 2 — “Fly to Her” (Chapter 3)
“The only way to stop a magic-stealer is with the truth. Remember, Jack, there is magic inside you, just as powerful as the magic in books.”
The bubble popped, snuffing his mother’s voice from Maple Street.
It was October, the moon was waxing, and Jack was full of words he couldn’t speak. Maybe he didn’t have enough magic right now to grow wings, or be the son Thelsenica and the Autumn Demons needed to find more magic; but Jack felt in his empty palm that he could do something for the fairy girl. If he could speak the spell maybe his magic would be released.
Jack squeezed his eyes shut. He ran through a speech maze, the walls crackling with fireplace flames. The October moon and the girl’s pink boots guided him.
“Fly to her,” Jack whispered.
The dandelion below his palm trembled. One by one its seeds lifted off. A ribbon of tiny umbrellas flew in a single, winding line, following the leader. The seedlings floated over the mowed lawns to the wild grasses and uplifted tree roots in the fairy girl’s yard.
Jack held his breath, twisted his wrist, and let out a silent whoop of triumph. The dandelion seeds listened to his hand and twirled around the fairy girl, orbiting her.
Look up, Jack thought, though he knew that even spoken words wouldn’t work on her. It took a long time and a lot of practice to know which words made people respond. The words in his mind were a wish, not a spell.
The girl didn’t look up or move. Her wrists twisted around the ropes like chains.
Sweat trickled between Jack’s shoulder blades, the warm yet absent sun baking his black denim jacket. The dandelion seeds were beginning to be tugged more by the wind than by his power. If Jack had more magic, if he was older and his wings would grow, he would have better control.
She looked up.
In stillness she watched the fluffy seedlings twirling around her. She slowly stood, the wooden swing bumping against her. With her eyes towards the sky, she stepped from beneath the shade of the maple trees, turning in place with the spinning fluffs. Her face didn’t melt for Jack like human faces did. Her face was a dream, glowing like the Harvest Moon. Seeing her smile gave Jack so much magic.
She laughed, Jack curled his fingers, and every dandelion in the sunny field exploded. A blizzard of floating seedlings encircled her. She raised her arms and twirled, the center of a summer snow globe.
The seedling storm kept churning, but she stopped with her back to the street.
Jack, hanging onto the spell like the reins of a wild horse, sprinted through a speech maze to say hello and tell her his name. He had pedaled down every street and trail in Brantree, had fought against the magical barrier for years, to tell her his name and learn hers.
The girl whipped her head around, her golden, kaleidoscope eyes blazing at Jack. The little white scar on her temple and her death stare threw his bike backward into the sprinkler.
Inside the sprinkler shower Jack grabbed his handbrakes, his tires screeching to a stop. The dandelion seeds misunderstood and dumped onto the fairy girl like ripped feather pillows. She gagged, scraping her eyes and tongue, but the seedlings kept swarming her.
Jack threw himself forward, dripping and gaping on the sidewalk. The magical barrier kept him from running to her. He tried to make the spell stop, but he could only grip his handlebars so he wouldn’t snap his fingers.
She blindly drew with her hand a time enchantment in the air. With golden light trailing from her finger, she drew the face and hands of a clock then flicked it into ticking backward.
“Stop!” She yelled.
Jack smelled honey-butter magic. The circumference of the golden clock stretched into a circle around her. The dandelion snowstorm stopped, the seedlings floating like dust in the air. Her enchantment made time hesitate.
Jack let out his held breath, and his spell went with it. The fluffs dropped from the air like gravel and the girl’s fiery glare found Jack again. Without breaking her gaze, she brushed the fluff from her shoulders. One dandelion seed clung to her elbow like a grace note. Jack thought the seedlings caught in her hair looked like jewels. She put her hands to her hips and the full force of her scowl hit him like a desert wind.
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Meleece Orme: Fantasy with wonder, grit, and heart. 