They were almost to the end of Main Street – Cally could see the meadow gate and the lamp lights of Vale House’s pineapple gate. A cool breeze rattled through the branches above them, sending little clouds scudding past the moon.

“Are you sure you can talk to me?” she asked. “Won’t Bree have a fit if you do?”

“Bree can get over herself.” He threw a laughing glance back toward the news store, it’s glowing front window still just visible beyond the trees. Then he grew serious and looked back at Cally. “No, it’s just that, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you lose the heart to lie.” He slipped an arm around her and led her off the sidewalk to the little wooden gate leading into the back garden of Vale House.

The gazebo glowed white on the lawn in the intermittent moonlight overhead. At the end of the property, lights in the windows of Katarina and Ignacio’s cottage showed the silhouettes of the couple passing back and forth in their little kitchen; Cally could hear them talking softly to one another. The smell of good food – still not tacos – wafted from the open windows. It was all the perfect picture of an idyllic summer evening, but Cally was seeing everything through new eyes, and only knew enough to know she had no idea what she was really looking at.

Ben stepped up the three wooden steps into the little gazebo and sat on one of the white painted benches, leaving room for Cally to join him. She chose the bench opposite him, instead, and sat down, watching him, waiting for him to make good on his promise to talk.

He sighed and gazed upward at the jasmine vines weaving their way through the latticework, as if he thought they might spell out the words for him to begin. Finally he said, “This is a special place.”

She looked around at the tidy garden and grounds. “Yes,” she agreed provisionally.

“No, I mean.” He gestured toward the house, not at Vale House itself, but up and over it, and to the north and south as well. “Woodley is a gateway, you see. It guards... things. A lot of secrets. Places that are vulnerable. Places and things that the rest of the world needs. And they need protecting, you see. From the outside world. Vale House is the heart of it, and the town is the gateway and if they go...” He spread his hands and shook his head. “I’m trying to find words.”

She could see that he was. “I know about the ghosts,” she offered.

“They aren’t all ghosts.”

“So I’ve been told.”

He smiled at her when she said this, and something in the way his eyes crinkled at the corners made her think he might have been content to just sit there and look at her. But he had promised to talk, and he continued to do so. “They aren’t all ghosts. They are...” He looked toward the sky, gesturing broadly with one hand. “Oh, all kinds of things. Everything! And.” Words failed him again.

Cally looked up at his face until he stopped looking at the sky and looked back at her. When he did, she moved across to sit on the bench beside him, still holding his gaze, and said, “And you, Ben Dawes. What are you? And don’t you dare tell me it’s complicated.”

He looked out into the darkness, into the cool wind coming from the west end of town, and as the moon came out from behind a cloud she could see resolution growing in his expression. “I am human,” he said at last. As if to demonstrate, he took her hand and uncurled her fingers, pressing them to his chest so she could feel his heart beating. “I am human,” he said again into the darkness, as if he were daring anyone to argue with him about it. She didn’t understand why tears seemed to be leaking between her eyelids as he started to tell her his story.

J

“Our father...Bree’s father, and mine...he had a wife. Well, of course he did. That’s, well, she... She was not human. She was from right over there. In the forest.” He tilted his head toward the meadow gate, but as far as Cally knew, one of the things that did not exist in that direction was a forest. “She stayed as long as she could. But it wasn’t her world. She couldn’t stay.”

“She was a fairy.” Cally remembered that was how these sorts of stories always went.

“Something like that.” He took several deep breaths. “She left when Bree and I were little. Well, I wasn’t so little anymore. She wanted to take us with her but my father refused. I remember a huge argument. They had to take it to arbitration. Not by human lawyers, you see, but by the ruling council in her world. A bargain was struck. She could take only one of us, and we would be allowed to stay here until we were old enough to decide for ourselves which one would go. I don’t remember most of this very clearly. I just remember she told us she would be back, then she left.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Cally.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze and released it. “It was a long time ago,” he said, shaking his head. “Anyway that’s not all of it. I don’t have much time tonight, but I feel like I need to tell you all of it. I’m afraid if I don’t tell you now, I might never get another chance.”

Cally nodded, and he continued. “Bree took it really hard. I don’t remember how I took it. Maybe I don’t want to. But Dad took it hardest of all. He had known what she was when he married her, but he thought he could make it work. He thought his love was strong enough to make her stay. But in the end, it turned out to be strong enough to make him go.

“He waited until we were older, and then told me to take care of Bree, and went to find his lost love. I only remember being very angry, but Bree was devastated. And that made me even angrier. I set to work to learn all about this town. This Vale. Did you know Woodley used to be called Ghoston Bhaille? The Home of Spirits...

“One night, once I was sure I had figured out all the secrets and tricks and roads, I took the Daimler and set off to find my father. I’m not sure what I hoped to get out of it. I guess I needed to tell him how I felt. I wanted to make him sorry for what he’d done to Bree. I found him, too. And I also found my mother. She was... terrible. I don’t mean bad. I mean great and bright and terrifying and beautiful. She had gone back to being what she had been before, before she had taken this whim to experiment with being human, with having children.”

“That night you drove us to Blackthorn,” Cally interrupted, as she had suddenly realized something. “It wasn’t really Blackthorn, was it? It was...” Now she was the one fumbling for words. “It was another place...”

He stopped looking at the sky and faced her, looking directly into her eyes. “The roads are bent, around here,” he said. “Tangled. They go to... many places. Many places. If you learn the trick of them, you can find things most people will never know exist.” He looked away through the gate that opened onto Main Street, where leaves tumbled in the wind and made skittering noises along the sidewalk, then he sighed and shook his head, returning his gaze to her. “I only took you around a couple of the turns. Bree is right: it was reckless of me. But you... I’ve been feeling reckless ever since you arrived. I felt like you were meant to see these things. I still believe that. Everyone who finds the exit, who finds Woodley, is meant to be here, for one reason or another.”

Cally laughed under her breath. “Even Joan?”

“Even Joan Cromwell,” Ben said, not laughing. “Even Jud Thornton. Not all the reasons are good ones.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, and the warmth of them seemed to shield her entire body from the growing chill of the breeze. Then, nodding, he continued to speak gravely. “It can be a perilous world for ordinary people. They have different rules there, in my mother’s country. Different values. They don’t understand how we see the world, any more than we understand how they see it.”

Cally thought about this for a moment. Finally she said, “What I want to know right now is how you see it.”

He closed his eyes, leaning back with his face turned upward. “It’s beautiful,” he said. The cooling breeze was turning into strong gusts through the garden and, as Cally shivered, at least part of her mind pointed out to her how much warmer it would be if she should shrink the rest of the way into his arms. She stayed still and watched his face carefully as he repeated, “It’s beautiful. I mean, their world is beautiful, yes, but. This world, this world is so much more messy, dusty, and sticky, and clunky, and beautiful. I love this world.”

Then he did pull her into his arms. He tucked her head under his chin as he continued telling his story, and she found she had no wish to resist.

“My mother told me that since I had seen her world, I was the one who would have to join her there. She reminded me of the bargain she had struck with my father, and I reminded her that no bargain she had struck with any other person had any power over me, as I was my own person, with my own free will. I was a teenager, remember.” He chuckled, and to Cally it felt like a deep rumbling in his chest. “I think she was impressed by this. She said I got my attitude from her. And in the end I did prevail in striking my own bargain, or at least an altered version of the original one. I would be allowed to come back here, to take care of Bree. But I would have to spend part of every day in my mother’s court until Bree was able to take care of herself, at which time I was to come and join my mother’s people permanently. I agreed, having privately made up my mind that day would never come, not as long as Bree lived, anyway.”

He smoothed a hand over her hair and sat back so he could look at her again. “So there you are. I came home. I thought I’d been gone only a few days, a week, at most. But in the meantime, Bree had married her high-school sweetheart, endured years of abuse, and dumped him. Some wonder where she dumped him, as he was never seen again. But that’s another story. Anyway, years had passed, and it took me a long time to get back into Bree’s good graces, insofar as anyone can, now. So I spend my days helping her in the family store, and at night I journey to visit my... other family. But while I am there, no time passes for me.”

“And that’s why you appear to be only half your age,” Cally suddenly understood.

“Only half?” He gave her a wry smile. “Are you trying to flatter me?”

“No, well, I mean...” She squinted and touched the silver streaks along the side of his beard, trying to make calculations in her head, something at which she had never been any good.

He shook himself, as if waking from a dream. Standing, he looked at what stars were visible, between the flying clouds, the way most people would look at a clock. “I have to go. But I will be back in the morning. Do you believe me?”

“I believe you.” Cally stood as well. “And it means the world to me that you would tell me all this. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, laughing. “You may yet find yourself agreeing with Bree.”

She shrugged and smiled at him, and he embraced her quickly once more before he turned and went down the gazebo steps. Cally shivered as the chill returned, watching him slip through the little white gate back out to the street, turning east toward Gardens Road. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and went through the shade garden back to Vale House.