Seeing Ghosts, by Stephen Dewey

Silly little king of kingdom,
What does your crown bring?
Can you find girls fairer?
Can you hear more sparrows sing?

Silly little king of castle,
Seated on your throne.
Does it change the star shine?
High and mighty and alone.

Silly little monarch coward,
Hidden past your moat.
Cities burn around you,
But will your kingdom float?

Silly little tyrant child,
Throne and robes apart,
Nothing’s changed about you,
Save my dagger in your heart.

Stock photography from http://www.freestockphotos.biz

They say you ought not play in graveyards, lest you wake the sleeping dead. But Dmitri wasn’t afraid. Little fearless Dmitri. Thin as willow branches, and just as drooping–his hands as often running through the soil as his feet. If Dmitri knew one thing from his eleven eternal winters, and ten celerity summers, it was that even fear itself wasn’t that much worth getting worked up over. And well, they say you ought not do many things, all of which Dmitri was rather fond of.

They say you ought not bring spiders you’ve found creeping about your attic’s twelve and a half inch crawlspace in for show and tell, for it frightens the young madams present. But Dmitri liked the feel of them when they crawled, so he hid them away in his lunch pail for company. They also say you ought to shut your lunch pail tight when a spider is inside, but that was simply an… accident.

They say you ought not crack your fingers and neck, lest your bones suffer some catastrophe, not to even mention the impoliteness of the sound–like twigs under winter boots, or toothpicks bent just beyond capacity. It offends, you see. But Dmitri liked the sound, and the sensation, and the wide eyes his schoolmates would offer when the flat of his fingernail just so barely graced the back of his palm. Double-jointed they say. Little fearless double-jointed Dmitri.

And they say you ought not bring in sand from the playground, let alone place it helpfully in the meals of your fellow students. But again, here was an accident. For Dmitri liked the taste of it in his sandwich, and “shared” only because the scampering Billy Thatcher jostled his elbow whilst he was pouring.

So, on the way home from school one October Friday, when Dmitri had asked in his softly spoken way what the stone-laden hills beyond the wrought iron fence were for, and why there was a man in black standing on a distant hill waving to him–a man, worth noting, that his mother neither commented on, nor saw at all–and his mother replied to him in saying that he ought not play in graveyards, the young boy knew that it must be something truly inspiring, and well worth pursuing.

As the moonlight poured into Dmitri’s room that night, pooling on the floor like liquid silver staining the turquoise carpet, and his parents had gone hence to some dreamscape, the young boy laid awake. He waited as long as he could, before caution gave inevitable way to impatience and excitement, and soon enough his bare feet kissed the night air as he rolled from beneath the covers and down to the floor. Dmitri waded through the silver pool, and donned a heavy jacket worthy of adventuring. The moon was high, and it was time to play.

—

The moon hung in the sky like an ornament, full and pocked with glittered craters arranged in a wizened countenance. Dmitri leapt from tombstone to tombstone. The gentle curves of his calloused barefooted flight seemed a natural fit to the low stones as he vaulted between them, the chilled granite of reverence and remembrance offering a cool touch to his skin. The distant pinpricks of ivory starshine watched his youthful wandering. And that’s when the dead man called out.

“You there,” the man called. “Boy,” he shouted. And Dmitri paused in response. The man was tall as smokestacks and just as black in his spidersilk coat. He shambled down the hill from where Dmitri had spied him earlier, as the boy took a curious seat atop a rather broad marble stone. He looked at the man, all gaunt and lank, his feet a consistent three inches from the top of every grass blade, with the smell of bluebells and mushroom about him. Dmitri smiled, for he’d never met a ghost before, and it was all rather exciting. “I don’t suppose you have the time?”

“The time?” Dmitri inquired in his perfect Bristol whisper. “It’s nighttime.”

The ghost’s eyes went rather large. “Then we are late! Very late! Come, come!” He shouted, before taking off from the grave at a rather fast pace, running along the air (three inches above the grass blades), in the direction of a crypt on the far side of the graveyard. Dmitri followed of course, for there was music. He could hear it now. Dmitri liked music. Sometimes, it hurt his ears, but he liked the way it felt–not just the way it sounded. And dancing. Dmitri loved dancing.

As the ghost vanished through the door, Dmitri wasn’t far behind. Stone in hand took its toll on the old brass padlock, and a swift kick left the entryway open. The young boy dove through the doorway and into the darkness as if the rest of the world had been on fire. And it may as well have been. For that’s when the world changed.

—

There was dancing, much dancing. Endless lines in congregation–the celebrating dead. They gathered for him, and Dmitri was lost in it. Every ghost got their turn to dance with the changeling child, who bent and spun and filled the room with pulsing colors and balls of light. Every ghost got their chance to kiss the dreaming boy, whose whispers set the rocks to shining, and music pulled from ground below and stars above and hills beyond. Every ghost got their moment, to speak with the wild wanderer, and call him friend, and give him name, and have his words dress every one in gowns and tails and diamond memories. The soil gave way to ivory ballroom, and the slow music’s heartbeat which swayed the world’s whims echoed in the October night. And Dmitri danced as the moon ceased its journey, and the stars took to fire, and the endless ethereal dances waxed and waned.

And then the Faeries came, of courts and kiths and capabilities unknown. They watched the dancing boy, but could not see his companions. Only a little Faerie child bowing to shadows and taking the hand of darkness and silence. But he could see them, little Dmitri. And he danced their dances, and spun to the songs that skated over the hillscapes and burst through the worlds, until every spirit raised its intangible feet and set them down in starlit dances.

When, at last, moon’s horizon quest began once more, and night continued its unyielding crawl across the countryside, the ghosts, in line, gave words of strength and prophecy–whispered in the child’s ear. Each phrase a dream which kissed the air and was forgotten to the deep of Dmitri’s mind. The ghosts left then, to their stones and hilltops, and the Faeries walked to the child and spoke.

They spoke their names, and talked of courts and the way of things. They spoke of dreams and truth and ancient ties. One, cloaked in silver and coral shells and dreams of the sea, heard Dmitri’s whispers, and cast the boy down. But Dmitri didn’t care, for he walked close to this seaside sidhe and, unbidden by any, whispered words of dark prophecy which filled the Faerie’s boastful countenance with flushing cheeks and angry eyes. So away he stormed, followed by more, until every last of the Fair Folk vanished their ways into the night.

But everyone remembers the bit of prophecy spoken in poem, with smiling naivety, that October evening. A bit of dark fortunetell that none, and certainly not the Duke, would ever forget. And as the Faerie bands and long-dead dancers settled away to their holds and homes that night, Gwyllion the Ghost danced among the gravestones anyways. And as he did, the changeling boy pondered what other things he ought never do, and when he may have the chance to do them ever so brilliantly once again.