The Curious Case of the Wassailing Wendigo (A Supernatural Legacies Short Story)

Christmas smacked my eyeballs the moment I walked into Director Tan’s office. Lights shimmered everywhere. Little figurines of cats dressed as elves, carrying gifts and making toys, lined the office shelves. A string of green tinsel garland wrapped around her desk. More lights twisted with the garland and shimmering red and green glass bulbs hung everywhere. Even the director’s monitor sported a Santa hat. The pièce de résistance of holiday décor rested in a new picture of Tan’s three cats: a Scottish Fold named Bonnie Prince Charlie, a Himalayan named Everest, and a British Shorthair named Lady Di wore elf costumes complete with hats and booties.  

 

My stepsister Roxy nudged my elbow and nodded at the new picture. Roxy sometimes shifted into a wolf and wasn’t fond of cats the way I was, but Tan’s obsession with her pets tickled her.  

 

When we took our seats to receive our next assignment, Tan turned from her monitor to face us. The corners of her mouth curved downward in a grimace that looked uncannily similar to the grimace of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The cat seemed to appear disappointed, as if he truly was the reincarnation of the Stuart prince who failed to regain the British throne for the Stuarts, and it still peeved him. 

 

Or perhaps, the poor cat didn’t like that Tan had placed him in yet another cutesy outfit along with his feline siblings. I doubted it. The Director got her cats into costumes regularly. How she did it was beyond me. My late cat P.C. wouldn’t have tolerated costumes.

 

Despite her grimace, Tan’s eyes twinkled. 

 

Oh boy. We were about to get a doozy of a case. Still, I sat straight and waited with respectful anticipation of the ludicrous work that I did. Wrangling supernaturals was like babysitting shifter pups, fun but exhausting.  They were also dangerous, but not the high-stakes cases I longed for. I wanted to do real investigative work. Not lecture trolls for getting wasted off Tank, or some other high potency alcohol made for supes, and peeing from their bridges onto traffic. Troll pee happened to be as slippery as an oil slick and had caused accidents. Still, despite the danger, it felt like babysitting.

 

“I.S.E.A. has received multiple reports of a wassailing wendigo. I need you, Agents Diaz and Crowfoot, to investigate if we really have one and detain it in Faerie.”

 

A chill danced across my shoulders, yet the word wassailing dulled any genuine fear. I was also confused. Wendigos, from what I knew, were dangerous and cannibalistic.  

 

“Only reports, no murders?” I asked. 

 

“No murders that we know of.” 

 

I glanced at Roxy. Her neon blue eyebrow jacked high, so high I thought it would reach her matching hairline. She met my gaze, and all but rolled her eyes. We were so sick of getting the nonsense cases. If it were a real wendigo, Tan wouldn’t put two rookies on the case. I’d never run into one, but they were extremely dangerous and hard for most supernaturals to kill. This wasn’t the case I’d hoped to get, but this was probably some figment of mundane imaginations. I despised wild-goose chases more than troll pranks.

 

“Am I wrong to assume it’s not an actual wendigo?”

 

Catching my reflection in the polished glass of one of Tan’s cat pictures, I cringed. My eyes looked ridiculously big and innocent…Gullible…Sheltered. I schooled my face to look serious, professional, and ready to take on an actual case.

 

“I would not assume so,” Tan’s Boston accent limned her hesitant tone. “Every incident reported an abnormally tall creature with a skull head and horse or deer-like features. Instead of murdering and cannibalizing mundanes, the creature is singing to its—and I use this word lightly—victims.”

 

“Okay. No murders, but has the Wendigo harmed anyone?” Even a scratch from a supernatural creature could have ill bio-magical effects. Not that I wanted anyone to be hurt, but that would put us in the serious caseload. 

 

“No injuries reported. The creature finishes its song and then wants to enter people’s homes. It continues to sing as if it’s bartering its way in. Since the wendigo seems to need permission, and eventually gives up. We’re unsure if it wants sustenance or shelter.”

 

Roxy licked her lips and sat forward. “Let me get this straight. It has killed no one. It just wants to carol and come inside for hot cocoa and cookies?”

 

Director Tan let out a long exhale. “That seems to be the case. No one has been harmed, but the alleged wendigo—we have no evidence other than witness testimony it is one—has appeared at several homes all over Seattle and the Eastside.”

 

“Did anybody think to record the so-called wassailing wendigo?” Roxy asked.

 

“I wish.” Director Tan pulled a face. “That would make it easier to decide whether there is a real threat.” 

 

This tidbit of information piqued my curiosity. 

 

It must have intrigued Roxy as well because she remarked, “That’s odd not to have any footage when everyone has a phone or surveillance camera on their house.”

 

“Not so odd,” Tan disagreed. “Not all supernaturals appear on camera. Princess and many cryptids can’t be recorded accurately.”

 

Princess, a Bigfoot, was married to Roxy’s aunt Aurora. She appeared fine in family photos in her human glamour but didn’t photograph well in her true form.  

 

“Some have the ability to make electronics malfunction,” I added, not stating that my stepfather and other fae could control people’s minds to make them think they saw nothing on camera or even go as far as to make them erase all evidence of his appearance. There existed a myriad of supernatural secrets which I would never share with the agency, but I would keep in mind during the investigation. 

 

Judging by the sharp look Roxy cut in my direction so preternaturally fast our mundane boss wouldn’t notice it, she didn’t like that I’d shared even that much. Sometimes I wondered if Roxy had only become an I.S.E.A. agent to watch over me.

 

I stuck out my tongue too fast for Director Tan to notice as well. 

 

My stepsister wasn’t the boss of me, and she’d have to accept that providing necessary information wasn’t betraying the supernatural community. That, and despite having a college education, she really wasn’t employable in the civilian sector. Roxy tended to growl when someone pissed her off, and there wasn’t even a tiny bit of her growl that could be mistaken as coming from a human.

 

***

We soon took our leave of Director Tan and headed out to interview the mundanes who reported encountering the wendigo. We interviewed the witnesses, took their testimony, which was eerily the same, but none had any sort of recording to prove they had an encounter with anything at all. 

Roxy shifted to her wolf form, sniffing around the houses of the witnesses. I used my fae second sight to see the color of the magic. It was a murky yellow that I’d never seen before, but it was magic.  

Neither of us could identify the type of magic present, but the witnesses weren’t lying. Some sort of supernatural had visited their doorstep and had tried to compel them to let it in and feed it. The mundanes all had the same reaction—slam the door, lock it, and hide. That seemed to deter the creature from entering…for now. Usually when a supernatural being visited you, they had a reason. 

Between homes, we tossed around theories, but none of it would stick without encountering the creature ourselves.

Our last witness lived in the Magnolia neighborhood, in a four-bedroom house that sat just up the hill from The Village, a town within a city with shops and restaurants where the locals loved to hang out. The Village had small-town community vibes within the city of Seattle that I liked. The rhododendrons, juniper bushes, and trees were older, grown in like the residents. Christmas decorations covered some houses and lawns. Menorahs were in other windows. Signs of non-Abrahamic religions were present as well, but it was the holiday season. This was a neighborhood where you raised a family but got to stay in the city.  

 

“Tacos and churros from the food truck down in The Village after the interview?” I asked Roxy as I pulled up in front of a split-level house. 

 

“Hell yeah, Jada.” Roxy slid on her sunglasses. “I’ve been craving tacos de lengua.”

 

A woman in leggings and a hoodie walked a Labradoodle and Australian Shepherd as we exited the SUV. She eyed us warily. Everything in her body telegraphed wariness. “Are you two feds or something?”

 

We both wore I.S.E.A. issued black suits, white shirts, and black ties. The suits had protection spells and other wards against harm worked into the interior of the material, but to the mundane eye we looked incredibly overdressed for a Seattle summer morning. In sharp contrast to our formal clothes, I wore my curls dyed moss green in two French braids.

 

Roxy pointed to her blue hair, pulled up in a ponytail to reveal her shaved undercut. She had a lotus flower tattooed on the nape of her neck and wings seemingly tattooed on her back, but neither was visible now. “Do I look like a fed to you?”

 

The woman stood her ground. “That’s not an answer. Cops need to answer.”

 

Roxy and I exchanged a glance. Her expression telegraphed, “You handle her, or I will.” Technically, we were not affiliated with the U.S. government at all, but we collaborated with U.S. law enforcement. I cleared my throat and put on my best smile. “We’re International Supernatural Enforcement Agents affiliated with the U.N., not one country.”

“Not cops,” Roxy added. “We’re here to help your neighbors.” 

We showed the woman our identification badges. 

As the tension in her body eased, her dogs relaxed, too. “The people who live here are my friends, and I look out for my friends. I thought you were from…another agency that isn’t welcome here.” She looked over her shoulder as if someone were listening. “Anyway. Doesn’t matter. You’re those supernatural kids from the videos, all grown up. Glad to see you are looking out for us magicless. That monster rumor has everyone scared.” She reached down and gave her Aussie a reassuring pat. The dog didn’t seem troubled at all. “Not me. I think it’s some anti-supernatural group trying to give the magical a bad name.” 

 

With that, she continued her walk.

 

Not much later, we were invited inside the home of the first witness. He appeared to be in his late fifties, early sixties, with hair dyed that not quite natural brown of someone covering grays. Maurice Griffiths was tall and gangly and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He brought us to a sitting room with furniture that probably had been purchased back in the nineties, before Roxy and I were born. It was in good condition. The word antiseptic came to mind. Everything seemed to have its place. The floors shone. The art was tasteful. Since every piece except one featured a woman, I’d guess that he really loved the ladies. I took it all in, looking for perhaps a unifying cultural tie to the wendigo visit. While the aesthetic was pleasing, the women were of different backgrounds. 

 

Sitting around a large round coffee table, we let him talk for about fifteen minutes about things that didn’t matter to the investigation. He explained he’d bought the home before the techies flocked to Seattle, and therefore, got it at a good but expensive for then price. He talked about his garden, his car, his errands he had yet to do that day. 

 

Roxy gripped her phone tightly. Normally, we didn’t have our phones out in the field unless necessary, but she had less patience than I did for chatting with strangers. In her world, if you weren’t pack or at least a supe, she wanted nothing to do with you. 

 

I wanted him to get to the point or at least stop speaking long enough that we could ask pertinent questions. However, as part of our training, it was important to let witnesses feel comfortable and talk for a bit before we took the reins of the conversation. If a witness was too nervous, they might forget a crucial detail.

 

“You see, I hadn’t checked my monitor when the doorbell rang because the landscaper had been laying fresh mulch around my roses.” He gestured to the door with a veiny hand. “Normally, I wouldn’t have answered without checking, especially after dark.”

 

Roxy’s bored expression all but screamed she’d rather be anywhere than here, listening to his story. In contrast, I kept my expression open and nodded as if it was completely reasonable not to want to answer your door in a nice neighborhood to encourage him. 

 

“I had the fright of my life. The creature stood as least as tall as a full-grown mare, had a skeletal head, glassy red eyes, and a white nebulous body. As if the thing was under a sheet or a cloud.” He touched his glasses. “I couldn’t see too clearly. Forgot to put these on.”

 

Roxy leaned forward. “Did the entity speak or make any sounds to indicate it might be a person in costume?”

 

The witness blinked and then regarded Roxy. He stiffened. “Absolutely not. I would know a prank. This creature made a sound that no person could make. It was singing yet not singing at all. It was as if it could vocally express more than one note at the same time—I’d be impressed if I weren’t frightened by its appearance.”

 

“How long did it sing?” I asked Maurice.

 

“Until the song was done. Then, the strangest thing happened. I felt compelled to let it in and feed it.” He puffed his chest a bit, lifted his chin, and his nostrils flared with his inhale. “I think I was under some sort of trance the whole time. Luckily, my self-preservation instincts were stronger than that monster’s magic.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

A muscle in his cheek feathered. “I slammed the door shut and called the hotline.”

 

Since its inception, the International Supernatural Enforcement Agency had been a secret organization founded by the U.N. However, after supernaturals revealed themselves as real, the agency made quick moves to establish itself as a branch of the U.N. like the Peacekeepers and set up a website and hotline. I felt sorry for the call center folks. The number of false reports those agents had to sift through alone was staggering, let alone determine how to handle the genuine cases. I had great empathy for them because, as rookies, Roxy and I were only a step above them in the filtering system. 

 

“Earlier, you had said you had a surveillance camera on your property. Do you have a recording of the incident?” Roxy asked, surprising me.

It shouldn’t have. Sometimes she looked like she was tuning out but listened to every word. 

 

The witness visibly recoiled. Maurice’s dark eyes narrowed suspiciously behind his glasses. “Do I have to provide the recording?”

 

Roxy leaned forward, an intense expression hardening her features. The look was not just a shifter alpha intimidation tactic but laced with magic. It said, obey or else. If she combined that look, which already had the witness squirming in his seat, with her angelic gift of persuasion in her voice, he’d do anything she wanted.

 

The apple of the witness’s throat bobbed with his audible gulp. 

 

“No,” I interjected, before Roxy could terrify him further. “But it would help with the investigation. We need to determine what sort of supernatural it was in order to track it down.”

 

My stepsister leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. She’d relented in mixed company, but I’d hear about interfering later, no doubt.

 

Gaze slanting uneasily at her and then fixing upon me, the witness waved his hand dismissively. “No need. I looked it up. The description I entered came up as a wendigo.”

 

“There’s no way it was a wendigo.” A growl rumbled under Roxy’s words—not a sound any human could make. “They don’t need an invitation to enter.”

 She shrugged.

“Unless, it was not that hungry. So it toyed with you a bit and decided it would come back to eat you later.”

 

The witness paled. His lip quivered as his eyes darted between us, looking for some sort of solace and finding none.

 

I had an academic knowledge of wendigos from my training, but Roxy had had access to stories through her indigenous grandmother. The coastal Salish-speaking peoples didn’t believe in wendigos like the Algonquins, but her grandmother was a wolf shifter. Roxy’s late grandma had a vast network of connections to other indigenous supernaturals, so Roxy knew a lot more than any I.S.E.A. database about supes of the Americas.    

 

“So, we’ll need the footage to positively identify whether it was a wendigo or a harmless supernatural.” I smiled sweetly. “For your protection.”

 

“What’s your email? I—I’ll send you a file.”

 

“Sure.”

 

I really wanted to know what was on the footage that he wanted to hide, but I had no legal right to it. That was the weird thing about being an I.S.E.A. agent. We had no jurisdiction over mundanes if they didn’t harm supernaturals. 

 

 

***

 

I dipped my taco in the birria consume and took a bite. The combination of corn tortilla, beef, spicy broth, and cheese was greasy perfection. 

 

Finished because she ate with the speed of a shapeshifter, Roxy licked her fingers.

“Damn. That beef tongue hit the spot.” 

 

My phone dinged—a notification that Maurice Griffiths had sent me an email with an attachment. 

 

“It’s from the witness. Can you open it for me?” I nodded at my messy fingers. 

 

Roxy wiped her hands and opened the phone with my passcode, then my email, and the file. Once it was playing, she set the phone on the dash so we could both watch. The camera caught a shadowy figure approaching the door. The creature had indeed appeared how Griffiths had described, but the angle of the camera made it hard to see the whole thing. Unfortunately, the audio on the recording only picked up the heavy breathing of the witness and the slam of the door. The video cut off as the creature disappeared into the night.

 

“Was it a wendigo?” I asked.

 

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one, but it did not match the descriptions my grandmother gave me or the I.S.E.A. database.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “The thing was creepy as heck though. Those eyes were dead but alive.” 

 

I murmured something in agreement and took a sip of my horchata, thinking about what it could be if not a wendigo. 

 

The conversation had died. Roxy looked at her phone, reviewing the interview notes. I let her have at whatever it was she was going over and moved on to dessert—freshly fried churros with a creamy center and hot fudge dip. They were so good I moaned with pleasure. 

 

“That’s what she said,” Roxy quipped without looking up. 

 

I chuckled, but not knowing if this entity was dangerous or not bothered me. Assuming it was a wendigo, it was so far from where the legend formed, and it didn’t seek vengeance on anyone. It simply sang in their heads, apparently. By the time I finished my churros, I was no closer to figuring out what the creature was. 

 

Roxy held up her phone, revealing her open notes app. “So, I looked at the times the Wassailing Wendigo hit each house. The guy we visited last was first.” She nodded in the general direction of the hill where his house was. “Should we stake out his place tonight to see if it comes back?”

 

I wiped my cinnamon and sugar-coated hands on a wet nap. “Yeah. I think that’s the only choice we have at this point, but we can return to the office first and do some digging to find a correlation between the witnesses.” 

 

“Going to shake a family tree or two?” 

 

 “Yup. I think they’re accidentally summoning the entity through a family tradition.” 

 

It was a shot in the dark. Most supernatural spawned from a myth of a region. Many of the witnesses could have Algonquin heritage, but my bet was this entity had something to do with an old belief that had been carried by someone from another culture. 

 

Back in the office, Roxy and I got to work on searching an I.S.E.A database that had access to census records. Our desks faced opposite walls, but we got to work, splitting the witnesses into two groups. We then pulled up the witnesses’ family records dating back to the immigration to the U.S. They didn’t have a common ancestor, but they all had a common ancestral region of origin.

 

Turning to face Roxy, I asked. “What myths come out of Wales?” 

 

“That’s what I’m seeing, too. South Wales specifically. The Welsh were Celts at one point, right?” She asked over her shoulder.  

 

“Not sure.” Most of Northern Europe were at one point Celtic or Germanic gods’ worshipers. Sometimes there was overlap, so I did a quick search on Wales history. “Yeah. They descended from the indigenous Britons, who were there before the Anglo-Saxons. Hmm… fun fact: Welsh means foreigner or stranger in Anglo-Saxon, but their language was a branch of Celtic called Cymraeg.”  

 

Roxy spun in her chair to face me. “Do you think the creature is a rare low fae?”

 

I bit my lip. She would not like what I was going to suggest next. “We could visit grandfather.”

 

She sighed heavily. “Let’s go visit grandpa, I guess.”

 

Moments later, I pulled on my fae light from deep in my core where it twined with my witch light and gods’ magic, letting the wild force flow to my hand. My fingertips glowed light green. With a motion like a karate chop, I sliced through the fabric of this reality, passed through the interstitial space between universes called the Null, and opened a door into the High King Oberon’s faerie. Actually, into his study, inside his private chambers within his castle.  

 

If any other planeswalker did this, including my stepfather Phyr, Oberon’s wards would instantly obliterate said fae. As the sole grandchild of the Hight King, I, however, had special dispensation. Not even my mother had this right.

 

Oberon sat in a chair by a fire. Branches and wreaths of holly decorate the mantle of the fireplace. Castle stones, wool, old tomes, wood smoke, and the verdant forests of the faerie just beyond the window filled my nostrils—a special mixture of aromas that I associated with both my beloved grandfather and a wild place that called me. Yet I knew not to stay too long. Faerie changed people with fae blood. 

 

Grandfather lifted his pink-haired, white-antlered head from the book he’d been reading. Bottle-green eyes the exact shade of my mother’s irises took me in as I entered, and then later Roxy after I gave her the go ahead to enter.

 

Upon seeing my grandfather’s inquisitive stare, my stomach knotted with guilt. I had not visited him as often as I had in high school and college. Academy had been rigorous; getting used to switching from academia to working full time had taken up so much of my mental energy. Time was meaningless in faerie…yet he missed me. I could see it in his eyes. Not many could. Oberon wasn’t very expressive.

 

“Danu has blessed me with good fortune. For the blood of my blood and elder of my kin is in good health.” My stepfather had taught me the greeting in Unseelie accompanied with a low curtsy.

Roxy made a sweeping bow as he’d taught her. She could not speak until Oberon spoke. I was direct kin. So, the formality was necessary. We were not in the Unseelie court, but I was no longer a child to be indulged…regardless of whether my grandfather didn’t see me as a full adult fae yet. Despite being in my late twenties, I was barely out of infancy for my grandfather’s people. I wanted him to treat me like an adult, though.

I needed respect, not indulgence.

 

Oberon smiled, baring his fangs. This was not a threat. Simply, this was how he looked when he was pleased. We would feel a threat as distinctly as an incoming storm. Everything in faerie, including the weather, was under my grandfather’s command.  

 

“Dearest granddaughter, and her lovely companion,” His gaze swept from me to Roxy. He gave her a small nod before returning his attention to me. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” 

 

The niceties were over. I explained everything I’d learned and showed him the video of the creature. 

 

Oberon chuckled. “Is it the winter solstice, or as the later ones called it, Christmas?”

 

“It is close,” I said, nodding. A little thrill that I was close bubbled up. 

 

Grandfather held out a silver-white hand. A leather-bound book left the case and landed gently. The pages spun until the book opened. 

 

Roxy and I stepped forward to see what it contained.

A picture of the creature we’d shown him appeared on the page. The picture was animated, and the monster danced and sang on a doorstep of a cottage. He shut the book with a snap and floated it back to the shelf. 

 “The Mari Lwyd must have found a Nowhere Door. This would be the time of year for one to go to your world, seeking its worshippers.”

Nowhere doors connected faeries to Earth. However, I hadn’t ever heard of any Mari Lwyd religions popping up. Maybe that would be a connecting factor between the witnesses? I tossed the idea. They’d know if they’d purposely summoned it.  

 

“Is a marry lewid literally a gray mare?” Roxy asked. 

 

“A mari lwyd is a being the mundanes worshiped as a god a long time ago. Harmless but insistent when it feels it is due a reward. They are not a low fae, but a god I’d long ago gave refuge to after what the angels did to many of us from other worlds.” 

 

Deep sadness dwelled in his beautiful, ageless features. Fae, and many other supernaturals had almost gone extinct because the angels had once wanted only their god to be worshiped.

 

Roxy looked at her feet. Her grandfather had led the wars and her father had fought in them.

 

“What reward?” 

 

The question had a two-fold purpose: to draw my grandfather out of any painful memories I might have brought up and to keep him on track. He could go deep into melancholy tales of the woes the post Fae-Angelic Wars had brought to the fae.

 

“They sing songs and play excellent games of wit. When it believes it has performed well, it wants confections or pastries. Whatever treats you associate with solstice, feed them to the Mari Lwyd and then show it the way home—I mean here. I doubt it can sustain itself long in your world.”  

 

Compassion and commiseration married in his sigh. 

 

“There simply aren’t enough people who believe in the Mari Lwyd as a god anymore.”

 

“What would draw the Mari Lwyd?” Roxy asked. “Would just having Welsh ancestry draw one?”

 

Oberon thought about it for a moment. “A Welsh voice singing a Celtic solstice song, or a carol would draw one.”

 

 

***

 

 

 

Maurice eyed us warily. “Yes. I played a CD of a Welsh vocalist who performed at Benaroya Hall last week.” His thick eyebrows furrowed together. “What does that have to do with the monster?”

 

We explained what we’d learned about the Mari Lwyd, leaving out the ancestry dive and the trip to faerie. One was an agency secret database. The other was my secret. I didn’t advertise I was the granddaughter of the king of the Unseelie fae any more than Roxy advertised she was the granddaughter of the archangel Gabriel.

 

“So, if I play the music, it will come back.” His face brightened. He lifted a finger. “What if I just don’t play it anymore?”

 

“The Mari Lwyd will be back until it receives its reward.” Not to mention that the poor thing really needed us to take it back to where it came from. I could tell that this man wouldn’t care if it ceased to exist as long as the Mari Lwyd didn’t bother him again.

 

Finally, he relented. We set out some treats my stepfather made in his bakery and waited. An hour of the music went by. 

 

“Did you sing along last time?” Roxy asked.

 

The witness nodded. “My grandmother sang some songs to me as a child. Never sang professionally though.”

 

Roxy scowled. “Sing.”

 

“Please,” I added. “Just so we can get this over with.”

 

Maurice stood, closed his eyes and sang. He might not have been a professional, but he possessed a beautiful tenor. His whole body and face transformed when he sang. It was a magic all of its own to witness someone use the words of their ancestors and mean them even if they no longer knew what the words meant. 

 

Three knocks like drumbeats came from the door. I motioned for Maurice to answer. There, the skeletal head with glowing amber glassy eyes, waited. Ribbons fell where the mane should have been. The white body floated like a cloud rather than a quadruped. 

 

My heart sank. Although it had found its way here, the Mari Lwyd wasn’t fully materialized in this world. Or rather, the poor thing was losing substance as it remained in a world that knew little of its existence. We had to get it back to faerie where Oberon’s belief could sustain it.

 

Maurice finished the song and then the Mari Lwyd sang. It was equally beautiful. When it finished, it spoke in an archaic tongue that might have been ancient Welsh. Maurice looked to us for help.

 

Roxy had the gift of the Herald and could speak and understand any language. She approached slowly and whispered in Maurice’s ear. He repeated what she’d said.

 

The Mari Lwyd laughed and made another reply.

 

“Offer it some food for being so clever,” she suggested, “and say this.” She then told him something in the former god’s tongue.

 

I brought Maurice the tray, and he repeated Roxy’s words. The Mari Lwyd gained a little substance but hadn’t formed all the way.

 

“Back up and invite it in like this,” Roxy commanded. 

 

That was my cue to open a door to faerie. Maurice came to the edge, confused. 

 

“Keep going,” Roxy said.

 

The Mari Lwyd followed us into faerie, where the ghastly creature transformed into a glowing, but solid, white horse. Maurice stared in awe at his ancestors’ god. He reached a trembling hand to the horse. The mare lowered its head, giving him access. Something passed between the elderly man and the horse. What happened exactly, I do not know, but Maurice appeared dumbstruck as he backed away to join us. We three then watched the Mari Lwyd gallop off over a purple meadow, singing a lovely song. 

 

 

The End

 

Copyright 2025 T.J. Deschamps @ Witch Works Publishing

If you liked this story, check out Wings and Fangs (Supernatural Legacies #1) here