Disclaimer: I don't own Gargoyles.
The smoke in the great hall made eleven-year-old Katharine's eyes water; she restrained the urge to cough.
She really wasn't supposed to be there; her father had told her to go to bed several hours beforehand, but Katharine could not sleep. The sounds and smells were intoxicatingly enticing; hardly easier to ignore was Katharine's still-insatiable curiosity, which slowly and surely drove her to sneak down the stairs and hide in an alcove near the doorway to the Great Hall, where she could watch the feast and celebrations unnoticed and without fear of what would have been an admittedly gentle reprisal.
It was All Hallows Eve, the night before All Saints' Day, when a special Mass would be celebrated, but for now all thoughts of religious devotion were as far from Katharine's mind as they possibly could be.
The roaring fire in the grate cast dark, dancing shadows sashaying and twirling up and down the rough stone walls. The lamb skin rugs usually placed to soften the floor were rolled and away in a store room; Katharine's bare feet were beginning to chill.
Where she was in her shadowy hiding place, Katharine realized she was being watched, just feeling a strange prickle on the back of her neck.
A hand lit on her shoulder. Katharine yelped and jumped (She went unheard by the crowd in the Great Hall). Still breathing hard, Katharine whirled round, and sighed in relief, smiling shakily up at the newcomer. "Oh, Magus, 'tis only you."
The Magus was a tall adolescent boy, seventeen or eighteen (Katharine couldn't remember which; she just knew he stopped short of a score of years old); she'd started calling him by that name nearly a year ago.
Katharine had begun Latin lessons when she was nine, and for both Prince Malcolm's daughter and her tutor it had been a less than pleasant experience. Katharine had eventually taken to running away and finding a hiding place until the lessons were past; unfortunately, that never worked, as the lessons were always rescheduled.
Of course, the Prince's daughter running off was bound to create uproar in the castle, and somehow, despite all the castle guards and servants set to tearing the castle apart looking for her, it was always the Archmage's former apprentice who found her first, sometimes within minutes. Finally, Katharine had found a place where she was sure even he wouldn't find her, but plans rarely work the way one wants them to (Little did Katharine know that the niche in the wall she had chosen to hide in was the exact place he had used to hide from his master so many years ago, on the days in which the Archmage was in a particularly bad mood). The Magus was the first one to ask Katharine why she was running away in the first place, and an agreement was reached.
He, having a better grasp of how difficult it was to learn Latin than Katharine's aging tutor, unofficially took over Katharine's Latin lessons; her tutor conveniently begged to resign soon after. When Katharine learned the Latin word for wizard, "magus", she started calling him that partly as a joke and partly to cover up her embarrassment that she didn't know the name of a boy she had known her entire life and considered to be her friend, despite his repeated protestations for her to stop.
It was a joke that quickly got out of hand; soon, everyone was calling him that, no one remembered how it had started (apart from Katharine and her somewhat harried new Latin tutor), and the Magus accepted his new "name" with a mixture of resignation and good grace.
The Magus frowned, noticing how obviously shaken Katharine was. "Is there something wrong, my Lady?"
Katharine shook her head vigorously. "Oh, no! You just startled me, is all." A pair of her father's deerhounds ran past, barking uproariously. "It is of no consequence."
He nodded slightly, his slate blue eyes following the progress of the twisting shadows on the wall. "My Lady…If you will forgive me for asking, the hour grows late. What are you doing down here?"
"I could enquire the same," Katharine shot back. He was usually locked and bolted into his quarters by that time of night.
Raising his hands in appeasement, the Magus replied, "I did not mean to cause offense. I was merely returning for something to eat."
A remembrance jogged her memory. "But Magus," Katharine protested. "There's food sitting outside your room. A loaf of bread on a plate and a goblet of wine. I have seen it."
In the Great Hall, a woman screamed in laughter. Katharine's companion's attention was momentarily distracted, before his eyes cleared. The Magus certainly was behaving strangely that night.
"I left it," he said slowly, "for the consumption of the dead, so they will not trouble me on this night."
Katharine was confused, until she realized what he was speaking of. She gasped, shocked. "That's a pagan practice!" When he didn't answer, she went on, not at all reassured. "Magus, you can not be a pagan; you have taken Mass!"
"It is a strange Christian, and not a very devout one at that, who practices magic, but yes, my Lady, I am a follower of Christ."
"Then why do you follow that custom? Father Fionnlagh says that the dead can not live on in this land; they are only shadows that can not make their presence known to us."
The Magus shifted uncomfortably on the small staircase, not meeting her eyes. "Father Fionnlagh is a wise man. But I believe what my eyes have shown me."
Katharine felt her face go white. She clutched at the material of his sleeve. "Tell me!" Katharine insisted urgently, feeling both eagerness to hear a good story and a little bit of fear of what she would hear.
A slightly teasing smile materialized on his face. "The Prince would not like it."
"My father can not hear us," Katharine countered, that stubbornly determined gleam appearing in her eyes. "And if he does find out, I will tell him I forced you to tell me. Tell me, Magus!" she demanded imperiously.
He half-restrained a laugh, shaking his head. "Alright, alright. It is not much, really.
"When I was young, at All Hallows Eve, or Samhain as we called it, strange occurrences would pass on this night. Small pranks, tricks; they could have been the work of some of the older children of our village. At the houses where food and drink was left for the dead, including the house where my family and I dwelt, nothing would be disturbed come morning."
"You're right, that isn't much," Katharine interjected, flashing a sparkling smile. "It sounds exactly like what you said—some of the older children playing tricks. You're really being very superstitious about this, Magus."
"Ah-ah," the Magus held up a hand warningly. "That is not all there is. There were other things done, things far beyond the sphere of children, far beyond their capacity."
"So their parents joined in."
"A large boulder was moved from one end of the village to the other," the Magus informed her flatly. "It would have taken several grown men to lift it, and the process would have been very loud."
"The dead can not harm us," Katharine asseverated adamantly, though she began to feel a trickle of doubt enter her psyche. "They can not interfere in our lives."
"Well my Lady, it was either them—" the Magus smiled a grim smile that took on the visage of deepest winter "—or the Fair Folk."
"The Fair Folk?" Katharine shuddered despite herself, instinctively reaching to cross herself. The tales she'd always heard of the Fair Folk had her convinced that they were anything but fair; she'd almost rather deal with the gargoyles at the parapets and highest towers of Castle Wyvern than them. Almost.
The Fair Folk were creatures of mist and air, unpredictable and quick to anger. They were vindictive in their pleasure and bitterly cruel in their rage and their hate. They never forgot a wrong done to them, and never passed up the opportunity to wreak havoc with the human realm.
"Well, I do not believe in the Fair Folk," Katharine declared, her defiant voice divided by a trembling note; it was clear she was lying.
The Magus shook his head. "Be careful what you say of the Fair Ones, my Lady."
Katharine let out a decidedly unladylike snort. "Do you see any Fair Folk here, Magus? Well, I never—"
A soft chime of laughter, unearthly and penetrating cut off her words abruptly, like sounds through shining water. Katharine jumped.
In the middle of the Great Hall, in the place where there were no tables and the people thinned, in the lowered section of the cavernous room, misty figures danced with abandon, their footsteps making no audible sound on the ground. Their laughter was soft and high, like strange music. They were like shadows, shadows given life and movement of their own.
Katharine tugged on the Magus's sleeve, her hands even more tightly clenching the wool fabric than before. "Magus?" she asked fearfully. He watched in fascination, almost transfixed. "Magus?" she called more loudly.
"Do not be afraid, my Lady," he replied softly. Fingers pressed the top of her hand lightly. "They merely wish to make their presence known. They will not harm you, unless you give them cause to, but take care…take care not to deny them again."
"Are we the only ones who can see them?" Katharine asked, white-lipped.
The Magus scanned the humans in the Hall, until his eyes fell on the far side to the right, near the fire. "Not entirely," he murmured. He pointed. "Look."
Katharine followed where his eyes led, and saw a woman sitting near the fire. Some of the neighboring lords had come, bringing their families with them (Katharine, admittedly, didn't care to play with their children; she didn't know any of them well enough, and most, like the children of the servants, were either too young or too old), and one of the ladies from an estate from the west stared at the spirits (Katharine only now noticed that the shadows on the walls no longer danced; they were stationary and static) silent and stock-still.
She was an older woman, around forty or so (1), with a long braid of light blonde hair, translucent, slightly freckled skin, and pale blue eyes. She was a Saxon, and their fair coloring was too much kin to the Danes—and by extension, Viking raiders—who were their distant cousins to make Katharine feel entirely comfortable.
The lady (Katharine was not sure of her name; it was something like Gwendolen or Gwenora) stared, utterly bewitched, her eyes unblinking, her knuckles white as she gripped her knees.
Then, as suddenly as the otherworldly happening began, it ended, with a final wave of eerie laughter, harmless yet full of mischief, and the Great Hall seemed somehow darker and duller after they left.
"Anything else?" Katharine breathed.
"Nothing much. However, I would not greatly advise staying beyond midnight; greater mischief happens after midnight on All Hallows Eve than before. So, if you will excuse me, my Lady…" The Magus started down into the Great Hall, to find something to eat.
"Oh…oh!" Katharine cried, startled. "Magus?" He turned back. Katharine smiled in some shy embarrassment. "Could you bring back some for me as well…to leave outside my door?"
He laughed, shaking his head. "Of course."
Katharine smiled slightly, strange music ringing in her head. Just in case.
1: Old by the standards of the day. In the tenth century, most women didn't worry about getting gray hairs because for the most part, they didn't live long enough to get gray hairs.
Oh, my, this is the second Halloween piece I've written out of season. I get the ideas for holiday fics at the wrong time, always.