Big hugs for Sugary Snicket! My first reviewer, thanks SO much! I hope you enjoy this new chapter.
By now I'm sure you're wondering what a human girl has to do with Halloween.
Well, at first absolutely nothing.
To tell the truth, I was content with my lot in town. I'd lived many years watching over everything and it served me ok. Even when that whole 'incident' that was later aptly named, The Nightmare Before Christmas happened. In short, Jack got bored, and somehow got it into his thick skull it'd be better for the whole world if Halloween took over Christmas.
Big mistake!
The chaos that ensued over that little fiasco. Now years later, still gives some of the elves who used to know nothing but Reindeer Games and Candy Cane dreams, nightmares. And caused Papa Nicky to install something the first of it's kind at the North Pole, a year-round shrink. Out of pure necessity, I assure you. Many of the elves, still have...ahem...issues. But let's not get into that.
For my older brother and I, on the other hand that memorable Christmas Eve wasn't really all that tramatic. Believe it or not, a few kids did like getting the Halloween-themed gifts. I used to call big brother, a mad scientist-in-training, and the miniature labratory set he recieved he wents nuts over. Espacially when it made a rather nice companion to the working toy electric chair he got. All in all, it went pretty good for him.
As for me, I recieved my first working broom, and the all around prettiest voodoo doll you ever laid eyes on. She wasn't destructive in any way. She just reminded me of the ghosts I'd seen lurking about in the Halloween Town cemetary. The phrase, "a beautiful kind of melancholy," best decribed her. And she told the best stories, I'd ever heard. I named her, Annabelle.
It was a horrible surprise to wake up the next morning and find our presents taken away, to be replaced with nothing short of junk.
Big brother was horrified to find both his electric chair and scientist set replaced with a skateboard and a Game Cube. I was equally so to find in place of my beloved Annabelle and my broom, this cheesy Easy-Bake Oven and a pair of Rollerblades, which I'd never even asked nor cared for. It was one thing we both agreed on wholeheartedly, we wanted our stuff back.
Later that day, I traveled to the North Pole, via the Holiday Trees. And gave Papa Nicky a no small piece of my mind, which is something considering it was coming from an eight year old at the time. Papa and Nana both listened to my plea on behalf of that small majority. In the end, I won. On the condition that all the other gifts were returned. That turned out not to be that big of a problem. All in all, I got Annabelle back before she got shipped back to Halloween Town. I spent the rest of Christmas Day, to the amusement of my parents happily whizzing up and down the snowy, December skies on my broom. While the aspiring Mad Scientist almost burned down the garage, thus getting grounded for a month. It was a good, if not memorable day.
But still, haven't you ever wondered...
Who grows the pumpkins you carve in the autmun?
Who reaps the long grasses to stuff the scarecrows and and such or cuts the wood for the many bonfire parties?
Who tells the winds to knock the colorful leaves from the trees, so children can play in them?
Or sends the October frost to lull the world into it's long, wintery slumber?
That would be me, my name Raven Nightwing.
An all-around proper Halloweenish name as anyone would care to tell you. But as I have said before, I had to hide who I was. Because Mortal equals scaring fodder, at least back then it did.
I was ten, when I my wanderings led me to that deserted field on the edge of the woods. It wasn't your typical place, that was for sure. The Halloween townsfolk called the area, The Nameless Lands. It fit prefectly, because while in sight of town, it was well past even Lock, Shock and Barrel's ominous tree house. About it was the strangest aura I'd ever felt in any of the holiday worlds. All I knew for certain was that even Oogie Boogie, himself wouldn't venture there.
What could possibly be so frightening to those whose sole purpose in un-life was to frighten? I had wondered to myself.
I soon found my answer.
Upon following an old dirt path and found what appeared to be, a gate and it's keeper. A woman who appeared to be a cross between a storybook banshee and a scarecrow was lashed into a cruxificton pose with ancient barbed wire. When I approached she appeared to be resting peacefully, I wasn't even sure if she was alive. Until I got too close, her eyes shot open so fast I fell to the ground in surprise clutching Annabelle who was riding in my coat pocket.
"I told you this was a bad thing to do," she quipped in that quiet way of hers.
The woman just watched me with these almost grotusquely big, beady black eyes with pinpoint black pupils that stood out from her straw-colored skin. Before throwing back her head and spewing forth the most eerie, maniacial bone chilling laugh I'd ever heard, including Jack's. It sounded like a wailing laugh almost. I had to clamp my hands over my ears to drown out the noise whch sounded like a siren wail in my poor shattered eardrums.
"Who dares come to this place, where even the King of Halloween fears to tread?"
"Me." I replied very irritated by that time.
It was then she seemed to really notice me for the first time, her eyes almost popped out of her head. When she realised I wasn't an inhabitant of the town. "You're human!"
Finally after a little cililized conversation, I found out she was indeed a rare subspecies of banshee. Apparently she'd been banished there even longer than anyone could remember, including her. But out there where even the citizens of Halloween feared to tread, she'd declared herself a sort of guardian of it's mysteries. Of which I found out were indeed many. She seemed surprised that I was there, period. Also that I had no desire to pass by her gate, I was perfectly content in having my first real conversation in the Halloween realm.
Because I plopped myself down right in front of her, asking any question that popped into my head until the great Jack-o-Lantern sun hung low on the horizon. I continued to return whenever I could and Annabelle still continued to advise againest it. I never listened. She still continued to shriek and moan threatingly, only now it had lestened in intensity. As if her heart really wasn't in it anymore. I think she was just lonely.
I called her Morganna, because she couldn't seem to remember if she'd ever had a name in the first place. She was rather egotistical creature by nature, the extravagant name seemed to please her immensely.
One day, to my everlasting surprise when I climbed the familiar path for our daily visit. I saw the gate was open and Morganna closed herself behind me in order to secure me into the fields beyond. It was a whole new part of the world to explore. I imagine she got a huge kick listening to me, a human child, live it up in the one place nobody dead would go. It was the ultimate paradox.
Out there was bigger than it looked for I found not only an old pumpkin patch, but an orchard as well. All touched with countless years of neglect and abandonment. Somehow it called to me, almost without thinking I began to weed the edges of the pumpkin patch. Day after day, I faithfully returned to tend my newfound charges. It took a long time, as the field was large and I was very small.
I brought tools to help me in my tasks, old gardening implements that I'd fixed up or made from disguarded trash in town. Surprisingly, sharp objects were not hard to find there, espacially about Behemoth's place. As I began to tame the landscape, I began to notice things. Strange mists and shadows darting in and out of the corner of my vision, eerie sounds coming down from the hills. Things went missing later to find them in the oddest places.
I once found my rake stuck up in one of the apple trees, but the strangest occurance happened when I saw a pair of fierce red eyes. They gleamed like firelit rubies from the boundry of the woods beyond. We stared at each other for the longest time, though I didn't feel threatened at all. Rather I got the impression I was being tested and appraised for some reason. But I wasn't worried, Morganna had let me in, I had nothing to fear.
Not long after whilest taking a break, I sat down on a clump of grass. At least at the time that's what I thought it was. Until it exploded, snapping and snarling out from under me.
That's how I met Old White and his mate, Night Black.
They were strange, yet fantastical creatures. But they certainally fit the Halloween profile, they lived in the woods patrolling the borders of the Nameless Lands. While they possessed the appearance of wolves about twice as large as a full-grown man. But instead of fur, their coats consisted of twigs and long grasses. One could not have been sure which was what, it provided unsurpassed camoflage in the dense undergrowth. As incredible as it may seem they also had the unique ability to flatten themselves completely out so they could resemble a pair of grassy knolls, only with eyes.
That's how I learned to tell them apart ironically, Night Black was female, and she's the one who possessed the red eyes I had seen. She was definately darker than Old White, in more ways than one. Her coat was mostly sticks and twigs mirroring her perferance of the woodlands. Old White, on the other hand, his grassy coat could glow like a beacon under the light of a full moon. It went well with his haunting, golden eyes that masked a mind far wiser than he let on. They called themselves, Mistwolves. All due to the extraordinary ability they possessed to produce and manipulate, the cold fogs and temperature fluxuations, I'd experienced of late.
They, like Morganna had been exiled from places far away, only to find a home for themselves and their children there in the Holiday worlds. Nor could they remember ever having names either, those were in turn my first gifts to them. They became my friends, a second family.
But still I yearned for more, a way to become more fully apart of the world I'd come to love so much. Yet, a part of me due to the instinct all humans have purely for the purpose of self-preservation. Stubbornly clung to my humanity like one of the Dark Lagoon Leeches on a blue plate special. My friends understood, but for all their power could offer no help.
Little did I know, however, that my prayers were going to be answered in a most unusual fashion. And I had my brother solely to than for it. It was an accident, litterly. All thanks to that Mad Scientist Kit of his, years later he still tinkered with it. Because it was one of the few gifts that actually grew with him. He'd improved a few things on it, not that Mama and Daddy ever knew. I made him pay me through the nose to keep quiet about it. Well, apparently there are certain substances you're never suposed to mix, ectoplasam and Wraith's Essanse for example. Espacially past the expiration date!
He'd set up his own little lab out in a corner of the still-standing garage, and it was my turn to clean. One moment I'm putting his junk in order then accidently knocking said clutter askew, the next I'm drenched head to toe in this pinkish-cream colored goo. There was no explosion, just a lot of griping over ruined clothes. But the results happened happened almost immediately, when I was leaning on the workbench wiping my face off with a shop towel. My arm phased itself right through it!
I soon began to discover more and more about this wonderful transformation. Ironically, it was TV that provided more helpful information. Think Danny Phantom. I was a real life Halfa, I couldn't believe it. I not only possessed that which could gain me acceptance in Halloweentown in a very unique way, but also retain the humanity I cherished.
In the years that followed, my new abilites opened up doors for me that I never thought possible. All the hidden inhabitants of the Nameless Lands united themselves under me, and I became their unofficial sovereign. As I unlocked more of the mysteries of my new home, I harnassed their abilites to help me in my new self-appointed tasks. Though no one realised it the Nameless Lands had a very large part to play on the whole Halloween stage of whose mantle had never totally been picked up, until I came.
And I was all too happy to do so.