Manners

They had been around for as long as I, or anyone I knew, could remember. The oldest person in Lily Lake who still had her memory had never lived in Lily Lake without them, and as far as she knew, neither had her grandmother, or her grandmother’s grandmother. And it seemed that, just like the Folk themselves, manners had been around for as long as anyone could remember.

Once, when I was seven, I asked my ma, “What does manners mean?” Because even back then I could hear the difference between manners one uses to talk to folk, and manners one uses to talk to Folk.

Ma pursed her lips. She had lines around her mouth back then, thin as spidersilk, so that you couldn’t see she was aging unless you looked at her at the right angle. All my questions back then seemed to turn her around to the right angle. Her age glittered at me. “It’s means precautions,” she said, dabbing the kitchen windowsill with salt.

I knew all the stories, all the ones that were true and all the ones that weren’t. Lily Lake was full of trees, and so it was full of stories about things that lived in ‘em, and things that got dragged into them, and things that emerged from them. I was always looking at trees funny back then, like the ones in their sad wire boxes on the street were going to burst with Folk, or get up and walk into someone’s house, or start dancing. That was the worst bit. You couldn’t ever be sure of dancing. You couldn’t be sure who you were dancing with.

Lily Lake wasn’t known for dancing.

Ma’s advice for avoiding any tussles was to practice manners only when it was necessary, only when the first of her rules failed. Avoiding was her frst rule. But I fancied myself a rebel, or a troublemaker, and thought privately that there was something fancy about disobeying ma.

The Folk were always in the park. They jumped around in the flowers and ran after one another and sometimes it was for fun and sometimes it wasn’t. Most people in Lily Lake believed that, either way, it was best to leave them alone. Which is why, when I saw them clustering around the fountain, everyone else walked on past, not even looking. No one had any ounce of daring, not like I did.

I wandered up to the gentry. These ones were all wearing blue, for some reason. They looked newborn in a way, older than me, but also like they’d only just appeared in the world, and a little hungry for something more. I liked that about them. I said good afternoon to them.

“Hey cutie,” one of them said to me. He had hair like summer honey, and little things bloomed around us when he smiled. They like children and pretty things, and children like them. I thought we would get along well, then.

I knew it was bad manners to ask their names, but I didn’t want to offer mine up first. Or at all. I knew that was dangerous. Who knew what they could do with my name? “What are you doing?” I asked instead.

A lady clucked disapprovingly as she walked by. She hesitated and stopped, then turned a fierce eye on me, not bothering to hide it from the people in blue. “Where’s your mother at, kid? You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m fine,” I told her. I felt perfectly brave, looking at her instead of the ones in blue.

It didn’t last long. Not when I noticed two of them had drifted behind me, like they were nothing but feathers. They looked ganglier than they had a minute ago, as though they’d all stretched and released some extra joints they’d just had sitting around. My bravery crawled into some hollow in me to hide.

“I don’t think you will be. Politely say your goodbye and I’ll walk you home.”

“You don’t know where my home is,” I replied.

She wouldn’t come take me from them herself. She wouldn’t risk it. I knew I could leave them myself, though. We were neither of us in each other’s places, me and the Folk. Pa called it “no man’s land”, when they didn’t come into our homes and we didn’t trudge on theirs, and I was still free.

I edged around them- best not to touch, or invite something you didn’t want to- and galloped over to the woman. She began to lead me away from the flowers. “You can tell me on the way there. What would your parents think of you mingling like this? You have any idea what you were just doing?”

I looked back at the people in blue, which I also knew you weren’t supposed to do, but I was feeling braver again outside their shadow. The one with honey hair held hands with one of the girls and they were dancing, or spinning, together. Blue fabric tornadoed around them as they got faster, their cheer getting more and more urgent.

Ma filled my pockets with extra salt the next morning, and put at least one iron button on each of my shirts.

There were more Catholic schools in Lily Lake than there were non-Catholic schools. Everyone’s manners (precautions) had them cramming their children into those sweating classrooms and portables. We went to Mass as often as we could, which was only three times a week. There were no Folk in school, and definitely no Folk in church. They couldn’t step on any holy ground, of course, which left lots of holy ground for us to trample.

“Why not? What happens if they come inside a church?” I asked Pa.

“They erupt like volcanoes,” he said. “No, I don’t really know. Ask Father Hare.”

I did ask Father Hare, who didn’t look pleased to be asked. He said it had something to do with what they were. I must’ve looked horrified then, because he said quickly that they were a sort of person without a soul. I should worry about them more than I worry about other people because they had no souls. I took this the wrong way. When he said worry, he was not talking about concern, but it’s hard to explain to a kid damnation beyond the basics.

“Does that mean there’s no gentry in heaven?” I asked him.

His lips made a shape like a lemon peel. “Not that I know of,” he said. “I’m fairly certain not.”

Everything I knew but the gentry could go to heaven. Even dogs could go to heaven, Ma told me, when our sheepdog passed on. I tried to imagine what a thing on the inside must look like that it couldn’t at all touch the pearly gates ever, even if it lived a peaceful life. Maybe on the inside they were all rot. “But why?”

Father Hare considered long and silent. He must have been trying to think of a kind way to say it to me. “They were made like us, in God’s image, but they are descended from those that were cast out of heaven. They denied His power, and so here they are, with us.”

It didn’t seem right to me that they couldn’t be allowed in a place where they’d already been. What was the point of keeping them out? Were they in trouble for leaving the first time?

I was a believer of empirical evidence, and only of the kind I found for myself. I went hunting for gentry, which isn’t much of a hunt, because sometimes they seemed to be everywhere, all the time, wet and shining in the river, or dusty and smooth beside roads, or lively and glittering in doorways. I asked one that was alone to come to the church with me. Not during mass, I added, when it looked like she was about to say no. I wanted to see what would happen. I hope she wouldn’t erupt into flame. I took her hand to bring her to the church, and even though I expected another knuckle or long fingers, or for the hand to yank me behind a tree somewhere, it was light and very warm.

“I’ve never been this way before,” she said.

“I thought you were all everywhere,” I said. That’s what I’d heard from ma and pa for ages, that the gentry were everywhere, and they were getting more everywhere by the day, and soon maybe there’d be more Folk than folk in Lily Lake. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t at least walked right up to the edge of the holy ground.

“Only where we’re welcome,” she said. “And sometimes wherever we want to go. I’ve been to school a few times.”

I didn’t remember seeing Folk in school, but then I wondered if I would have noticed. She didn’t look anything special. If she weren’t just a bit too light, and a bit too graceful, and if she didn’t sometimes had wings or long hands when I looked at her from the corner of my eye, then you couldn’t tell at all.

“What about church?” I asked her. “Mass is boring, and sometimes it goes on for ages. You could meet Him!”

“It’s against the rules,” she said. “I’m just supposed to avoid it. Could hurt.”

“'Cause you turn into a volcano? I think that’s just a story. You just got to be real good at sitting still for a long time.”

She grinned. Her lips looked like my ma’s when she wore lipstick. Dark and round as flowers, but cheerier. “What’s a volcano?”

I expected her to know what a volcano was, because she sounded human and ordinary. I had expected her to sound like an animal, and then I expected her to sound like me. Then I realized that she wasn’t either, and everyone of ma’s manners came back to me. There was no room in ‘em for holding hands. I let go quickly and put my hands over my ears as I ran. Just in case I’d offended her somehow. I didn’t want to hear how she’d make me pay for it.

There were other times I paid attention to the gentry. Once a group of them dragged a young member of their own kind, cussing and kicking, into the trees. The sounds were awful, but that was their business. The rest of us minded our own. A few strangers wandered into Lily Lake. Most of them made it out. Some didn’t. One of those some was a gentleman in a bar. No one had warned him that the Folk and folk mingled in these bars, and there was a reason Lily Lake never had bar fights. You never knew who your were brawling with. Once he threw the first insult, there was nothing to do but ask them to take it outside. The Folk were perfectly happy to.

Years passed by and I only noticed when I saw the momentum I thought I’d be taking to college was only running back into Lily Lake. Some people moved away, and some didn’t. The ones that didn’t because city councillors who decided on new buildings with exposed iron beams inside them. Every new apartment looked half-built, but if it meant keeping the gentry out, it was worth living in a place with visible foundations. There were still gruesome happenings in Lily Lake, but they were mostly in the trees now. Ma and pa realized I wasn’t going to college, and while we all mourned that, they also realized that the best way to get me out of their house was to buy me an apartment. It was old, no iron beams, and close to the trees, so there were a fair number of gruesome happenings near me. But a least I had a roof over my head.

They’d taken to reminding people they were the Good Ones. They got especially frisky and ripe in spring and fall, when the weather broke and the animals got rowdy with each other or frantic with preparation. They liked pranks more; they liked dancing and games and testing all our manners.

I didn’t wonder about the Good Ones in mass anymore. I didn’t have the same questions for them that I’d had when I was little. I don’t reckon I had any for a long time. I stepped around them and ignored their invitations. It was never any easier to tell which of them you could trust, or if you could trust any, and it was best to take ma’s advice and avoid them. Don’t make eye contact, and don’t offend them, and keep salt at your windowsill.

There were so many measures in Lily Lake. Everyone scrabbled to keep them out, just to get on with our lives.

But I worked a job at six in the morning, six days a week, and I didn’t have the time to spend on the Good Ones. I remembered my manners, the one time I needed them, when one of their kind came to me asking for food. I knew better than to turn them away. I lost my lunch for that day, but, as ma reminded me when I told her, I could have lost a number of other things. I thanked the lord I still had both my eyes, and I had enough wits not to ask for a favour in return.

But after that, it was harder to ignore the Folk.

It seemed like breaking that rule meant I could never follow it again.

It was fall, and summer was still on its way out, taking its sweet time dragging itself out the door. Green leaves and summer berries lingered in Lily Lake like fingers at the doorframe. Long nights dragged on like a guest’s goodbyes. School was starting again and there was a sudden lack of children out and about in the day. Every person I passed in Lily Lake in the daytime felt like a conspirator in a world without children and, as the Good Ones got restless again, in a world that looked away from them.

But here I was, in the park, walking past a patch of flowers that some landscaper had put down before they realized it was only going to become nesting ground for the Good Folk. There was just one today, which was strange. She lay down in the flowers like she’s been left there, like she’d never get up again. She had huge eyes, with huge pupils that didn’t get smaller even when she looked right into the sun. She moved her hands in the dirt like she’d dropped change in it.

I just looked down once as I passed. Lily Lake got colourful in the fall, so even with all the green trees, I was sure it was a leaf. Just a red leaf she’d taken off the one tree in Lily Lake that was already changing colours. Except the leaf was wet and deeply coloured and curled around her fingers like gloves. She wasn’t digging in the dirt, but just spreading the gore from her fingers around in it.

I stopped walking.

It was just the one, and I wouldn’t talk to her if she offered me anything.

“Good morning,” I said.

She blinked at me. “Hey there.”

The blood could have come from anywhere. It was only on her hand, so whatever it was couldn’t have been that messy. Still might have hurt. I said, “I’m going to a diner for breakfast. Do you want to come?”

We sat outside, so she could be in the sun, and so she wouldn’t be sick from the iron stove inside. She drank three different fruit juices and had a bowl of yogurt and honey. I drank a coffee that tasted like licking a carpet. It occurred to me I might be doing the sort of something Father Hare got confessions about.

“So what have you been doing?” she asked me. She was wearing blue, I noticed, and I remembered a day over a decade ago and many more of them in blue. “With just, all of this?”

I sipped my carpet. “This?”

She circled something in the air. “This. Your life. What are you doing to get through it faster?”

“Faster?” Most people I knew, even in Lily Lake, were gunning for slower. “Nothing? I’m working right now. I might go to school one day. I just get older, I guess?”

“Sounds boring. Do you feel older yet?” She sounded a bit like ma, like she’d already seen the future ma had seen for me. I’d known her for less than an hour and I could see by her mouth that she already knew everything about me she needed to.

“Every day. And not really ever,” I said. “Aren’t you getting older too?”

“Older,” she replied. “But only in years.” She finished one glass of juice all in one gulp. She managed to smile and drink at the same time.

“It’s not boring, either,” I said. I remembered the Folk dragging their own into the trees and the shrieking that came after. If that was what they did to pass the time, I was sure I’d rather be bored. “I’ve got lots to do.”

“You’re not worried you’ll run out of time?” She licked her lips. One of her hands was two shades of brown, because it had all dried now. “You all do. You should just give up now. We could go dancing, if you like?”

I said no, because ma had taught me manners and because I liked where I was right now, in Lily Lake, and I didn’t want to jump to a Lily Lake where half of what I knew was dust, including me.

She shrugged and told me she was going dancing that night. But maybe she’d see me later. I walked her to the edge of the park, where the gentry had started to collect like bees when the sun went down. I didn’t hear the music, but she started to dance down the path. I stopped as soon as she moved, then turned and went home. I thought I could feel myself getting older as I walked.

I invited her to church, just to see if her response would be different. She stepped up to the door and stuck her hand inside. No eruptions. No fire. She wandered inside, wrinkled her nose at the musty smell, and wandered outside again. She told me her skin prickled when she was inside, but it wasn’t much worse than iron.

“Well, maybe. I feel a lil’ sick,” she said, with a hand on her stomach.

She asked me why I chose to go to church, now that my parents didn’t even bother telling me to.

“To save my soul,” I said. I wondered for a moment if it were insensitive to talk about souls with someone who didn’t have one, but ma had never said. I don’t think ma had ever thought I’d be talking to the Good Folk about souls at all. “Because I don’t want to go to hell.”

“It would be terrible for you,” she agreed. “You don’t know how to get through life fast.”

“I’m not trying to. I’d rather stay around for a while.”

She smirked at me. I didn’t know we were friends enough for her to smirk at me. I didn’t know the gentry smirked. “How long is a while?”

I leaned heavily into manners, because I thought that her face meant maybe she was leading me to a place I’d need them. We had come to the edge of the park again. This time I could smell the flowers, more than I had all summer, even though they were wilting. She touched my hand. The gentry all danced together, and I couldn’t tell if I knew the beat of the music because I heard it, or because I imagined it in the way their feet moved.

“A while, for me, means the rest of my life,” I said.

“I’d like you to have the rest of your life too,” she said. “So you can enjoy it before you maybe go to hell. Or heaven. For however long.”

“It’s forever,” I told her. “Whatever’s after is forever.”

“Is that why you take so long to get there. Hey.” She led me closer to the dancing, but touched my face with one long finger. “What’re you cryin’ for?”

I danced all night, like I never had before.

I was wrong about the music. It was there, and I’d only not been listening. I’d been listening to Lily Lake instead. While we danced, she told me, “Our songs don’t stop, not like your songs. We’re good at that.” She pulled me close and didn’t ask anything of me, or offer me anything. She smiled like she’d known me all my life. I didn’t feel like I was getting older anymore.

I was taking my sweet time to get where I was going, I thought.

I danced and danced. 

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay