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Description
There once lived a boy of thirteen years, whose name did not express his true character. He possessed a most mature and reserved nature about him, and whenever anyone happened to strike up a conversation with him they were left wondering how such a young boy could contain such a fine disposition. This boy lived in a home absolutely devoid of parents, and had grown so under the capable hands of his nanny since he was but two. His polite manner and age-old stare had a way of simplifying a person until there seemed to be nothing left except bare essentials and it was because of this stare that this boy was entering his final year of junior high absolutely filled with dread. He had never been to school. There was only one other thing that had scared him more: Every waking moment was a battle to contain the Eye of his mind.
“Ben!” The nanny called from the hall, her slippered feet slapping tiredly on the cherry hardwood flooring. She had bright eyes and a handkerchief to restrain her curling dark hair, a pair of black shoes swinging by their heels on her fingers. “Ben!” She called again, her other hand on the doorframe. “Ben, don’t forget your shoes. You know your parents would be worried if you didn’t wear them to school.”
Ben turned from the window and came to take the shoes from Nanny. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner, there was a dragonfly that absolutely wouldn’t quit boasting about his aerial maneuvers. I promise I’ll wear the shoes.”
Nanny, already used to the boy’s quiet and sometimes absent nature made a noise of assent and called over her shoulder that he should take care on the way to school. His somewhat odd explanations were normal to her, for she knew the master and mistress of the house were mysterious people indeed.

Time has a way of stretching like toffee, if you’re in the right mindset for it. It was just so for Ben, whose mind to many adults could only be classified as his personal rabbit hole. And it would seem to many, that the boy was indeed inclined to ADHD if the surface explanation was all that one desired, and nothing more. But Ben was more than unusual; he was the son of Hades and Persephone. Their power passed to him was a dangerous mix of growth and death constantly at war, ever fighting each other for dominance in him. Despite the conflict that seethed throughout his being, Ben had fought to control both powers, to keep his sanity and some kind of balance. There was little of his own will-power set to any other task but this one. In short, Ben’s very character was conflict, and yet he lived. Like oil and water in one place together, there was something completely wrong about his existence. Nevertheless Ben was to take on school for the first time in his life as well as manage his discord. There is good and bad to be found in this boy’s plight, for due to this remarkable condition Ben was granted with an ability to see possible events and was often assailed with visions of possible futures, doomed as he was to live a half-life. For a boy of thirteen, it was a marvel he wasn’t half-mad or lost forever in his Wonderland.
Ben bounced and rattled around on the slippery synthetic leather of the seat, staring out the window and imagining what the monarch’s would say if they ever came here. The season was changing just as it did every fall, but something was different for him. This fall felt like an unraveling, an undoing of what he’d pursued all his short life. Around him the other children laughed and chattered, voices raised and animated. The bus squeaked and slid into its brakes. Two more students joined the lively throng, found the seats directly behind Ben. They seemed to be caught up in quite an argument.
“I’m telling you, it moved!” The older one, a boy had his arm on the top of the backrest, the other gesturing to the girl with insistent motions and a pair of sharp brown eyes. His curling hair, cropped relatively short reminded Ben of a Faun he’d seen in a picture book.
“Well of course it would move Jay, what did you think it would do? Really!” The girl rolled her large eyes and whuffed out her frustration through her nose.
“Angie it moved! It’s been still all there months, and now it moves! To the water dish might I add. That’s just a little weird, don’t you think?”
“It is in its cocoon after all. And you should leave it alone, remember! It’s hibernating.”
This perked Ben’s attention, and he turned. “What kind of butterfly is this? Is it going through the cocoon stage of metamorphosis?”
The girl looked surprisedly at him, but answered him almost immediately. “Yeah, it is. We’re not sure what kind of butterfly it is though…”
“I think it’s a Monarch! They’re supposed to come this way when fall arrives.” Piped in Jay. “I’m James, by the way. But you can call me Jay.”
“I’m Angie! What’s your name?”
“Ben. Nice to meet you.” She looked about ten. Jay, about twelve. He must keep control over it. These people couldn’t see it.
“Nice to meet you too, Ben!” Angie smiled, her duck fluff hair curving in almost-curls to frame her face, dark eyes merry and bright like an English robin’s. Ben thought himself, no one must know how hard it is to sit still let alone walk one foot in front of the other, pounding the earth step by step.
“You too.” Ben dipped his head in acknowledgement and went back to numbing his eyes on the speeding road outside the window. He started from his reverie by the slight jostling of his seat, as the two new occupants squeezed onto his bench. Their excited faces stopped him from getting up to leave.
“The bus driver never lets us sit three to a bench. We’re expanding his horizons.” Jay winked, elbowing Angie in the ribs. “Keep it our secret?”
And Ben rode the rest of the journey close to the wall and occasionally bumping Jay’s shoulder.

A month later, Ben was learning how to play. At recess and at lunch, afterschool and on the bus he would tag along with Angie and Jay listening to them debate and discuss the up-coming holiday: Halloween. School was a minor concern since his mind was occupied with his two friends. Ben was realizing more and more, how he’d never known how much he’d needed other human contact. It had always been just him and discord. But the presence of two people had eased that conflict; they were something to take his mind off the chaos inside him. He hoped rather than knew that he had control over the Eye. The visions never hit while he was in class for which he was grateful, because the mathematics teacher seemed to believe he was a slacker who cared nothing for the curriculum. The fall had turned the leaves red but their change of colours felt like some kind of betrayal, though Ben could not trace a reason why. Something still pulled at his spirit like a steady trickle and wore away at his will. When he fell into the Eye everything almost stopped as if frozen and happened in slow-motion; and stuck in the state he would float until another person brushed past him in an effort to continue through their busy day.
That was why he hoped Jay and Angie never saw him at his worst. Reverting to the Eye brought changes to his body that would alarm his friends.
“Hey Ben. What will you be for Halloween?” Angie and Jay had found him at his locker, collecting his textbooks to study at home.
“Uh…I don’t know. What will you be?” He asked. A trickle of the Eye turned into a flow. Let him make it home, or at least away from the two before he was yanked up into the slow-motion Wonderland, everything suspended in action as he fell into the deeper state of mind-sight. Ben seized the feeling and quashed it, listening as Angie described her idea. The gravestones in the cemetery had been a source of entertainment to the kids at school, and she wanted to dress up as a statue.
“I’m going to be a vulture. They’re smart, and scary.” Jay boasted. “You should be a vulture too, Ben.”
The bus swayed and bumped most sickeningly. Ben gripped the edge of the seat.
“Ben?” Angie looked at him, concern in her bright eyes. “Are you okay?”
Up till now the flow had stayed subdued but it leapt forward with a roar, and Ben struggled to move his mouth, or even hear the words she uttered. I must fight it! I can’t go there, not yet! Why can’t you understand that? The roaring stopped, and Ben snapped back into reality.
“Those are interesting choices. Perhaps I will join you, Jay. Though I ought to ask permission first.” Clearly, they were spooked by the reserved behaviour he displayed. Crushed, Ben decided they would probably not be there on the bus with him the next day. The bus jerked to a stop. He excused himself, not meeting their eyes and hopping off the last step with false indifference. He made it to the front step of his house before he was drawn into the Eye again.

Now Angie and Jay, they were indeed worried for their quiet, vague companion. Being siblings, the two were closer than two peas in a pod, despite all their arguing and oftentimes did not require words to voice their worries. However when it came to someone as contrary and intricate as Ben, Angie could not let her unease about his erratic behaviour go. She resolved to speak to the boy the next day, but did not see him on the bus or at school. Two weeks passed by and still there was no word. The teachers and even some students began to display a recognition of his absence, but not a word was heard of the boy. And stranger still, as Jay learned that the school had been instructed to pay no mind over his absence the matter grew on Angie’s mind. And so another agonizing week passed, Jay convinced Angie that Ben was fine and that it was probably best to wait for Ben to return, giving some unexpected but good advice to his younger sister.
“We should invite him to come trick-or-treating with us. Halloween’s this Friday, and it doesn’t matter about school and all that. We could meet him in the park by his house.”
“But what if he doesn’t have a costume?”
“I did make an extra vulture head. And a black cape shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
And so it was decided that Jay and Angie were to take Ben out for a night of fun.

Meanwhile, young Ben was spending his days locked up in his room, the Eye pulling him in and rejecting him dozens of times. It is to us a sensation of fever and great fragility, as if one is made of the thinnest crystal while boiling within roars an ocean full of bright stars. It was without a doubt that Ben was reaching the climax of something as Halloween drew near and the leaves turned from red to gold to dead. Nanny endured the alarming deterioration of her master with a mixture of apprehension and fear. Nothing she tried could ease the violence of his apparent loss of sanity, to be sure she knew not what he was to become. Ben lived through the Wonderland of suspended time, wondering every moment when things would become easier to comprehend, the sounds less sharp and the images of many possible outcomes blurring together like a muffled movie in slow-motion. To Angie, Jay and the school it was thought that Ben was ghastly ill and bedridden at home. To his Nanny, Ben was very sick indeed. As for Ben himself, it almost seemed he’d lived a year just waiting for the world to catch up to his speed when at last, the Eye let him go and he found himself existing at the same pace as the world, gasping for breath on his bed at home. Nanny came in and found him lying there quietly, collecting himself and went over to his side.
“Ben! It is so good to see you awake. Your friends left you a note; they thought it might be nice if you could get some fresh air with them on Friday.” She took him by the shoulder, “oh, master Ben I am so glad you have made some friends.”
He turned his head with that age-old directness, asking Nanny a question which unnerved her as the absence of mind she’d witnessed while caring for him in his feverish stupor was gone. “Nanny, what do my parents know of this? Surely they want to see me now?” All his life, Ben had craved to know who his parents were, and why they could not visit him. Now more than ever he wanted to see them for he feared he would soon be gone forever. Nanny herself could not answer his questions, since she had been sworn to secrecy from the day the baby boy had been entrusted to her care.
“Ben, I am sure they would see you if they could. And believe me, they do know.” That was all, and she brushed back the damp lock of hair from his face, ignoring the frost-like pollen that beaded his brow. “Now, I’ll make you some hot tea with brown sugar, and how about some soup? Your friends seem very nice.”
Ben lifted the folded school note to his eyes, and a small smile eased the disorientated, lost look off his face. They would go trick-or-treating.

“Whoohee! Don’t you look grand! Oh I cannot wait until Ben sees this. You look absolutely revolting!” Angie chortled away, the look of glee on her grey face out of character as an expressionless stone angel.
“And you look absolutely ghastly.” Jay’s voice was slightly muffled through the pointed beak of his mask, a pair of black sockets staring back at his sister. “Come, let’s go get Ben. He said he had his own costume.”
The two siblings skipped out into the fading light of day, an odd pairing among witches and ghosts and scarecrows.

Ben stared into the mirror assaulted by second thoughts for his choice of costume. A man made of vines and leaves wasn’t as scary a sight as he had hoped. But the prospect of going out dressed up as the grim reaper seemed like too much to tempt fate with and he refused to be a super hero of any sort. The Eye was becoming less gripping and for that Ben was very glad. He sensed some kind of climax looming closer and closer, but dared not pursue the thought lest he was wrenched into fast-forwarding his existence in comparison to the rest of the world. Some change would make its appearance, and soon. Still, Ben was glad to have met the lively Angie and her brother. All his life, when he counted this first year of junior high seemed to mean nothing when he thought of the gift that meeting the two children had been. Just then, Nanny opened the door and he turned to see Angie and Jay behind her.
“Oh! What a marvelous costume, that’s one that’ll get the parents. They’ll never see you until you speak.” Jay exclaimed with excitement. Angie merely stood there, taking it in. Vines of crawling ivy crept up Ben’s legs and arms, a web of ferns covering his chest and tiny barbs twisting around his neck up to his pale face. There were dark shadows under his eyes, but he looked strangely calm and attentive.
“Thanks. I am quite frightened by yours. Shall we away?” Not a hello was exchanged, even though the three had not seen each other since that torturous bus ride Ben had fought all the way home. Still things were just the same between them – or so it seemed. Jay and Angie accepted that Ben would tell them what had happened when he was ready. It was a very worried Nanny that watched the three children venture out into the night from the doorway. “Let the child spend this one night among friends. Before it must occur.”

First they went to the park, swooping and stalking through the tall supports of the playground structures; generally enjoying the wildness of the beginning of Halloween. Then Jay initiated the trick-or-treating and the plant-boy and stone angel followed him.
“Ben, I’m glad we’re friends.”
Ben glanced at Angie, whose sombre, stoniness seemed at odds with her kind words of sincerity.
“Me too.”
Jay turned and motioned for them to hurry, his swirling black cape rustling in the still air.
“Come on you lot, if we don’t get an early start all the candy will be gone!”
“Only because you’ll eat it all!” Angie retorted, taking Ben’s hand and running them both to James. They walked up the steps to a door, and knocked. A jolly-looking woman opened the door and looked quizzically at the odd trio.
“And what might you be?”
“I’m a graveyard angel!” Angie gave her best blank stare but it was ruined by her grin.
“A vulture.” Jay hunched his neck and held his hands behind his back.
“I am a member of the forest.”
The lady gave a hearty laugh and handed them all chocolate bars. “My, isn’t that unusual! Have a good night, kids!”
The three looked at each other, and muffled their giggles.
“Member of the forest? C’mon Ben, make it more frightening!”
“I should like to see you be more frightening, you really could be a spine-chilling graveyard angel.”

The night darkened and deepened, revealing a scattering of stars and streaky clouds. It was a night for scares and strangeness but Ben wished it would last forever. They came to a busier part of town and decided to cross. And suddenly the Eye reared up, sucking Ben in for a long moment. He saw Angie step onto the road, saw the car, its headlights dimmed to nearly nothing. Saw her body crumple –
“Ben, c’mon! We’re going to the other neighbourhood.” She called him back and the vision was coming true. Angie took a step. Jay hefted both his bag and Angie’s in two hands. The roaring blocked out all sound, increasing in volume and prickling his crystal skin.
No! Ben was beside her and gave her one push with all his strength and – He floated in the Eye, at the Pinnacle of his fast existence. He saw Jay scream and the candy scattered on the grass. Angie lay by the curb, unmoving. He watched Jay run over to his sister. Angie propped herself up on her arms, looked back at him. Jay dragged her away from the road, onto the pavement. Tears flowed from his eyes as they both looked back to where Ben had leapt.
“He’s gone.” The two children sat, staring in shock and horror at the road. “Jay?”
“Yeah.”
“Jay, what’s that?”
Jay watched the Monarch butterflies twist up into the sky, and away into the night.
“Jay, look!” Angie’s voice shrilled.
Ben watched as his body burst into the violent orange of Monarchs. So this was the climax. No longer could he feel the pent up conflict. He wasn’t the half-boy prone to attacks of autism. Where their friend had fallen rose a blurry figure of frost-like pollen. It collected itself, and raised its bowed head. It was Ben, whose ears were now pointed and from his back a pair of dragonfly wings fluttered. At last, Ben opened his eyes.
“So this is who I am.”
All along it had been his state of being, and now he was pure uncontained energy. The first fairy watched as time slid by him like a slow river, existing at a faster rate than the world. The two energies he’d spent thirteen years controlling finally balancing on their own as a new kind of power. And the son of the gods flittered off to join Pan’s forest.

Description
There once lived a boy of thirteen years, whose name did not express his true character. He possessed a most mature and reserved nature about him, and whenever anyone happened to strike up a conversation with him they were left wondering how such a young boy could contain such a fine disposition. This boy lived in a home absolutely devoid of parents, and had grown so under the capable hands of his nanny since he was but two. His polite manner and age-old stare had a way of simplifying a person until there seemed to be nothing left except bare essentials and it was because of this stare that this boy was entering his final year of junior high absolutely filled with dread. He had never been to school. There was only one other thing that had scared him more: Every waking moment was a battle to contain the Eye of his mind.
“Ben!” The nanny called from the hall, her slippered feet slapping tiredly on the cherry hardwood flooring. She had bright eyes and a handkerchief to restrain her curling dark hair, a pair of black shoes swinging by their heels on her fingers. “Ben!” She called again, her other hand on the doorframe. “Ben, don’t forget your shoes. You know your parents would be worried if you didn’t wear them to school.”
Ben turned from the window and came to take the shoes from Nanny. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner, there was a dragonfly that absolutely wouldn’t quit boasting about his aerial maneuvers. I promise I’ll wear the shoes.”
Nanny, already used to the boy’s quiet and sometimes absent nature made a noise of assent and called over her shoulder that he should take care on the way to school. His somewhat odd explanations were normal to her, for she knew the master and mistress of the house were mysterious people indeed.

Time has a way of stretching like toffee, if you’re in the right mindset for it. It was just so for Ben, whose mind to many adults could only be classified as his personal rabbit hole. And it would seem to many, that the boy was indeed inclined to ADHD if the surface explanation was all that one desired, and nothing more. But Ben was more than unusual; he was the son of Hades and Persephone. Their power passed to him was a dangerous mix of growth and death constantly at war, ever fighting each other for dominance in him. Despite the conflict that seethed throughout his being, Ben had fought to control both powers, to keep his sanity and some kind of balance. There was little of his own will-power set to any other task but this one. In short, Ben’s very character was conflict, and yet he lived. Like oil and water in one place together, there was something completely wrong about his existence. Nevertheless Ben was to take on school for the first time in his life as well as manage his discord. There is good and bad to be found in this boy’s plight, for due to this remarkable condition Ben was granted with an ability to see possible events and was often assailed with visions of possible futures, doomed as he was to live a half-life. For a boy of thirteen, it was a marvel he wasn’t half-mad or lost forever in his Wonderland.
Ben bounced and rattled around on the slippery synthetic leather of the seat, staring out the window and imagining what the monarch’s would say if they ever came here. The season was changing just as it did every fall, but something was different for him. This fall felt like an unraveling, an undoing of what he’d pursued all his short life. Around him the other children laughed and chattered, voices raised and animated. The bus squeaked and slid into its brakes. Two more students joined the lively throng, found the seats directly behind Ben. They seemed to be caught up in quite an argument.
“I’m telling you, it moved!” The older one, a boy had his arm on the top of the backrest, the other gesturing to the girl with insistent motions and a pair of sharp brown eyes. His curling hair, cropped relatively short reminded Ben of a Faun he’d seen in a picture book.
“Well of course it would move Jay, what did you think it would do? Really!” The girl rolled her large eyes and whuffed out her frustration through her nose.
“Angie it moved! It’s been still all there months, and now it moves! To the water dish might I add. That’s just a little weird, don’t you think?”
“It is in its cocoon after all. And you should leave it alone, remember! It’s hibernating.”
This perked Ben’s attention, and he turned. “What kind of butterfly is this? Is it going through the cocoon stage of metamorphosis?”
The girl looked surprisedly at him, but answered him almost immediately. “Yeah, it is. We’re not sure what kind of butterfly it is though…”
“I think it’s a Monarch! They’re supposed to come this way when fall arrives.” Piped in Jay. “I’m James, by the way. But you can call me Jay.”
“I’m Angie! What’s your name?”
“Ben. Nice to meet you.” She looked about ten. Jay, about twelve. He must keep control over it. These people couldn’t see it.
“Nice to meet you too, Ben!” Angie smiled, her duck fluff hair curving in almost-curls to frame her face, dark eyes merry and bright like an English robin’s. Ben thought himself, no one must know how hard it is to sit still let alone walk one foot in front of the other, pounding the earth step by step.
“You too.” Ben dipped his head in acknowledgement and went back to numbing his eyes on the speeding road outside the window. He started from his reverie by the slight jostling of his seat, as the two new occupants squeezed onto his bench. Their excited faces stopped him from getting up to leave.
“The bus driver never lets us sit three to a bench. We’re expanding his horizons.” Jay winked, elbowing Angie in the ribs. “Keep it our secret?”
And Ben rode the rest of the journey close to the wall and occasionally bumping Jay’s shoulder.

A month later, Ben was learning how to play. At recess and at lunch, afterschool and on the bus he would tag along with Angie and Jay listening to them debate and discuss the up-coming holiday: Halloween. School was a minor concern since his mind was occupied with his two friends. Ben was realizing more and more, how he’d never known how much he’d needed other human contact. It had always been just him and discord. But the presence of two people had eased that conflict; they were something to take his mind off the chaos inside him. He hoped rather than knew that he had control over the Eye. The visions never hit while he was in class for which he was grateful, because the mathematics teacher seemed to believe he was a slacker who cared nothing for the curriculum. The fall had turned the leaves red but their change of colours felt like some kind of betrayal, though Ben could not trace a reason why. Something still pulled at his spirit like a steady trickle and wore away at his will. When he fell into the Eye everything almost stopped as if frozen and happened in slow-motion; and stuck in the state he would float until another person brushed past him in an effort to continue through their busy day.
That was why he hoped Jay and Angie never saw him at his worst. Reverting to the Eye brought changes to his body that would alarm his friends.
“Hey Ben. What will you be for Halloween?” Angie and Jay had found him at his locker, collecting his textbooks to study at home.
“Uh…I don’t know. What will you be?” He asked. A trickle of the Eye turned into a flow. Let him make it home, or at least away from the two before he was yanked up into the slow-motion Wonderland, everything suspended in action as he fell into the deeper state of mind-sight. Ben seized the feeling and quashed it, listening as Angie described her idea. The gravestones in the cemetery had been a source of entertainment to the kids at school, and she wanted to dress up as a statue.
“I’m going to be a vulture. They’re smart, and scary.” Jay boasted. “You should be a vulture too, Ben.”
The bus swayed and bumped most sickeningly. Ben gripped the edge of the seat.
“Ben?” Angie looked at him, concern in her bright eyes. “Are you okay?”
Up till now the flow had stayed subdued but it leapt forward with a roar, and Ben struggled to move his mouth, or even hear the words she uttered. I must fight it! I can’t go there, not yet! Why can’t you understand that? The roaring stopped, and Ben snapped back into reality.
“Those are interesting choices. Perhaps I will join you, Jay. Though I ought to ask permission first.” Clearly, they were spooked by the reserved behaviour he displayed. Crushed, Ben decided they would probably not be there on the bus with him the next day. The bus jerked to a stop. He excused himself, not meeting their eyes and hopping off the last step with false indifference. He made it to the front step of his house before he was drawn into the Eye again.

Now Angie and Jay, they were indeed worried for their quiet, vague companion. Being siblings, the two were closer than two peas in a pod, despite all their arguing and oftentimes did not require words to voice their worries. However when it came to someone as contrary and intricate as Ben, Angie could not let her unease about his erratic behaviour go. She resolved to speak to the boy the next day, but did not see him on the bus or at school. Two weeks passed by and still there was no word. The teachers and even some students began to display a recognition of his absence, but not a word was heard of the boy. And stranger still, as Jay learned that the school had been instructed to pay no mind over his absence the matter grew on Angie’s mind. And so another agonizing week passed, Jay convinced Angie that Ben was fine and that it was probably best to wait for Ben to return, giving some unexpected but good advice to his younger sister.
“We should invite him to come trick-or-treating with us. Halloween’s this Friday, and it doesn’t matter about school and all that. We could meet him in the park by his house.”
“But what if he doesn’t have a costume?”
“I did make an extra vulture head. And a black cape shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
And so it was decided that Jay and Angie were to take Ben out for a night of fun.

Meanwhile, young Ben was spending his days locked up in his room, the Eye pulling him in and rejecting him dozens of times. It is to us a sensation of fever and great fragility, as if one is made of the thinnest crystal while boiling within roars an ocean full of bright stars. It was without a doubt that Ben was reaching the climax of something as Halloween drew near and the leaves turned from red to gold to dead. Nanny endured the alarming deterioration of her master with a mixture of apprehension and fear. Nothing she tried could ease the violence of his apparent loss of sanity, to be sure she knew not what he was to become. Ben lived through the Wonderland of suspended time, wondering every moment when things would become easier to comprehend, the sounds less sharp and the images of many possible outcomes blurring together like a muffled movie in slow-motion. To Angie, Jay and the school it was thought that Ben was ghastly ill and bedridden at home. To his Nanny, Ben was very sick indeed. As for Ben himself, it almost seemed he’d lived a year just waiting for the world to catch up to his speed when at last, the Eye let him go and he found himself existing at the same pace as the world, gasping for breath on his bed at home. Nanny came in and found him lying there quietly, collecting himself and went over to his side.
“Ben! It is so good to see you awake. Your friends left you a note; they thought it might be nice if you could get some fresh air with them on Friday.” She took him by the shoulder, “oh, master Ben I am so glad you have made some friends.”
He turned his head with that age-old directness, asking Nanny a question which unnerved her as the absence of mind she’d witnessed while caring for him in his feverish stupor was gone. “Nanny, what do my parents know of this? Surely they want to see me now?” All his life, Ben had craved to know who his parents were, and why they could not visit him. Now more than ever he wanted to see them for he feared he would soon be gone forever. Nanny herself could not answer his questions, since she had been sworn to secrecy from the day the baby boy had been entrusted to her care.
“Ben, I am sure they would see you if they could. And believe me, they do know.” That was all, and she brushed back the damp lock of hair from his face, ignoring the frost-like pollen that beaded his brow. “Now, I’ll make you some hot tea with brown sugar, and how about some soup? Your friends seem very nice.”
Ben lifted the folded school note to his eyes, and a small smile eased the disorientated, lost look off his face. They would go trick-or-treating.

“Whoohee! Don’t you look grand! Oh I cannot wait until Ben sees this. You look absolutely revolting!” Angie chortled away, the look of glee on her grey face out of character as an expressionless stone angel.
“And you look absolutely ghastly.” Jay’s voice was slightly muffled through the pointed beak of his mask, a pair of black sockets staring back at his sister. “Come, let’s go get Ben. He said he had his own costume.”
The two siblings skipped out into the fading light of day, an odd pairing among witches and ghosts and scarecrows.

Ben stared into the mirror assaulted by second thoughts for his choice of costume. A man made of vines and leaves wasn’t as scary a sight as he had hoped. But the prospect of going out dressed up as the grim reaper seemed like too much to tempt fate with and he refused to be a super hero of any sort. The Eye was becoming less gripping and for that Ben was very glad. He sensed some kind of climax looming closer and closer, but dared not pursue the thought lest he was wrenched into fast-forwarding his existence in comparison to the rest of the world. Some change would make its appearance, and soon. Still, Ben was glad to have met the lively Angie and her brother. All his life, when he counted this first year of junior high seemed to mean nothing when he thought of the gift that meeting the two children had been. Just then, Nanny opened the door and he turned to see Angie and Jay behind her.
“Oh! What a marvelous costume, that’s one that’ll get the parents. They’ll never see you until you speak.” Jay exclaimed with excitement. Angie merely stood there, taking it in. Vines of crawling ivy crept up Ben’s legs and arms, a web of ferns covering his chest and tiny barbs twisting around his neck up to his pale face. There were dark shadows under his eyes, but he looked strangely calm and attentive.
“Thanks. I am quite frightened by yours. Shall we away?” Not a hello was exchanged, even though the three had not seen each other since that torturous bus ride Ben had fought all the way home. Still things were just the same between them – or so it seemed. Jay and Angie accepted that Ben would tell them what had happened when he was ready. It was a very worried Nanny that watched the three children venture out into the night from the doorway. “Let the child spend this one night among friends. Before it must occur.”

First they went to the park, swooping and stalking through the tall supports of the playground structures; generally enjoying the wildness of the beginning of Halloween. Then Jay initiated the trick-or-treating and the plant-boy and stone angel followed him.
“Ben, I’m glad we’re friends.”
Ben glanced at Angie, whose sombre, stoniness seemed at odds with her kind words of sincerity.
“Me too.”
Jay turned and motioned for them to hurry, his swirling black cape rustling in the still air.
“Come on you lot, if we don’t get an early start all the candy will be gone!”
“Only because you’ll eat it all!” Angie retorted, taking Ben’s hand and running them both to James. They walked up the steps to a door, and knocked. A jolly-looking woman opened the door and looked quizzically at the odd trio.
“And what might you be?”
“I’m a graveyard angel!” Angie gave her best blank stare but it was ruined by her grin.
“A vulture.” Jay hunched his neck and held his hands behind his back.
“I am a member of the forest.”
The lady gave a hearty laugh and handed them all chocolate bars. “My, isn’t that unusual! Have a good night, kids!”
The three looked at each other, and muffled their giggles.
“Member of the forest? C’mon Ben, make it more frightening!”
“I should like to see you be more frightening, you really could be a spine-chilling graveyard angel.”

The night darkened and deepened, revealing a scattering of stars and streaky clouds. It was a night for scares and strangeness but Ben wished it would last forever. They came to a busier part of town and decided to cross. And suddenly the Eye reared up, sucking Ben in for a long moment. He saw Angie step onto the road, saw the car, its headlights dimmed to nearly nothing. Saw her body crumple –
“Ben, c’mon! We’re going to the other neighbourhood.” She called him back and the vision was coming true. Angie took a step. Jay hefted both his bag and Angie’s in two hands. The roaring blocked out all sound, increasing in volume and prickling his crystal skin.
No! Ben was beside her and gave her one push with all his strength and – He floated in the Eye, at the Pinnacle of his fast existence. He saw Jay scream and the candy scattered on the grass. Angie lay by the curb, unmoving. He watched Jay run over to his sister. Angie propped herself up on her arms, looked back at him. Jay dragged her away from the road, onto the pavement. Tears flowed from his eyes as they both looked back to where Ben had leapt.
“He’s gone.” The two children sat, staring in shock and horror at the road. “Jay?”
“Yeah.”
“Jay, what’s that?”
Jay watched the Monarch butterflies twist up into the sky, and away into the night.
“Jay, look!” Angie’s voice shrilled.
Ben watched as his body burst into the violent orange of Monarchs. So this was the climax. No longer could he feel the pent up conflict. He wasn’t the half-boy prone to attacks of autism. Where their friend had fallen rose a blurry figure of frost-like pollen. It collected itself, and raised its bowed head. It was Ben, whose ears were now pointed and from his back a pair of dragonfly wings fluttered. At last, Ben opened his eyes.
“So this is who I am.”
All along it had been his state of being, and now he was pure uncontained energy. The first fairy watched as time slid by him like a slow river, existing at a faster rate than the world. The two energies he’d spent thirteen years controlling finally balancing on their own as a new kind of power. And the son of the gods flittered off to join Pan’s forest.