Gypsy Girl

My story begins with them laughing at me. They always are. The boys, mostly. The pack of boys, wild and scruffy as a wolf pack, running around the Anglian countryside. I shut my eyes and listen. Well, listen isn't quite the right word. Strain to detect something else, something otherworldly. Feel. Reach out, not with my mind, but with my soul. It's the only way it works.

   "Gypsy girl! Gypsy girl! Says she dreams of other worlds!"

   "I only dream of one other world," I whisper. I mean to say it louder, but I'm distracted. I came to this empty, icy meadow for a reason. I can feel the other place very strong here. The place has strange machines that don't work by fairy enchantment. And everyone has them. Everyone has strange clothes and it seems they're all human. Thick as humans have grown in this world since they entered it thousands of years ago, we are still only one race in so many. I can hear the boys taunting me, but one has the rasping voice of a crow. He's a fairy. He changed into a crow last week and hasn't managed to change all the way back. Another boy is huge and burly and his voice carries for a mile if he yells, which he is. Scaring birds. I can hear the crows flying over us. Anyhow, the loud boy is an ogre. Full-blooded. Though, with human and nonhuman matches being legalized a few years ago, that may not be so common soon.

   "Come on..." I whisper. I can feel it so close now...I may even be able to push through, break the barrier between the words...Why did I think words? Worlds...

   "Gypsy girl! Gypsy girl! Says she dreams of another world!"

   My eyes snap open. My father's rage is in my blood. He was the strongest warrior in this shire before he died, and no one beat him. Plague did. Mother and I only recently returned to England. We've been traveling the countryside all over Europa. Now it's cold and ice covers the dead grass and damp soil. The trees circling the meadow are leafless. Only a new smell in the air reminds me of spring.

   "I tell one story at one fire on one night with one of you there--" I point an accusing finger at crow boy--"and I hear of it for months on end! You do wrong to treat with me in this foul manner. I cannot help my dreams. I see another world, but it does not change yours. Stop making mine a plague."

   Two crows fly overhead, cawing again and again, adding to the tumult in my mind. My soul may be at peace and curious about the Otherworld, but my mind remembers my father and refuses to be content. Where did he go? He had fairy blood. His parents didn't tell the priest that my grandmother was a fairy, and they were married against the law. She probably still is a fairy, if the extreme people haven't managed to kill her. if you're not human, you have no soul. When you die, you cease to exist. But Father was only half fairy, so where is he now? Is he anywhere? Have I a soul to call my own?

   "Gypsy girl! Gyp--"

   I'm dangerous now. When I'm cool, I am dangerous. That was the way with Father, they say, but it is with Mother too. I think I inherited her coolness. I want something from her. I want all of me to be from her, so I'll go somewhere after I die. Heaven. I believe and obey and love and everything, and I want Heaven, not because of what it is, but because of what's in it. Even so, I can't help wanting to inherit Father's righteous rage. He fought the goblins just before the plague. He would have spread it among them, but he didn't want the innocents to get it. Goblins have innocents, just like us.

   "Gypsy comes from Egyptian," I say coolly. "I'm not Egyptian. Gypsies once came from Transylvania, which is now part of the Black Forest."

   "You're cursed." It was a ginger said it, a tall stocky fellow in the back of them all. "Your land, your family, your father--"

   "Do you not understand your thoughtless cruelty?" I tilt my head, incredulous. "Because my father was strong, and I have some of that strength, you think I don't feel?"

   "You feel less." His eyes are harsh bluish-green, glaring at me. His ears are large and pointed, and his eyes are large. He must be part goblin. "Look at you. You look at us as you look at the crows. We're harmless to you."

   "One of you is half crow already," I laugh. "Did my father slay yours? Don't look to me for recompense. I never killed any goblin--or anyone, actually."

   The ginge turns furious and throws a stick. I deflect it with my arm easily, but he picks up a rock and runs at me. I turn and run, not looking for a hiding place, but for better ground. I need a place that I know well, somewhere I can lose them. I will prove to these country churls that I know the wild better than any of them ever will.