Swinside Village, Cumbria Beltane afternoon
The smoke of the Beltane fire was already winding through the village when Grey returned from the stone circle.
Children wove in and out of the maypole with damp ribbons trailing from their sleeves, cheeks flushed pink and mouths sticky with honeycakes. The air rang with their laughter, sharp and high like birdsong, as they darted between the legs of dancing couples and shrieked at the sudden bursts of fiddle music.
The bonfire hadn't been lit yet, but it loomed in the field like a pyre waiting for a reason—stacked too neatly, wood black with damp and smoke-primed, as if it already knew what it would become. Wildflowers crushed beneath hurried feet released sweet, wet perfume, and the smoke of cooking fires curled through the meadow like lazy spirits.
Grey lingered at the edge of the hedge path, shoulder resting lightly against the old dry-stone wall. She let the sound of fiddles and laughter bleed into the mist and fold around her like a cloak.
She didn't dislike the festival. Beltane had always been one of the softer ones—no offerings, no blood, even in the old days. Just fire and food and the illusion of joy. But merriment always pressed against her skin like ill-fitted fabric, full of colors she could never quite wear.
It wasn't that she was melancholic all the time. She happened to think she had a fantastic sense of humour, thank you very much. It just didn't come in colours most people appreciated. Dry, mostly. With a tendency toward mischief and morbidity. And the odd conversation with the dead. That tended to freak the average English country villager out, just a schoche.
The villagers didn't exclude her, not openly. But no one quite looked at her, either. Children gave her a wider berth than they gave the thistles. The elders nodded politely and kept walking. Even the air near her felt quieter, like the land knew what she was and didn't want to interrupt.
So she watched. That was her place.
Until the storm god arrived.
He came tumbling down the slope from the forest road, barefoot, cloak flapping, covered in what could only be described as theatrical disgrace. His antlered headdress bobbed wildly as he threw his arms skyward.
"Bow before me, mortals!" he bellowed, voice veering between London drawl and Dublin mischief. "I am the Storm King Wickham, Lord of Lightning, Slayer of Candles, Thief of Soap! Tremble before my laundry crimes!"
Amidst shocked tourists, a dozen children screamed—some in joy, some in confusion—and scattered like startled hens. Wickham charged after them in exaggerated slow motion, tripping over his own cloak and collapsing in a dramatic death-wail that involved at least three unnecessary spins and a sprig of heather.
Grey closed her eyes and sighed. "Every Beltane," she muttered. "It's like a faerie-flavoured pantomime."
Later, she found him crouched beneath the festival's half-built tor, curled like a goblin over a stolen plate of pastries and chewing something that crackled.
"You're early," she said, arms folded.
"You're damp," Wickham replied brightly, crumbs dusting his chin. "And haunted. And moodier than a bog ghost in a poetry phase. Which I love. But also: tragic."
Grey raised an eyebrow. "Is that fur on your socks?"
"Tradition," Wickham declared, lifting a leg like he was modeling for the cover of Faerie Vogue. "Very druid-chic. Straight off the altar. Dead sheep and divine flair."
"You look like someone raided a scarecrow's sale and then lost a bet."
"Darling, I am the sale. I am the market. I am the broken stall marked 'chaos—half off.'"
Grey sat beside him, shaking her head. "You realise you're terrifying at least one entire generation of village children."
"Good. They'll grow up resilient."
He pushed a honeycake toward her with the exaggerated reverence of a religious rite, gesturing at her to eat, knowing she probably hadn't bothered all day.
"Something's stirring," Wickham said, eyes narrowing.
"Define 'something.'"
"Oh, you know, the usual—Birds screaming prophecy in Latin. Mirrors turning sideways. A scrying bowl exploded in Maerlowe's face yesterday—nose full of ash and indignation. Very dramatic. His eyebrows will never recover. I brought biscuits."
Grey bit into the cake, letting the sweetness distract her for half a breath. It was cloying and sticky, and she kind of hated how much she liked it. She didn't show it, of course. That would've ruined the whole aloof-and-haunted aesthetic she'd perfected by accident around age fifteen.
"The girl passed. She wasn't trapped. Just… lost."
"Right. And I definitely didn't start a fight with a glamoured fox spirit over kindling. Except I did. Yesterday. Which is why I smell faintly of wet dog and victory."
He shifted, tone softening. "Darling, that soul pulled hard. The thread you touched? It pulsed like thunder. I felt it. Maerlowe felt it. And someone else definitely did."
Grey stilled. A prickle ran up her spine, cold and familiar. "I felt someone watching," she murmured, but her mind added the rest: And I didn't mind it as much as I should have.
Wickham pointed a half-eaten pastry toward the tree line, mouth still half-full. "Big bloke. Hair like a silk spill. Amber eyes, which, by the way, glow. Real subtle. Standing just out of glamour range, brooding like a Byronic novel with commitment issues. The whole 'brooding Fae specter of your worst romantic decisions' vibe. Definitely not local."
"Unseelie?"
"Well it's either that or a very dramatic tax auditor, darling."
Grey let the silence settle between them. She watched the wind tug the smoke from the unlit pyre, her thoughts folding in on themselves like paper charms. She didn't want to say it aloud, but Wickham was right. Something was stirring. And if she admitted it, it might become real.
"Why are you really here?" she asked.
"Me?" Wickham blinked with false innocence. "I'm here for community. For spirit. For petty thievery and ritual chaos. For warmth and flirtation and whatever passes for cake in this village. Perhaps a little light arson. You know, the classics."
Grey gave him a look—the kind that suggested she'd measured his soul and found it slightly too noisy.
He leaned in. "Maerlowe said if I let you face what's coming alone, he'd personally drag me into the Veil and make me catalogue cursed sigils by scent and alphabetise the Folio of Threads in blood. And… because I like you."
"That's almost sweet."
"Don't be flattered, darling. I like cursed things."
Just before dusk, the bonfire was lit. Flames roared into the sky, sparks curling upward like silverflies. The villagers circled, hands joined, songs rising in half-tune.
Grey stood just outside the edge of the circle, her arms tucked tightly across her chest. She told herself it was to keep warm. It wasn't.
And the fire flickered.
For a heartbeat, it wasn't fire at all—it was a gate. White marble, wreathed in ivy and gold, its arch whispering secrets only the dead could hear. A figure passed behind it—tall, graceful, watching.
Then it was gone. Smoke and fire again.
Wickham appeared at her side, eyes glittering. "You saw it too."
Grey's voice was quiet, uncertain. "If that was the Veil, it was way too thin for my liking," she said, trying for nonchalance and missing by a mile. Her skin still felt stretched, like something had looked too closely through her and decided she didn't quite fit the shape she wore. Her pulse hadn't stopped skittering since.
"Oh, darling," Wickham whispered, eyes narrowing with something that was not quite fear but far from comfort. "Now you're not just Threadtouched. You're broadcasting. It's like the Veil doesn't just notice you—it listens to you. Echoes you. Like you're speaking in a language only the dead remember, and they've all just looked up at once."
"Get lost, Wick," she sighed wearily, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes.
He scrutinised her for a moment. Then he grinned, quick as lightning, bowed with a mock flourish—nearly tripping on a wayward garland—and disappeared into the crowd like a phantom with excellent comedic timing.
Grey walked home alone under the rising moon. The hedgerows hissed with mist. The standing stones glimmered—not light, not movement, but something in between.
She paused. The night was too still.
Then, behind her, a voice soft as a sigh:
You guided her well, Child of the Thread.
She turned.
Nothing.
Only wind. Only rain.
But one of the stones bore a mark. A spiral, faint and silver. As she reached for it, it vanished.
She didn't speak the rest of the way home.
But the mist followed her. And the ghost image of the gate flickered behind her eyelids every time she blinked.