Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce Page B

saw a ball of ginger fur brushed up against the base of the fence. It wore a little red collar.
    “Bugger bugger bugger fuck.”
    He squatted beside his kill. It was a pretty ginger cat. Its eyes were wide open and it lay still. Jack tried to poke it.
    “Fuck bugger fuck bugger.”
    It was a neighbor’s cat that he’d seen in the yard once or twice, a sweet thing owned by the elderly lady who lived a few doors away across the street. Jack felt his stomach squeeze. He could see where the pellet had gone in the head. There was also a tiny clot of blood in the cat’s ear. Why did he have to suddenly be such a good shot?
    He stared back at the house. He didn’t think anyone could have seen what had happened. He held his head in his hands, trying to ward off a deep thrill of shame. Then he recovered, got up, and walked back to the outhouse to open the pellet-studded door. Inside he found a garden spade.
    Returning to his kill, he dug a hole in the earth as deep as he could, but after just a couple of feet he hit clay that made the spade ring, as if it was iron. He put the cat in the shallow grave. He thought about taking off its red collar but decided against. Then he covered the dead cat with loose soil. He scattered a pile of dead leaves over the grave to disguise his handiwork.
    He returned to the outhouse, put the spade away, and went back inside the house.
    G ENEVIEVE WATCHED THE BOY kick off his boots at the door and hang his jacket on the banister post of the stairs.
    “You okay, Jack?” she shouted, still busy with the girls and the cake.
    “Yep,” he said, swinging upstairs.
    She hadn’t meant
Are you okay?
She had meant:
Gosh I’ve hardly seen you for three days
. But his answer had told her that he wasn’t okay. She gazed at the spot on the stairs where he’d been, as if his imprint or a ghost of him was still there.
    “Are you sure it is Aunt Tara?” Amber said.
    “Why on earth do you say that?”
    “Well, I heard you saying to Daddy that she should be nearlyyour age. And she’s not. So it can’t be her, can it? She’s not old enough, is she?”
    “Don’t be so silly. Of course it’s your Aunt Tara.”
    And Genevieve picked up the cake in its baking tin and put it in the oven, which had been warming.

CHAPTER TEN
    Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a faery, hand in hand
,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand
.
    W. B. Y EATS
    H e also had a great way of listening. It was as if everything I said to him was important. Counted for something. And it was like that with everything he said, too. Nothing lost, or loose. We rested there amid the bluebells with our heads leaning against the moss-covered stone and with the lark twittering in the infinite sky, and it was as if time didn’t shift.
    No one came or went. Usually on a lovely day such as that there would be several people strolling in the Outwoods, but today none passed by. I didn’t even think it strange.
    “A lovely girl like you,” he said, “you must surely have a boyfriend.”
    “I do. But he doesn’t make me happy.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “He thinks more of his music than he does of me.”
    “But I love music and music makers. You could have a worse fellow than that, you know: one who makes music.”
    “I don’t know about that. I think they just like to have the girls look at them. That’s what it’s all about.”
    “Is that such a bad thing?”
    “It is for me. I want to be somebody’s special person. I don’t want to be with a man who looks at other women.”
    “You’ll have your work cut out for you to find a chap like that,” he said.
    That sort of remark would normally make me prickle. He was mocking me for being naïve but he had a way of softening it with a smile and with these lovely wrinkles around his eyes, so that I didn’t take the least offense. Plus, his experience was an attractive thing. He was so relaxed in his manner with me. Richie was always so