The Moonlight Boy | Ferry's Tale # 1

The time of the shadows (part one)

Time was passing by slowly. The cold was just as piercing, and the weather as gloomy and moist as always. The school days were long and boring. His friends were doing the same things, every single day. Nothing seemed to change. Not a single sign to make him believe he was a fairy.

Maybe I'm not a fairy, after all. Maybe I'm just a boy who can see fairies... he tried to convince himself.

Still, there was something different since his last visit to Lavender Sky's cottage. He could feel it. It was there, waiting. Like a long-distance threat, yet getting closer with each day that passed.

He decided he shouldn't tell anything to anyone. His mother, his friends, all the people he knew, would have seen him with different eyes. Everything would have changed. He didn't care what people thought. But what about his friends? How would they react? They didn't even believe him when he told them he could see fairies, let alone now? That would have devastated her to know he wasn't her real child. What about May?... May believed in fairies, but would she had felt the same if finding out HE was a fairy? People are afraid of the unknown, he remembered Lavender told him. And all he wanted was everything to remain the way it was.

"What's wrong with you, Ferry?!!" he heard Matilda yelling in his ear, shaking him by the shoulder. "It's the third time I'm telling you!"

"What? What is it?" he asked as if awaken from a deep sleep.

The school was over and now the three of them were heading home.

"I was asking if you could join us for the Halloween night," she said, sniffing. If there was one thing Matilda hated the most that were people not paying attention to her.

"I─ I don't know..." Ferry stuttered. "I never─"

"You mean you never went trick-or-treating?" was Ben's turn to wonder.

"Well..."

"So what do you usually do on Halloween?" Matilda asked.

"My mum and I, we decorate the front garden with pumpkins and dummies made of old clothes, leaves, and branches. And then, my mum bakes the best pumpkin pie in the world."

"Bo-ring!" Matilda cut him short. "How can you spend Halloween without trick-or-treating? This year, you're coming with us," she decided.

" I usually go with my sisters," Ben mumbled.

"Aren't you a bit too old to go with your sisters?" Matilda mocked him.

"Who else is coming?" asked Ferry.

"Well, last year I went with my father. But now that I'm older, I suppose I could go with you," she said.

"I was thinking," dared Ferry, "we could invite May to come along..."

But he didn't even finish his sentence, that Matilda burst into laughter; although anyone could tell it was a burst of nervous laughter.

"When is it going to get into that head of yours that May will never be your friend. It doesn't matter you're doing homework together. Didn't you notice that she barely looks at you at school?"

"I just thought─"

"You thought what? That she'll team-up with the weirds? Please! She's in Cecilia's group. The group of the popular ones, that is," she said, stressing the last words.

"Matt's right, Ferry," Ben interfered. "I don't see any point in asking her."

But Ferry still believed May would have come with them if asked. He just had to wait a little longer before his friends accepted her as part of their group.