Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show by Frank Delaney

observed.

A fter lunch, to escape the house’s mood, I went outdoors. Fog had come in. From the yard I went on a long looping walk that I’d worked out since the first days I was allowed to roam the fields alone. I was six years old then, and imagine what the woods looked like. Thrilling—a mysterious forest, especially in fog, when all branches took on new shapes. I saw caves that didn’t exist, and the ghosts of animals long extinct—a fog in the woodlands is a work of ever-changing magic. Even now, though I was a dozen years older, and they seemed less populated by the supernatural, the woods served me well.
    The well stands away from the woods, its mound like a green breast out in the fields. As you approach you hear the water burble faintly against the pleasant and orderly walls. Those stones have lined the well for centuries. This is the best, the freshest drink that you can have.
    When I emerged from the trees, I saw an old woman by the well; she stood still, and she was looking toward me. Nothing unusual in that; the local people, from the cottages and from one or two of the smaller farms, drew buckets from here. Miss Fay often came with me as I fetched a pailof water for them; going back to the cottage she always made the same joke about how we were Jack and Jill.
    Still, I thought that I knew everybody who used this well, and I’d never seen this tall crone. Nor the garment she wore—except in paintings; she had an ankle-length black Kinsale cloak. As I drew closer I could see that it was lined with bright, shining green fabric, probably silk. The Kinsale cloak billows out into the world; it’s from another century; it has ruffles. You don’t see it much in the countryside, as it’s mainly worn by rich city women on classy occasions.
    To add to the mystery, this creature also carried something I’d never seen except in storybooks—a wooden pail. All our buckets were enamel or galvanized metal.
    I stopped and, unusually for me, I didn’t speak a greeting. The woman, much older than Mother or Missy Casey, beckoned me forward. She had an urgent air of command. I walked forward, picking my steps.
    She waited, still beckoning. Beside the dark pool of the well the fog lay thickest, a gray blanket, swirling and dense. On and on she beckoned me until I stood no more than some feet from her. Now I could see that the cloak obscured the lower half of her face.
    She felt strange in the way only a total stranger can. I knew I’d never seen her before—and I had been a boy who rode his bicycle like a hero all around these roads. She had a gray face, and her cloak’s hood also covered her head so that I couldn’t say what color hair she had—or indeed if she had any. Her high cheekbones—from what I could glimpse of them—suggested that once upon a time she might have been a beauty. Now she seemed tired, maybe exhausted.
    I could have reached out and touched her face, as she could mine. Neither of us moved; I, frightened, held my hands by my sides. I felt the damp fog on my face, saw my breath on the air. She held the wooden pail in her hand. Her eyes searched me, every square inch, head to foot.
    “Look at you,” she said.
    A statement, one with no emotion in it, no kindness, no threat, no criticism, no praise. I kept my eyes down. Her creaking, slightly uncouth tones gave no identification. An Irish voice? Perhaps, but I couldn’t say whence.
    “Look at you,” she said again.
    Somewhere in the woods behind me a bird swore, harsh and high. The fog thickened.
    “I’ve something to say to you, young lad,” she announced. “And you’ll remember it many times.”
    Fear is what I remember. Of what, I didn’t know. Fear of having no control? Or fear that a stranger could presume to have an influence upon me, make an observation of me? As she now did, and this is what she said.
    “You’re going to be given a shock, young lad.”
    I found my voice. “Where are you from?”
    She eyed me. “You’re