Demon Child

They were chipped and cracked by her unaccustomed exercise of the past two days. She began to file them carefully, soon absorbed in the simple task.
        “You'll just chip them again,” a small voice said behind her.
        It startled Jenny so that she let her bottles of polish fall from her lap to the ground. Fortunately, neither had been opened.
        Frank appeared in the corner of her vision, rounding the rocks, Freya came close behind him. They were dressed in blue jeans and white teeshirts. They were perfectly beautiful children.
        “You shouldn't scare old people like me,” Jenny said. “I might have fainted on you. Then what would you have done?”
        “Got some lake water to throw on you,” Frank said. The idea seemed to appeal to the twins. They both smiled
        “Aunt Cora used to worry about her nails,” Frank said. “But if you ride a horse, you can't worry about sissy stuff like that.”
        “It isn't sissy stuff,” Freya said. It was the first time she had spoken. If there were to be a battle of the sexes here, she knew for certain which side she was on.
        “When Freya grows up,” Jenny said, “she'll take care of her nails, and all her boyfriends will be glad she looks so nice. It makes a girl prettier.”
        Jenny bent and retrieved the fallen bottles of polish, put them in her lap again. She was glad of the chance to talk to the twins. When she went before a class of twenty-five third graders this fall, she would have to be a little experienced in knowing how to talk with them.
        “Freya takes care of her nails now,” Frank said.
        Freya held up her hands, smiling through the fingers. They were both such impishly charming children. Jenny smiled back through her own fingers, then saw that what Frank said was true. Each of Freya's small nails was free of excess cuticle and shaped, though they were rounded rather than elongated in the fashion of a grown woman's nails.
        “She keeps them nice,” Frank said, “because she's a werewolf.” He watched Jenny solemnly, waiting.
        She was not sure whether he was serious or whether she was being played with.
        She decided to accept it as a joke, and she laughed. Somehow, the rumors had filtered down to the children themselves. She couldn't imagine who would have been so careless as to let such ugly ideas fall on such young ears, but she decided that joking about it was the best thing to do. “Freya isn't a werewolf,” she said. “She's just a very pretty little girl with a brother who likes to scare people.”
        “No,” Freya said, speaking again, her soft voice barely audible. “He's right. I am a werewolf.”
        Neither of the children were smiling.
        They looked at her, waiting.
        Jenny would have liked to catch hold of the inconsiderate adult who had passed these rumors on to the children. Surely Richard wouldn't have, especially since he believed werewolves were only superstitious folderol. Aunt Cora seemed to think there might be a grain of truth somewhere in the rumors, but even Cora would know that no good could come from feeding such frightening fantasies to children. That left Harold and Anna. She didn't know them well, but she doubted that either was that irresponsible.
        “How do you know you're a werewolf?” Jenny asked. Perhaps she could make the suggestion seem as foolish as it really was.
        “I go to sleep for long naps, and the wolves howl and kill things every time.”
        “But if you're asleep, you're not the wolf,” Jenny pointed out.
        Freya shook her head soberly. Her yellow curls bounced. “Yes I am. The ghost in me leaves when I sleep and takes the body of a wolf. Then it hunts.”
        Frank put his arm around Freya in a brotherly display of camaraderie. “She won't hurt you, Jenny. Will you Freya?”
        Standing there, the sun gleaming off their hair, their jeans muddy at the knees, their faces freckled, they looked like nothing so much as two typical American children from some Norman Rockwell painting, healthy and alive and as cute as buttons.
        “No,” Freya agreed. “I won't hurt you. Just rabbits.”
        Unaccountably, Jenny felt cold here on the sunbaked rock. Did she really believe this nonsense about curses and wolves? Could she, even for a moment, believe that part of this darling little girl went out at night and tore the throats out of rabbits? It was laughable, wasn't