The "Dullahan" and the Fire Sprite

As I looked at the Jack-o-lantern, it seemed to be looking back at me.

It was the greatest night of the year, All Hallows’ Eve, Halloween, Sanheim, whatever you choose to call it. However, I learned something that night that changed my perspective on it. No longer was it simply a night of fun hauntings and frightening eyeball candies. It was late, and my friends had just crossed the corner to their houses across the street now that our collections of candy had been properly divided. I was standing on the threshold of my own house, fake cobwebs and a bubbling cauldron of dry ice and warm water combined waiting to greet me. I had been peering into my pillowcases of sweets to decide what I would eat first.

 My costume was fantastic. I wore a suit of old fashioned armor my antique-dealing uncle had designed after a real suit of armor he owned, and a black caplet around the shoulders. A fake headless neck had the armor and caplet concealing the place it met my head, and so no one saw a girl with my long brown hair. Instead they saw a headless rider, looking for a steed. I was so proud of it. Then a tiny voice broke my concentration in looking at the lantern's details.

“Hey Dullahan, did this house give you safe passage as well?” I blinked, my confusion paramount.

“What?” I choked out. A tiny little person, like a doll, looked up at me. Her hair was made of flames, and her body was smoldering like embers. When she pushed the lid of the jack-o-lantern out to look at me, she shivered.

“What?” She asked crossly. “Never seen a fire sprite before?”

“N-no. I can’t say that I have.” My head was spinning.

“Well, you must be new then. This house put out the pumpkins tonight, so that means it’s safe for us here.” She was obviously freezing and quickly retreated to the warmth of the jack-o-lantern.

I sat down on the steps beside her, and peered into the jack-o-lantern.

“You know, those human kids freak me out every time they come up. Little brats dressed like what they think zombies and vampires are like. Hah! If only they knew.”

“…Right….” I trailed off. Apparently I had a fire sprite, whatever that was, taking shelter in the jack-o-lantern I had carved with a smiley face earlier that evening. What did she mean by safe passage? Before I could ask this question gnawing through my brain, she spoke again.

“At least they provide us camouflage, dressed like that. The reapers can’t sense us when we're mixed with fake magical beings, stupid things.”

“Reapers?” I echoed, feeling more and more confused by the minute.

“Boy, you are slow. This same night every year, those phantom reapers come out to snack on any being with magic, in other words people like you and me! Over the centuries, a few sympathetic humans figured this out, and started giving us shelter at places where lanterns were placed. Did you granny Dullahan not tell you any of the old tales!?” She growled.

“What’s your name?” I was suddenly struck by this question and hoped to prove the situation more real by having it answered.

“Combustia. You?” I was about to answer, when suddenly a dark shadow passed over us both, and we froze.  Combustia let out a horrified gasp, and clung to the flame from the pumpkin’s candle more tightly. She sent up a shower of nervous sparks.

“T-they’re here. W-why are they here!? I thought they couldn’t find us!” The air, which had been a slightly chilly autumn temperature, dropped to below freezing in an instant.

The perspiration on my skin from the hot and sticky armor froze to little spots of ice.

I stared up in horror at the beings standing in front of me and the fire sprite. They had no eyes, but they were looking at us. Looking back on it now, I can’t describe what they looked like, only vague edges dark as the deepest cruelest ocean, and a feeling of going insane if I looked at them too long. I had never touched insanity before, but now I knew what it felt like to skim that surface.

Combustia was going crazy inside the pumpkin, flailing against the gooey walls, tears of ashes running from her eyes as they advanced. My legs were literally frozen, iced over onto the porch to hold me in place.

The reapers can’t sense us when we're mixed with fake magical beings…. I gasped and grabbed the jack-o-lantern. I held it in my lap, too frightened to think, drawing it into the folds of my caplet and hunching over it.

Ba-toom, ba-toom, ba-toom.

Blood roared in my ears, when I felt the reaper’s one slimy cold claw touch my knee. I stared stubbornly down at the jack-o-lantern, knowing I couldn’t afford an attempt at looking into its face. Combustia had fallen silent.

I swear the leading one cocked its head as it looked at me.

After an agonizing period of time I later realized was two minutes, they were gone.

Just like that, and so was the ice.

Combustia lay gasping on the floor of her shelter before crawling on her hands and knees to look out the eye of the lantern at me.

“Why are we still alive? They should have eaten us.”

My trembling hand removed the capelet and fake bloody neck.

“It didn’t want me.” Combustia stared at me uncomprehendingly for a minute, before her eyes enlarged by about five times. She groaned and fell onto her back on the pumpkin floor. The fire sprite covered her face in her hands.

“I can’t believe I was just helped by a stupid human kid. How humiliating.”

“You could say thank you.”

“Nah, it’s not in my nature.”

“Want to come inside and explain all this in a little more detail?”

“Is there candy?”

“Trick-or-treat.”

“Awesome, I will….”

I gathered up the Jack-o-lantern, and retreated inside. Such was my first taste, that Halloween was actually a safe-haven for magical beings, rather than a night for humans to protect themselves from magical beings.