34 Samhain
misunderstanding developed because a hollow hill is called a sidhe, and it is likewise pronounced shee, and it is said that sometimes faeries live in sidhes, as may ghosts and even gods. No, Sith means “the silently moving people,” and to the Scots, the faeries are a people in their own right, though not quite of this world, and not likely to be seen or heard unless they wish to be. And certainly these two children, who had seemed as real as stone when we saw them through the window on sunny afternoons had never made a sound when they passed, and vanished like smoke in wind when we looked for them. I told Natalia seriously, “I don’t even know if they’re really children.” Around us the day was perfectly calm, the woods perfectly still. This late into autumn, not even songbirds skipped among the branches, though here and there the odd squirrel or chipmunk darted among the roots and branches, stocking up for the coming winter. Natalia glanced into the woods on either side of the narrow trail and said, “Do you think they were ghosts?” I thought about it, then shook my head. Call it instinct, but when I’d seen them they looked too content and solid to be the lost spirits ghosts are typically thought to be. She half smiled, wonder in her eyes, and asked, “Do you think they were faeries?” Again, I shrugged. “I don’t know, sweetie. But the Scots folk around here believe these woods are haunted by faeries. So do the Mi’kmaq, who call them the Megumoowesoo. And, you know, the Acadians do, too, and call them les feys.” I spoke fair French by dint of my Cajun ancestry and I had spoken with the Acadians on many occasions, up around the village of Cheticamp. They seemed to like that I was Cajun, seeing me as one their lost cousins who were exiled to Louisiana when the English took Nova Scotia so many centuries ago, and so I had been privileged to sit in on some of their kitchen parties which were, like ceilidhs, full of music and old stories. “It seems everyone who lives around here believes there is magic in these woods. That’s why it used to be called Coille n’an Sithchean—the faerie woods. It’s like it’s between the worlds.”