It was Gwen who did the terrible thing. It could be said that she didn’t mean to, not really, but it is the nature of children to do such things at times. Owen warned her not to, but Owen was as afraid of Her as Gwen. And not nearly as brave.
Gwen knew a secret. Mommy and Daddy had other names as well. Gwen did too, but Mommy only spoke her other names when she was doing something very wrong. And mom had hired Her, which was a wrong beyond words.
“Help me,” Gwen whispered, and she said the name she’d heard her uncle speak once, in a tone of fearful wonder. And in the six years since she had never forgotten it, and at eight was determined to use it.
The word filled the entire basement for a moment and then stopped. Words are not meant to stop - not even stop does that! - but this one did as She came down the stairs.
“What do you think you children are doing?” She said in a tone far past warning, Her face cold and unkind.
“Nothing,” Owen stammered.
“Children are always doing things that they should not do. You will stop that at once,” She snapped, and the world went quiet and still in a way that made the children ache.
The emptiness of the world of adults is a normal thing, but to children it was a wound they could not even fathom. She stared at them with blue fires in her eyes and their protests went still as well.
“Hi!” a voice said, and it was bright and friendly as a boy stepped into the basement. He was unlike any boy that Gwen or Owen had ever seen; his clothing was a riot of colours that somehow fit together and his grin was all they knew of innocence and much else as well.
“YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE,” She said and the command made the frozen world turn grim and cold.
The boy’s grin did not change at all. He was eleven, which everyone in the room simply knew as well. “Nope! Honcho was really firm that I belong everywhere,” he said, and it made perfect sense even though there was no sense to it.
She stared at him, with eyes that were now black flame and the boy looked quite concerned.
“Your face is going to hurt if you keep doing that,” he said and the fire vanished from Her eyes. She stepped back and looked shocked in a way that suggested that She had never been shocked before.
“You - what are you?” She demanded.
“Being Jay is sometimes a what as well,” Jay said. “And you aren’t a what and not from Outside at all. Oooooh. You’re from really far Inside the universe?!”
Her expression was terrible to behold. “You cannot see Me boy,” She snapped.
“I can see lots of bindings and! you’re not as scary as Charlie. She has a really scary face!”
“I go where the wind takes me,” She said. “And you will go where the wind is not.”
Jay did not move. The air did something that air should not do. He blinked, looking quite surprised in turn, but there was delight at the world in him at all times, even when the times were not delightful. “That’s not a nice binding at all you know, and… you do know that.”
Something changed in the basement. Jay stared up at Her thoughtfully.
“I am beyond you, creature from Outside. You have no power over Me,” she said, in a tone Gwen and Owen had never heard before.
“But you're scaring these children, and they asked for my help,” Jay said. “So you won’t hurt them.”
She reeled back and let out a hiss. “I am the Great Exception, little thing. You will not put your will upon me!”
Jay sighed. The sigh was very put upon, and very not-Jay. Gwen was not certain why she knew this as well, but to know Jay was to know things. And sometimes those things made sense but mostly they did not.
“Then I won’t,” he said, with a calm to him that was not placid at all. “But Jayseltosche can, and I don’t think you want that.”
She went still, almost as still as Gwen and Owen did when She was angry.
“You have rules you’re allowed to break and limits you ignore,” Jay said. “Honcho is like that too. I’m really good at bindings. But there are no bindings on me. I don’t want to do the things I can do, and I bet you don’t want me to do them either?”
A wind blew through the basement, wildness from a direction that Gwen and Owen could not see.
“You’re leaving on this wind,” Jay said, soft but somehow louder than the wind about them.
An umbrella snapped into existence in front of Her. And she moved, with an unseen wind, gone between moments. The wind died down and Jay turned to study Gwen and Owen.
There was nothing in him that scared them, even though he had scared Her. “That went pretty weirdy. I’ll talk to Honcho but! you probably need a new nanny and that’s not me.”
Owen hugged Jay. Who grinned and hugged back.
“You’ll be okay. And she won’t come back,” Jay said and to Gwen’s wonder it was she and not She now even in her head.
“Thank you,” she whispered and Jay hugged her too.
“I should explainify this to your parents, but Charlie is way better at that. And Jay vanished, in a way that most people don’t. And it got very busy but also became very good. And Gwen got to meet Charlie, who didn’t seem scary at all, but she was wise enough that she didn’t say that at all.
And the next time the wind changed, it was only wind and noting more.
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