Brambling

Something is in the hedge again. Third night this week.

Small, no taller than my knee, all vine and thorn, with a face like unfinished carving. It watched me from the bramble line a long while before it came closer. Wings like dead leaves, near see-through in the lantern light.

It wanted the ribbon from my hair. I gave it. Seemed pleased. Started humming, if you can call it that, more like wind through a hedge, and reaching for my braid.

I pulled back before it touched me. My grandmother's voice in my head the whole time. I didn't understand why until I saw what it did to the miller's boy last spring. Sweet child, wandered off with one for an afternoon, came back talking half in riddles, called his own mother by the wrong name for a week.

They're not cruel, I don't think. Just want what they want, same as a magpie wants shine. Give freely and they'll trade you a small charm, some trinket of knotted grass that holds until the next full moon. Take nothing they haven't offered. Braid nothing they haven't asked.

Elders salt the windowsills every new moon on account of them. I used to think it superstition.

I don't anymore.

There's a verse the children sing at Elder Brawmwick's fire that says it plainer than I can:

"Tiny vines and childlike face
The Bramblings draw you near
They'll bring you to a secret place
But don't let them braid your hair!"

Mind the briars. Mind your hair.