For reasons I have revealed elsewhere, October is—for me—a month of haunting fascination mixed with eerie dread.
In Cratersville, when I was growing up, October was known as the month that held the all important night where all us kids dressed up in costumes and ate obscene amounts of candy—chocolate being the gold standard in this regard (hear me people who hand out licorice, pixy stix and candy corn).
You might know this night as Halloween. In the Iconvilles, however, Halloween is called the “Night Between the Worlds.” This is a tip of the hat to the fact that October 31 is the one night* of the year where the cultural decorum of the iconvilles can be freely broken without any penalty. It is also a time when those with the talent (and know-how) can actually enter the Crossroad of Souls** and come back with the same life they entered with.
Of course, there are some creatures—created or wild magic born—who don’t have this restriction, but that’s another story for another day.
Suffice it to say, the liminal quality and blurring of the lines that were so much part of the celebration proved to be problematic overtime after Poppy and I discovered the Magic that allowed us to create little creatures.
Chaos and mischief abounded each time the Night Between the Worlds came around. It intensified as we entered our teen years. We didn’t know where the chaos was coming from, for we always tried to contain the excess magic we thought we were releasing.
We didn’t know, that all the while, we had a phantom being deceiving us, a ghost that lived in the shadows of my father’s theater who drew upon a power that even we couldn’t quite fathom.
I’m telling you this, not just to get you in the mood for the spookiest night of the year, but to tease you about things that I will be writing about in the future.
I have a frightfully fantastic tale to tell.
Until then, let me wish you October babies a SPELLtacular Birthday no matter which day in October you were born on, and remember you too can cast spells of wonder if you just let your true spooky self shine.
—Jellybean Reds, Creator of Little Creatures
* In certain towns, like Cratersville, we were permitted minor violations of cultural decorum in the week leading up to Between the Worlds Night without too much grumbling from the local hardcore denizens
** The Crossroad of Souls is a place where souls wishing to reborn await invitations back to the temporal world
