The Secret Invitation

"Just what do you think you're doing, you rascal?" asked my mom, opening the door and catching me eavesdropping. Then she added as I stammered to come up with an answer: "Have you finished your chores?"

"No," I lied.

"Well, get to it then! Or do you think Brigid should halt the coming of Imbolc until we're done with the preparations?"

"No, mother," I sighed. "I'll get to it." As she was turning to close the door, I couldn't help but ask: "One more thing. Have you... has anyone seen Tim-Tam?"

Her eyes softened as she stroked my hair. "Oh, darling. She'll come back eventually. Come on, see to your chores. We'll look for her after the festival, if she doesn't show up by herself until then."

I sighed and went away, as my mother closed the door. They would probably find some other room to talk. I hadn't managed to figure out what about, but I'd heard my name and the word "surprise" mentioned.

A surprise for me, that sure would be something. Though on second thought, why wouldn't they prepare a surprise for me? I was about to come of age, after all. Sharing a birthday with a major festival is usually a bummer, but this year it would be different, right?

I went to climb on the roof. Lying about still having work to do got me more time for myself, and if I was caught slacking off, I could just proclaim the chores done. But usually my family just thought I was working slowly, which prevented them from giving me more tasks, as they weren't sure I could handle the increase.

I scanned the horizon, as if expecting to spot the brown little furball that was Tim-Tam among the neighboring houses and gardens. Everyone was running around like tadpoles in a pond getting the final touches done for Imbolc. My family insisted on starting earlier than usual though, so there wasn't much left for us to do.

They gave me extra chores too. Though most of them were busywork, no doubt to keep me away while they plotted my surprise unperturbed. I'm usually good at eavesdropping, but I could not for the life of me figure them out this time. Every time I got a chance to listen in on their whispers, something would come up requiring my attention, one of them would spot me and saddle me with a task, or I plain couldn't focus on what they were talking about. It was like they were having supernatural aid or something.

I heard some neighbor yell at her family that they were too slow. I heard our name dropped in, most likely as a comparison. How dare we finish way before everyone else?

We were not technically finished. My dad had this thing where he'd always leave something trivial to be done for the last moment, like a plate not yet set, or a knot left undone. Then, when a neighbor asked if we were finished with the preparations, someone would go "hold on", do that one last thing, and then sigh in relief at being done in the nick of time. It was stupid if you asked me, and the neighbors probably knew we did it on purpose, but they seemed to appreciate that we were careful not to cause them to lose face like that.

I sighed and went into my room through the window, going for the fortune cookie stash. I liked to eat one every week, and use the rest of the time in between cookies to twist the meaning of the fortune until I got something interesting out of it. One time I got "A dream you have will come true," and after mulling on it for a week, during which I took extra care taking notes of everything I was dreaming of, I interpreted it as an end of the world prophecy regarding one dream in which I was flying: gravity will cease to function and everything is going to float into the sky.

The eve of Imbolc that particular year coincided with the day for a new fortune to be wrung through my mind, but when I opened the jar to get a cookie, I found, to my dismay, that they were all missing. I wanted to go ask someone about them, but they probably didn't know about this hobby of mine; I made sure to keep it to myself, and never had any cookie gone missing from my stash. I had little reason to suspect someone in the house would steal all of them. And I was still pretending to do the chores I had finished a while ago. I'd probably sort it out after the festival...