In America, a child will threaten your house after dark, and you are simply expected to thank her for it.
A quiet street. Small armed figures moving door to door. The adults were paying them not to attack.
A tiny ghost and a smaller dinosaur came up my path, held out open sacks, and delivered their terms in unison.
"Trick or treat!"
A threat. Politely worded, but a threat: pay tribute, or a trick befalls your house. I respected it at once. The cleanest negotiation I had seen in this country — no contract, no lawyer, only an ancient bargain understood by all.
I did not have enough. No one had warned me the village children would come to collect. I dropped in what I had: one wrapped candy, then, ashamed, my last two, then a tangerine, then — because honor demanded it — a folded bill.
"Oh, that's way too much, you don't have to—" the dinosaur's mother called gently from the sidewalk.
I did have to. A house that cannot pay its tribute is a house with no standing.
"Thank youuu," the ghost sang, already sprinting to the next house, my tangerine thudding in the sack against everyone's candy.
They were not warriors. A six-year-old and a smaller six-year-old, out past bedtime, gathering sugar from neighbors who adored them. The threat was a costume too.
But I have chosen to treat it as real, because they did — and a man does not ask the child to soften her threat. He pays it in full.
Next year I will be ready. I will buy the largest sack of tribute in the store, and I will hold my gate against every ghost and dinosaur on this street, and I will pay each of them completely.