Odds Are Good

by Bruce Coville

  If I reminded her that she had said hello to me minutes earlier, she would shake her head, moaning that she was worthless.

  Even that was not as painful as when she asked where my grandfather was, and I would have to remind her that he had died three years earlier. She could only remember him alive, and only knew he was dead when it was brought to her attention. Every day, sometimes more than once a day, she learned again that the man she had lived with for over fifty years was gone, endlessly repeating that horrible first moment of discovery.

  Her memories peeled away like layers of an onion, each layer with the power to bring tears to the eye. I found myself growing younger in her eyes as she remembered me not as her youngest and most disgraceful grandchild, the high-school dropout with no prospects, but as the little boy I used to be. I wondered if her failing mind would finally carry her to a time before I was born, and if so, if she would then forget who I was and no longer recognize me when I came to visit.

  This had been going on for some months before I began to suspect that as she lost memories she might not be simply moving away from the present, but might indeed be moving toward something else, something long lost that she wanted to regain.

  “I can almost see it, Tommy,” she moaned once, holding my hand, her eyes squeezed shut, something like tears but thicker oozing from their corners. “What was it? What was it?”

  But the memory, and then the thought, eluded her.

  By the next week she was confined to her bed. Being the only one in the family without a job, I began to visit daily to care for her.

  It was during this time that she began to hint at her secret. “Did you ever see them?” she asked one afternoon while I was sitting beside her bed, working a crossword puzzle.

  “See who, Gramma?”

  “The fair ones,” she replied impatiently, as if I were a stupid child not paying attention to something obvious.

  “I don’t think so,” I said cautiously.

  She sighed, then whispered, “Of course not.” After a moment she added, “I wish you had.”

  “What are you talking about, Gran?” I asked, totally mystified.

  She closed her eyes. Her face relaxed, and for a moment I thought she had fallen asleep. But when she spoke I realized that she was seeing something in her mind.

  “Elves,” she said. “I’m talking about the elves.”

  “I wish I had seen them,” I answered with some conviction. I had the terrible feeling that she was finally losing her mind. Even so, it was a fact that I had wanted to meet an elf from the first time I had read about them.

  “I helped them once, you know,” she continued. “At least, I think I did. Do you think I helped them?”

  “Of course,” I said, squeezing her hand. It was the first note of whimsy I could remember hearing from her in many years, and I was amused. Amused, and oddly touched. I found something both sweet and very sad in the way we were exchanging roles, me becoming the grown-up, she the child.

  “Didn’t I ever tell you about it?” she asked. Before I could answer, she muttered, “Oh, of course not. I’m not supposed to talk about it. Never did, either, till now.”

  It was one of those moments she had when she suddenly seemed to lurch into the present.

  “You can tell me about it,” I said.

  “Probably shouldn’t,” she muttered. Then she did sleep.

  The next day she seemed stronger and more alert, and for a moment I wondered if her body was actually growing younger along with her mind. But the look in her eyes was almost feverish.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I want to tell you about them. I think it will be all right.”

  It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about the elves again.

  “I was nineteen,” she said, leaning toward me and whispering, even though there was no one else in the room. “And only recently married to your grampa. Falling through was an accident, actually, but they were desperate, and I was able to help them.”

  “How did you meet them?” I asked. I felt myself slipping easily back into a childhood mode where I had listened eagerly to her stories. Besides, there was no harm in humoring her.

  “I fell through,” she said softly. “I was walking across the field, the one between the house and the barn. One minute I was there, the next . . . pfffft!” She made a burring noise, almost a raspberry. It was quite funny, coming from that ancient, wrinkled face.

  “Where did it happen?” I asked. “Where, specifically?”

  “You know,” she said slyly.

  “The fairy circle?”

  She nodded.

  I felt a slight shiver. In the field between the house and the barn was a perfect circle about fifteen feet in diameter where the grass never grew quite right. My sister and I had always called it the fairy circle and said it was where the elves came to dance. I had had a lurking fear of the spot from the time I was in fifth grade and had bought a book of “strange but true” stories from our school book club. One story in particular had terrified me, a tale about a man who had vanished in full view of his wife and children while walking across a field. He was never seen again, but his children once heard his voice emanating from the exact spot where he had disappeared, calling faintly for help. Afterward, the grass around that place had never again grown quite the way it should.

  The story and the “fairy circle” in my grandparents’ field had merged in my mind, and I had usually given the spot a wide berth. Being of scientific mind, I had decided that the disappearing man had fallen into another dimension of some sort. Despite our name for it, I had never thought of our “fairy circle” as actually belonging to magical creatures. It was simply a place to watch out for. Now my grandmother’s words were making me reconsider that position.

  I shook my head and smiled at myself. What foolishness! I was being drawn in by her senile fantasies. But what harm in it? It seemed to make her feel better to tell the story. It certainly wouldn’t hurt me to listen.

  “What happened after you ‘fell through’?” I asked.

  Gramma closed her eyes and didn’t answer for a long time. “So beautiful,” she whispered at last. “So beautiful—and so sad.”

  “What was so beautiful?”

  “The elves. Their world. I wish you could have seen it, sweetheart. It was more wonderful than I can tell you. But someone was dying.” She paused, then added ruefully, “Like me.”

  I wanted to tell her she wasn’t, but she had never appreciated that kind of comforting dishonesty. So I simply said, “Tell me more.”

  She sat up. It startled me, for she had not been able to do so on her own for several days. But it was as if the story she wanted to tell had overtaken her, was holding her in its grip.

  “I was afraid when I first fell through,” she said, her voice husky but strong. “Thank goodness I had read Alice in Wonderland. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t. I think every child should read Alice, don’t you, Tommy? It doesn’t make any sense, but neither does the real world. It’s a very educational book.”

  She shook her head. “Listen to me babble. I don’t have much time; I have to stop going on so. Listen carefully. Otherwise you will forget. You can’t count on memory. Memory can betray you.” She paused, drew a breath, then said, “All right, here’s what happened.”

  I listened carefully. That night, I wrote down what she said:

  When I fell into the land of the elves, I was afraid; terrified. Not so Dyor, the elf who found me. He was tall, Tommy, tall and terribly beautiful—so beautiful that it made me ashamed to be seen by him. I felt like a little brown wren next to a magnificent cardinal.

  I didn’t see him right away, only the world into which I had fallen. The field was like our field, save that there were no fences or barns, the grass was somehow more lush, the flowers brighter, the sky more wildly blue. A sweet breeze blew through the grass. Floating on the breeze was an enormous lavender butterfly; it landed on my shou
lder, as if it could not imagine being afraid of me.

  Then Dyor stood, rising from the grass like a dream. He had been sleeping, he told me later, and my arrival had woken him.

  “Thank the seventh star you are here,” he said.

  It’s hard to tell you what his voice was like, Tommy, except to say that it wasn’t simply beautiful; it was thrilling.

  He must have seen that I was trembling. Or maybe he simply realized how I would feel. Anyway, he raised his hands, palms out, and said, “Please do not be afraid. We have been hoping someone would come. We need your help.”

  When I asked him what he meant, he shook his head and said, “Let me show you. It will be easier than trying to explain.”

  Taking my hand, he led me out of the field and into the woods. Such woods! Such trees! I felt that our trees were copied from them by some third-rate manufacturer.

  Dyor led me to a grove filled with elves. They blinked and turned away when they saw me, as if something about me hurt their eyes. It made me sad.

  At the far side of the grove stood two thrones, carved from burnished wood that had a strange grain. Sitting on the thrones were two elves, one male, one female. He was the most exquisite of all the elves, with silver hair that seemed to hold its own light. She should have been beautiful, but was not. Something had happened to her, weakened her somehow, so that she seemed to be wasting away.

  The elf king stood and held out his hand to me. I crossed the grove. I was shaking. Not because I was afraid he would do anything to me, but simply because he was so wonderful. It was like meeting a god. At the same time, I was fretting inside over how I would ever get home to your grandfather. Of course, he wasn’t your grandfather, yet; we had been married for less than six months at the time. But I knew I had to get home to him.

  When I reached the elf king I knelt before him and bent my head to the ground. I had never met royalty before, but I had read my books, and it seemed like the right thing to do. After a moment he reached down and put his hand under my chin. His skin was warm and smooth. “Stand,” he said in a voice even more wonderful than Dyor’s.

  I stood.

  “What is your name?”

  “Ivy,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t think it too foolish.

  I was pleased when he smiled. “A beautiful name,” he said. “For a beautiful young woman.”

  I began to blush. I knew I could not be beautiful in their eyes, but it pleased me that he said it.

  He stared at me for a long moment, squinting a bit as he did, as if I hurt his eyes. “We need your help,” he said at last. Even though Dyor had said the same thing, I found it astonishing. What could these people possibly need from me?

  I started to say, “I will do anything I can,” then stopped myself. These people were magical, after all. Who knew what they might ask of me? I wanted to help, but I didn’t want to commit myself to something that would keep me from going home again. Choosing my words more carefully, I said, “How can someone like me help someone like you?”

  The queen stirred then, moving as if it hurt to do so. “This is my fault,” she said. “It is best that I explain.”

  Her voice sounded not like bells but like sand running between your fingers, and it was all I could do to make out her words.

  The king paused, then nodded. I was aware of the elves all around me, staring at me. The queen held out her hand. I took it, wondering if I should kiss it, wishing Dyor would advise me. But the queen simply squeezed my fingers, then pulled her hand back. Unlike the king, her hand was cool, almost cold.

  “I have made a serious error,” she said softly.

  The king was frowning.

  I waited, but no one spoke. Finally I said, “What did you do?”

  “I stayed too long at the fair.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stood and looked at her, waiting for her to go on.

  “The goblin fair,” she said at last.

  The king looked away.

  “There are rules,” said the queen. “It is never wise to ignore them.”

  She straightened herself in her chair. I remember that specifically, because it was hard for me to imagine that someone so graceful could ever be uncomfortable. Finally she went on:

  “Once a year the peoples of faerie gather at the goblin fair. It is a time of guaranteed peace, when dwarf and elf, goblin and sprite can freely meet and mingle, trade and talk, exchange everything from newts to news. I love the fair, love it too much, I suppose, for last year I broke the rules and stayed past midnight. When that happened, when I made that fool’s mistake, the goblins took, as was their right, their penalty.”

  She closed her eyes and looked away.

  “What was it?” I asked. “What was the penalty?”

  “A part of me,” she whispered. “They took a part of me and wrapped it in a stone, and now the stone is warm, but I am cold, and I am fading, and in time I simply will not be, unless the stone can be recovered.”

  I shivered at what she told me.

  “It is part of the stone’s enchantment that no elf can touch it,” she continued, “nor no magical creature of any sort. Only a human can hold the stone. Would you do that for me, go and fetch the stone, bring it back so that I can be whole again?”

  It would have taken a heart far harder than mine to say no to that, Tommy, though I did worry what your grandfather would say when I got home.

  Well, getting that stone took longer than any of us imagined. What an adventure I had getting it back to the queen! Dyor and I met stranger creatures and saw wilder places than I can tell you about—giants and unicorns, and once I even saw a cave where a dragon lived, though I didn’t see the dragon itself.

  But with Dyor’s help I did it, Tommy. We found the stone and carried it back to the queen. And when we did, when I placed it in the queen’s hand, the most amazing thing happened. It was as if the stone dissolved, melted right into her palm. Something seemed to change and grow in her then, so that she was suddenly—oh, right somehow. Healthy again. Herself.

  My grandmother began to cough at that point, as if the effort of telling the story had caught up with her all at once. “No more today, Tommy,” she said. “I’m too tired.”

  To my shame, I tried to get her to tell me more, even though I could see that she was exhausted. Of course I realized the story was quite mad. But I was also enchanted by it.

  The next day she went into the hospital.

  I visited her daily. She told me more about the elf world when she could, though mostly she was too weak. A single strand ran through all the memories. “I have to get home,” she muttered as she wandered through the back corridors of her mind. “I have to get home.”

  For three days I thought she was speaking about coming back from her adventure. It was almost too late when I realized that she meant she needed to go back to the farm.

  “I have to go, Tommy,” she cried, late one night, clutching my arm with a strength that astonished me. “Take me home!”

  I wish I were stronger. I wish bureaucrats could be slain like dragons. But this was not an elven adventure, and I was not able to free her from the hospital.

  She freed herself, I think. Through sheer effort of will she made herself well enough that they let her go home, on the condition that someone stayed with her around the clock.

  That was all right. I had nothing else to do.

  Three nights later I knew she was going to die. A trip back to the hospital might have squeezed out a few more days, but they were days that she didn’t want, and that would have been spent in a place she hated.

  She wanted to be home.

  It was about three o’clock in the morning when the elves arrived.

  I was sitting in my grandmother’s room, holding her withered hand, wondering which labored breath would be her last. Suddenly I heard a rattling in her chest. Her hand tightened on mine.

  “It’s time, Tommy,” she moaned.

  Then the wall on the far side of the bed t
urned to liquid silver, and the elves stepped through.

  There were eight of them. The first, I was quite sure, was Dyor. The king and the queen came last. I understood what my grandmother had said, about feeling like a wren next to a cardinal. The fact that all the elves blinked and averted their eyes, as if my plainness was painful to them, added to the feeling. I wanted to crawl under the bed and hide from their beauty, wanted to shake my grandmother and shout, “They’re here!” But I could not, couldn’t move at all. It was as though time had stopped, frozen at the moment of their arrival.

  Dyor reached down and gently separated my grandmother’s hand from mine. “Hello, Ivy,” he whispered, and when she smiled I knew that she was still alive.

  In that moment I felt a shift, as if I had moved from the place where time had stopped to their place, where time went on in its own way.

  “We are here to redeem a promise,” one of the elves said to me as they began to cluster around her bed.

  “What promise?” I asked.

  “A long time ago your grandmother did me a great service,” said the queen, whose voice was not like sand now, but like breeze through leaves, like birdsong in spring, like rain on a window late at night. “In return, we offered her a chance to stay in Elfland, where she would have been immortal. She refused.”