“And when we awoke, our Christopher was naught but bones.
“We shouted, we fought among ourselves, we attempted flight, but it did no good. We saw the sunlight wane, then reappear, over and over, for time had become strange to us.
“And at last we slept again, and when we awoke old Stephen was as Christopher, nothing but bone.
“And so it went, and we perished, each in our turn, until only I survived, and I knew what my fate was to be when next I slept, and in my despair I fell down upon my knees and cried out to whatever had trapped us, whatever had spoken that first day, and I begged for my life, I bargained, I offered whatever I could if only it would free me, spare my life and let me go.”
“And it did?” Jenny asked.
Tinker nodded. “Aye,” he said, “but erst it spoke to me again, and told me that it would trade my life for seven others—if I swore, by God and the Virgin, to bring it seven other lives, then I could go free. May God forgive me, lady, I did so swear—and but moments later I was on the high road, where you found me.”
“And you sent it seven people?”
“I know not how many I sent it!” he wailed.
Jenny stared at him.
“Look you, lady,” he said, “I bethought me that if I spoke of Queen Mab in the village, and said fairy treasure was to be had in the wood, then a few hardy souls would venture forth, and I’d be quit, and at little cost to my conscience, for they’d take the risk upon themselves, would they not? And I’d put that village behind me and ne’er set foot there again, and ’twould be an end on it.” He gestured helplessly. “How was I to know of television, or motorcars, or tour buses? To send hundreds thither, at risk of their lives, was ne’er my intent, and now all England is cursed of me—my face blazoned on paper at every corner, and on the telly glass in every home! Take me to America, I beg you, let me put this behind me!”
She stared at his pleading eyes for a moment.
“We have television in America, too,” she said at last. “You’d be news there, too.”
His expression collapsed into despair.
“And you have to do something to stop them,” she said, struck with sudden horrific realization. “All those people going into that forest…I bet they’re still sneaking in, even though it’s officially closed. My God, I was tempted to take a look!”
“What can I do?” He spread his hands hopelessly. “A tale once spun has a life of its own.”
“That’s true,” she said thoughtfully.
“And if I speak the truth now, they’ll stretch my neck ere morn, for betraying all those fools to their doom.”
England wasn’t known for lynchings, but this was a special case. “That might be true, too,” she said. She considered carefully.
She wondered, for a moment, why she didn’t just throw Tinker to the wolves—after all, he had betrayed all those innocents. By his own admission, he had meant to send seven strangers to their deaths—but then, he had seen his own companions killed horribly one by one and known he was next…
He’d done wrong, but he knew it, he wanted to make what amends he could. What good would it do to destroy him?
But they couldn’t let more people feed the thing in the forest, whatever it was. Jenny didn’t believe in demons or fairies, but there must be something in there.
And then she saw the way out. If one lie had lured people in, maybe another could turn them back.
“Listen,” she said, “you’re going to go on TV again—on television—and tell everyone that Queen Mab’s angry about all these intrusions on her privacy. Remind everyone that fairies are dangerous—that’s something we tend to forget nowadays. Remind them that fairies steal human souls. That should discourage most people—and anyone who goes in anyway, it’s his problem.”
“Aye,” Tinker agreed reluctantly, after a moment’s thought. “That should serve, I warrant. But am I to spend my life in television?”
“Oh, no,” Jenny said confidently. “Don’t worry. You’re just a fad. It’ll all be over in a few weeks, and you can settle down somewhere—I bet there are colleges that would hire you for their history departments. You must know the sixteenth century better than anyone else alive.”
“Aye, perhaps,” he said. “You’ll accompany me, then, to the television?”
She hesitated, but then said, “Sure.” She gestured. “Go ahead and open the door, and we’ll tell your camera crew the news.”
Jenny insisted they do their interview right there. The first few questions were harmless, asking about how she happened to pick Tinker up.
But then the newscaster asked, “Do you believe there are fairies in the wood?”
She glanced at Tinker, there beside her.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “and in fact, I believe I’ve heard their voices.”
Startled, the newsman asked, “Oh?”
“When I picked Bill up on that road. Maybe he didn’t hear them, but I did. They were saying they wanted to be left alone, that he’d abused their hospitality long enough and that any other humans who bothered them would regret it.”
She glanced at Tinker, who smiled gratefully at her.
“Indeed, I heard something,” he said. “I’d not caught the words, though…”
And together, they blithely made up a whole network of lies.
The broadcast went well—and for the rest of her stay in England, Jenny Gifford found herself something of a celebrity. She spent a good bit of time in Tinker’s company, helping him adjust to modern life—an adjustment he made with amazing speed.
And she was only slightly jealous when he bedded that young witch, rather than herself—but really, she told herself, he was a bit old for her, wasn’t he?
She giggled at the thought.
By the time she returned to the States Tinker’s moment of fame was already passing, and her own with it. Within a week of her arrival home, the whole thing seemed like a dream.
But for the rest of her life, she still shuddered whenever she passed thick woods.
GHOST STORIES
“Oh, sure, Damon, the old Hanson place is really haunted, but you go there anyway,” Jeremy said sarcastically. “You play with the ghosts, right?”
“There’s just one ghost,” Damon said. “His name’s Ichabod Hanson, and yeah, we play checkers, or cards, and he tells me stories and stuff.”
“Oh, right,” Jeremy scoffed. “And my teacher is Madonna in disguise, she gave up music to teach sixth grade.”
“You don’t believe me?” Damon asked, with a peculiar smile.
“Of course not!” Jeremy replied.
“Well, come on then, and I’ll show you.”
Jeremy didn’t like the look on Damon’s face, and he didn’t like the look of the Hanson house, but he couldn’t refuse a challenge like that.
“Okay,” he said. “When?”
“What’s wrong with right now?” Damon asked.
Jeremy blinked in surprise, and looked around at the bright sunshine. “Does the ghost come out during the day?”
Damon shrugged. “Sure.”
Jeremy couldn’t see any way out. “Okay,” he said.
* * * *
The old Hanson place had been built more than a hundred years ago—Jeremy had heard his mother say so—and it looked as if it hadn’t been painted or repaired in all that time. It was all weathered gray wood, with just a few shards of glass left in the narrow windows.
The two boys parked their bikes in the tall grass by the porch, and Damon led the way up the sagging steps. The boards creaked under their weight, and Jeremy tried to be as light as he could—the ancient planks felt as if they might break at any moment.
The front door stood open, and Damon stepped inside. “Hi, Mr. Hanson?” he called. Jeremy stood nervously on the porch peering in; Damon leaned back out and whispered, �
�Listen, let me do the talking. Don’t you say anything. Okay?”
Jeremy, who was beginning to think this might be more serious than he liked, nodded nervously.
“Come on inside,” Damon said.
Warily, Jeremy stepped in—and the door closed behind him, all by itself.
He moaned.
He’d always thought most horror movies were stupid because nobody would be dumb enough to just walk right into those traps where the monsters could get them, the way the people in the movies always did, but here he’d gone and walked right into a haunted house, and now the ghost was going to get him…
But Damon didn’t look scared at all.
“Good day, young Damon,” a strange voice said, and Jeremy jumped. “’Tis a pleasure to see ye. Who might this other lad be?”
“Hi, Mr. Hanson,” Damon said cheerily. “This is Jeremy.” He nudged Jeremy. “Say hello,” he whispered.
Jeremy said, “Uh…hi,” to the empty air.
“A good day to ye, Jeremy,” the voice said, and this time Jeremy could see him, an old man at the top of the stairs, with the sunlight from an upstairs window coming right through him—a rather small man, with a bushy beard and curly hair worn fairly long; he wore an old-fashioned black coat with big buttons, and a dark vest, and white pants. He was coming down the stairs toward them.
Jeremy backed up against the door.
“My name, as I suppose Master Damon’s told ye, is Ichabod Hanson,” the ghost said. “And I’d offer to shake hands with ye, had I still a palm solid enough to grasp.”
Jeremy glanced at Damon, but didn’t say a word.
“Jeremy didn’t believe I really knew a ghost,” Damon said.
“I suppose ’tis a hard thing for some to believe,” the ghost said, smiling through his transparent beard. “I’m none too sure I’d have credited it myself, when I was yet alive.”
“Tell ’im how you wound up as a ghost,” Damon suggested.
“Would you hear the tale, lad?”
Jeremy nodded, then stood staring at the ghost, listening.
“I was, y’see,” the ghost said, “a sailor out of Boston, having gone to sea as a boy, a few years before the War Between the States, and a fine life I found it. I sailed the world around any number of times and saw every port from Halifax to Hong Kong, but a day came when it seemed to me that the time had come for me to settle down. So I built myself this house, and I found myself a wife, and I tried me best to live me a quiet life here on the land.”
He sat down on the stairs, and motioned at the boys; Damon promptly settled on the floor, and Jeremy cautiously followed his lead.
“I found, though,” the ghost continued, “that the life of a landlubber was not for me. I’d a hankerin’ to see foreign shores and strange sights that was not to be denied.” He sighed an intangible sigh. “So with a kiss and a farewell, I left me wife and me home and took ship for a run to Singapore.”
He smiled with the memory. “’Twas a fine voyage, lads, but when I come home, I was weighed down with the guilt of how I’d treated me missus, and I swore to her that I’d settle down good and truly this time, and for another six months I did just that—but then an old shipmate offered me a first mate’s berth on a tea packet…”
And so it had gone, he explained, one voyage after another, and his wife had progressed from understanding to unhappy to angry, and, he said, he should have known better, for Mistress Sarah Hanson was from a family that was well known to have witchery in it.
“And at last,” he said, “when I was perhaps a trifle too old to be traveling about as freely as all that, I told her one fine day that I’d a chance to captain a schooner on a run down to Rio de Janeiro, and she said she’d had quite enough of all that. She wanted her man at home, and where I’d got away from her before despite her asking and pleading and begging, she’d decided to resort to something a little stronger. And she put a spell on me, that I’d remain at home here forevermore. And she didn’t say until I died, neither—she said forever.”
Jeremy glanced at Damon, and Damon smiled back.
“So I’ve been here ever since,” Hanson said, “and all in all, I’ve not minded a bit, no, not even when I sickened and died. I’d thought that might be the end of it, but no, I stayed here just the same, and kept me widow company of an evening, telling her tales of my adventures in foreign ports—those tales that were fit for a lady, and some that weren’t, and what’s more, keepin’ myself largely to the truth.” He smiled at the memory. “And you know, lads,” he said, “it seemed to me that I enjoyed the telling near as much as I’d enjoyed the doing—or perhaps a shade more. I’d no need to spend weeks between ports living in a crowded cabin smelling of bilgewater, getting from one place to another, as I had before.”
All in all, he told the boys, he was grateful to his wife for the curse she’d put on him—save that it had been lonely when she died, as no one had cursed her.
He paused for a moment, letting the lonesome silence sink in, then said, “But other folk happened along in time, and I enjoyed their company, told them a tale or two—just as I have Damon here, and as I’d be glad to tell you, Jeremy, if you’d like.”
Jeremy nodded. “Yes, please,” he said.
So Ichabod Hanson told Damon and Jeremy about his first visit to the Caribbean, as a boy of thirteen on a freighter hauling sugar, and how they’d run afoul of a hurricane and limped home with but a single mast and the hull full of water, and Jeremy listened to that, and thought he would gladly have listened forever, had not Damon eventually interrupted.
“It’s past dinnertime,” he said, pointing to the setting sun. “We’d better get home.”
“Oh,” Jeremy said, startled; he’d had no idea they had been there so long. “Oh, wow.” He had been sitting cross-legged on the floor; now he looked up at the ghost and said, “Wow, thanks, Mr. Hanson. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“Come back any time, lad; ’tis a pleasure to have so attentive an audience as yourselves.”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said, “I will. I mean, it’s too bad about the curse, but it’s neat to hear all this stuff, you know?”
“Ah, the spell’s hardly a curse, in truth, for my existence here’s no hardship on me.”
“Isn’t there any way you can get out of it? Did she really curse you forever?”
“Oh, well, she done as good as, lad. The way of it was, we were talking, and she said I was the travelingest man she’d ever seen, and she saw no way that she could let me go the least little bit, for I’d be off to the far side of the globe in a trice if she even let me out to go to the market. And I said that I was no more besotted with travel than many another, and she’d stretched the truth of it. And she said that she’d never seen a man who’d gone as far as I, and never would until a man walked on the moon, and until then, I’d be cursed to stay inside these walls. So y’see, lad, ’tis as good as forever—I’m bound here until a man walks on the moon, and the word of it reaches me, and how could that ever happen?”
Jeremy’s mouth fell open. “But my Dad says…” he began.
Damon poked him, hard, in the ribs; Jeremy turned and saw a finger pressed to Damon’s lips, and didn’t finish the sentence.
“Come on,” Damon said, “it’s time to go.” He took Jeremy by the sleeve, opened the front door, and dragged Jeremy out onto the porch.
A few minutes later, as they were hurrying back toward their homes, Jeremy said, “But men have walked on the moon, years ago! My Dad told me all about it! Why haven’t you told him?”
“Because, you jerk,” Damon said, “I haven’t heard all his stories yet!”
Jeremy thought that over. It wasn’t like Mr. Hanson was in any hurry to move on, and Jeremy had hardly heard any of his stories.
“Right,” he said. “Can I come back tomorrow? I promise I won’t tell him.”
Damon smiled. “Sure,” he said, “any time.”
THE FROG WIZARD
The charts didn’t show an island there, but the greenish smudge on the horizon certainly looked solid. Captain Kai was curious, and his schedule was not particularly tight, so he ordered the helmsman to make for whatever it was—cautiously, of course.
It was an island. The charts were wrong. This was not really very unusual in these seas, but it was interesting.
An uncharted island could have its uses; Captain Kai dropped anchor and sent a dozen of his men ashore in the ship’s dory to explore the place, with a lieutenant named Kwan in charge.
This was not exactly Lieutenant Kwan’s idea of a good way to spend an afternoon, but he knew better than to argue. He sat in the stern of the boat muttering vile imprecations into his beard as his men rowed ashore.
The shore itself was unremarkable—a broad expanse of sandy beach stretching off in both directions, and at the top of the slope a line of palm trees. Kwan sighed as he clambered out of the boat; he knew that his sailors would treat the whole thing as a vacation from their dreary life aboard ship, and would run about as wildly and heedlessly as if they were the Emperor’s personal guests in the pleasure gardens at Haichin. One or two would probably get lost, at least one was bound to eat something poisonous, and about half could be expected to return to the ship with rashes, stings, bites, bumps, and bruises from the local plants and animals. A broken wrist from falling out of a tree would be no surprise at all, and would mean a tongue-lashing from Captain Kai for Lieutenant Kwan—a man with a broken wrist can’t haul on ropes, and it was an officer’s responsibility to keep his men fit for duty.
The Lawrence Watt-Evans Fantasy Page 19