Mythology Abroad

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “They do seem like a pair of personable chaps.”

  “So were Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer,” his supervisor pointed out sternly. “A couple of charming thieves. Well, now we’ve got them on a genuine charge of criminal trespass, if we need to swear out a warrant for a quick pick-up. Stay close and keep an eye on them. They’ve obviously been in no hurry up ‘til now. They may be preparing to make their move. And when they do …”

  Michaels rose, decisively. It was more comfortable to stand. “I’ll lower the net on them smartly, sir. Count on it.”

  O O O

  Holl, languishing in a bed in the corner of a hospital ward, stared at the white walls and the blank, curtained windows. He had never felt so lonely in his life. There were others in the beds around the room of the ward, Big children, all his own size or larger, but clearly younger than he and frightened, and none of them with a thought for anyone else. He had to admit that he was frightened, too. He couldn’t recall clearly what had happened to bring him here. He had already examined his ear-tips, and discovered that they were round, instead of pointed normally. At first he thought it was Keith Doyle’s doing, but a hazy memory reminded him he had done it himself at the Big One’s urging.

  His skin under the white cotton robe was tender. His arms were slightly puffy, as they had been once when he had gotten sun poisoning. That was before Catra, the archivist, had issued an advisory about sunscreens and vitamin B5. Then he remembered the burning and choking feeling he had suffered on the hillside. The absence of pain was a chilling void.

  “Good morning, Holl,” caroled a woman in a stiff-starched white dress. “Have a good sleep?” Her warm voice had a burr in it, which was the friendliest thing he had found in this strange place so far.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking up at her. “How long have I been here?”

  She took his wrist in a businesslike grip and consulted the watch on her other arm. “You were admitted in the afternoon the day before yesterday. You’ve slept the clock ’round, and half again. I’m surprised the usual tumultuous clamour of this ward didn’t rouse you at dawn. Pulse normal, but you’ve still got a nasty burn. You’ll be staying with us at least one more day, for observation.”

  “Two days? Does K … does my uncle know I’m here?” Holl asked, pushing himself upright. The nurse took the pillows from behind him, plumped and replaced them, settling him back against the head of the bed.

  “Good Lord, yes. He’s probably out in the corridor now. We’ve had to chase him out at the end of visiting hours already. I’ll send him in just as soon as you have had breakfast.”

  As soon as the cart containing the dirty trays was wheeled through the swinging doors, Keith slipped into the ward. He had an armful of books, which he shifted to one elbow to wave. “Hi! How are you feeling?” he asked in a low voice, as he sat down on a chair beside the hospital bed. He settled his burden on the floor underneath his seat.

  “Fine, I think. Well enough, though I can’t remember anything that happened after I climbed up the hill. Must I stay here?” he asked plaintively.

  “You’re still pretty red. Do you know what happened to you?” Keith asked, studying his face closely.

  “No.”

  “Then I think you ought to stay, just in case.” Keith explained the events of Holl’s collapse, and ended by saying, “I would rather you were where they can treat a convulsion instead of worrying if you’re going to have an attack in the middle of nowhere. When they say you’re all right, then you can get out of here. It shouldn’t be more than another day.”

  “I don’t like the hospitality of strangers,” Holl said darkly. “Most especially strange Big Folk.”

  Keith sighed. “I know, but they’re professional medical specialists. I’m just your ordinary Cub Scout who had CPR training once in swim class. Come on, humor me. How would I explain to the Master if I came back with you on a stretcher? He’d probably make me sit in a corner and write five page essays on health care for the rest of my life.”

  Holl threw up his hands. “Very well, I submit. I’ll stay until they release me. But with a protest.”

  “Fine. They have vaccines for that sort of thing. I brought you a few things to make your incarceration more interesting.” From under his chair, Keith retrieved a small hardcover book, which he gave to Holl. “This book will eventually be a Doyle family heirloom. My cousin gave it to me when I was six and home with chicken pox. My mother put it in my suitcase at the last minute as a sort of traveling talisman. I think you should keep it with you while you’re here.”

  “‘How to Go About Laying An Egg’?” There was a cartoon drawing of a white chicken on the paper dust jacket.

  “Full of good advice,” Keith insisted airily. “Very Zen.”

  Holl looked from it into Keith’s twinkling eyes and fell back on his pillows laughing. “I like your family, Keith Doyle. They all seem to be a little mad, but in a good way.”

  Next, Keith handed him a yellow paper envelope. “Here. More surprises. I brought you the pictures I took at the farm, during the going-away party your folk gave me. I mean us. Look, here’s Maura. And there’s the Master in the corner with his wife.”

  “See him glare,” Holl noted with amusement. “He didn’t care for that.”

  “Told me to go away and play,” Keith averred with satisfaction. “Well, he wouldn’t pose, so how else was I going to get a picture? There’s Enoch and Marcy, and here’s Dola, pretending to be a movie star. She’s going to be a knockout when she grows up. What is she, ten?”

  “Just about,” Holl said, taking the photograph from Keith and adding it to the stack.

  “Here’s your baby sister. The next picture was nothing but a big blob because she put her hand in the lens. Almost gave me a black eye.”

  Holl laughed, but then the laughter constricted into gasping breaths. Keith, still seeming jolly on the outside to hide the worry on the inside, sprang up to press the bell for the nurse. Holl forestalled him with a wave.

  “No, leave her be. I’ll be all right. I’m just out of energy. So strange. There was some truly malign force on that hillside, but whether it was natural or not I can’t tell.” He sat upright again, and with Keith’s assistance replaced the pillows propping him up. “Do you know I haven’t been this ill since I was a tot? That was in the days when the steam tunnels were still exposed near our home. We had to be so quiet all of the time. My mother sat by me, soothing and silencing.” He gave Keith a wordless look full of woe.

  Keith smiled sympathetically, and moved from the chair to the edge of the narrow bed. “You want your Mom. I know how you feel.”

  Shamefaced, Holl nodded. “I guess I’m hearkening back to my childhood. I’ve only just realized that I can’t sense any of my Folk this far away. I know they’re there, so I understand the link’s still good, but I can’t differentiate between them, if you see what I mean. There’s a tiny dot on the horizon, and I know it’s them. I didn’t mind it while I was well, but being feverish leaves me gloomy and sorry for myself.”

  Grinning, Keith passed his hands in the air a few times like a conjuror and produced a small, narrow, black box from his jacket pocket. “The pictures and books weren’t all I brought. Would it help if you could talk to them?”

  Holl eyed it warily. “What’s that?”

  “Matthew’s portable phone. He said you could keep it here until you’re sprung. I think you was framed,” Keith went on, in his bargain basement imitation of Humphrey Bogart. “But we’ll have you outa here and playing the violin again in no time. International Access Code, then 1, then your area code and number.” He handed the small phone to Holl. Holl dialed.

  There was an audible click from the receiver, and the distant sound of ringing, and then another click. A shrill voice, audible even to Keith, demanded, “What is it?”

  “Keva,” Holl explained, his hand over the mouthpiece. “She’s never learned just to say ‘hello,’ as the etiquette manual suggests.” Keith grinned
. Keva was a law unto herself regarding manners, or anything else. Holl uncovered the receiver. “Keva, this is Holl speaking. Can you ask our mother if she’ll come to the phone?”

  There was a long wait, and then Keith could hear the overtones of a more gentle voice. Holl’s mother Calla was a tiny woman, small even for the Little Folk, with a very young face under a wave of soft, silver hair. Keith guessed that she was a bare eighteen or twenty years older than her outspoken daughter. That was unusual enough. Normally, the Folk only thought of getting married in their fifties and sixties. Babies came much later on. At forty-one, even Holl was pushing it a little to be thinking of engagement.

  “Mother? Yes. I know, I’m far away, and the link is weak. You sound as clear if you’re standing here. A miracle, these small machines.” Holl dropped from English into the Little Folk language, a tongue Keith was becoming used to hearing, though he couldn’t understand it.

  It was boring to listen to a conversation in a foreign language. Keith tried to make sense out of the tone, instead. At first, Holl seemed to be merely exchanging news with his mother. After a while, though, the subject changed, and Holl’s voice became angry, then thick. Something his mother was telling him bothered him very much, nearly choking him. Keith felt he was intruding on something private, and got up to leave, but Holl waved him to stay. After a while, the conversation must have turned to more cheerful topics, which he was willing to share with Keith.

  Holl translated a phrase from time to time, moving the receiver aside. “The she-cat has had kittens, Mother says. There are six of them. The well has been cleared out at last, and is flowing so generously it threatens to burst the old pipes. Deliveries are keeping apace of orders, and Ms. Voordman has sent word through Diane that if you are really in Scotland, you must send her a postcard.”

  “That sounds like an order,” Keith joked, snapping off a salute.

  More words were exchanged in the Little Folks’ language. “Dola wouldn’t look askance at a small present, but is too well brought up to ask,” Holl told him with a wry grin.

  “Now, that’s a hint,” Keith acknowledged, “but it carries the same weight as an order.”

  “I’ll tell her. And many photographs of the strange places we visit would be welcome.” More talk. Holl’s voice fell to soft, nearly inaudible tones. Keith felt uncomfortable, but didn’t leave because Holl wanted him to stay.

  To break the tension, Keith opened a book of his own, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, and read for a while, trying to block out the conversation. He became engrossed in J.F. Campbell’s description of the bodach of Jura and other tales of magic. Those sounded friendly. He wished he could find one of those to interview. Interesting also how the stories coincided so neatly with other books he had read.

  Thoughtfully, Holl took the phone away from his ear and pushed the Off button. Keith closed his book on one finger. Holl looked depressed, but he mustered a grateful smile.

  “Thank you,” he said. “That helped. There’s … a lot going on at home. Express my gratitude to Matthew, and let me know what it costs for the call.”

  Keith quickly judged that Holl didn’t want to talk about his call until he had had time to digest it, and cast about swiftly for another topic of conversation. “So, when you get out of here, should we go and find whatever it was I offended and apologize to them?”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Holl warned him, momentarily distracted by Keith’s endless interest in his hobby, though his eyes kept their troubled look. “Most of the hidden ones want to stay hidden, without your great feet tramping all over their privacy.”

  “Well, we were always brought up to think that Americans abroad should act as good will ambassadors wherever they went. Don’t you want to be the ambassador for your people wherever you go?”

  “No,” Holl answered, keeping the banter going, but without much spirit. “Especially not in your company; they’d probably declare eternal war on my folk once they’d met you.”

  Keith waved away the suggestion that his presence could cause an inter-species feud. “They’d get used to me. I’ve never asked, you know, but do you believe in sprites and fairies and things like that, Holl? I mean, what I’m looking for could be fantasy to your folk, as much as it is to mine.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never made a study of it. But I’m here. And since the legend writers group my Folk in with them, I suppose there might be others out there. You’re counting on it, aren’t you?”

  Keith considered the question. “I’m looking for whatever is out there, but naturally, I’d prefer them to be my kind of Little People, who consort with dragons and do magic.” He pointed out a passage on one of the pages. “This J.F. Campbell compares legends of the Fair Folk with actual people he met in Lapland. The way he describes them, they could walk under his outstretched arm with their tall hats on without bending over, but never touch him.” Keith measured his friend with an eye. “Just about the right size. Do you think you’re descended from Laplanders, Holl?”

  Holl snorted. “I don’t know where my people are from, if not from the old place we’re trying to find. So far as I know they’ve always been there. All my father would say was that it was terrible when they left it, without much helpful detail. We didn’t spring out of the ground, so I expect we came from somewhere. You’ll need to ask one of the old ones. Why?”

  There was a long pause. Keith’s eyes twinkled. “I read this feature article about a man in Lapland who everybody thinks is Santa Claus,” he offered impishly. He grinned at the expression on Holl’s face, who realized he’d been led into a trap. “Even the adults who meet him think so.”

  “Aargh! Be off with you before I have a relapse!” Holl seized his pillow and yanked it over his face. Keith shut his book, and stood up to go.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said casually, “I found the body. It was in a funeral urn, about five feet down the pike from where Matthew dug up the lidded pot. He’s dead all right. It was moider. No doubt about it. Moider. Case closed, shweetheart.” Running his finger along the brim of an imaginary fedora, Keith winked at Holl and swaggered out the swinging door.

  Holl pushed the pillow back into place behind his head, and settled back with a sigh. “Thank you, Keith Doyle,” he said softly. “You’re a host and a cure in yourself. I have a lot to think about now.”

  O O O

  The guard at the quadrangle gate had become used to seeing Michaels walking in and out of the University grounds. Perhaps the guard thought the old boy in the tweed suit was a visiting doctor. The way the National Health chopped and changed, he could have brought in a host of agents and never been questioned.

  Surveillance on the portable phone link the blond lad had been using revealed one interesting fact: the boy’s first language was not English. The lingo boffins hadn’t pinned down the root language yet, but it sounded halfway between Icelandic and Balkan. Were other powers involved in O’Day’s latest pickup? Michaels hoped the answers lay in Inverness, the tour’s next stop.

  ***

  CHAPTER NINE

  “This is a great place,” Keith exclaimed, all but hanging out the coach window to get a good look at Inverness. Where Glasgow was gray granite and yellow sandstone, Inverness was red sandstone and black iron. He snapped pictures with the lens focus set on infinity so he wouldn’t have to keep changing it and risk losing his subjects. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked most of the time. He had taken three whole rolls of new scenery in the last two hours alone. “That’s weird. This castle looks almost brand new. It’s almost exactly the same color as cream-of-tomato soup.”

  “I’m sure that’s precisely how they put it in the travel brochures,” Martin quipped sarcastically, from two seats behind Keith. “‘Our national treasures and how they compare with canned goods.’”

  Inverness was hilly, set along the deeply cut bed of the river. With passersby wearing shirtsleeves and light dresses, it was hard to believe that the city lay 200 miles further n
orth even than Glasgow. The hot summer weather was a surprise to the Americans, but it was more of one to the English school teachers, who exclaimed over it with pleasure.

  The storefronts were trim and clean, and painted hoardings disguised construction sites. Flowerpots made a colorful contrast to the wrought iron light poles from which they depended. From pegs in the walls around some of the shops, lengths of tweed and woven shawls flapped gently in the breeze like plaid pennants. Above the buildings in every direction, distant mountains, the snow topping their peaks a shock in July, arched broad green backs to the sun and clear blue sky.

  Holl leaned against the window across the aisle, and soaked up the new sights. He was feeling much better, and after a few days of forced inactivity, was ready to do some exploring. The others had been solicitous of him, cheering him up with stories of the dig. Matthew especially had been kind. He waved away the idea that Holl should pay him back for the telephone call home. “It was necessary medicine,” he assured Holl, “and we’d never stint you that.”

  The camaraderie of the little group, the unquestioning acceptance of Big Folk toward complete strangers touched Holl. Beside his own village, the Big students in the Master’s course at Midwestern had been his only real outside contact. The ancient Conservative faction within the village held that the seeming friendliness of Big Folk was a sham. He was pleased to be bringing back to them proof that that was not so.

  What did not delight him was the memory of the mysterious attack he had suffered on the hillside. If this was what happened to trespassers on charmed soil, he planned to keep Keith off any fairy mounds in the future. Thank heavens that nothing like this existed in Illinois. On the other hand, at home he would have had the experience of one of the old ones to hand, and there probably would never have been such a trap sprung from which he would need rescuing.