Mythology 101

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “And they come in like that whenever the med center gets new ones? Have they had any recent replacements?” Louise nodded. “Can I have some of them?”

  “No!”

  “Oh, come on. Please. It’s to make some kids happy.”

  Louise stared at him suspiciously. “Are you serious?”

  “Honest. May I never go to Mars if I’m not. It’s a … Junior Achievement group,” Keith announced after a moment’s pause.

  “Okay,” she sighed. “Come back this afternoon, and I’ll see what I can find.”

  “May Allah bless you and all your children. And all the ones you don’t know about, too.” He departed, kissing his fingertips and bowing low to her as he backed out the door. Louise groaned and drew out her inventory card file.

  O O O

  “Sure I have fabric left over from earlier semesters,” Mrs. Bondini said, accepting the can of cola from Keith. She slid the plate containing her tuna melt and French fries off the tray. Keith set down his own fries and a pair of turkey sandwiches, and put the plastic tray out of the way on an adjoining table. He had headed Mrs. Bondini off from the entrance to the Faculty lunchroom, pleading the need for a personal audience. Amused, she had accepted his invitation to eat with him in the University Deli. Evidently, she had memories of the course she had taught in three-dimensional sculpture in which he’d enrolled a couple of semesters back. “Why?”

  “It’s this Junior Achievement group I’m working with,” Keith said, popping open his own can and unwrapping a sandwich. “As I’m not too familiar with this kind of project, I thought I’d come to someone who is.”

  “And ‘this kind of project’ is…?”

  “Um … Cabbage Patch Kids’ clothes. All kinds of doll clothes. It’ll be a big hit. They’ve something really different in mind. Costumes, ethnic dress from other nations, that sort of thing.” Keith smiled politely at her. After all, he was almost telling the truth.

  “Well, aren’t they supposed to sell shares and get their operating capital that way?”

  “Well, first they need money to print the shares with. And I remembered you also taught the costuming course, so …”

  “… So you figured I might be a soft touch,” Mrs. Bondini finished cynically. “Remembering, of course, that the college owns those bolts of fabric.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Keith agreed innocently, tucking a quarter sandwich into his mouth. He tried to talk around it, struggled to swallow quickly. “And the thing is, I’m sure there’s some, well … undesirable prints or something hanging around that you might be willing to throw to me instead of the dumpster.”

  “Maybe.” Mrs. Bondini rolled up the cellophane from her lunch and dusted her hands together. “Well, come with me, and we’ll see what I might have for your future tycoons.”

  With an innocent smile, Keith followed her.

  O O O

  He had one more stop to make. In the History Department, he spent a little time going through the local archives. Everyone was away from their desks at lunch except a student aide, so he was able to root through the drawers undisturbed. Satisfied with his findings, he used the phone in one of the empty offices to put through a couple of calls, all the time looking around nervously to make sure no one was overhearing him.

  O O O

  Keith was in such a good mood that he didn’t even flinch when Dr. Freleng handed out a new research assignment that threatened to cut into his dwindling free time. When the other students in the class shared their ideas for investigation he smiled vaguely and maddeningly. Even to Marcy, who knew, or thought she knew, the reason for Keith’s behavior, he seemed more ridiculous than ever.

  “What is wrong with you?” she hissed in his ear as they left the classroom.

  “Wait and see, my pet,” he smirked.

  O O O

  That evening, he was late making his way to the class. The librarian on duty at the entrance to the stacks was not convinced when he told her that his two huge plastic-wrapped bales contained drop sheets for the painters that were coming in the morning. The bags were obviously heavy, and full of slippery bulks that showed a tendency to slump to one side.

  “You cannot bring those things in here! Absolutely not!” she insisted so vigorously that her glasses slid off her nose. They dropped to the end of their tether, and bumped against her chest on every stressed syllable, especially the nots.

  Keith sighed, trying to look patient and martyred, and wishing he could carry the bundles in through the elves’ back door, though it would spoil the surprise. “I told you, Mrs. Hansen wants these on level ten. They won’t be in anyone’s way. I’ll just put ’em where she told me to.”

  The librarian seemed taken aback by his evocation of a higher authority than herself “Well, we’ll see. I’ll go ask Mrs. Hansen myself!”

  Keith waited until she was out of sight, and then rushed himself and his two bundles into the stairwell.

  O O O

  It was far less harrowing, but no less clumsy an entrance than his first one into the hidden classroom. The bags wouldn’t fit through the doorway at the same time, so he had to hold one in his arms and propel the other before him with a foot. The session had already begun. With a newly developed awareness of what to listen for, he could hear voices long before he ever got into the room. Carl Mueller was on his feet, red faced, with one hand in the air. Keith had most likely interrupted him in the middle of another deathless speech. He kicked the two bags into a corner and sat down. They sloshed against each other, and subsided.

  Holl glanced over his shoulder and looked curiously at Keith, who gestured to him to wait. The Elf Master favored him with the same expression, but Keith sat up attentively, hands folded, and displayed ingenuous interest in class proceedings. The Master was not distracted. He turned away from Carl and came to lean over Keith.

  “Vhat haf ve here, Mr. Doyle?” he inquired, eyebrows raised.

  “Urn, nothing much,” Keith answered, shrinking back in spite of himself.

  “If it is nothing, then why is it so large?”

  “Well, I brought them.…”

  “Obviously.”

  “… To see if you wanted them,” Keith finished, his mouth dry. Suddenly his attack of generosity didn’t seem like the good idea it had been the night before.

  The thick red eyebrows climbed nearly all the way into the hairline.

  “Vhich ‘you’ do you mean?”

  Keith swallowed. This was not going at all the way he had wanted it to. He had hoped to bring the matter of the parcels up quietly at the end of class, when he could fade away without making a big fuss. And why was the old guy being so touchy? “Well, you all,” he gestured, indicating the elves, then flipping the hand and shrugging uncomfortably, his carefully prepared speech deserting his memory. He had been positive the Master would be pleased. “Just some things I picked up here and there. Thought you could use.”

  He knew he was saying all the wrong things. After listening to Ludmilla explain to him how touchy they were about accepting favors, he had just spat out every buzz-word in the lexicon. The other students remained silent. The young elves were expressionless, but the humans looked positively irate. Lee had a bloodthirsty look in his eye that made Keith very nervous. He smiled hopefully at everyone. Whatever he had interrupted, it was a dilly. The others just watched him uncomfortably. Seeking to diffuse the tension, Holl got out of his seat, clearing his throat loudly, and dragged the bags into the center of the room. The young elves were around him in a moment, leaving the Elf Master pinning Keith to the back of his chair with a needle-sharp gaze of disapproval. There were exclamations of interest and approval from the Little Ones as they opened the bags. Holl made a great show of presenting the contents to the others.

  “Look how useful these’d be,” Holl said, championing Keith. He held up a white hospital sheet and tested its strength. “Still in best condition. The Big Ones are always tossing out things with life left in them.”

  “That’s a
truth,” said Catra, tossing her long, taffy-colored braid out of the way. She rubbed the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. “Ah, percale. Nice fabrics. The one thing I’ve been wishing for. I’ll have that. My mother will be able to do much with a sheet that big.”

  Her sister, the little blond elf, reached for the sheet’s edge, a sour look on her face. Holl reached into the bag, and found it was full of sheets. He put another into her hands. “Candlepat, here’s one for you.” She beamed, tucking the bundle under one arm.

  “Ahh.” The others were sorting through the plastic sacks. The sheets were counted and divided up. Candlepat and Catra unfolded bolts of fabric and tried them together for style. Most of them were Christmas materials, red stars on white background, white stars on red, blue and white stripes, green and white, red and green. When they came to the green fabric decorated with small white stars, it looked like the two sisters might come to blows.

  “I want that,” Candlepat wailed a protest, holding on to the bolt. “You bully me because you’re the older. It isn’t fair.”

  “It’d look better on me than it would on you. You have fine clothes in plenty because you’re the prettiest. And you have a whole counterpane, the newest in the household. I do not. This will do me well. You can go without, for a change.”

  Marm pushed his way between the two of them. With a reproachful look at each, he unwound the bolt, found the midpoint, and tore it into two equal pieces. Eying each other like a pair of angry hens, they accepted their halves from him, and went on pecking through the contents of the sacks. Marm himself nodded pleasantly over a short piece of tweedy brown, and tucked the end into his tunic belt.

  The floor was soon strewn with lengths of cloth, most of them loud and gaudy to the humans’ point of view, but obviously attractive to their smaller classmates. Laniora was cooing over a length of white-starred blue. Maura had out the lone bolt of blue denim fabric and was holding it up against herself, mentally measuring for an outfit. She skillfully twitched the end out of Catra’s hand when she reached for it, and appeared to be entertaining some pleasant thoughts on decoration. Catra looked up only once to see that it wasn’t her sister competing for the piece of cloth, and went back to her own browsing. Holl, after exchanging unspoken communication with Maura, draped the blue cloth over his arm and approached Keith with it.

  “What’ll you trade for this one, eh?” Holl asked, rescuing him from the Elf Master.

  Gratefully, Keith broke eye contact and nervously edged out of his seat. “Ah, I hadn’t thought about it, really. It was supposed to be a gi—um,” he paused, responding to his friend’s obvious prompt for more diplomacy, and rubbed the corner of the cloth between thumb and forefinger. “What would you like to trade?”

  Maura whispered in Holl’s ear, and he nodded, fingering the fabric speculatively. Keith watched him with respect. He didn’t look too keen or too disinterested: a natural garage-saler. “I’d say it might be worth a small lantern, or a toy, or a carved wooden box this big.” He sketched a form in the air about six inches wide. “There’s more than a single garment’s length here, you see.”

  “Sounds fair. How about the lantern?” Keith asked quickly. Holl nodded and rerolled the bolt around its flat cardboard core. Maura took it and the two men shook hands. Patting Holl’s arm for thanks, she disappeared down the tunnel, waving the bolt happily. Taking their friends’ cue, the others spoke up at once with offers for their prizes.

  “Look,” Keith said, holding his hands palms out to the others. “I’m no good at this sort of thing. You take what you want, and we can figure it out later, okay?”

  There was a general chorus of agreement, and the elves simply bundled the bags up and carried them away toward their home. In the echoing passage, Keith could hear the shrill voices of the elven sisters, arguing about who would wear what. Holl had a satisfied grin on his round face. Keith felt pretty good himself. Everyone seemed happy. This was much more what he had in mind. The other students’ ire seemed to have dissolved. They had arisen from their seats to watch the bartering, and now came over to praise Keith for his generosity and thoughtfulness. His idea seemed to have gone over well with them all.

  Except the Elf Master. He still stood by Keith’s desk, radiating disapproval. Keith tried not to look his way. He felt himself cringing away from the stern little man. The other Little Folk were reappearing out of the tunnel and taking their seats. Keith appeared to have broken the ice, and the students, all of them, were chattering to one another, relaxed, the cultural barriers down at last. Marcy distracted him at that moment by grabbing his face between her hands and kissing him right on the mouth.

  “You doll!” she said. “So this is what you were being so mysterious about. I’ve been wanting to do something like that for months.”

  “Well, why not do it again?” Keith leered, slipping an arm around her waist. He caught a glimpse of Enoch who had a shocked expression on his face. Keith winked at him over Marcy’s shoulder, and was rewarded with a cold stare. Oh, well, the little sourpuss never liked him anyway.

  “No, not that,” Marcy corrected him, playfully but firmly turning her face aside. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yup,” he acknowledged. But he kept his arm around her, and she didn’t protest or move away. This was a reward he hadn’t expected for his efforts, and he was enjoying it. There was a thundercloud building up over Carl’s head, and Keith enjoyed that, too. He was a hero. In everyone’s eyes but Carl’s, the Elf Master’s, and Enoch’s, that is. What was eating them?

  “What are you going to do with the jeans fabric?” Teri Knox asked Maura shyly. It was probably the first direct question she’d ever asked one of the others.

  Maura seemed just as timid. “I don’t really know. I would like to make an outfit like the one in green wool you wear.”

  “Oh, my pantsuit? Well, I could bring it around, and you can copy the pattern.” She eyed Maura, estimating her size. “It’s too bad they don’t make tailored styles that small.”

  “That’s no matter. I’m good at fittings. I can copy almost anything, but there are no books of patterns in all of Gillington. I’d be most grateful.” Maura, just as shy, was warming to Teri’s friendliness.

  “No problem,” Teri said. “I’d be happy to. You’d look really good in a blazer, too. You’re built just like a Barbie doll. Did I ever wear this outfit down here? I think you’d like it.” The two girls bent over a sheet of paper, and began discussing designs.

  “Great fellow, this Keith,” Marm said in an aside to Carl, who was sitting at his desk, staring at nothing. “He’s a friend.”

  “He’s a phony,” Carl growled.

  “Not in my books, laddie,” the elf retorted testily. “In my view he’s thoughtful, not like some other people who think only of themselves, and scoring off the other man.”

  “I don’t do anything like that,” he snapped.

  “And you don’t do anything else,” Marm flung back.

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “If you say that about Keith Doyle, you must be.”

  “Marm, bring your voice down,” Holl said, glancing over his shoulder at the Elf Master.

  “But, Maven, do you hear this fool? Listen to him,” Marm said indignantly.

  The Elf Master sat by himself, watching, saying nothing himself. He appeared to be thinking deeply on some subject, one that disturbed him. Everyone else seemed to be pleasantly chatting. It was the most relaxed class meeting he had ever witnessed, especially one that had started so badly. But it boded to end ill.

  Marm’s and Carl’s argument was getting louder, and some of the others were joining in, mostly on Marm’s side.

  “You really must be dumb if you believe that.” Carl had a finger leveled, and was jabbing out for punctuation. Keith was still talking quietly to Marcy, and seemed unaware that there was a battle going on. “After what I’ve told you? He’s not your friend. He’s nobody’s friend, except his own.”

  “A
nd why else would he bring us things?” Marm demanded, ignoring Holl’s attempts to bring the argument to a close.

  “Yes, vhy?” the Elf Master spoke at last, making himself heard over the din, and addressing Keith directly. “For vhat reason do you bring us gifts?”

  “Um,” Keith was distracted from his private chat with Marcy, and had to think how best to phrase his answer. “Just because I wanted to. No good reason.”

  “Eh, I told you,” Marm said triumphantly.

  “They’re bribes,” Carl shouted, pushing his way into the middle of the crowd, and sending a forefinger thudding into the center of Keith’s chest. “So when you lose your home you won’t blame him. But it’ll still be his fault. He’s the one behind the movement I told you about. He’s trying to get the Administration to tear down the library!”

  Keith’s mouth dropped open in amazement. So that was what was up. The vindictive creep!

  The chatter and noise died away without an echo, and Keith found everyone looking intently at him. “Is that true?” Marcy demanded, a hurt expression in her eyes. “He said that at the beginning of class.”

  “Well …” Keith began, his voice dwindling to a squeak. “Not exactly. The vote hasn’t been taken yet.”

  “Is it true that you’ve been working toward it?”

  “It was,” he said uncomfortably. “I did it to annoy Carl. But that’s all over. I looked up some facts on the library building today, and I called the Historical Society. They might be able to declare it a historic landmark. If they do, it can’t be torn down.”

  “And if they cannot so declare it?” the Elf Master inquired frostily.

  Eyes on the ground, Keith mumbled, “Then I guess it’ll be torn down. But I’m sure I can get them to reverse the vote.”

  “Meester Doyle,” the Master said, very slowly and distinctly. “I think you should leaf now:” Keith gathered up his books in silence.

  “I’m really sorry,” Keith said from the doorway. No one looked up, but Holl gave him a little wave from behind his back. Enoch and Carl had identical grim smiles on their faces. Keith sadly pulled the door closed behind him.