“No! What good would it be if it didn’t light? I promised you a functional lantern.”
“I don’t get it. I mean, how would you light it?”
“How do you think?” Holl answered the question seriously. “Blow on the wick.”
Obediently, Keith blew. The wick ignited. Astonished, he dropped the lantern. It hit the floor with a THOCK! but the flame didn’t go out. “That’s incredible,” Keith exclaimed. “How does it work—? Magic! Is it magic?” he demanded.
Holl regarded him patiently. “Old skills, like carving,” he said, picking the lantern up and holding it out. “It’s stronger than it looks. All good hardwoods. Go on, blow it out.”
Keith screwed up his face like a little boy with a birthday cake. The flame vanished, and the wick showed white again in its wooden cage. It wasn’t even hot. “I don’t believe it,” he said, cradling the lantern reverently in both hands. “This is mine to keep?”
“Of course. We made a bargain. Value for value received. I’m satisfied. Here, there’s more. These are from the feuding sisters.” From his coat pockets, Holl produced a pair of wooden spoons, a small painted marionette, and a flat hinged box. “From Marm, who still believes in your innocence,” he said, indicating the last. “Good work, but nothing fancy.”
“Nothing fancy, he says,” Keith echoed mockingly. “It’s professional quality stuff. Even better!”
Holl turned the box so the lock was facing Keith, and took hold of one of his hands. “Put your thumb here, widdy.” Puzzled, Keith allowed his thumb to be pressed to the lock plate. “Now it’ll only open to your hand. Good for things you want to keep private. You might keep the key to the classroom in here, if you choose.”
“A magic lock! I love it. Eat your heart out, CIA.”
“Will you stop? A simple charmed lock is nowhere near so important as full-blown magic.”
Keith flushed. “Sorry. I’m not used to getting anything that’s charmed or magical.” He picked up the marionette and admired its glittering glass eyes. “What’s this do?” He made it dance a few steps, whistling a few bars from the ‘Beautiful Blue Danube.’ The joints turned smoothly, and the painted wooden shoes beat a delicate tattoo on his coverlet. But when he let go of the puppet’s strings, it did a step of its own before dropping nervelessly to the bed. Its bright stare was reflected in Keith’s own astonished eyes. He was speechless.
Holl cocked an eye at it. “You’ve got a bit of energy of your own,” he said enigmatically. “It wouldn’t work like that for everybody. Amazing.”
“You guys are amazing, not me,” Keith exclaimed, poring over his treasures. “I know people who would pay anything for stuff like … That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“How you could earn money.”
“And why do we need money? We don’t live in a cash economy; strictly barter.”
“Well, don’t you understand? If you made enough toys like these,” he held up the box and the puppet in one hand, “and like this,” the lantern in the other, “you could sell them and earn enough to buy your own home. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about jerks like me trying to tear it down around your ears.” Keith blushed, having made mention of those very obvious attributes. Holl didn’t notice. He was thinking it over. Keith didn’t have to. It was obvious. It was right.
That, of course, was the answer. Marketing was one of his skills. Hadn’t he just been demonstrating it to his present disadvantage in Student Senate? Had he not done a thorough selling job on Marcy to get him in to meet the elves in the first place? Was he not, after all, a Business Major? He was.
“Come on, Holl,” he said, jumping to his feet and shouldering into his coat.
“Where to?” The elf looked up from his meditation in surprise.
“To redeem myself, and maybe you, too.”
***
Chapter 15
Getting through the concealed door in the side of the library building unobserved was the easy part. The sun had set behind a sky full of rain clouds, and very few students were out on the common. A few lonely streetlamps draped their beams on the shiny wet pavement, and the tired brown grass lay flat. Keith and Holl crossed through the gloomy pools of light and eased in behind the paving stones as simply as shadows. The hard part was trying to convince the elders that Keith had rational point of view to which they should listen. Most of them were for throwing him out on the spot. Holl, who had had the whole concept explained to him on the way over, was not entirely convinced himself. He had to concur at least that it was a darned good idea, and managed to convince the clans to give Keith a hearing at least.
“But why not sell handcrafts?” Keith insisted to an assembly of the Little People. “Bored housewives make a bundle on color-by-number tole paintings at craft fairs. You could clean up on your creative skill alone.”
“Exploitation!” one of the white-haired men shouted.
“Not by me,” Keith said frankly. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about my mistake. But apologies won’t really help you. I know I blew it, I’ll admit, but not because I knew anyone was living here.”
Strangely, it was the Elf Master who came to his rescue, speaking up from among his fellows. “Is it any wonder, when we haf gone to so much trouble to prevent detection?”
Keith was grateful for his teacher’s intervention. “Right now you can’t afford to buy a new place if you lose this one. The least you can do is consider making it easier to find a new home. If you exploit your own talents, you help yourselves.”
“We have no wish to expose ourselves. You have already done enough to jeopardize us.”
Full of excitement, Keith threw his arms out toward the little man. “But that’s where I come in. You won’t be exposed. I’ll find buyers for you. I’ll deliver the merchandise, and I’ll handle all the external negotiations. All you have to do is make things.”
“What things?”
“These!” Keith seized the handful of wooden toys out of his pocket. There was a general outcry.
“You’re ridiculous! Toys!”
“You want to stereotype us to your foolish folktales. Santa’s little helpers. Big Ones are all alike!”
“Meester Doyle,” came the Elf Master’s sadly patient voice, “Meester Doyle, where did you get the impression that we are eager to take up handicrafts as a means of supporting ourselves, however covertly, in your society?”
“Well, I … you know, that’s how … In fairy tales, like the elves and the shoemaker, they …” Keith sensed the ridiculousness of his words and broke off, bright red. “I’m sorry. Myths and legends are the only stuff I have to go on in common between your culture and mine. You know, like the story that unicorns are only attracted to virgins.”
“And supposing the unicorn hasn’t read the story?”
Keith took a deep breath. “I assumed that maybe legends were based on observations that had been distorted over time. I’m sorry. I just wanted to be helpful.”
“Don’t help. Don’t get involved. You haf already done enough. Just go.”
“Ye should never ha’ come in the first,” Curran, Holl’s clan leader snapped out, stepping forward. “I was agin it, and still I am.”
“Wait,” Holl said, holding his hands up for silence. “Curran, there are others with opinions. Can we consider it?”
“Ye’re too progressive, lad,” the old man growled, shaking his white head doubtfully.
“And what choice have I got?” Holl demanded, addressing not only the old man, but all the elves. “The world’s not the same as it was. When was the last time that any of you were ever able to walk about in honest daylight? We younger ones can because we look like Big Ones’ children, and we can tell you that this fastness into which we’ve dug ourselves has become surrounded by city.” He looked around, searching for understanding in his friends’ faces. “Have none of you wondered why scavenging parties take so long to return? The farmland has receded away from our door. The natural ways are drifting out of our rea
ch, and a colder way is taking their place.” His voice sank to a choked whisper, but the room was silent, aware, listening. “There’s no magic out there now, just machines and money.”
A plump, elderly woman spoke up. “Then we’ve trapped ourselves like coneys. Is no open land left?”
Holl looked at Keith, passing on the question, and the tall student cleared his throat. “Sure, outside of the cities. Ironically, this one just grew up around the University because the Agriculture School is so good. It’s big, but there’s plenty of farmland and forests beyond it.”
“Perhaps we should consider it, then,” she suggested. Her daughter, or grand-daughter, a child with flaming red curls, nodded vigorously. The elders wrinkled their foreheads, muttering among themselves. “Look you,” she exclaimed, “time was when there was plenty and enough for a’. I do not want to live in a maze we canna find our way out of. If we must buy a home on a day soon, we’ll have to have the gold in hand before then.”
“Um, we don’t use gold anymore,” Keith put in. “Not since the ’twenties. Just dollars.”
“How much will we need?” Dever, a younger elf inquired. His black eyes were in marked contrast to his ice-fair hair and beard.
“Depends on the land,” Keith said frankly. “I don’t know anything about real estate.”
“Ach!” spat Catra. “Don’t you read the newspapers, Dever? There are advertisements in, every day.”
“I don’t read them,” Dever admitted shamefacedly. “I only read the comic strips and the columnists.”
The room broke up into a dozen arguments.
“I say do it!”
“No, it would be selling out.”
“We could try.…”
“Do you know another way? I don’t.”
The argument got louder and more forthright, shifting into a language which Keith could not identify. There were German words thrown in here and there, and he was positive he heard some slang, too, but the body of the discussion was nothing he’d ever heard before. There really were three distinct sets of accents in the room, when they spoke English. The old ones sounded Irish, or something like it; the middle-aged ones exclaimed their opinions in middle-European; the young ones in Midwestern American, complete with slang. Right now they all sounded exactly alike.
“I do not trust him,” Curran growled, and Keva nodded sour-faced agreement.
“What about those newspaper articles?” one of the others demanded.
“He wrote them,” Enoch speculated blackly. “He deserves none of our confidence.”
“Not at all,” Holl interrupted. “And he offers to help us.”
“He offers to make a spectacle out of us!”
“Why not discuss it?” Tay said, dropping back into English and thrusting himself forward into the middle of the group. Keva waved a dismissive hand with a sound like she was spitting and turned away.
“The Maven has been rarely wrong,” a burly, dark-haired elf said in English with a thick accent like the Master’s, stroking his beard thoughtfully.
“He’s becoming too like the Big Ones, Aylmer. Best to stick to what we know, and make our own way,” Keva said forcefully. She glared over his head at Keith.
“Yes! Why do we need this Big One?”
“Yes, why?” “Why does he have to come into our lives?” “Ask him!”
Aylmer turned to Keith and fixed him with a stern brown eye. “And vhat do you get out of all this hard vork for yourzelf?”
“Nothing,” said Keith, earnestly but firmly. “You’re my friends. I just want to help.”
“No,” the Master said, chopping a hand downward to forestall debate. “That is more of your charity.”
“What charity?” Keith demanded. “Even if it is my scheme, you’d be earning your own way. It will be hard work. Like Holl said, value for value received. Okay—you can give me a commission for being your business manager. Ten percent is fair. Check it out in the business law texts. That’s standard.”
“I haf,” the Master admitted, showing a small glimmering of humor at last. “The usual percentage is thirty to forty.”
The young man turned red again. “Maybe. I’d be happier with ten, myself. You’re going to need all you can save to buy land. How about it, then? I’ll take care of the shipping and you just fill the orders. What more could you ask? You could have a cottage industry with real cottages!” Keith demanded triumphantly. “That’s a degree of reality you rarely find today in business.”
“It sounds too easy,” Marm complained.
“It vill not be easy,” the Elf Master said, considering. “But perhaps it should be done.” He turned a piercing eye on Holl. “Ve can learn at least if it is practical.”
Holl bowed acceptance. It would be the closest thing he’d ever get to an apology from the imperious teacher. “Thank you, Master.” He turned to Keith. “The floor’s yours, widdy. What do you want us to do?”
Scratching his jaw, Keith considered. “The obvious market is gift shops and things like that. I think we’ll need at least a dozen to fifteen things to start off for the buyers to choose from. What else can you make besides these?”
Several of the elves ran for their homes, and came back with armloads of wooden implements. “See this,” one said. “That’s half worn out,” another scoffed. “See this!” Tay and a woman, probably his wife, came back pushing a small wheelbarrow.
Holl sorted them into piles. “Cook’s tools,” he pointed to one group. “Musical instruments. Toys and puzzles. You’ll never figure that one out, Keith Doyle, so you may as well put it down.”
Keith set the puzzle box back and helped sort out the most attractive items.
“What about the lanterns?” Marm asked. “They’re useful.”
“Easy to make, too. It’s only a case of strengthening the natural characteristics and uses of the wick,” Dever explained. He would have gone on, but Keith shook his head wonderingly.
“I don’t understand.”
“His brain’s got enough to do, moving that big body,” Holl said cynically. “He’d need years of instruction.”
Keith held up a regretful hand. “I don’t know. How will I explain magic lanterns to the shop owners? It might seem perfectly natural to you, but they don’t believe in magic.”
“That’s not a magic lantern,” Marm said. He picked up a little box with a round window on one side covered by a thin cloth screen. “This is. Like your televisions. Here, look.”
He shoved the screen side at Keith, who peered closely.
“I don’t understand,” said a finger-sized Keith, looking stupidly at a thumb-sized Dever.
“His brain’s got enough to do, moving that big body,” an image of Holl repeated.
Keith goggled. “I don’t believe it. That’s impossible.”
“But there’s nothing to it,” Holl insisted. “It’s made with the heartwood of a tree. That part can hold memories forever. Not too lengthy an event, but you can make records over and over until you’ve got one you want to keep. Keva’s got one of Tay taking his first steps.”
“Sugar,” spat Keva, who was ostentatiously not listening to the progressive Doyle and his cohorts, and hated to be considered sentimental. Tay blushed and stroked his beard. Holl smiled.
“Well, I can’t take that,” Keith insisted, putting down the magic lantern. “I don’t think the Midwest is ready for it.”
“Well, then,” Holl said. “Will these do?” He pointed out his selections.
“Yeah,” Keith said, kneeling before the display appreciatively. “All of it is beautiful. These things’ll sell themselves.” He considered, fingering the little wooden boxes. “I’ll need about three samples of each item, in case I have to give some away. Just let me know when I can come and get them.”
He had plenty of volunteers among the younger elves who were ready to show off their skills. Some were openly disappointed that their work hadn’t been chosen. “Why not these?” Dever asked, sounding hurt as he retriev
ed a hand-sized harp.
“I only need a small representative sample to start,” Keith explained soothingly. “I don’t want to blow their minds out on my first visit. Plenty of time for expansion later on when we see how big our market is. These are so terrific, my big problem is figuring out where to tell people this merchandise is produced. No one would ever believe I made ’em.”
It was a popular answer. They redoubled their offers of help. The middle-aged set joined in less enthusiastically, but they were convinced of Keith’s sincerity, and flattered by his admiration of their work. The eldest elves still held themselves apart, refusing to participate.
Curran, the white-haired elder, remained unconvinced, even though most of his clan was involving themselves excitedly with Keith’s plan. “But what if the inevitable does not happen, lad?” he rapped Keith smartly on the top of the head with his knuckles to get attention. “What be the point of setting ourselves to earn this money, if we may not need it?” He said ‘money’ as if it burned his tongue. “The resolution to tear down may be dropped.”
“If you don’t have to move?” Keith rose, frowning thoughtfully. “Well, what if the day comes when you decide to move of your own free will? You could. If it were me, I’d rather have the means available than to have to scratch for them in a hurry. It would keep your options open.”
“A valid point,” the old man said. “I will gi’ conseederation to it. Whether or not we follow your scheme.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Keith. “Well, I’d better go now. I’ve still got some studying to do before tomorrow.” He gathered up his coat and other possessions. Waving his goodbyes to the others, he disappeared into the dark stairway, his heels pattering happily on the floor. Curran gathered up the other elders with a glance, and they drew together in conference. The argument began again.
“Um, there’s just one more thing,” Keith said, reappearing around the doorjamb and addressing the Elf Master. “Sir? Can I come back to class?”
“Yes,” the Master said, rounding austerely on him. “Next week. You are still suspended for causing a disturbance. You must understand that a classroom is no place for theatrics. Others are there to learn.”
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