LITTLE PEOPLE!

by Gardner Dozois

  The Unseelie host cried out (in unison, no less), “We’re ready.”

  And our king, who was now sitting astride his horse beside Asrai, shouted, “Out with ye all.”

  Then the tummel began.

  The Unseelie threw a golden ball toward me, which I struck with my stick (what a civilized way to resolve differences), and then with a great shout both sides ran to meet each other. My horse jumped forward with the others.

  But no one, neither Seelie nor Unseelie, made even a pretense of trying to hit the ball back and play the game. They started, right off, to club one another.

  I had enough to contend with: a balding witch was determined to bash my brains out with a stick.

  Sometime during all this shouting and heavy breathing, I realized that maybe fairyfolk couldn’t get killed at this game, but I could. Later, I found out that it’s considered mandatory for fairyfolk to include at least one human in their wars. The good king had probably been looking for an excuse to grab the Unseelie’s gold, all the while.

  They were all gonifs and gozlins. While they were attacking each other, and probably having a helluva time, I was having enough trouble just staying alive.

  Gottenyu, did the blood flow! Limbs were lost, maidens deflowered (probably for the umpteenth time!), and it all looked very real to me.

  So how did I survive all this, you may ask?

  Just as you thought: Asrai had turned herself back into a dragon and was felling the beasties and trows and bogles around me like a woodcutter working to a deadline. Her green scales were spattered with blood.

  So she protected me (although I fought like a demon, you should know). For most of the day, I hid out on the edge of the field. Don’t be so quick with the sneers. Remember what my mother said.

  The carnage went on until dark, and then the Unseelie finally began to lose. The battlefield looked like something Dante would think up. Maybe all these spirit things could just go home and grow new heads and limbs, like worms. It was enough to make even a strong person such as myself want to varf.

  What was left of the Unseelie began to make a buzzing noise. Then, just like that, they turned into a horde of insects—every kind you could think of, but mostly locusts.

  They flew around and away, eating anything that was green, from grass to leaf, cutting a swath from here to New York City.

  That locust business is a Jewish bit, you know.

  Go read about it in the Haggadah.

  ###

  Of course, everybody (except the locusts) was happy. The Seelie folk were milling about, shaking hands, hugging, and making a great roar; the Unseelie had flown away. Good riddance!

  But my real work was still to be done. Even though the good fairies won, any mortal (remember Hub?) left in the Unseelie’s fairy ring would become old and shrivel up and turn to dust like the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz. (Shtumie, where do you think Frank Baum got it from?)

  As I said before, fairy time is different from human time. (Where do you think Washington Irving got the idea for Rip Van Winkle?) Even now, I might be too late. Hub might have aged sixty years in the last few hours.

  Asrai and I made our way to Fishkill Craig, past the old barn, to the scraggly wood below the cliffs, where the fairy ring was lit by will-o’-the-wisp. A motley group of curious pixies and fairychildren followed us. The pixies were green as grass, and the fairychildren were all babyfat, blond hair, and hummingbird wings.

  The ring was between two huge blackthorn trees, and it looked like a soap bubble—it had a shimmering, transparent surface, and inside I could see lithe figures dancing wildly. I could almost hear the fairy music, but we were still a safe distance from the ring.

  “You’ll be first inside the ring,” Asrai said to me. “I’ll follow, and we’ll all make a chain”—she waved her hand at the pixies and fairychildren.

  “What about that?” I asked, pointing to what I thought was a pair of eyes in the forest dark.

  “Don’t worry, Poppa’s already made a spell for those on the outside of the ring. What’s left of the Unseelie won’t be aware of us, and those inside the ring won’t notice, anyhow. They’re too busy dancing.”

  I wondered what the king, my future father-in-law, was up to. Probably negotiating a contract with the Unseelie. I didn’t trust him, but didn’t dwell on the thought. If he happened to be reading my mind, it would be, as he said, cockroach time.

  As we neared the ring, I could hear the most beautiful music that was ever played. Bach was boogie compared to this. All I wanted to do was dance, and Fred Astaire I’m not. (Indeed, that’s the way humans are trapped in fairy rings. You hear the music, and then you’re dancing with all the creatures from Gehenna until you fall apart.)

  I saw all manner of horned and winged creatures hopping about with naked human beings. Such a frenzy!

  And there was Hub! His pot belly jiggled like jello as he danced with a beautiful, blue-eyed goblin girl. She had primroses in her long, black hair.

  “That’s not so bad,” I mumbled, developing a yen for that goblin girl, and then Asrai was daubing fairy ointment on my eyelids and in my ears. She used too much, and it stung like hell. (Maybe she was reading my mind again and got a little jealous.) But the music suddenly sounded like chalk rubbing across a blackboard. Now I could see that the dancers—monsters and humans alike—were filthy. And what a smell! Next to that, herring was perfume. The whole forest seemed to stink.

  “All right, Mister Ladies’ Man,” Asrai said, “get into the ring and pull out your friends.” She took hold of my belt and the waistband of my pants. “I’ll hold onto you, but you must keep one foot outside the circle. If you fall completely into the circle, none of us can help you.”

  I was more than a little nervous about all this, but I crawled into the fairy ring like a natural-born, thank you, Moma, hero. The bubble-surface of the ring felt like wet cellophane: slippery and slimy.

  Even with the fairy ointment in my eyes and ears and Asrai holding me by the pants, I felt a wild urge to break away and dance with the naked folk. But I have will power. I grabbed Hub—feh! He was as sweaty and slippery as a horse—and with a jerk pulled him out.

  He promptly fell asleep. The bags under his eyes looked like window shades, but he had not aged very much.

  So I went back into the fairy ring to do the good deed. One by one, I pulled out every man, woman, and child. Each one fell asleep immediately. This was hard work, you should note, and seemed to take all night. Now you know: even heroism involves drudgery.

  There were a few close calls, of course. Several times when I grabbed someone dancing with a kobald or a gnome, I was almost pulled completely into the ring—foot and all. But Asrai and the pixies and fairychildren held fast: they were stronger than I thought.

  When I finally pulled out the last person, there was a great hue and cry. It was as if only now had the Unseelie seen what I had done. The gnomes and goblins and dwarfs—all the various demons—danced and spun even more wildly, and turned into goats and cats and dogs and creatures of the woods.

  Asrai pulled me out, and I promptly fell asleep in her arms, ready to rest, at least for a while, on my laurels.

  I deserved it!

  ###

  You want the loose ends tied up now, right?

  Okay, the Daoine Sidhe are still in the Jewish Hills, and Asrai and I visit them once a week. We got married, of course—a nicer girl you couldn’t find—although we had some trouble at the wedding when the rabbi spilled some wine on Asrai. But she made it to the girls’ room before she turned into a dragon; she waited there until she changed back into a girl again and then returned to the wedding. It worked out: Everyone thought she ran away because she was shy and afraid to marry such a worldly person as I.

  We also visit Moma. Well, Asrai sounds Jewish, doesn’t it? Such a nice girl, my mother should complain? Anyway. Moma wants to be Grandma. So I’ll be Moishe, the sower of dragons.

  Of course, Hub’s all right. If he wasn’t, don�
�t you think I would have mentioned it before? Asrai’s father placed a cleaning spell over the Graubs and mixed up the fabric of time. When Hub and the others woke up, everything was as it was before. Nobody was lost, and all the hotel guests left on time to make their various appointments.

  The gold I try not to think about. Asrai has been helping me with a few routines, and her father told me if I keep his daughter happy (which I do!), he’ll book me in Vegas for a few weeks—the pixies need a vacation, anyway, he said. But any funny business with the showgirls and go forage for food with the other cockroaches.

  So much for his liberal attitude.

  New York City is still having trouble with the Unseelie, but that couldn’t be avoided. (Better them than us!)

  My father-in-law, the king, tells me they’ll be back.

  That I try not to think about.

  There’s a little of Scarlett O’Hara in every heroic type.

  ###

  Just as I thought. Someone doesn’t know the frog joke. Okay, just to prove to you that I’m not a mean person, here it is:

  What’s green and red and goes sixty miles an hour?

  Shtumie! A frog in a blender.

  No, I don’t tell dragon jokes!

  MOISHE MENCKEN’S YINGLISH-YIDDISH GLOSSARY:*

  A Guide for the Perplexed

  bar mitzvah/bas mitzvah—the ceremony signifying and celebrating passage into Jewish adulthood and responsibility. The bar mitzvah is for boys, the bas mitzvah is for girls.

  chutzpa—guts, nerve, presumptuousness. For example, it takes chutzpa to write this glossary.

  dershrokn—the German word for afraid. Linguists might argue, but as far as I’m concerned, if my mother uses dershrokn, it’s Yiddish!

  draykop—a confused or addled person. (See meshugge.)

  dybbuk—a demon that possesses a person and makes him or her do terrible and crazy things.

  farchadat—punchy, dizzy.

  farshtinkener—stinky, stunk-up. Stick this word on anything you don’t like.

  feh!—a Jewish way of saying “phooey!” Say it loud and with gusto.

  [*Yinglish: a term coined by Leo Rosten to mean Yiddish words used in colloquial English. Bagel is a Yinglish word. While I’m at it, I would like to acknowledge my debt to Mr. Rosten’s wonderful sourcebook, The Joys of Yiddish (McGraw-Hill, 1968). Go ahead, buy the book: you’ll be a better person for it. Credit also goes to Harlan Ellison, he should live and be well. It was his glossary at the end of his story, “I’m Looking for Kadak”, that gave me the idea to do such a thing. You should read that story, too. You’ll find it in an anthology by Jack Dann (who?) entitled, Wandering Stars: an Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction (Harper & Row, 1974).]

  Gehenna—hell.

  gevalt—a very versatile word. Use it as an exclamation when you’re surprised or in trouble. What does your date say to the waiter when he brings the check? “Gevalt, I forgot my wallet!”

  gonif—see gozlin.

  goslin—some sort of demon. (But see gozlin.) According to Avram Davidson, goslins come “leaping through the vimveil to nimblesnitch, torment, buffet, burden, ugly-look, poke, makestumble, maltreat, and quickshmiggy back again to geezle guzzle goslinland.” If you want to find out about goslins, you must read Davidson’s perfect short story “Goslin Day.” It can be found in Wandering Stars.

  Gott—God. Frequently used as an exclamation.

  Gottenyu—“Dear God.” Use it like gevalt when you’re surprised or in trouble. (See gevalt and oy.)

  gozlin—a thief or swindler: a nonprofessional gonif. A gonif? He’s the real McCoy—like the mafioso who lives next door.

  grepse—when your mother picks up something heavy and makes that funny breathing sound—that’s grepsing.

  Haggadah—the narrative which recounts the bondage and exodus of the Jews from Egypt. It is read aloud at the table on Passover.

  kacken—defecate. What all Jewish mothers refer to as “Number Two.”

  kosher—food that is considered “clean” according to the Jewish dietary laws. Certain meat and fish (such as pork and shellfish) cannot be eaten at all; beef, to be kosher, must be blessed according to ritual and slaughtered a certain way. In Yinglish, kosher means that someone or something is okay, authentic.

  krenk—means sick in German; hence, an illness. Krenk can be used sarcastically to good effect: “Oh, so you want a tip for such lousy service? A krenk I’ll give you.”

  mazik—a clever, devilish child.

  mench—a real person, someone you can depend on, someone to be proud of. But don’t tell your wife that she’s a real mench. It’s a masculine noun. Tell her she’s a real baleboosteh. That’s a feminine noun, and it means someone who’s got it together, an owner, a runner of things—whether it’s a job or the home. Got that?

  meshugge—crazy. (See draykop.) A draykop looks at you funny and maybe he can’t quite focus; a person who is meshugge (a meshuggener) hits you over the head with a Q-tip.

  nu?—always say this with a question mark. Use it when you’re surprised, disgusted, or questioning anything. Use it anytime: you can’t louse this one up. “Nu, how’s by you?” “Nu, again you need money?” “Nu? So all right already, I’ll go look for a job.” See what I mean? So nu? Go practice.

  nudnik—a person who is a pain in the tuchis (ass) and, maybe, boring, too. Such a person you would not fix up with your sister.

  oy—now this is a word you can use! Use it to indicate happiness, dismay, tsuris (See tsuris), ecstasy, fatigue, pain, etc. It can be used anytime, with any emotion. Don’t be afraid: you can’t make a mistake. Try it: “Oy, am I (happy, sad, etc.).” If you’re really happy, sad, etc., then say, “Oy-oy-oy, am I—” See how easy?

  oy vay—it means “Oh, pain.” It’s used like oy (See oy.), but it’s even more emphatic than oy-oy-oy.

  pisher—one who pees; a young, inexperienced person; a nobody.

  plotz—to explode. “From such aggravation I could plotz!”

  putz—the male reproductive organ. When you refer to someone as a putz, you’re saying he’s a jerk, a real idiot.

  schlemiehl—a jerk, an unlucky fool.

  shikker—drunk. Can be used either as a noun or an adjective. “He’s a real shikker, that one,” or, “Is he shikker again?”

  shlepper—a jerk who is also a slob. (See schlemiehl.)

  shtik—from German: piece. Often used to describe any distinctive or showy behavior. “Picking his nose in public is a shtik with him.” One can also say, “I’ll have a shtik bread (piece of).” Notice I didn’t say shtik of bread. That’s bad form. So what’s your shtik?

  shtumie—use it as you would “dummy,” and with some affection.

  shut—synagogue.

  shpatsing—from the Yiddish word spatzier, which means to walk, stroll, amble. Blame this on my mother, all you scholars who say you can’t use the word this way. She makes up her own Yinglish. Wanna make something of it?

  tsuris—trouble. That we all got.

  tummel—means tumult in German. So it’s any big noise or commotion.

  varf—vomit.

  zoftig—pleasingly plump. Only used to describe certain members of the fairer sex.

  A Gift of the People

  By Robert Sampson

  Sometimes in the cold dead middle of the night, we may get the uneasy intuition that our tidy rational world is surrounded by Powers old and strange and implacable, remorseless creatures who swim and flicker subliminally around us, vanishing at the turn of a head. If we’re lucky, we’ll never actually see these Powers. If we’re really lucky, we’ll never have to meet them . . .

  Robert Sampson won the Edgar Award for the best mystery story of 1986. In the science fiction genre, his stories have appeared in Full Spectrum, Strange Plasma, and elsewhere.

  * * *

  My brother Ted was eight when he first saw the People. I suppose it was for the first time. He never talked much, especially about that. When he saw them, if
he saw them, he was at the bottom of Lake Olwanee, about twenty seconds from drowning. I had teased him into that mess, so it was not something I even wanted to talk about, either.

  Olwanee, in northern Ohio, is a sprawling, mud-bottomed lake with a dark-pebble beach that agonized our feet. About seventy feet off shore floated a raft, its black timber riding clustered oil drums. It was beyond comfortable swimming distance and was therefore a challenge. Whatever was nearly out of reach, I felt obligated to strain after.