Sister Emily's Lightship

by Jane Yolen

  Little Jason was playing outside when he got there and followed Donnal up to his room. He thought about warning the boy away again, but when he reached into his pocket and pulled out the scarf, having for the moment forgotten the scarf’s magic was lost to him, he was overcome with the red heat. He could feel great gray wings growing from his shoulders, bursting through his parka, sprouting quill, feather, vane. His mouth tasted blood. He heard the snick-snack of little neck bones being broken. Such a satisfying sound. When the heat abated, and his eyes cleared, he saw that the boy lay on the floor, the red scarf around his neck, pulled tight.

  For a moment Donnal didn’t understand. Why was Jason lying there; why was the scarf set into his neck in just that way? Then when it came to him that his own strong hands had done it, he felt a strange satisfaction and he breathed as slowly as when he said his mantras. He laid the child out carefully on his bed and walked out of the room, closing the door behind.

  He cashed the check at the local bank, then pedaled into Northampton. The Mercantile had several silk scarves, but only one red one. It was a dark red, like old blood. He bought it and folded it carefully into a little packet, then tucked it reverently into his pocket.

  When he rode past the barn where he lived, he saw that there were several police cars parked in the driveway and so he didn’t stop. Bending over the handlebars, he pushed with all his might, as if he could feel the stares of townsfolk.

  The center was filled with cars, and two high school seniors, down from Smith Academy to buy candy, watched as he flew past. The wind at his back urged him on as he pedaled past the Main Street houses, around the meandering turns, past the treatment plant and the old barns marked with the passage of high school graffiti.

  He was not surprised to see two vans by the roadside, one with out-of-state plates; he knew why they were there. Leaning his bike against one of the vans, he headed toward the swamp, his feet making crisp tracks on the crusty snow.

  There were about fifteen people standing in a semicircle around the dead tree. The largest of the Great Grays sat in the crotch of the tree, staring at the circle of watchers with its yellow eyes. Slowly its head turned from left to right, eyes blinked, then another quarter turn.

  The people were silent, though every once in a while one would move forward and kneel before the great bird, then as silently move back to place.

  Donnal was exultant. These were not birders with field glasses and cameras. These were worshipers. Just as he was. He reached into his pocket and drew out the kerchief. Then slowly, not even feeling the cold, he took off his boots and socks, his jacket and trousers, his underpants and shirt. No one noticed him but the owl, whose yellow eyes only blinked but showed no fear.

  He spoke his mantra silently and stepped closer, the scarf between his hands, moving through the circle to the foot of the tree. There he knelt, spreading the cloth to catch the pellet when it fell and baring his neck to the Great Gray’s slashing beak.

  Under the Hill

  THE DAY BIG NOSE Harry got tossed down the mine shaft for stealing from his boss, Joey the Needle, was All Hallows Eve. Or, as they say in the upper world, Halloween He had been blindfolded and gagged and his hands and feet tied, just to make things more difficult. But not impossible.

  If they’d wound the rope widdershins, or if he had been tied with the binding of the three narrows—hands, wrists, knees—I couldn’t have helped him.

  Or if it had been a real mine shaft.

  A real mine shaft and Big Nose Harry would have been in trouble. That would have landed him in with the dwarves, which would have been uncomfortable in the extreme. Or in with the trolls. Enough said.

  But Big Nose Harry had been taken for a ride and dropped Under the Hill, which may have looked to the humans who dropped him there like a mine shaft, but certainly isn’t.

  Which is how I got him.

  And which is what I told him as I took off the gag.

  And after a while, when he’d stopped all that screaming and started listening, he realized that we might be of mutual benefit to one another.

  One hand, he said, washing the other. A typical human way of looking at things. But close enough to what I already had in mind.

  So I took off his blindfold. Which for a while made things worse.

  But when they got better again—him being a natural hero, which is someone who can overcome his tendency to scream and turn it to good use—I untied him as well.

  I knew he couldn’t get out from Under the Hill again unless I helped. And—as I told him—if I even began to suspect he was a runner, I could always sell him to the Queen. She’s perpetually short of good teinds around this time of year.

  And him being a good soldier—except for that one misstep with Joey the Needle—he got the point real quick.

  Allegiances Under the Hill as well as Over can be bought. Of course they can. The threat of death or dismemberment is a powerful coin.

  He shook his hands to get out the pins and needles. Those are his words. I didn’t see any such thing. But then humans have different sight than the fey. If he believed he had pins or needles, it was not my duty to set him right.

  When he finished shaking, he spit in his hand and said, “Put it there!”

  Of course I took his hand.

  Saliva, like blood, is a great binder.

  “So whadda we do now?” he asked, looking around.

  His eyes goggled, like a great frog’s. I had put a glamour on the place before taking off his blindfold. Standard procedure, of course. What he saw was a room all gilded on top and sparkling below. Roots running riot with gems, and mushrooms looking like diamonds ready to be plucked.

  Beginner stuff. Nothing exotic. But it always works with humans and Harry was no exception.

  “I mean whadda you do for fun in this joint?” he added.

  “Work comes first,” I reminded him.

  He nodded and put his finger to the side of his not inconsiderable nose.

  “Got you,” he replied.

  I’m sure he did, though it didn’t stop him from putting one of the “diamonds” in his pocket. I didn’t plan to be around when it turned back into a toad.

  We had to wait till moonrise, of course. My magic doesn’t work as well in the bright light of day. And of course, this being All Hallow’s Eve, I was as strong as I ever get during the year. I didn’t tell Harry that of course. No use giving him any power over me.

  Didn’t tell him my true name either.

  And I made him carry the pot, handle slung over his right arm. Left, of course, would have invited disaster.

  Where we were heading was back to Joey the Needle’s place, a little social club on seventh street situated between a garage and a sandwich shop.

  Revenge for Big Nose Harry. This we both knew.

  Revenge for me as well.

  But that was my own little secret.

  Joey the Needle had not always been a kingpin. He was a small numbers man from Bayonne. But about a year ago he had come into big money and with it bought his way right up to the top.

  “Just found it lying around,” he liked to say.

  Only where he found it was underground when he was burying one of his boss’s ex-employees, a man who had asked for too much of a raise.

  Where Joey the Needle found the money was in my safe hole.

  How was I to know he was going to dig in the middle of a swamp? There’d been no rainbows that day, no need to keep an eye on the pot. My tea leaves hadn’t said anything about theft. Only about sewing.

  Sewing.

  Needle.

  I didn’t make the connection until much later. Tea leaves are like that. Useless really. I understand coffee grounds are purer. But I can’t stand the taste.

  So there I was sitting in my cozy condo Under the Hill, several dozen leagues away from the safe hole. I was reading a book called “Touch Magic” and laughing uproariously at the funny parts.

  The alarm went off.

  By the tim
e I got on my seven leaguers and went to see what had triggered the bell, my entire pot was gone. Not even a copper penny left.

  I’d barely time to write down the license number of the Honda Civic that was making its swift getaway.

  It took me weeks to convince a drunken Irish cop to trace that license for me. Weeks more to locate the Needle. Things are hard these days when only drunks and old ladies believe in us. We fey can’t just get up and go easily into the city amongst the iron and steel girded walls.

  So Big Nose Harry ending up in my place was a gift, really.

  But we fey know that eventually these gifts always come our way.

  Of course we don’t always know what to do with a gift once we have it. Though this time I already had a glimmer of an idea.

  Well, more than a glimmer.

  It depended upon Harry’s greed and Joey’s uneasiness.

  In other words, it depended upon human nature.

  We went in my cart, pulled by a one-horned nanny goat, as I could no more have gotten into a car (all those metal parts) than fly.

  A glamour convinced Harry we were in a Porsche.

  He was impressed. “Nice wheels.”

  I agreed. “German’97” I said. I wasn’t lying. It was a 1797, and the wheels had been made by a wheelwright known throughout the Black Forest.

  As we went along—jouncing a bit more than a Porsche, but I didn’t want to expend any more of my magical capital than necessary, even if it was Halloween—I explained my plan to Harry.

  “I can make you look exactly like the Needle,” I said.

  “Are you a face lift doc or sumpin?” he asked.

  “Sumpin…er, something like that,” I answered, “only I take half as long and it doesn’t hurt.”

  He smiled. “I like that.”

  “I thought you would.”

  “And this face change will help me exactly how?” He rubbed a finger on his nose again.

  Rather on than in, I thought. Really, humans are a disgusting race. Inventing metal solely to kill one another off.

  “Think, Harry,” I said, and then make it a command by placing my left hand over my right. “Think!”

  And then he got it. “If I look like him, everyone will think I am him.” He grinned.

  “And…”

  Really, humans are not very bright either. Better not to burden him with the knowledge that, with the glamour in place, only twelve humans at any one time would see him that way. I doubted he could count that high.

  “And I can tell everyone what to do and…”

  I could see I was going to have to take a more active role than is normal. That’s never a good idea. Humans need to believe they make all the decisions in any interactions with the fey. But we were almost into town and he still hadn’t got it.

  “And you can have control of the Needle’s money and his—”

  “His safe!” shouted Harry happily. “I can open his big Underwood 777!”

  Rather you than me, I thought. According to my sources, that safe was pure iron. Even being in the same room with it was going to give me a headache you wouldn’t believe.

  “And see what’s inside,” I finished up for him.

  “Yeah,” he said with the same kind of look the Queen gives her teinds, just before shoving them into the Pit of Hell.

  We pulled up in front of the little sandwich shop an hour after moonrise. The space right by the social club door was just being taken up by an enormous stretch limo. At the rate Joey the Needle was going through my gold, there’d be precious little left for me.

  I got out of the cart and tossed what looked like keys to Harry. Actually they were three beans sewn together.

  “Gee, thanks, Boss,” he said.

  “No, Harry, no. You’re the boss now,” I said, turning him so he could see his transformation in the plate glass window.

  And there, right below *EATS MAMA’S EATS* was Joey the Needle, looking dapper and disgustingly thin.

  Harry saluted the image. It saluted him back. He turned and checked it out over his right shoulder. It did the same. He waved. It waved.

  After a few seconds of such posturing, Harry got it.

  “Hey!” he said in a fair imitation of Joey’s reedy voice, “I’m him. The Needle.”

  “No, Harry,” I said, “you’re you. But everyone else will think you’re Joey. Now remember, we have only a short time to do this before the glamour goes.”

  “How short?” he asked.

  “Cock’s crow,” I said.

  “Hunh?”

  “Sunrise.”

  “Ah geeze,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  We went in.

  Now I’m not saying that all humans are dim bulbs, but the ones at the social club were not the brightest of creatures. Perhaps their names had something to do with it. Call yourself Sammy Two Shoes or Tim the Tongue or Grasshopper Vic or Slow Hand Charley and you’re asking for a bad geas. The Powers simply don’t fool around when it comes to names. An ancestor of mine called himself Rumplestiltskin and look where that got him!

  So when we walked in, and Harry—now Joey—was being greeted by the gang, I told them I was Ben Armstrong from Chicago. Pick a name, pick one that gives you strength.

  “Muscle, eh?” asked Tim the Tongue. When he spoke, his tongue—with its silver stud—flicked in and out like some dotty reptile.

  I nodded.

  “Chicago, eh?” Grasshopper Vic asked. “I got me an uncle in Chicago.” He set down his violin case, opened it, drew out a gun and began to clean it.

  “Put that thing away,” Harry/Joey said. “Before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Some body did,” Slow Hand Charley said.

  They all laughed.

  See—dim bulbs.

  Grasshopper put his gun away and asked, casually, “So why’re you back, Boss. Thought you were off for a weekend trip to Vegas.”

  Harry/Joey turned to me.

  No use hoping he’d come up with an answer.

  “Changed his mind,” I said.

  “But I thought him and Miss Foofy was getting hitched there,” Sammy Two Shoes said.

  Come in the middle of a story, my old mother used to say, and you lose the plot.

  “Changed his mind about…” I hesitated.

  But Harry/Joey jumped in, surprising me with his quickness. “Changed his mind about using the credit card. I want to use what’s in the safe.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Safe money, you know,” I added, smiling.

  They all laughed.

  “Okay, Boss,” the Tongue said.

  We went into the back room where the safe was kept, picking up a trio of hangers-on along the way: Jimmy Four Eyes, Willy the Weeper, and Cricket Danny Pucci whose shoes squeaked as he walked.

  “Do you always open the safe with this big a crowd?” I whispered into Harry/Joey’s ear.

  “Yeah,” Harry/Joey whispered out of the side of his mouth. “It’s an Underwood 777.” As if that explained it.

  The Underwood 777 was big and black, with touches of green and brass. It had a large dial with numbers and letters picked out in gold. I could feel the unshielded iron all the way at the door and my knees went weak. Putting my hands on the frame, I hung in there. The touch of the wood kept me standing.

  Just.

  Meanwhile, the gang members had made a big half-circle around the safe.

  Harry/Joey went over to the Underwood 777 and cracked his knuckles. They sounded like a skeleton reassembling itself: clickety-clickkety-clack.

  Then he straightened up again.

  “Get me a beer,” he ordered hoarsely, and Grasshopper Vic raced out to do his bidding.

  Then Harry/Joey turned to me and gestured. “Armstrong, commere.”

  I couldn’t leave the doorframe. Not and keep standing.

  “I said, commere.”

  I shook my head. It was about all I could manage.

  Harry/Joey snapped his fingers a
nd Jimmy Four Eyes and Willy the Weeper came over to me. Each one grabbed an arm and carried me across the room, depositing me in front of Harry/Joey.

  Right by the safe.

  “When I say commere, you gotta commere,” said Harry/Joey. “I am the boss. Right?”

  They all nodded their heads, but I could no longer manage even that.

  “All of youse outta here. Now!” said Harry/Joey. “Cepting Armstrong. Him I want here.”

  “But the safe…” Sammy Two shoes began.

  “Outta Here!”

  “Now,” I added softly.

  They all left.

  Harry/Joey bent down and stared at me. “Whadda I do now?”

  I looked up at his befuddled expression. “Open the safe.”

  “I don’t know the combination,” he said.

  “Well don’t look at me,” I told him. “I’m not likely to have it. Who does know it?”

  “Only the Needle knows.”

  “You are the Needle now.”

  “Only this Needle knows nothing,” he said.

  Before we got stuck entirely on N’s, something I couldn’t stop while that close to the iron safe, I whispered, “Get me into the next room and I’ll think of something.”

  “What’s wrong wit’ you?” he asked.

  “The opposite of iron deficiency,” I said.

  “Iron afficiency?” he asked.

  “Close enough.”

  So he picked me up and carried me back across the safe room. As we reached the door, my strength began to return, and with it my magic and with that my brains.

  “Put me down,” I instructed him, and he did.

  “This is what you have to do…” I began, looking up at him.

  But Harry/Joey had this peculiar expression. He was staring bumfuddled at something across the big room.

  Striding through the front door of the social club was another Needle—the real one—accompanied by three thugs who made up in mass what they clearly lacked in any gray matter.

  Harry/Joey dropped me and straightened up.

  “Thought I’d better get some safe money,” the real Needle said.

  “But, Boss…” began Sammy and Danny and Arnold and Willy together. Their heads jerked back and forth, forth and back between the two Needles so quickly, I was surprised they didn’t develop whiplash.