Little People

by Tom Holt

  Not that that mattered a damn, since I wasn’t even figuring on using it as a diary, just a useful notebook to write stuff down in. Besides, it wasn’t as if anybody was ever likely to read it except me, so what difference did it make?

  So: all I needed now was a quiet place to work and some privacy. Unfortunately, both commodities tend to be rare verging on non-existent in the context of boarding-school life. Short of locking myself in the lavatory, I couldn’t rely on an undisturbed hour from wake-up bell to lights out. It’s also an awkward fact of human nature that if you look like you’re doing something you don’t want other people to see, you broadcast some sort of psychic wave that attracts all the busybodies and amateur comedians within a two-mile radius. If you want to be left alone to get on with something, your best bet is to sit in the open in the busiest part of the premises; and if you keep stopping people and asking them for help with some aspect of what you’re doing, suddenly you’ll find you’re the next best thing to invisible and inaudible.

  (Of course, I’d learned this particular survival maxim back when I was seven and desperately trying to find an uninterrupted fifteen minutes to finish reading my Secret Seven adventure. In our house, for some reason, sitting in a chair reading a book is and always has been interpreted as a cry for help, an expression of loneliness and depression one step removed from the empty aspirin bottle or the teetering walk along the window ledge. Just open a book at random – doesn’t even matter if it’s the right way up or not – and before you can say ‘Jack Robinson’, or even ‘Piss off, I’m trying to read’, you’re surrounded by bouncy, cheerful people asking you how your day’s been, and would it help to talk about it?)

  So I parked myself on a bench on the westerly side of the dining hall, with my notebook open on my knee, some book picked out at random on the other side of me, and a pencil stuck behind my ear, as if I was locked in some particularly arduous and potentially contagious piece of homework. It should’ve worked; but I hadn’t been there more than a minute when a shadow fell across my page, and I heard a voice above me saying, ‘What’re you reading, then?’

  As a precaution, I’d made a point of noting the title of the book selected at random. ‘Moby Dick,’ I told him. ‘Got to get it done by tomorrow, or I’m history. And geography and possibly physics too.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ The shadow (which belonged to an exceptionally annoying youth called Ben Thaxton) stayed where it was, right across my page. ‘Funny word, that,’ the voice went on.

  I tried not to be too obvious about taking a deep, calming breath. ‘What word, Ben?’

  ‘Moby,’ he replied. ‘Looked it up once, couldn’t find it. Not in the dictionary.’

  ‘It’s short for Möbius,’ I replied, not looking up. ‘I know,’ I went on, ‘Möbius Dick, it does conjure up a profoundly disturbing mental image. Still, that’s writers for you. Perverts, the lot of ’em. Now, since you’re here, perhaps you could help me out with this bit. It says here—’

  Thaxton shrugged, gave me a funny look and moved on. I counted up to ten under my breath, just in case he decided to come back, and then opened the diary.

  To start with, I’d decided, I’d draw up a grid with ‘sightings’ all down the left-hand side of the page, and—

  I stopped, and blinked. On the first blank page in the diary, dead centre of the sheet of paper – useful addresses of some such – there was some writing. It said –

  HELP

  – in teeny-weeny little letters, traced in some kind of brownish ink.

  Odd, I thought. I held the book a few inches from my nose, just in case I’d misinterpreted it or missed something else that might explain it, but there was nothing more that I could see. I had no idea human beings could write that small.

  Looking at it was putting me off, spoiling my concentration, so I turned the page, found myself looking at a list of decimal conversions (you know – how many scruples to the kilo and how much is one metre in perches) and flicked on through in search of blank stuff I could write on. There was a nice white patch like a croquet lawn in ‘Personal Details’. I picked up my pencil to begin writing, and—

  HELP

  – exactly the same as on the addresses page; even the same distinctive and rather unappealing shade of rusty-brown ink.

  I studied it at nose’s length, just to be sure, making a point of looking out for stray hairs, spots and discolorations. Nothing – not even a wispy fine spray of brown where the nib had dragged on something. What on earth could it mean? Had my uncle Trevor, or possibly even T. J. Bardshaw & Sons Family Funeral Directors est. 1958, been drinking, or just bought a new ultra-fine Rotring mapping pen? Maybe it was one of these new performance-art things, like the one where there’s this guy all covered in white paint, standing on a plinth pretending he’s a statue.

  I sighed. Darwin probably never had all this trouble; nor David Attenborough. I flicked on a couple more pages until I hit more empty white. Only it wasn’t as empty as it had looked at first sight, and this time, right there in the middle of the page, same handwriting, same ink, was –

  PLEASE

  Once the penny had dropped, it hurtled down like a bomb from a Stuka. Small, neat, florid handwriting. Small, neat, florid, elfin handwriting. The sort of handwriting you’d be likely to have if you were only six inches tall. As for the brown ink, it almost certainly wasn’t ink. Ouch, I thought.

  I lifted my head and looked round, to see if anybody was watching me; the very last thing I needed right then was some other idiot interrupting me. Then I started turning pages and examining them, one by one, starting with 1 January.

  But the days dwindled down to a precious few: November, December, and no more little brown words, not even smiley faces or Kilroy’s nose poking out over the top of the Ready Reckoner. Plenty of possible explanations for that, needless to say. The writer was interrupted, or he got bored, or his pen broke, or the cut he’d made in his arm stopped bleeding, depriving him of his ink supply. Could be anything like that – and chances were I’d never find out which.

  Like it mattered, I thought. Even if this was elf handwriting, what did it mean and what was I supposed to do about it? No use at all just saying ‘Help!’ It would be as bad as shouting ‘Look out!’ when someone was driving fast on a motorway, without making it clear what they were supposed to be looking out for. (Whereupon the driver jumps on his brakes, the car skids and slews round sideways, right into the path of an oncoming lorry carrying concrete bridge sections—)

  I resolved on one last check. It was just as well that I did, because I had missed something, tucked away in the coils of the Underground map like a goat being squeezed to death by a python. This time it was a whole sentence. It said –

  PS: ELVYND SAYS THANKS FOR THE BEER BUT HE PREFERS GUINNESS

  – which surely put the whole business beyond doubt. Didn’t it?

  One of the benefits of paranoia is the tremendous boost it gives to the imagination. Quite apart from the semi-rational, almost plausible alternative explanation (Daddy George with a bottle of brown Indian ink and a magnifying glass, playing games with my head) I was able to concoct at least three others, each one scarier and more bizarre than the last, though I can’t remember offhand what they were, only that they were all further-fetched than British goods in Australia. Wonderful stuff, all of it. Catch a non-paranoid coming up with anything half so creative? I don’t think so.

  I closed the diary slowly, tucked it away in my inside pocket, dumped Moby Dick on the bench and went for a walk round the back of the football pitch. By now I was so thoroughly freaked out that I was fully expecting to see hordes of little green men with pointed ears gambolling about on the grass and pulling faces at me. Most of all, though, what I really wanted was someone I could tell about it all without the certainty of an incredulous stare followed by prolonged and uncharitable mirth. Someone like—

  ‘Oh,’ said Cru, hopping out from behind a tree, ‘it’s you again. Are you following me around, or som
ething?’

  ‘What? Oh, no. Sorry.’ That was me all over. Captain Coherent to the rescue. ‘I mean, no, I’m not. I didn’t even realise you were—’

  ‘Whatever. Goodbye.’ She said the words, but stayed exactly where she was, directly in my path like essential carriageway maintenance on a busy summer motorway. For someone who didn’t want me around, she was making it pretty hard to get away.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Would it help if I was to say I’m sorry?’

  She frowned. ‘But you say it so often,’ she sighed. ‘All the bloody time, it’s like Pavlov’s dogs. I don’t suppose you even know you’re doing it, it’s so instinctive. Have you the faintest idea how annoying that gets, after a while?’

  I nodded. ‘It must be,’ I said, wondering what the hell she was going on about. ‘I don’t mean anything by it, if that’s any consolation.’

  Another sigh. ‘No, probably you don’t,’ she said. ‘You know what your problem is?’

  Well, talk about your no-brainers. Seeing elves, obviously. ‘Um,’ I replied.

  ‘Your problem is,’ Cru went on, ‘you just don’t stop and think about other people. Ever. As far as you’re concerned, the world consists of you right there in the middle, and a lot of little flat cut-outs spinning round you, like one of those mobile things we had when we were kids. You—’

  ‘You had one of them as well, did you?’

  ‘What?’ She blinked at me, as if she hadn’t been expecting any input from my direction at that particular juncture. ‘Look, do you mind not interrupting when I’m telling you something really important? Thank you. Oh hell, where’d I got to?’

  ‘Mobiles,’ I replied. ‘I had one hanging off my ceiling, with Father Christmas and his reindeer. We made it at play school out of cardboard and silver paper.’

  ‘Will you shut up about stupid bloody mobiles? Thank you,’ she continued, breathing out through her nose. ‘Where we’d actually got to, before you started drivelling about cardboard silver reindeer, was chronic egocentricity and total lack of regard for other people. Would you like to talk about that for a minute or so?’

  Not particularly; but it had to be better than not talking at all. Besides, buried deep in the male survival kit of instinctive abilities there’s an amazingly useful little function that allows you to look attentively serious, nod your head and grunt ‘Mphm’ in all the right places whenever the significant female in your life launches into a monologue prefaced by ‘We really have got to talk this through’, leaving the conscious mind at liberty to drift off and amuse itself with imaginary football matches, car-engine fault diagnosis, quadric equations and other more congenial stuff. I put the facility on standby, relaxed the muscles of my back and shoulders, and replied, ‘All right.’

  She sighed. ‘What’d be the point?’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t understand, it’d just be a waste of time and breath.’

  I managed to keep myself from saying, Oh good, that’s all right, then, and restricted myself to a contrite stare at my toecaps. False modesty apart, I’m good at that particular stare, probably because I’ve had so much practice. One of the few benefits of having spent so much time in the wrong I could claim it as my domicile for tax purposes.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘We won’t discuss that any more. I forgive you, even if you are a shallow, self-centred insensitive bastard.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘So.’ Cru fidgeted with her hands, like Lady Macbeth with a hangnail. ‘You have a good Christmas, then?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Neither did I.’ Her lower lip quivered – a warning to sensible men to remember appointments in distant cities. ‘I had a thoroughly rotten Christmas, if you must know. Shall I tell you why?’

  Though I’d spent most of my English grammar lessons drawing Klingon battlecruisers on the inside of my pencil-case lid, even I can spot a rhetorical question. I kept my face shut accordingly.

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ she said. ‘Because I spent the whole lousy holiday waiting by the phone, just in case someone might deign to spare the time out of his incredibly busy schedule to find a window to give me a call. Finally, on Christmas Day, the phone does ring, and what do I get? Yuletide greetings. The compliments of the season. Damn it, I got a more passionate Christmas message from the Damart catalogue.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said;’ then, as she was winding herself up for a really good explosion, I added, ‘But there’s a reason.’

  Cru stopped her countdown with one second to go, just like in the James Bond films. ‘Really?’ she said.

  ‘Really.’

  She frowned. ‘This had better be either wholly true or stunningly imaginative,’ she said. ‘For choice, both.’

  I grinned feebly. ‘Funny you should say that,’ I said. ‘Because it is. Quite.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She pulled a face. ‘This isn’t going to be about elves, is it?’

  ‘Funny you should say that, too.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Go on,’ Cru said wearily. ‘I’m listening.’

  So I told her. The dead elf. (I sort of left out the bit about falling on the poor wee bugger and crushing him to death. Must’ve slipped my mind or something.) The experiments. The microscopic fag end. The eventual close encounter. Daddy George’s suspicious manner and cryptic remarks. The whole incredible tale, right up to the diary and the tiny messages. When I was through, I looked up at her. Not promising.

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ I muttered.

  ‘Oh, sure I believe you,’ she said, with a slight snort. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. What’s all this stuff about elves got to do with you not phoning me?’

  It took a moment to remind myself that I was the selfish egocentric one in this relationship. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I guess I was preoccupied. And,’ I went on, as wisps of green fire started flickering out of her nostrils, ‘with my stepfather being so bloody suspicious all over the place, there was no way I could get to a phone. You see, there’s a phone in his study and another in the living room, and that’s it. And I couldn’t use the one downstairs because the whole place was crawling with nosy filthy-minded relatives.’

  Long pause, as if she was calling for a manual recount before making up her mind. ‘Well, all right, then,’ she said. ‘I suppose if you couldn’t get to a phone . . . Though you could’ve used a call box.’

  I shook my head. ‘The nearest one’s five miles away, and usually it’s not working.’

  She frowned again. ‘Five miles isn’t that far.’

  ‘Yes, but if I was gone that long, someone’d have noticed and I’d have been interrogated about where I’d been.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘So, why the hell didn’t you tell me? What do you think I am, a telepath?’

  She lobbed that one at me so gently, it was practically a fond embrace. ‘I didn’t think,’ I replied. ‘And, like I said, I was preoccupied. Which was very wrong of me,’ I added quickly, ‘but you know what it’s like when something starts niggling away at your mind. It gets so that nothing else seems to matter after a while.’

  ‘If you say so,’ she said. ‘Right,’ she went on, in a much brisker tone of voice. ‘Let’s see this famous diary of yours, then.’

  Much more like it. I fished it out, opened it and pointed. At least, I pointed to where the writing had been. Note the past tense.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ Cru said. ‘You sure you’ve got the right page?’

  I snatched the diary back and flicked through. ‘It’s gone,’ I said. ‘Vanished.’

  ‘Away with the fairies, you mean.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Or are you going to tell me it’s lemon juice or special elven invisible ink?’

  ‘I thought you said you believed me.’

  ‘I did. That was before you showed me a page with no writing on it.’ Her eyebrows started to close in, like hungry wolves round a wounded de
er. ‘When I said I wanted an imaginative excuse, I didn’t mean something so wildly bizarre that it insults my intelligence.’

  ‘But it was there,’ I protested. ‘Right there where I was pointing. I saw it.’

  She looked at me sideways. ‘This seeing-things-thataren’t-there aspect of your character’s a new one on me,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m not sure I’m all that happy about it.’

  ‘But—’ I stopped dead. Have you ever put your foot in some really deep mud, so that it keeps going on down and down without meeting anything solid? The trick is, under such circumstances, not to thrash about and make sudden violent movements, or you really will get stuck. Same goes, in my limited experience, for protesting your innocence to a sceptical female. Keep still, say nothing, wait for someone to pull you out. Which, to her credit, she immediately proceeded to do.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, in a vaguely conciliatory tone of voice, ‘you thought you’d seen it because you’ve been so preoccupied lately. And,’ she went on, ‘just because you imagined some elf stuff once, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all the elf stuff’s imaginary.’

  ‘True,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Besides,’ she went on, falling in beside me and starting to walk back towards the main building, ‘it doesn’t actually fit in with the rest of what you’ve been telling me about these elves of yours. Like, what you were saying seemed to suggest that they’re somehow being – well, held against their will. Forced to work as gardeners, or whatever. Anyway, they’re localised to your dad’s house, and maybe the immediate vicinity. That’s a hundred miles away.’

  I frowned. ‘How’d you make all that out?’ I asked.

  ‘Isn’t that what you told me? About the elf that died saying death is a sort of freedom, and it was finally outside the limits? Sounds to me like it’d escaped from – well, from somewhere. And then you said about your stepfather’s garden being so perfect but nobody ever did any work there that you could see. And then you find there’re elves there, with little spades and things; and your stepfather gets so incredibly hostile when he catches you hanging around the garden. Doesn’t it stand to reason that . . .’