Always at your service.
It was signed, but the signature was illegible, literally a few squiggly bumps and a couple sweeping high and low points, perhaps his initials were FN, or OF, or LH, but it was impossible to tell. More so, though, she wondered after what he meant at the end.
It could be an allusion to what she had said on the radio—the words sounded familiar, and she believed she had said something very similar, expressing regrets and things she would change. It could be his reference was in the general sort of “fall in love'', but was it aimed at her? But if it were, then it was an admission that he did not already love her, and Betty took comfort in that. It must be an admittance of desire and nothing more.
Despite herself, she was highly pleased with the letter, to be so used as a confidant. To have someone talk to her without mind to propriety or to what he should be telling her. How pathetic was this, to take what others might see as a creepy letter and think of it in an affectionate light? But she couldn't believe there was any harm intended.
Perhaps he was just a person every bit as lonely as she was, taking security in the secrecy of letters. She appreciated it, but would be worried if he expressed growing attachment without her participation. Supposing she were to have an issue, who could she ask for help from? She thought that the neighbours would know.
Betty showered, dressed, then dried her hair while watching over her cooking eggs and toast. Then she went outside, taking several letters with her in her book bag, thinking that she would go to the park and do some reading while there.
It was too early for most of the neighbours to be out fussing in their gardens or taking out trash, so Betty saw no one except a late husband as he dashed into his car and ground the clutch by accident at the corner.
Several times Betty had thought to buy a car, she had been working long enough now that she had money saved for one, but she couldn't justify the expense when her bicycle and the basket on the front served her perfectly well, with two shopping streets within a mile either direction of her home.
One was human shopping, one was the Sunny Glenn market. The park she was angling towards was nearer the market, and it took her only a few minutes of walking before she had crossed the road and was walking through the side gate, a simple thing of plain wood which might have been a private entrance except Betty knew it wasn’t.
Leaves had fallen and been raked into piles, and now a few workers were putting those piles into large canvas bags. In the distance, Betty smelled the heavy smoke of a leaf and green twig fire, work accomplished with the use of a great deal of gasoline or charcoal. While she walked, she mentally re-read the letter over and over again, pondering its meaning until she was no longer certain what had been written and what her mind had independently interpreted.
She walked into a person and immediately apologized, then laughed in surprise when she saw who it was.
“Jenny?”
“Betty! Fancy seeing you here.”
“I live nearby.”
“I never see you. Do you walk in the mornings or...wait, it must be in the afternoon.”
Betty nodded. “It seems our work schedules have made it so we do not meet each other.”
“What has you so absent-minded?” Jenny asked, her expression and tone joking but also curious.
Betty considered telling her, and could think of no one better to inform. So she pulled a sealed envelope out of her purse and handed it over.
Jenny's eyes squinted and she held the letter close to her nose, reading it aloud. “'To the Bell of the Glenn...' Pretty enough handwriting, but can't spell, can he? There should be an extra 'e' in 'belle', but one must not be too picky, we all make mistakes. Who gave you this?”
“I don't know.” Betty paused to listen to the way that the birds sang in the distance, and overhead she heard the laughing of ducks as they called to those on ponds below. “I was hoping that you might be able to tell me a little bit.”
Jenny puffed out her cheeks, red and flushed with the chill of the morning. She blew onto her fingers, the breath fogging in the morning light. “Secret admirer, then?”
“Don't say that.”
“Why not?”
“That's the last thing I need is an admirer.”
Jenny shrugged. “You asked my opinion, and it is a plausible idea; that or someone who is just too meek to approach you and speak to your face. Plenty of Never Weres like that.”
Betty felt a cold sensation in her gut. “You think it is from a Never Were?”
“You'd be lying to yourself if you didn't think the same. Look at the paper, for crying out loud.” Jenny paused and her face darkened. “Or...”
“Or what?”
“It's nothing. Forget I said anything.”
Betty hissed her annoyance and shot the woman a glare.
Jenny reluctantly said, “If it isn't a Never Were, then it is someone who wants to act like one.”
Betty felt her cheeks drain of color, and all at once she was reminded of a person or two who would engage in this duplicity. All warm feelings toward the letters and their sender hardened.
“You mean that some human wants to trick me into thinking I have a Never Were admirer. And possibly mislead the community in this way.”
“Or perhaps just you,” Jenny said, but her expression indicated that she thought that anyone who would go to this extent would be of nefarious reasons greater than a bit of personal vengeance.
While Betty reeled with this possibility, Jenny looked a second time at the letter; or rather, the envelope. “But I really do doubt it. If this is a forgery, it's a good one. See the angle of the 'l'? Left hand slant and the curl is at the bottom of the letter instead of at the top, as humans do. It is in all capitals, which is unusual, but perfectly acceptable for someone who has spent time in the field or military office. The details are correct.”
Jenny licked the ink, tasting its quality, and Betty tried not to look revolted by the display. “Sap and resin. Grasshopper spit, too. I don't know enough to pinpoint its origin, but I can tell you a little of the sender.”
At this, Betty perked up noticeably and her heart skipped to think that the letters might be genuine, but this time she was more guarded than before. “Who?”
“I can't say who, but I can guess as to what. Obviously avian, if you hadn't supposed that much then I really think you daft. Not a raptor, raptors use the more revolting types of stains to write with.”
More revolting than grasshopper spit? “Like what?”
Jenny shrugged. “Bile from small rodents, larger ones if they can get a hold of it. Blood sometimes, but they like to mix that up with things.”
Betty felt a little nauseous, and Jenny laughed.
“It is not so bad as you would imagine. They use all they can from their hunting, that is all.”
If it wasn't for the chill of the day, Betty might have been thinking that this all was nothing more than a waking dream. She shivered. “Well, then I am glad that the sender is not a raptor. Can you say anything else about him?”
Jenny's lip quirked but she kept from teasing or making a fuss. “Hard to say. It is possible he or she is a type of songbird, but I really do not know. Could be a common wren.”
“Basically, anything in the air which doesn't have talons?”
Jenny nodded, then considered something. “Never Weres like their territories. It is very likely that you either live in or walk through his territory frequently. Why don't you make note of the noises birds make, and identify them that way?”
Betty considered this, too. “The library has a stash of bird recordings and I think a couple of reels about them.”
“And there are books, but you'll have to be familiar with the onomatopoeias they use to describe the sounds.”
The upstairs collections reading room of the Sunny Glenn Library sat echoingly empty, and Betty checked the clock on the wall, wondering if she should take the hint and leave. The librarian had been out of sorts this morning and
this was unfortunate as Betty had to ask her for the recordings of the birds. As she had also asked to view documentaries, Betty had been shown to a small room with a bare bulb and no heating. She sat on the table, having used the sole chair to prop open the door to allow what little heat she could into the room.
Meanwhile, Betty leafed through the book she had brought with her, her mind too much in disorder to do anything more than mindlessly skim over the words and turn the pages, not having read a single line all the way through. Her head felt better now, than it did earlier this morning, but the tea and coffee she had had in the meantime did little to rid her of the after-effects of too much wine from the night before.
Presently there came a huff at the entrance to the room, and Betty saw the librarian standing there, a cart loaded up with two boxes. She said, “Do you know how to run the equipment?”
Betty knew. She did work in a recording booth, after all, but she did not dare to cross the librarian while her hair was frazzled and her eyes were hard and angry, so Betty allowed the woman to show her. Once the woman was contented that all was situated, she left the cart and contents for Betty's perusal.
Soon a moving picture flickered on the far wall and Betty sat in a chair, having decided to use the cart to keep the door open for the heat, even if she did have to rub her fingers to bring life into them.
“Birds. They live in the air and the trees, and we admire them, but do we truly appreciate them for what they do for our world?” the narrator said over flickering landscape scenes with blurs of motion that Betty presumed were supposed to capture birds in flight. She stared blankly at the images, not finding them at all interesting, and finding the dialogue even more dull.
Her mind wandered to last night, as she was completely unable to focus on the film but needed to listen to it anyway. Half-way through the film, perhaps twenty minutes in, Betty wondered if they would ever play a recording of bird noises, or if she was going to have to listen to a stuffy ecologist professor administering his drivel for the entire film. It didn't take more than a few minutes for her to lapse back into her daydream.
Betty changed the film to another one, smiling as she did so, wondering now on her initial reaction to the letter, and admitting that she shouldn't be surprised that her opinions had morphed, grown both more wary and more hopeful.
As the new film played across the wall, she was pleased that it opened with bird songs, but disappointed that the birds were not identified. For a time she watched this film intently, but it ended at twenty five minutes in length, and the birds it covered had not been native to this region, but were rather birds of the southeast.
She put away the reels and the machine, then set to listening to the dry intonations of a bird watcher who would say the bird name, play a recording, repeat the name and recording, then move on to the next.
Her mind wandered, remembering what it was that had brought her here.
She had relinquished the reels to the librarian, who had come to scowl, and most of the other recordings, and was ready to throw in her hat when she heard a familiar whistle.
Betty stopped and replayed it. She was certain she'd heard the whistle before, but not from the trees. No, it had come from the ground, from a man, as he had walked away from her door after the first time she had rejected him.
Clarkin knew mockingbird whistles.
Chapter 15
With the afternoon came the taste of snow upon the air, and the dark clouds moving slowly overhead supported the ominous idea of a winter storm.
In rebellion against the early onset of bitter temperatures, Betty had a taste for something bright and summery, and so she found herself at Crawley's Soda Fountain, a place with giant windows painted in the geometric patterns popular thirty years ago and now trending again with their vintage vibes.
Inside, the Speak Easy had new life with excitable girls in ponytails and winged eyeliner. They stared at Betty's lips as she ordered a black cow, the float not the shake, then sat near the entrance on a tall stool with a small table before it. Lipstick was all the fashion, but it was a fashion parents hated, a throwback from the days when prostitutes set themselves apart from the good girls with a vibrant red.
Betty had no such qualms. As Welch had said, no man would keep her hours, and she had much greater things to worry about than what people said about her lips.
Upon the table Betty laid open the Journal of Patrick Summerscale, which detailed his experiences being stranded in a Never Were community. Betty had checked this out from the library by simply tucking it in her bag. Yes, a mortifying thing to do, but she had not wanted a paper trail to follow her, not when she might come under suspicion, and she doubted that anyone would want to rent the book given that it had only two entries on the card on the inner flap, and those were dated two years ago.
Betty's black cow came, frothing high from where the ice cream had met with the pop, and she sipped at it. Root beer instead of the cherry cola she had asked for, ah well, she couldn't expect the girls to get it right when they were so occupied with flirting with the boys from the grade above them. The book, likewise, turned out to be not quite as expected.
Yes, it was a journal and it was about a man who had been thrown into the midst of Never Weres long before they had come out of hiding, but the man had squandered his opportunity. He spent long, brooding days hiding in the room they had given him, pondering deep philosophical thoughts about writers who must have been important in that day, and whom history had forgotten.
It was then that Betty heard a familiar voice.
“Lemon-lime pop and strawberry sherbert, please.”
Betty met Jenny's gaze and motioned that the woman should join her, and once Jenny had paid, she did so, setting her purse down on the edge of the table and groaning to be off her feet.
“They might not get the order right,” Betty said as a warning. Jenny glanced at where one of the girls leaned with an elbow on the counter, making eyes at some boy with cut off shirt sleeves and muscles they both thought were impressive.
“It will be close enough,” said Jenny. “What do you have there?”
Betty surrendered the book to her perusal, and within a few pages, Jenny started laughing. “He puts his confusion together in the only way that an Englishman can! By drivelling utter nonsense.”23
Betty grinned, but did not tell Jenny that she was used to admiring British works of literature. In the case of the journal, Jenny was spot on with her description.
“Whatever did you get this thing for?” Jenny asked at last, still browsing through the pages for the few illustrations which added to the text.
“In the letter I read, he made mention of some things I don't know. I was hoping that I could find something of Never Were stories, and this was the closest thing they had in the library.”
“I'm surprised they even had this. Never Weres don't publish things, unless you are to consider the sending of a letter to be publishing.” Jenny paused to let the girl give her the float, then watched as she left again. With a spoon, Jenny tasted some of the overflowing ice cream. “Cherry.”
“I told you they'd get it wrong.”
“At least it is a complimentary flavor.” Jenny shook her head, then continued, “What I was saying was that the Never Weres have verbal storytelling. Ballads are particularly popular, we like the rhythm and it is a nice way to spend the long nights of winter.”
“I'm just curious about a couple of things.”
“You can ask me and I'll tell you anything I know, but I can't repeat the stories. I don't know them that well.”
“That might be fine.” Betty closed her eyes and tried to remember. “What do you know of someone named Loti? Lah-ti? I'm not sure how it is said.”
“Loh-tee.” Jenny took a long drink and wiped her lips, taking some color off her lips and onto the napkin. “He's a character, of ambiguous gender, most often referred to as male but it's common enough for Loti to be female. He's the watcher of the world, the guardia
n against the night. It warns the others and keeps them safe. If they do not listen to Loti, terrible things befall as a result of not heeding his cries.”
Betty cocked her head. “He sounds a bit like a banshee.”
With a wave of her finger, Jenny set to correcting her. “No, no. A banshee is almost always female, the ancestor or relative of those who hear her scream over the moors. To hear her cry is to tell of the oncoming death of a loved one. Very different.”
The spoon beneath Betty's fingers clattered against the glass, a little too noisily to be polite, but the youths didn't notice. She considered what this meant, that her admirer considered himself to be a guardian over her. That could be a comfort, or it could be a concern. She didn't know enough of what was happening to draw the right conclusions.
Before Jenny could ask why, Betty pressed on, “And what of being afraid of the stealing of the bell?”
“The stealing of the bell?” Jenny blinked, confused. “How was that used? In what context?”
“ 'I fear the stealing of the bell'.”
Jenny pursed her lips and rolled her shoulders. “Well, there is the gremlins and their bells. I suppose that could make sense.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, it's not a story, it's more of an event...” Jenny trailed off and for a long few seconds, Betty worried that she would not say more. Presently, Jenny continued, “In gremlin society, every family lodge has a bell which symbolizes all the wealth and status of their family. Every family protects their bell and every generation adds to its adornment, often to the extent where the bell consumes an entire room. They also try to steal other's bells and defile them, and if this happens the family will wage war until their bell is returned. In 'Exica and the Gromils', the Gromil family had a beautiful bell which was encased in an equally elaborate bell tower which was in the center of the Gromil living quarters, in a courtyard of sorts.
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