The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  Now that Denzil could believe.

  “Why did you wait so long to report it?” he asked. He glanced at the constable. “I take it she has only just made her complaint?”

  Tremeer looked guilty and shot a glance roofward before catching himself.

  “I . . . uh,” he began. “That is, she . . .”

  “It’s hard for a woman my age to get about easily,” the Widow said. “It’s the arthritis.”

  Now the lies began again, Denzil thought.

  Tremeer had recovered his officiousness in the meantime. He took up a notepad and pen from the table beside him.

  “And when was the last time you saw her, Master Denzil?”

  “Yesterday. When she didn’t come ’round today, I got worried.” Denzil sighed. “Jodi’s not the sort to be involved in this kind of mischief,” he added.

  Nettie nodded, glad of his support.

  “She’s a child, isn’t she?” the Widow said. “And aren’t all children an annoying nuisance?”

  Not so much as you are, Denzil thought, but he didn’t bother to reply. Rising to his feet, he nodded to Tremeer and the Widow before turning to Nettie.

  “Call me if I can help in any way,” he told her.

  “Thank you. I will.”

  “And if you should happen to find her . . .” Tremeer began.

  “I’ll be sure to notify you straightaway,” Denzil said.

  He waved Nettie back into her chair as she rose to see him out.

  “I can find the way,” he said.

  Once he was out in the hall, he collected his hat and cane by the door and quickly made his escape. Outside, his glasses immediately fogged up again, but he ignored the discomfort. Sometimes it seemed that he spent half his life peering through murky lenses and the other half cleaning them, so he was well used to the burden by now.

  Something odd was going on, he thought, and he meant to get to the bottom of it. But first he needed a good stiff drink to take away the taste of the Widow’s poor playacting and Tremeer’s toadying up to her.

  He gave Nettie’s house a last considering look, then headed towards the harbour and made his way to the nearest pub, which in this case happened to be The Ship’s Inn.

  Naturally, to make the night a perfect loss, he found Taupin sitting there with a look about him as though the hedgerow philosopher had been waiting just for him. Or at least waiting for someone to buy him a drink.

  He almost turned and walked out again, but Taupin hailed him cheerily and Denzil didn’t have the heart to walk the ten blocks or so to The Tuck-Net & Caboleen.

  Besides, he thought, the children all liked the old fool. Maybe he’d know where Jodi was.

  2.

  It was no use just sitting here, Jodi decided after a half hour had passed and the cat still wouldn’t go away. Getting up, she dusted off her trousers and set off to find another way out of the maze of crates. But at each exit they found that the cat, drawn by the whispering sound of their tiny footfalls‌—and Jodi’s running commentary on the dubious ancestry of cats, this one mangy cat in particular‌—was waiting for them.

  “Bother and damn!” Jodi cried.

  Picking up a stone, she threw it at the cat, but it had no visible effect. The largest one she could find that she could throw with any accuracy was no bigger than a peppercorn. Still, she kept up a steady barrage until her arm got sore. Then she returned to slouch down beside Edern.

  “Why do cats have to be so bloody patient?” she wanted to know.

  Edern shrugged. “This friend of yours,” he said. “What was his name? Dazzle?”

  “Denzil.”

  “He’s a magician?”

  Jodi laughed. “Denzil’s about as logical a man as you’re likely to find, which means he doesn’t believe in magic. If it can’t be explained by logic, he’d say, then we simply haven’t found the proper parameters and reference points.”

  “Then he won’t be much help to us, will he?”

  “He’s also wise and clever and my best friend.”

  “Yes, but if he doesn’t know anything about magic, there won’t be anything he can do for us.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “I think so,” Edern said. “What do you know about the stoneworks ’round about the countryside?”

  “Bloody little, except they make me feel tingly and sort of‌—oh, I don’t know, touched by mystery, I suppose.”

  “Did you ever hear that they’re supposed to be the places where our world meets the Barrow World?”

  Jodi laughed. “Oh raw we. Now you want to call up hummocks and piskies to give us a hand?”

  “If a witch can shrink us, then why can’t the Little People exist?”

  “That’s your plan?”

  When Edern nodded, Jodi started to laugh again, but she caught herself. Fine, she thought. Let’s think this through‌—logically, as Denzil would have her do it. Magic worked. It obviously existed‌—they were proof positive of that. So why not Smalls?

  “Why would they help us?” she wanted to know.

  “Maybe we could trade them for their help.”

  Jodi stuck a hand in her pocket and came out with a piece of twine, some dried pieces of biscuit left over from dinner that she’d meant to give to the first stray dog she ran across, three glass marbles, two copper pennies, a piece of sea-polished wood that had no discernible purpose, two small geared wheels that obviously did have a purpose, though Jodi didn’t know what kind of a mechanism they’d come from, a small penknife, and some lint. She gave it all a critical look, then held out her hand to Edern.

  “What would they like from this?” she asked.

  “We could trade services,” Edern said patiently.

  “What sort of services?”

  “We’d have to ask them that, wouldn’t we?”

  Jodi sighed. “I don’t know.” She glanced at the cat who continued to eye them with unabated interest. “Besides, first we have to get away.”

  “But when we do . . .”

  Jodi stored the detritus from her pocket back where it had all come from, only keeping out the bits of broken biscuit. She offered Edern a piece and chewed on another herself.

  “Stoneworks,” she said, mumbling the word as she chewed. She swallowed, wishing she had a drink. “Like the stone crosses and such?”

  Edern nodded.

  “What if God sends down an angel to see what we’re about? I don’t think He’d be ready to help me because I rather doubt that I’m in His good books.”

  “It’s unlikely that would happen,” Edern said.

  “If piskies can exist, then why not God?”

  “I was thinking more of a place like the Merry Maidens.”

  “Oh, I know the story behind them. Some girls were dancing on a Sunday, weren’t they? Thirteen of them. And God turned them to stone. There were two pipers playing for the girls and they ran off, but they got turned to stone all the same and stand a few fields over.”

  “Why all this sudden talk of God?” Edern asked.

  “Well, you brought it up.”

  “The story I know of the Merry Maidens is that they’re mermaids who got caught dancing when the sun came up, so they were turned to stone.”

  “You’re thinking of trolls.”

  “The point is,” Edern went on as though she hadn’t interrupted, “that there’s a sea wisdom in those stones. The sea’s full of powerful magic and lore. If we could get Her help . . .”

  “I don’t think I’m in Her good books either,” Jodi said. “At least my family isn’t.”

  Both her father and uncle had been taken by the sea. A year later her mother died of a broken heart, which amounted to the sea being responsible for her death as well. Jodi was quiet for a long moment, thinking of the parents she only knew from the fuzzy memories of the toddler she’d been at the time of their deaths.

  “Jodi?”

  She shook off the gloom that had started to settle upon her.

  “I
’m fine,” she said. “I was just thinking.”

  “About the stoneworks?”

  She nodded. “I don’t think I’m quite ready to accept that the sea could have a bit of a chat with us.”

  “There’s also the Men-an-Tol stone, though that’s farther away.”

  “I’ve been through its hole the nine times it’s supposed to take to wake the charm, but nothing ever happened.”

  “At moonrise?”

  “Not at moonrise. But then‌—” She gave him a sudden rueful grin. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  “You didn’t believe in magic before the Widow enchanted you.”

  Jodi nodded. “I suppose we could try this stone of yours, but first we have to get the button charms from the Widow’s house.”

  “Better we go to the stone first to find out how the spell works. That way, when we do retrieve the charm, we can work it there on the spot.”

  “And have her shrink us right back down again in the next moment.”

  “Not if we go when she’s not about.”

  “I suppose. . . .”

  “Perhaps the Little People can give us some protection against her magic,” Edern said.

  Jodi banged the back of her head against the crate in frustration.

  “And perhaps,” she said, “we can fly away on a leaf and save ourselves the long walk to the stone. Bother and damn! I’m tired of perhapses and maybes.”

  She stood up, chose another stone, and flung it at the cat.

  “Get away, you!”

  Surprisingly, this time it worked. The cat backed away, looked once to its right, then fled.

  Jodi turned to her companion with a grin. “That showed him, didn’t it just?”

  But Edern didn’t look in the least bit pleased. He sat very pale and still, just staring at the gap between the crates through which the cat had been peering at them. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Jodi turned to see what it was that he was looking at.

  Windle, the Widow’s fetch, stared back at her. It had chased off the cat merely to take up the watch itself. And there it would stay, Jodi knew, until the Widow arrived with some new kind of spell to snatch them willy-nilly from their hiding place.

  “Found something then have you, my sweet?” a too familiar voice called out.

  Or maybe the Widow was already here.

  3.

  It was smoky inside The Ship’s Inn, thick enough to be a fog. Those who weren’t puffing away on pipes and cigars had cigarettes dangling from their mouths, each exhalation adding to the general haze. Blinking behind his glasses, Denzil navigated his way through to the bar where he resignedly took a stool beside Taupin.

  Brengy Taupin looked the part of the hedgerow philosopher he claimed to be. He was thin as a rake and wore an odd collection of raggedy clothes that hung from his frame with about the same sense of style as could be expected from a scarecrow‌—in other words, it was all angles and tatters. The gauntness of his features was eased by a pair of cheerful and too bright eyes. His hair was an unruly brown thatch in which bits of leaves and twigs were invariably caught. Denzil often caught himself staring at it, waiting for a bird’s head to pop up out of its untidy hedgery.

  “Can I buy you a drink, you?” he asked.

  He signaled to the barman to bring them two pints of bitter without waiting for Taupin’s reply.

  “This is a kindness,” Taupin said after a long appreciative swallow of his bitter, which left a foamy moustache on his upper lip.

  “Not to be confused with a habit,” Denzil said, still wishing he’d chosen to walk the extra few blocks to the Tuck.

  However, if the truth was to be told, for all Denzil’s gruffness towards his companion, he and Taupin got on rather well, for they both loved a good philosophical discussion‌—a rarity in temperate Bodbury‌—and were each capable of keeping one going for weeks on end.

  “Naturally,” Taupin replied.

  He dug about in one of the enormous pockets of his overcoat as he spoke.

  “I’ve got something for you here,” he added as he came up with an odd mechanism that he set on the bartop between them.

  Denzil couldn’t help but be intrigued.

  Taupin knew his weakness for inexplicable machinery and the like. If it was odd, if it appeared useful but couldn’t be readily explained, then it became an object of the utmost fascination to the inventor.

  What lay on the bartop was most intriguing. It was obviously a clockwork mechanism of some sort, but Denzil could see no way in which it could be wound up. Nor what it would do even if it were wound up.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Taupin replied. “But watch.”

  He gave the thing a shake, then set it back down upon the top of the bar. For a moment nothing happened. Then a cog went rolling down a slight incline, caught another, which made the second cog turn. A small metal shaft rose, returning the first cog to its starting point while the gears of the second turned yet another cog, which in turn set a whole series in motion until a shaft at the far side of the machine began to turn. In the meantime, the first cog had rolled back down its incline to engage the second once more.

  Denzil leaned closer, utterly captivated.

  “How long does it run?” he asked.

  Taupin grinned. “Well, it’s not the perpetual motion machine you’re always on about, but it’ll go for a good hour.”

  “With only the one shake to get it started?”

  Taupin nodded.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “In a junk shop in Praed. Fascinating, isn’t it? You can keep it if you like.”

  “How much?”

  “Fah,” Taupin said, waving aside the offer of monetary return. “You can have me over for dinner some night‌—but when Jodi’s cooking, mind you. I won’t eat your idea of a meal.”

  Regretfully, Denzil pulled his gaze away from the machine that went merrily on about its incomprehensible business. Pushing up his glasses, he turned to Taupin.

  “I meant to talk to you about her,” he said.

  “Who?” Taupin asked. “Jodi? A delightful girl. Quite clever and quick to learn. And oddly enough, considering how the greater part of what she’s learned has come from you or my own self, a remarkable cook.”

  Denzil nodded. “I just wish you’d stop filling her head with fairy tales.”

  “Why ever for? What can it possibly harm?”

  “Her intellect. The logical progression of her reasoning.”

  Taupin laughed. “Look,” he said. “This”‌—he pointed to the mechanism‌—“is how you see the world. Everything has its place. It all moves like clockwork, one event logically following the other. When something doesn’t fit, it’s merely because we haven’t understood it yet.”

  “So?”

  Now Taupin reached into one of his voluminous pockets and dumped its contents on the table. Geegaws and trinkets lay helter-skelter upon one another. A small tatty book lay entangled with a length of netting. A tin whistle had a feather sticking out of its mouth hole and what appeared to be a dried rat’s tail protruding from its other end. A square of cloth with buttons sewn to it, each oddly connected to the other with startlingly bright embroidery that almost, but not quite, had a discernible pattern. A crab’s pincer with a hole in it through which had been pulled a piece of string. Two stones‌—one with the fossil of a shell upon it, the other with what might be faded hieroglyphics or simply scratches.

  There was more, but it was all too much for Denzil to easily catalogue.

  “This is how the world really is,” Taupin said. “A confusion in which some things make perfect sense”‌—he shook the whistle free of its encumbrances and rolled it back and forth on the palm of his hand‌—“while others may never be explained.”

  Now he plucked up the stone with its curious markings and offered it to his companion. Denzil took it gingerly, as though afraid it might bite,
and gave it a cursory glance. The markings did appear to be some sort of language‌—though not one he could recognize. And it was very old.

  “I found that around by the point,” Taupin said. “Washed in from the sea, it was.” He pointed back to the bartop. “That’s the true face of the world, Denzil‌—all jumbled up with no distinguishable pattern except that, somehow, it’s all connected to itself and the whole thing muddles through in the end.”

  “A pretty analogy,” Denzil said as he handed the stone back, “but a mistaken one.”

  “Still, we’re not so different, you and I. We both pursue Truth.”

  “We are different,” Denzil assured him. “I go about my search for Truth in a rational, scientific manner. You hope to stumble over it through blind luck and tomfoolery.”

  Taupin raised his glass to him. “Here’s to Wisdom, wherever it may be found.”

  “What I need to find at the moment is Jodi,” Denzil said.

  “Misplaced her, have you?”

  “This isn’t a joke, you.”

  Taupin’s grin faltered, his features growing increasingly grave as Denzil explained the situation.

  “It makes no sense,” Denzil said as he finished up.

  “Not a smidgen,” Taupin agreed.

  “Jodi’s simply not like that.”

  “Not at all.”

  “And I don’t know where to begin to look for her.”

  Taupin said nothing for a long moment. Brow wrinkled with thought, he slowly moved the contents from his pocket from the top of the bar back into his pocket, then finished the last inch of his bitter.

  “There’s two ways we can go about this,” he said finally.

  “And they are?”

  “We begin with the Gossip method of logic, whereby we search the town from top to bottom, leaving word with the Tatters children and the like as we make our way.”

  “And the second method?”

  “Well,” Taupin said, “once we’ve exhausted the logical route, we’ll take the illogical one and start to consider the impossible.”

  Denzil shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about.”

  “I smell magic in the air,” Taupin said simply.