Advanced Mythology (22 page)

“Can’t we go back to the way things were before?” Dola asked wistfully, leaning her head against his shoulder. “I thought the fence was meant to deflect the outside, not shut it off completely.”

“You’re right, child,” Holl said. “And it would be well if we told them so.”

“Now?”

“Now.” He stood up and took her hand.

* * *

“Take down the boundary spell?” Curran asked, outraged. “We can nae take it down!” Intimidated by the old one’s fury, Dola held fast to Holl’s arm. He gave her hand a squeeze for confidence.

“We’re doing this all wrong,” Holl said. “We have shut this thing in with us. It’s angry because it’s trapped. Let’s set it free.”

“It is a radical idea,” the Master said, coming to stand beside his heir-designate. He had been summoned from the house by Catra during the last argument. “I propose ve call a formal meetink to decide the matter. Here and now. Archivist?”

Catra reached for her pad and pencil, never far from her side, and sat down on the nearest bench. The rest of the Folk gathered around them, arranging themselves on one side or the other, Conservative and Progressive. Catra nodded to them. The red-haired Headman turned to the rest of the anxious-eyed village.

“Very gut. I declare this meetink to be open. I recognize Holl.” He sat down on the old one’s bench as grandly as if it was his armchair in the living room.

Holl had to admire the Master’s tactics. Such a move forestalled the inevitable arguments, subsuming them under Robert’s Rules of Order. Everyone must now listen, if impatiently, to what he had to say. He knew he was laying down his reputation for this proposal. He chose his words with care. Dola glanced at him, asking with her eyes if she ought to sit down. He shook his head, indicating that she should stay. She stood tall as a princess beside him, gazing proudly at her family and friends. It was the first time she’d been included in a village meeting, a function always reserved for adults.

“We’ve been living under siege for months now. You all know it. I did not realize until Dola showed me how unbearable it’s become, living inside a spell that harms us while it seems to do nothing whatsoever to our tormentor. Turning up the power does not work. Perhaps turning it down will bring peace.”

“No!” The outcry from the Conservatives was automatic. “Destroy the thing,” Aylmer said. “Then ve vill talk about opening the fence.”

“It’s entitled to its life, as we are,” Holl said. “Let’s let it escape.”

“We can’t let Big Folk bumble onto the land,” Candlepat pointed out.

“All right, let us not take down the spell entirely,” Holl offered. “Let’s put holes in it so our unwitting guest can come and go—go, we hope—in places where Big Folk cannot accidentally wander through; say, at the wide part of the stream, and over the compost heap, and go back to behaving as usual.”

“You’re asking them for an act of faith,” Enoch said, rising after being recognized by the chair. “They won’t act until someone else steps forward. You’ve got my vote. I say we do it.”

“Seconded,” Tay said automatically.

“But we may attract more things that we do not wish to know about us,” Calla, Holl’s mother, pointed out gently.

“We’ll be careful not to use too much of our skills,” Holl said. “We have not really become used to living in the open again—I never lived outside the walls of the library. The rest of you must remember what it was like and teach us. To survive we must keep our heads down and do what we may, safely and prudently. Catra quoted Thoreau earlier. Let us moderate our actions. Humans have laws to guard against public nuisance because they are aware that they are capable of creating one. It would seem our actions have more consequences than we knew. We are self-governing. Simplify, and we will not draw unwanted eyes.”

“In favor of tryink this new approach?” the Master said. All of the Progressive’s hands went up and, to Holl’s surprise, a number of sheepish-looking Conservatives. “Opposed?” Curran’s hand shot into the air, followed by only a few of his fellows. “Very vell, it is carried. Ve vill lower the protections, opening them entirely in places to be selected vit care. Ve vill review its effects in vun veek. Any other business? No? Adjourned.” The Master rose from Curran’s bench and strode magnificently to the door.

“Done and done,” Enoch said with a wry grin. “He gets things done most efficiently, doesn’t he? Keith Doyle will notice the difference. He’s not stupid.”

“No, he’s not,” Holl said. “I hope he will remain patient until he can be told.”

* * *

The top of the dining room table was invisible under the heaps of papers, ledgers, and textbooks. Keith felt underneath the nearest stack of notes, hoping he could find his pencil without looking away from the line of tiny numbers on the spreadsheet he was filling in. Staring at something made it hard to keep his gaze on it. The document seemed to bloom with light, twitch, then blur. Unable to stop himself, Keith blinked, and lost his place. Damn! He groaned and rubbed his eyes. Since he was now free to look, he could search for the pencil. Calculating the costs of running a franchise restaurant versus an independently-owned unit in the same chain was a job for expert accountants or actuaries, not a tired grad student who could just about balance his own checkbook. Keith had just discovered that his pencil had been in his breast pocket all along when a key rattled in the lock. He glanced at the beer-sign clock on the wall. Eleven forty-five! He’d better get to bed pretty soon.

“That must be the star coming back from rehearsal,” said Dunn, without looking up. He had been working on his laptop on a board balanced between the arms of their own good armchair, in front of the television. He kicked down the volume on MTV. “Yo, Pat.”

“Hello, dear, I’m home,” Pat said, slinging his shoulder bag on the couch. “Did you two miss me?”

“Always. Did you bring me anything?” Keith said, glancing from one column to the next and making a note so he would remember his thoughts about franchise viability the next evening.

“Sure! This … piece of paper,” Pat said, stooping to pick up something from the floor. “Is this anyone’s? No, forget it; it’s blank.”

Keith glanced up idly at the yellowed square in Pat’s hand as his roommate headed for the wastebasket. Something glinted on its surface. Keith leaped out of his seat and grabbed it away from him.

“What’s with you?” Pat demanded. “Manners, boy. It’s scrap paper.”

“I don’t think so,” said Keith, holding the fragment gingerly. “It’s not paper. It’s parchment.” As he’d been taught, first by Holl and later by Enoch, he sent an inquiring thread of sense into it. To his delight he could sense a tiny measure of magic in the paper. The feel of the power was unfamiliar: delicate and wispy; not at all sturdy and matter-of-fact like the elves, or cool and airy like the air sprites, or rough like the bad-tempered
bodach
of Lewis and Harris. This had been made or at least enchanted by a type of being he had never met before. Enormously excited, he brought it over to the lamp to look at it more closely. Pat followed him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Not sure,” Keith said, looking closely.

As he tilted it under the light he saw a pattern of faint, transparent tracery on the surface. “Does anyone have a magnifying glass?”

“There’s one on my Swiss Army knife,” Dunn said. He got up, carefully setting the board and computer down on the couch. From his pocket he brought out a thick, red-cased knife. Keith unfolded the little lens and peered at the paper.

The silver threads seemed to spell out tiny words. Keith sat down at the table to transcribe them onto a sheet of notebook paper.

“Not only does your correspondent use invisible ink, he also speaks fluent gibberish,” Pat said. But Keith recognized a few of the words. He didn’t know what they meant, but they echoed the text of the invitation on the billboard ad.

“You almost tossed out my very first RSVP,” Keith said with satisfaction.

“You’re kidding,” Pat said. “Who from?”

“More like
what
from?” Dunn asked.

“Finding out’s going to be half the fun,” Keith said. He took out a blank sheet and carefully copied out the pattern of silver lines. He compared the transcription to the bit of parchment, which he stowed carefully in a new file folder marked “Attending.” “I’ve got to send this to the farm,” he said, waving his piece of paper. “Dunn, can I use your scanner?”

* * *

Keith took the disk with the file back to his own room. He sent the tracing as an attachment to an e-mail to Holl for translation, then went back to read his other messages.

The Little Folk must have been on line already that night, because before he signed off there were excited e-mails from both the Illinois Little Folk and the Irish Little Folk. The message was a variation on their own language, Catra wrote, dating back over a thousand years. They’d no idea who or what it was from.

The Old Ones were even more taken aback. The Niall swore he would check every record they had dating back to the Flood to see if they could figure out with whom they had contact so long ago.

“It’s an exciting thing, so it is,” the Niall’s message concluded. “You are doing a great thing, young one. We are all sorry it is not possible to get any of us over to you in time for this knees-up, and surely we wish that it was. Could you draw pictures or take videos so we can see who these mysterious correspondents were?”

“Of course I will,” Keith sent back. “I’ll have to photograph it just to reassure myself it happened.”

“Are we invited to this thing?” Pat asked, after Keith read the replies out to his roommates. “Or am I just going to die of curiosity waiting to hear what it was like?”

“You have to come,” Keith said eagerly, his eyes shining. “Both of you. All the elf-friends ought to be there. I don’t want to be the only Big Person besides Marcy who remembers this in years to come. This will be a historic occasion.” He struck a statue-like pose with one finger pointed toward heaven.

“You mean a
mythological
occasion,” Dunn said wryly. “But you couldn’t keep me away with barbed wire.”

“Excellent,” Keith said, pleased, grabbing a pencil to make a note. “That’s
three
RSVPs. It is going to be one great party.”

“If anyone else replies,” Pat said, ever the devil’s advocate.

“Come on,” Keith said. “I know these can’t be the only other beings out there. I just hope some more understand the invitation.”

* * *

He wasn’t disappointed. The spider-writing was only the first of a flood of replies. Some of the responses Keith received were in picture-writing. He particularly enjoyed the ideogram that showed a pretty good caricature of him and a wooden keg. Keith hoped the guest, whatever it was, understood the whole message, and wouldn’t show up in May at his apartment looking for a drink.

A few replied only by repeating the image from the ad, some in loving and exact detail that included the ad copy in the corner. Others sent written notes in alphabets that neither he nor any of the Folk had ever seen before. The linguists at the farm were going crazy with delight trying to translate them. Most were on some kind of paper or parchment, one or two on scraps of leather, and tended to be small in size, except for one.

Late one November evening, Dunn was interrupted by the sound of hammering at his bedroom window. He rubbed the condensation off the glass to see a pair of blackbirds, flying with their wings close together. As he watched, they threw themselves at the pane, tapping frantically until he let them in.

The birds skimmed in and hovered over his desk. Narrowly missing a stack of CD-ROMs they let go of the leather strings they clutched in their claws, and dropped a stone the size of a plate. It landed with a loud
BANG!
that shook the desk. The birds fluttered out into the night. Dunn stares at the stone. Impressed into it was a single, enormous thumbprint.

“Doyle!” Dunn yelled. “It’s for you!”

***

Chapter 20

“Beach!” Maria shouted, pounding on her employer’s hotel room door. Stefan stood beside her, his eyes shining with excitement. “Beach, open!”

The door opened a crack, and the tall man peered out over the security bar. The two Eastern Europeans stood on the threshold in a state of high excitement. “What do you want?”

“Beach, you must look!” She held up a brown paper bag.

Beach groaned. Every day for the last several weeks, despite the worsening weather, the pair had gone out shopping. They seemed determined to cover every single store in the Chicago area, one block at a time. Most of their purchases were horrible, tasteless, and cheap. Bags packed their room, adjacent to his, and every bag was labeled with a name in their own language. “Uncle Illian,” or “Cousin Katya,” and so on. They must have larger families than the Osmonds. “What is it now?” he asked nastily. “Something for Granddad Janos?”

“No,” Stefan said avidly. “We found one of something.”

“
That’s
descriptive,” Beach said, but the others paid no attention to the acid comment. They pushed past him into the room. Maria swept the desk clear and put her bag on top of it.

“Hold on, what the hell are you doing?” he snapped, grabbing at the swirl of papers. Ming had sent him a cluster of graphics of the magical language. He had been sorting through them, looking for common elements with previously known documents. “This is important work I’m doing here!”

“Ignore those,” Maria said grandly. “Those are dead.
This
is alive.”

She unfastened the top of the paper sack as though it was made of silk and drew from it a parcel wrapped in tissue paper. Beach eyed it with curiosity as she removed layer after layer, finally revealing … a lantern. It was about six inches square with twisted pillars, pierced screens on three sides, a peaked roof topped by a ring, and a candle inside. The whole thing, including the candle, was carved out of wood. Only the wick was soft cotton.

On the tip of Beach’s tongue was the word, “so?” but it died as he recognized the object. He reached for his computer mouse and started clicking through the images of artifacts until he found the one he wanted.

“Yes!” he breathed.

No doubt about it, the lantern on his desk matched at least one object in the possession of Maria’s government. He saw plenty of differences in ornamentation and fashion, but that could be the whim of an individual creator. According to the documentation, the old one had been discovered in 1632. This one was new.

“Does it work?” Beach asked.

With a triumphant smile, Maria picked it up and blew on the wick. It ignited.

“As you see,” she said. “It burns without consuming itself.”

Beach sat down slowly, his eyes never leaving the dancing flame. “Well, I’ll be boiled in oil.”

He stared at the lantern for a long time. At last, he had evidence that there was some connection to the magic right here in Chicago. It had been five years since he had seen the artifacts held in that secret vault. He had begun to lose faith in his dream. Here it was, restored. He played with the lantern, igniting and extinguishing it. It never failed to react to his breath. Beach laughed. Maria and Stefan looked pleased with themselves.

“Good job,” he said, chucking Stefan on the arm with the side of his fist. Something scratched away at his memory, begging to be let in. He pointed at the lantern. “I’ve seen one of these.”

“Yes, right here,” Stefan said, looking puzzled.

“No,” said Beach thoughtfully. “I have a strong impression that I have seen another just like this one recently. Very recently.” Automatically, his hand reached out for the stack of surveillance photographs from the Doyle apartment. Reluctantly he tore his gaze from the object on the table to flip through it.

The image was so small he almost missed it on the second pass through. In a snapshot of the young man’s living room, in the midst of a collection of junk on a wooden mantelpiece over a nonfunctioning fireplace stood another lantern.

“The boy?” Stefan asked, his eyebrows drawn together in a puzzled frown. “But he is too young to be trusted with the great secrets of power.”

“If that’s true, why are most hackers under twenty?” Beach challenged him. “No, it’s plausible he has some connection to the source. I’ve run into nothing but dead ends trying to make a connection either through Perkins Delaney Queen or Gadfly Electronics.
He’s
the one who had the lingo on his home computer. This Doyle has to be deeply involved. He must be the conduit, if not the source itself.” Beach tapped his chin with a forefinger. “Very, very interesting. He acts like such a total wally you’d never suspect him.”

“We will go over his apartment again?” Stefan asked.

“No,” Beach said, narrowing his eyes dangerously. “This time we have to question him directly.”

* * *

Keith hunched over the wheel of his car, steering with one hand and holding his pocket tape recorder in the other. It was just his luck that the first heavy snow of the season was falling on a Friday evening as he was trying to get down to the farm.

“PDQ note,” he said. “Personal assistant with personality. Personalize your Origami … no, too repetitive. How about, never forget a coupon again. I-discounts always in your pocket, courtesy of Origami. This’ll be for the home shoppers, not business buyers.”

His windshield wipers began to click and scrape, drawing lines on the window instead of wiping clear. Keith wasn’t worried about ice accumulating on the blades. They had fouled half a dozen times already, but a new little gimmick he’d taught himself was working out pretty well. He put down his pocket recorder, held his outspread right hand to the cold glass and concentrated on his newfound skill. He had to drive peering between his fingers, but it was worth it. Within five miles the rubber blade had melted clear.
So there, Enoch,
he thought triumphantly.
One fire spell to order.
He put his fingers down against the hot-air vent to thaw them. Maybe when the weather started to warm up he’d work on a spell for cooling, and save wear and tear on the air-conditioner in the aging car.

He picked up his recorder and tried to get his mind back on the mysteries of international franchising. He hated to admit it, but the Master had been right when he said Keith might be wearing out under such a heavy schedule. He was. The last couple of Mondays it had been a real challenge to get out of bed to go to his job. If working for PDQ wasn’t so stimulating he’d drop the whole thing and go back to a regular schedule and living off campus. He wouldn’t have to eat crow. Things changed in the business world so often the school had several grad students going up and back every term. The professors wouldn’t mind if he changed back, providing he could make it past the semester break. Just then that respite felt a million miles away. He hoped his good karma with the powers-that-be at PDQ would hold out until he received his MBA. He hated to give up the job completely, for several reasons. Thanks to the generous salary, trickles of money flowed slowly but steadily into his three saving funds: house, ring, and Doris. He was getting valuable work experience. And it was fun. He ought to ask Dorothy what PDQ would think of letting him have a shorter work-week. Some of the really senior creative directors seemed to come in only a couple of times a month, but stars like that were given a lot of leeway. Keith shook his head. He was the most junior person on staff. He’d be pushing it to ask for special favors less than three months in.

He had left the expanse of well-lit interstate freeway miles behind him for the empty, four-lane road that led due south toward Midwestern. The shorn crop fields on both sides of the tarmac looked like a shaggy beige carpet under five or six inches of snow. His headlights, on for safety though it was still daylight, lit up the rooster-tail flurries swirling across his lane. If it got thick enough, he wouldn’t be able to see the lines. There was nowhere to pull off for miles yet. The soft shoulder sloped sharply down into drainage ditches on both sides of the road. He hoped the promised storm rolling in from Iowa would hold off for another hour and a half, until he reached the farm. At least the temperature was cold enough for dry snow rather than sloppily wet. Though the road wasn’t slick, a crunchy, half-inch film of snow had already accumulated, enough to fill tire treads and make the going treacherous.

How lonely it was out here. He couldn’t see another car ahead or behind him. Chicago was wall-to-wall with people, but downstate Illinois, flat as God’s ironing board, was a patchwork of farmland speckled with small towns and cities. Normally Keith enjoyed the endless sky stretching to the horizon. At that moment his world had shrunk to the area his headlights could illumine under lead-gray clouds and worsening snow. It would have been a relief to find a pair of red taillights to follow towards town.

A tiny speck of bright white appeared in his rearview mirror and grew steadily larger. One more car on the road. Keith smiled at the reflection. He always wondered who was in other cars and where they were going. Dola chided him for wanting to care about the business of every person in the world.
But why not?
he thought with a wry grin. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.

Seventy miles more. He’d be grateful when winter break came and he could stay in Chicago for a few weeks straight. He’d miss Diane and Holl and the others, but they could come up to visit him for a change. Some day, when he was finished altogether with school he’d have to make up his mind where to live. He had almost $5,000 in the house fund already. By spring there ought to be enough for that down payment on at least a modest starter home. Would he and Diane stay near the university, or in Chicago? He’d hate to be too far away from the elves, but it was tough to make a living in advertising in a small city. The major business was in the big cities. But where did she want to live? He wanted her to be happy.

The bright light in his mirror divided into two and continued growing. The other car was coming up pretty fast. Guy must be in a hurry to get where he was going. Keith dropped the recorder and put both hands on the wheel in case he had to maneuver. He pulled into the right lane to give the other room.

The car pulled level with him. Out of the corner of his eye Keith got a glimpse of metallic paint, white or silver, and the silhouettes of at least two men in the car. The passenger, a pale face with dark hair and eyebrows blurry behind the foggy glass, turned to look at him. Keith tipped him a grin and put his attention back to driving. It was kind of nice to have company.

The other car weaved back and forth in its lane, then started over the dashed white line into Keith’s.

“Hey!” he cried, as it came within inches of his fender. “Watch it!” He stomped on the brake, dropping back a length or two. The other car immediately slowed to match his pace, and loomed toward him again, this time clipping the left edge of his bumper. It swerved back, then hit him again with a
BANG!
The driver must be drunk. Not wanting a worse collision, Keith put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The powerful Mustang engine growled to life, and he shot ahead. His cell phone was beside him on the seat. He ought to call in a drunk driver, but he didn’t want to take either hand off the wheel. The snow was getting thicker.

The white car fell lengths behind him, but started to pull forward, homing in dangerously on Keith’s bumper. What was wrong with those people? Did they
want
to cause an accident? Keith urged the Mustang onward.

There must have been one mighty engine under the other car’s hood. No matter how Keith tried to maneuver, no matter how fast he drove, the white car kept beside him, and it was gaining ground. Keith slowed. If he could drop back quickly enough, he could pull a bootlegger’s turn across the sunken meridian, and head north toward the nearest town. This was a dangerous driver. He ought to be yanked off the road before he killed someone.

To throw the other off guard, Keith increased his speed past 90 and hung on to the wheel for dear life. With any luck a state police car would spot them as they roared past. Keith might end up with a ticket, but so would the other guy. Glancing in his mirrors to make sure no other vehicle would be endangered by a sudden change of direction, Keith hit the brakes hard, then spun the wheel in a circle. The back end broke loose and fishtailed for a moment, then the car bounded over the uneven grass barrier in the center of the road to the northbound lane. Keith stepped on the gas.

Within moments the other driver turned his vehicle to follow. Keith saw the headlights bob as the white car crossed after him. It was chasing him! Keith peered ahead through the dancing dots of white. How far ahead was that last turnoff?

The other gained on him. Keith held grimly to the wheel. The white car swerved into the other lane, rocketed forward until it was halfway ahead of him, then edged over, forcing him closer to the edge of the road. In a moment they’d both go into the ditch. He tried slowing or speeding, but the stranger had his measure now, and matched him move for move. Keith felt gravel under his right tires as he felt the white car nudge him in the front left fender. He hit the brakes hard and threw down a mental anchor, using the thickest thread of magical sense he could muster, to keep his car from spinning out. He bumped over the loose rocks on the shoulder. A cold stone was in his belly as he heard the drive train drag through the gravel.

The white car didn’t have brakes as good as his, mechanical or magical. Its tires, clogged with snow, skidded on the smooth road. As Keith watched in horror it went off the road and crashed into the ditch, finishing tilted over at a 45-degree angle against a fence. Keith heard the impact as he overshot the site. He hauled his wheel over to the right, rolled to a stop on the shoulder, then threw his car into reverse. He turned to look behind him, steering with one hand, the other outstretched along the top of the car seat. He hoped no one was hurt.

As he got closer, he could see figures staggering up onto the roadside. He thought he saw at least four of them. He could just about fit them into his car while they waited for the tow truck. He’d better call in the accident, then give Hollow Tree a ring just to let them know he was going to be late. But first to find out if anyone had been injured.