Fabulous Creature (8 page)

“Wow!” James shook his head, grinning. Watching Griffin’s steady slate blue eyes, exotically tilted and hypnotically intense, he was almost ready to believe the whole story. “Okay,” he said. “Got it. I’m a big fish, otherwise known as Prince Poisson. But maybe you ought to know that I’ve been leading a double life—or would it be triple? Anyway, my other alias is James. James Fielding.”

She shrugged. “That’s all right. So do I.”

“So do you, what?”

“Lead a lot of different lives. A lot more than three.” She sat down on a rock and tucked up her bare feet. The long braid hung over one shoulder and down into her lap. The silver dress clung close to her thin, limber body, making her look a bit like a fish herself, or perhaps like a rather undeveloped mermaid. She stared at James thoughtfully for a moment before she said, “You want to know something funny? I knew it. The minute I saw you, I knew.”

“That I’d go along with the gag?” James said.

“No,” she said indignantly, but then she smiled. “Well, maybe that too. But what I meant was that you probably really are one. Or at least you were one once. Otherwise you wouldn’t have understood.”

“I was
what
once?”

“Like in another reincarnation. You probably were a prince in another reincarnation.”

“Why not?” James said. Maybe that explained the Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great hang-ups. “How about you? Were you ever a princess?”

“Me?” she said. “No, I don’t think so. I think I’ve usually been animals.”

“Griffin!” The kids were calling from further up the canyon.

She sighed. “Little kids. Sometimes I get very tired of little kids.”

“How old are they?”

“Well, Woody is seven. He’s my brother. And Laurel is just a few months older.”

“And how about you? How old are you?”

“In this reincarnation?”

“Well, yes,” James said. “Let’s start with this one, anyway.”

“All right. In this reincarnation I’m thirteen. But I’m actually a very old soul.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” James said.

“Grif! Come on. We’re hungry.” Woody and Laurel had come back around the curve of the canyon wall,

Griffin uncoiled herself and stood up. “I guess I’d better go.” She started towards the little kids and then, turning back to James, she curtsied again. “Good-by,” she said. “See you.”

Further up the canyon Laurel and Woody bowed and curtsied and then jumped up and down waving and shouting, “Good-by, Prince. Good-by Prince.”

James waved back. After they’d gone, he sat on the rock for quite a while, composing a letter to Max in his head. Max wasn’t going to believe this one.

T
HE WAD OF
paper arched neatly, bounced off the rim of the wastepaper basket and fell to the floor. It was very strange, since he’d been writing poetry all his life, that now when something really important had happened—the kind of thing that had inspired poets down through the ages—he suddenly seemed to have lost his touch. Of course, most of his poetry in the past had been humorous and satirical and in a style that wasn’t particularly suitable for what he had in mind at the moment. The trouble seemed to be that while what he was trying to express was incredibly exciting and original and significant at what you might call the gut level, it kept coming out at the verbal level sounding surprisingly ordinary and trite. He’d tried sonnets, triolets, ballad form, blank verse and anapestic pentameter, all with about the same results—another opportunity to practice basket shooting.

He sighed, and pulling Jenkin’s
A Man for All Ages
across the desk, he opened it to page thirty-two, which was as far as he had gotten in a whole month at New Moon Lake. He might as well get some work done on the da Vinci thing. There probably wasn’t any new way to say what he had in mind anyway. After all, where could you go after “How do I love thee” and “My luv is like a red, red rose”?

There was a knock, and Charlotte opened the door. When she saw James at his desk, she paused in the doorway. In the Fielding family one didn’t interrupt intellectual exercise unless it was absolutely necessary. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to interrupt your train of thought.”

“Don’t worry,” James said. “It’s already derailed.”

Charlotte glanced at the wads of paper in and around the wastepaper basket. “Having trouble with Leonardo?” she asked.

“Well, not exactly.”

“Well, what I came in to say is that we’re thinking about driving in to New Moon. Would you like to come along?”

“No, I guess not, thanks. Now that I’ve finally gotten started on this thing, I guess I’d better keep at it awhile.”

As Charlotte was leaving, James suddenly said, “Mom.” Charlotte had always been easy to talk to on almost any subject. At least comparatively easy, judging by what he’d heard about other people’s mothers. But when she stopped and came back, he changed his mind. There just didn’t seem to be any way to put his feelings about Diane into words without somehow trivializing them. “Oh, never mind,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“I’m in no particular hurry, if there’s something you’d like to talk about.”

“No. It can wait. Right now I’d better stick with Leonardo.”

He didn’t, however, stick with Leonardo for very long. When he heard the Volvo’s motor starting up, he went to the window. William was just getting into the passenger side of the front seat. Charlotte was driving as usual. It wasn’t that William was a bad driver. It was just that on longer trips he tended to start concentrating on some important issue and forgot to notice such minor details as stop signs or oncoming traffic. So Charlotte encouraged William to concentrate on his important issues and let her handle unimportant routines, particularly the ones that were potentially lethal. As James watched from his window, she deftly backed and turned the old Volvo and set off briskly down the narrow dirt road.

James went back to his desk, poked at the da Vinci notes, wandered out the door and down the stairs. It wasn’t until he was in the front yard that he realized where he was heading. The week that the Jarretts were to have been in Sacramento wasn’t quite over yet, but it was possible that they might have decided to come back a little early. And even if they hadn’t, a game of tennis might be just what he needed to work off some tension and restlessness. In fact, right at the moment, a game of tennis would probably help the da Vinci more than anything else he could do. Relax his nerves and do great things for his powers of concentration. Halfway down the drive he stopped suddenly and went back to the cabin for his tennis racket.

He’d played one set with a middle-aged lady and was sitting on the sidelines waiting for another partner possibility to present itself when he heard the sound of running feet on the path outside the courts. He turned around in time to see Laurel Jarrett dash through the gate, skid to a stop and then stand still, staring delightedly in his direction. He smiled, and she started toward him, balancing on the tips of her toes. In Laurel’s case, tiptoeing seemed to have more to do with the state of her emotions, than with any desire to move quietly. When she was directly in front of him, she came down off her toes and said, “Hi!” Then, glancing around and lowering her voice she said, “Prince Pwah-son.”

“Hi, yourself,” James said, and then with a sudden surge of excitement, “Hey, are you back from Sacramento already?”

“Oh, I didn’t go.”

“But your mother and father went, didn’t they. Diane said your father was one of the judges.”

She nodded. “They went. But they left me here with Susie. She’s my baby-sitter. They never take me when they go to swimming things because I’m the only one in the family who sinks.”

“You—sink?”

“Yes,” she said tragically. “It’s awful. I have the wrong kind of bones or something. Jacky doesn’t even sink as fast as I do, and he’s only two.”

It was a real disappointment. For a moment he’d been sure that all the Jarretts must have returned. But Laurel was still standing in front of him doing her tragic heroine bit. “That’s too bad,” he said. “About the sinking.” He moved over to make room on the bench, and she scooted herself up beside him. She was wearing denim slacks and a flowered blouse. Her feet, in very small blue sneakers, swung back and forth about six inches from the blacktop. It really was too bad that they all went off and left her just because she couldn’t swim as well as the rest of them. She obviously felt very bad about it. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to go,” he said.

“Oh, that’s all right. I didn’t want to. Besides, Griffin says it’s probably just an enchantment. The sinking. She says as soon as she figures out the right spells, she’s going to disenchant me and then I’ll probably be able to swim better than anybody.”

“Oh, that’s great. Where’s Griffin today? I mean, how come you’re not working on some enchantment or other this morning?”

Laurel sighed. Tragedy had returned. “She can’t. Woody has tonsillitis, and she has to take care of him.”

“Where are their parents? Did they go to the swimming meet, too?”

“No. I think they just went to a party. They usually go to parties. Is it nice not being a fish anymore? Or do you miss it sometimes? The secret pool and everything. Griffin says it’s not so bad being a fish as long as you’re smart enough not to get hooked. Griffin says she was a fish once, and it wasn’t too bad.”

“Oh, well yes. I guess I’d say that Griffin was right. It wasn’t too bad, most of the time.” He grinned. “I did get tired of those mosquitoes though.”

Laurel grinned back, her excited, lopsided smile. Slipping down off the bench, she picked up James’ tennis ball and ran in a circle bouncing it. James went back to watching the other tennis players and wondering if anyone else was going to need a partner any time soon. It didn’t look as if anyone was. When Laurel came back and scooted back up on to the bench, he said, “I guess I’m going to be leaving now. Say hello to Griffin and Woody for me when you see them.”

“Okay.” Laurel jumped down, and when James started off she ran along behind him, skipping and jumping and making a funny singsong noise. It was actually a little bit embarrassing, but every time he stopped and looked back at her she smiled at him lopsidedly, wrinkling her long, delicate nose and looking so pleased with herself that he couldn’t bring himself to chase her away. But when he came to the beginning of Anzio, he said, “I’m going up Anzio now to the west gate. Where are you going?”

“I am, too. I’m going to Griffin’s house. Griffin’s house is number nineteen.”

James remembered number nineteen. It was on the west side of Anzio, not far from where the trail began that led through the grove of pines to the west gate. So they went on together until they came to the driveway. The house, an immense A-frame set on a massive stone foundation, loomed over them at the end of a short, steep drive.

“Come on up and see Griffin,” Laurel said, tugging at his hand. “Griffin hasn’t seen anybody but Woody and me for two whole days.” The tugging, along with a certain amount of curiosity, won. James allowed himself to be led up the drive and a flight of stone steps. Pushing open a sliding door, Laurel went in without knocking, and James followed. The living room towered, an enormous triangle of glass on one end, a stone fireplace wall on the other, and on each side huge sloping surfaces of rough-hewn wood. There was nothing in the room that actually looked like a piece of furniture. Vases and ash trays sat on white plastic mushrooms or clear glass cubes, books lined up along racks of chrome and glass, and in front of the fireplace was an enormous conversation pit, terraced in squashy velvet. On the walls and dangling overhead were several works of art that looked as if they’d been stolen from the opening sequences of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
At the moment the room also was decorated with an assortment of toys, newspapers, articles of clothing and dirty dishes. Griffin, dressed in a Mexican-looking smock with faded embroidery around the top, was lying on her stomach on the lower level of the conversation pit. She was reading a book, and all around her were dozens of other books. When Laurel said, “Hi, Griffin, look who I brought to see you,” she sat up quickly, looking startled.

“Hi,” James said, “Laurel insisted that I come in. Hope it’s okay.”

A wide smile replaced the startled expression. “Of course, it’s okay. Enter Prince Poisson and welcome. You honor our humble castle with your royal presence. You’ll have to excuse the mess, though. My folks are away and our live-in left, and I’m a lousy housekeeper.”

“Where’s Woody?” Laurel asked.

“He’s in his room. He still has a fever.” Then, as Laurel started to run on tiptoe toward a doorway, she added, “Don’t get too close to him. He might be catching.”

James made his way down to the lowest level of the conversation pit, which was completely awash with what seemed to be very old books. Books were everywhere—stacked, tumbled, piled and scattered.

“What’s been going on here?” he asked. “You been hijacking bookmobiles?”

“No. They’re mine. I bought them. Aren’t they great?” She slid down among the books and started gathering them into stacks, handling them as carefully as if they were valuable heirlooms. “They had a sale at the library in New Moon. Books people donated and all the old ones they didn’t want any more. I bought them all. There were too many for me to carry, so yesterday Mr. Grant, he’s the librarian’s husband, delivered them for me. I’m going to read them all.”

James picked up a couple that were lying near his feet.
Kiss Me Deadly
by Mickey Spillane looked as if it had been left out in the rain and Jane Austen’s
Emma
had obviously been attacked by a dog. “Well, it looks like an interesting assortment,” he said.

“Yes, I know. I just finished that one.” She was pointing at
Emma.

“Did you like it?” Charlotte had all of Jane Austen’s books, and James had read a couple with rather mild interest.

“I loved it. I love all her stories.”

“Oh. What do you like about them?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They’re just so perfect—and small.”

“Small?” He examined the width of the book.