Advanced Mythology Page 4

  “Full schedule,” Keith said. He spied a bowl of huge strawberries like fat, speckled rubies and helped himself to a hearty scoopful, taking in the tangy scent with appreciative sniffs. The fruit and vegetables the elves grew not only looked more perfect than anything he ever saw in a store, they tasted like Aristotle’s absolute of ideal flora. “Just got my classes sewn up.”

  “My schedule’s mixed up,” Diane said. “I’ve only got six required courses left, but the history section I want won’t be offered until January. The food service wants me to stay on, so I’m spreading out my classes three and three. That means,” she said, with a sly look at Keith, “I’ll have some free time.”

  “Mmm,” said Keith, leaning over to offer her a strawberry and a kiss. “I’ll take all of it.”

  “I’m glad the party hasn’t been until now,” Diane continued. “I’ve hardly been around since the end of last term. I went home for a while, then I was in Chicago for a while visiting Keith, then I went with my roommates to New York for a weekend. Then, my summer job has been keeping me very busy.”

  “I know,” Keith said, putting the free hand, the one not carrying a plate of sandwiches and fruit, around her waist. “I’ve hardly seen you myself.”

  “Well, that’ll change,” she said. “I’m working after class this year in the general nutrition department, but apart from that I’m all yours.”

  “Mmm. That’s all I need to make this year perfect.” Keith leaned in for another kiss, then drew back with a mischievous look in his eyes. “Perhaps you can help solve a mystery that’s always puzzled me,” he said, working his brows up and down like Groucho Marx. “How can they take perfectly good ingredients and turn them into school food?”

  “I hope I never find out,” Diane said, laughing. She filched a sandwich from his plate. “I’d much sooner learn how you folks make such incredible bread.”

  “If you inqvire of Keva,” the Elf Master said, his eyes glinting behind his gold-rimmed glasses, “I know she vill be both pleased and flattered.”

  “So, are you still living in that phone booth we moved you into back in June?” Pat asked Diane.

  “Sure am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can afford it on my salary and financial assistance,” Diane said firmly. “I don’t have to have a roommate. I grew up with four sisters and one bathroom. This is my last chance to have a bath all my own.” She shot a pointed look at Keith. He pretended to look innocent. Holl knew he was thinking of the house in the suburbs with two baths he was hoping to buy. The other Folk smiled. They were looking forward to one wedding, and anticipating another one. They would celebrate for Keith Doyle with the greatest of joy; for all he’d done for them, it was the least they could do in return.

  “And you, Keith Doyle, will you really be living in that small box on the edge of town?” Marm asked, glowering at them for slowing down the buffet line.

  “It’s got everything I need,” Keith said, moving ahead and picking up cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks. “Bedroom, kitchenette—all right, just a stove, a sink and a refrigerator at one end of the bedroom—and a bathroom. More than enough.”

  “It is a suitcase, Keith Doyle, smaller than your old dormitory room,” Enoch pointed out.

  “Well, a suitcase is all I plan to use it for: keeping clothes in. And sleeping,” Keith said. “I’ll be spending all of my waking time in class, studying, or with Diane or my other friends, or here.”

  “Would you not have been happier sharing larger quarters?” Marm asked. “Diane is living in a small place. You are living in a small place. Would it not make sense…?” The Elf Master moved a hand and Marm abruptly stopped talking. Keith guessed that he had sealed Marm’s back teeth together momentarily to keep from embarrassing Diane, but it was too late. She was blushing.

  “Sure I would,” Keith said, deliberately misunderstanding the question to take attention away from her, “but breaking in a roommate takes time.”

  “Besides,” said Pat, with a theatrical sigh, “who else would put up with him?”

  Keith flipped a hand toward Pat. “See? And it’s just simpler not to have to explain about you and the ears.” He gestured in the direction of his own. “Listen, it’s my own space, however small. You notice it’s on the side of town nearest here. It is a lot better than spending another term in my old room at home. Even though my younger brother is finally out of there. He’s starting college, too.”

  “Not here?” Enoch asked, alarmed. “Two Doyles in one place?”

  Keith grinned. “Nope. I love Jeff and we get along better these days, but this town ain’t a-big enough for the two of us. He got a full scholarship to architecture school in Seattle. In fact, he got a pile of scholarships, some from the weirdest places. He attracts good fortune, especially the financial kind.” Keith gave a mock sigh. “Nobody wants to support a budding wizard, but they’re all over fairy godparents.”

  “You do enough good on your own,” Holl assured him, joining the line behind Enoch and Marcy. “But are you certain you won’t be lonely?”

  “I won’t have the time,” Keith said, briskly, glossing over his private doubts. “But I will miss living with Pat.”

  “That makes one of us.” Patrick Morgan grinned at him over Holl’s head. “I put up with you for four years,” he said. “That should have earned me a medal, not just a diploma.”

  “No, Pat’s my problem now,” Dunn said, slapping the taller man on the back. “Making a stab at the legit-i-mate theater doesn’t pay worth spit, but I can hold on for now. I’m programming for my brother’s company. He got some venture capital recently. That means I’m paying the bulk of the rent right now, until the money runs out. Then we’ll both be washing dishes somewhere to cover the rent of our opulent three-bedroom riverside apartment. But, whatever. I’m doing my part to support the arts.”

  Pat fanned himself with a fluttering napkin. “I have always relied,” he said, in a breathy Southern accent, “upon the kindness of strangers.”

  “Yeah, right,” Dunn said, turning back to the food. “You folks wouldn’t be interested in investing in a budding software giant, would you?”

  “Not in this market,” Holl said with a rueful smile. “You can imagine the expressions on the faces of the Conservatives if we propose investing the money earned from their painstaking labors on the whims of the Internet marketplace. There is still considerable disagreement about the computer.”

  “I can hardly believe you have one, even though I know I’ve sent lots of messages to it,” Keith said, around a mouthful of sandwich. Diane had recovered her composure, and was eating chicken salad. “Too Progressive even for you?”

  “Not you, too,” Holl groaned. “It is a good machine, and a worthy investment.”

  “Would you like to see it?” Dola asked.

  “Sure.”

  She grabbed his hand. “Come along, then!”

  “Not now, child!” Orchadia scolded. “Let the youth eat his dinner.”

  “It’s okay, Orchadia,” Keith said, letting himself be dragged into the kitchen, to a handsomely made cabinet on wheels. Holl and Enoch followed along, with Diane and Marcy behind them. Importantly, Dola pushed aside her relatives working at the kitchen table, and opened the doors.

  “It is the very most recent con-fig-ur-a-tion,” she said carefully, showing off the features. “I like the scanner. It is as though the computer has an eye. It copies images nearly as well as we can. The printer is very fussy, though. Catra has had to speak to it many times to produce what she wants.”

  “Very nice,” Keith said, as Dola turned on the unit. The screen came to life in an instant. Keith put his plate down and came closer for a look. He read the drive properties enviously, noting the speed and capacity. “Much nicer than the setup my folks gave me as a graduation present. Where’s this cable go?” He traced the striped ribbon coming out of an opening in the side of the case down to the floor and under the kitchen table. A couple of the elves
had to get out of the way for him to see the tall white box it led to. “A server? Your own server?”

  “Yes, and in the way all of the time,” Keva snapped. “I’ll break an ankle on it one day, and all will rue it, you mark my words.”

  “No, it’s not in the way, grandmother,” Dola said. “You never put your foot under this table.”

  “Do not show disrespect to your elders, girl!”

  “Why?” Keith asked.

  “Why here?” Holl asked.

  “Yes, and there’s no good reason for it,” Keva said, sailing away in high dudgeon.

  Holl grinned after his indignant sister. “It does no good to point out to her that this is where the telephone line enters the house, making it the most logical location, and the most out of the way of daily tasks. Keva keeps threatening to throw a cup of flour into the workings. I’m afraid one day she will.”

  “No,” Keith said, waving his hands. “Why a server at all?”

  “So as not to have to interact with Big Folk and your service providers,” Holl said patiently. “They want details, and once you are in their clutches, they gather more. We don’t want anyone tracing our comings and goings, nor especially our contact with the others. And the monthly cost—the Archivist researched it most thoroughly and determined it was worthwhile to buy our own. The domain names are registered to you, by the way.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” Keith said, with a good-natured grumble. “The way you’re going, I’m going to wake up one day the potentate of a small country—all on paper.”

  Dola turned off the computer and rolled the cabinet back against the wall with the help of her great-uncles.

  “Beautiful carving on those doors,” Diane said.

  “I …” Tiron began, and the others turned to look straight at him, “couldn’t have done it better meself.” Holl turned back, abashed to think the newest member of the household might be in the mood to stir up trouble. He was ashamed for lacking trust.

  “That is a handsome cabinet,” Keith said. “A new design?”

  “This is one-of-a-kind,” Enoch said. “I built it especially for the computer and its attendant pieces. It is like the rolling wardrobes we saw in a catalog fair Marcy brought home one day.”

  “Nice! Are you thinking of moving into the furniture business?”

  “Not furniture. The market is too crowded at the low end and too chancy at the high,” Enoch said flatly. “We cannot afford quality wood for speculation. I’ll not make another. Unless,” and his grudging look belied the generous words, “ye’d like one for your own.”

  Keith was touched. “That’s really nice of you, Enoch, but I don’t think I could get it up the stairs to the room I’m renting. I really like it, though. Look at that satin finish. Is it real rosewood, or just a varnish?”

  “There’s no just-a-varnish about it,” Enoch said. “I took a piece of oak and enhanced the grain a bit to smooth it out. It is much stronger than rosewood. Which it needs to be, in this household, with all the racketing about it gets.”

  “The computer is popular in the evenings especially,” Maura said. “That is when we receive the Internet mail.”

  “Hmph!” Keva said, pushing them aside to attend to a cooking task at the opposite end of the room.

  Enoch snorted, watching her strut away. “And the Conservatives are there for every word. Don’t let them tell you they aren’t, and if they didn’t see the use of it beyond what we Progressives espouse, they’d have put it out the door already. All gather around in the evening to read the messages from our folk left behind in Ireland. The Niall has a computer of his own, and a fine one by the sound of it. And even the old ones see the Internet as a solution to not having every new book and periodical to hand because they are no longer living in a library. They read more journals and scholarly digests now that they do not have to slip volumes away one at a time. They have greater access to material from all over the world. It’s not often the box is not in use.”

  Keith grinned. “That’s one way to worm the computer into their hearts. Give ’em more than they can handle, and they won’t remember what they did without it. At least you don’t get a brain ache from too much education.”

  “That’s never your problem, Keith Doyle,” Holl said, but it was a half-hearted sally.

  He shouldn’t have said anything. Keith glanced at him, curiosity writ large across his thin face. Marcy leaped into the breach.

  “Come and see my graduation present,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s down in the barn,” Marcy said. She took his and Diane’s arms and firmly turned them toward the door, ignoring their questions. Enoch led the way.

  “Careful, I’ll spill my potato salad!” Diane exclaimed, laughing.

  Marcy pointed out the new kitchen garden, where the cooks had planted dozens of exotic species of herbs and spices in sunlit plots like squares of emerald. She reached out to bruise a sprig of lavender. To Holl’s nose, its scent was strong enough to perfume the air for yards around, but the Big Folk only seemed to be able to perceive it when they were right on top of it. Diane plucked the top of a stalk and put it in Keith’s breast pocket. Marcy showed them the basils, thymes, and mints, naming them all with help from Enoch. Holl trailed along in their wake, keeping well back to avoid uncomfortable questions. He was grateful to Marcy and Enoch for keeping Keith distracted. His Big friend was kind-hearted, and already knew that something was troubling him. But he had given his word not to speak about it, and he wouldn’t.

  The other Big visitors had little sensitivity to magic, but he was surprised Keith hadn’t sensed the problem going on in the house yet. The argument between Tay and Marm over the wine was just another symptom of the bad feeling that seemed to pervade the entire house—no, the farm—with a psychic miasma like the smell of mildew. Everyone was on edge, and had been for weeks. Tensions that normally bubbled under the surface broke through, worrying everyone. Accidents were more prevalent than could just be put down to chance. Intrusions from the outside were becoming more frequent, as county inspectors for this and poll-takers for that had appeared on their doorstep, or, more troublingly, inside the borders of the land around the house. Small wonder that tempers were flaring: the Folk had been scared into remaining inside the house, when they were just becoming used to having an outside it was safe to go.

  More than one person had wondered aloud, once the thrill of owning their own home had worn off, whether they had done the right thing and wound up in the right place. Half the Conservatives had declared the house unlucky. To Holl’s horror, several were campaigning to be put on a ship or jet airplane, no matter what, and sent back to the Folk who still lived in Ireland. If their fears were forcing them out into the world, away from the safe haven they had created here, things were bad indeed. He wished he could consult with Keith, but he’d been forbidden. Even the Master had suggested Holl relied too heavily on Keith’s assistance.

  The Master was right, of course. Keith had been invaluable so many times that it was easy to take him for granted. Now that they were out in the world again after half a century, they ought to learn to be self-sufficient in all their needs. That included working out social pressures that came with their new liberty.

  Perhaps, Holl thought sadly, following the others around the barn, they were not ready to live unprotected. Perhaps the transition ought to have been gradual, though Holl had no idea how that could have been accomplished, with or without Keith Doyle. They’d had to be so very quiet, both physically and magically, while living in the basement of Gillington Library. Now voices were freed and magic was loosed—and people did not like it when they couldn’t feel the protective walls around them. Holl noticed that a few of the Folk no longer went outside except to race between house and barn as though enemies lurked all around them, just out of sight. Not that Holl hadn’t felt the sensation himself, though he put it down to uncertainty rather than scrutiny.

  All the same he wished he co
uld talk it out with a sympathetic and technically disinterested ear. Keith ought to have insights that would be valuable to Holl. If nothing else, it would be good to talk to someone who didn’t live in the middle of the problem. Every time the doorbell rang, everyone jumped halfway out of their skins. Every time a truck drove by on the bumpy country road, everyone braced themselves to scurry to a hiding place. It was at the Conservatives’ urging that the repulsion spell around the property had been strengthened to a point that pained those that must pass through it. Gradually they were turning what was to be a home in touch with nature into a secured camp. They couldn’t go on like that, but Holl didn’t know what to do to turn it back.

  ***

  Chapter 4

  Beyond the old barn, now given over entirely to the production of wooden goods, the Folk had built a pole barn to contain their farm equipment. A gravel drive that intersected with the original driveway led out around the front of the house to serve it.

  Keith glanced over his shoulder at Holl, trailing behind them, as he crunched down the slope toward the oversized door.

  “What’s with Holl?” Keith asked Marcy in an undertone he hoped wouldn’t carry over their footsteps.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Keith made a face. “I always get suspicious when people answer a question with a question. There’s something eating everybody. The farm is not as … happy-go-lucky as it ought to be.”

  “Really, there’s nothing specific,” Marcy said, nervously.

  “Uh-huh,” Keith said, with a dubious expression. “Well, it doesn’t seem okay.” She looked so alarmed that Enoch cleared his throat with a pointed “ahem!” Keith relented. “Never mind. I’ll get to the bottom of things, once I’m down here again for the year. What’s this present?”

  “Take a look,” Marcy said. With a flourish, she threw open the pedestrian door beside the large one and flipped a switch.