Higher Mythology Read online

  The Iris lowered gently onto the grass between the barn and a field of standing crops. She curtseyed as Keith’s weight left the gently swaying gondola. Immediately Winslow started to feed heat to the envelope.

  “See you in a couple of hours,” Frank called, his voice diminishing as the balloon rose. “Truck’ll come and pick you up here!”

  Keith waved, and walked off the meadow into the cornfield. The rainbow globe vanished behind the canopy of green leaves.

  Corn stood over six feet high in the field behind the house, concealing the individual cottages he knew were standing there. The Little Folk had come up with an excellent system of camouflage. During the growing season, the cottages were hidden by the tall stalks of grain, since each of the little houses stood no higher than the wooden playhouse Keith and his siblings had in their back yard while they were growing up. When the corn was cut, all you could see from the road was the woods behind the settlement. Even in the wintertime the houses defied detection. Their outer walls were dark wood, carved into strand-like patterns and stained to blend in with the County Forest Preserve that stood behind them. Only someone with superior depth perception who knew what to look for could perceive the miniature village, and that only if they could see through the aversion charm the Little Folk had placed on each structure. Keith fairly admitted he couldn’t do it. He relied instead on the white pebbled paths that led through the cornstalks from one doorstep to another until he could make out each home by its shadow.

  Despite the protective coloration, each home was very different. Most of the eight that were fully built were occupied by members of Holl’s age group, the Progressives, who had quickly shed the fears of the last four decades and taken off to live in the open air, away from the larger community in the farmhouse itself. As was their thrifty custom, the Folk had used scrap wood of every size as well as whole boards to build, binding the conglomeration with skill and magic. Glass windows, pieced together like stained glass, were backed by small, beautifully woven curtains that Keith guessed had been rags they’d unraveled and blended together again. Little details gave away clues to the identity of the occupants of each house. Marm, one of Holl’s—and Keith’s—best friends, had carved an ornamented trellis-work surrounded by the figures of animals on the wall that faced away from the road. This season, the trellis was covered by climbing green grapevines. Marm’s wife, Ranna, was a celebrated wine-maker.

  Without knowing Holl’s personal taste, or Maura’s skill with a garden, Keith would still have picked out the sixth cottage as theirs. Neat as hospital corners, the little borders around the edges of the tiny house glowed with beauty. Garnet tea roses, proportionately accurate for the Little Folk, grew closest to the house, bracketing the dark walls with spots of rich color. Autumn flowers were just coming into bloom. Hummocks of blue asters dotted the dark beds. Most particularly, on either side of the doorposts grew a handful of white bellflowers, a token and a tribute to Holl’s difficult journey overseas to win his lady’s hand. Keith grinned as he rapped on the roof’s edge with his knuckles.

  Inside, he heard hubbub, and Holl, his cheeks red, peered out the curtained window.

  “It’s you, then,” Holl said, pulling the door open. “Miss here won’t take her sleep. I’ve been walking her up and down for an hour. I think she knows there was company coming.” Without shifting the bundle in his arms he rolled his shoulders to ease them. “Will you take her so I can stretch a bit?”

  “Boy, she’s grown, hasn’t she?” Keith said, accepting his ‘niece’ in his two hands. The baby, still hairless and toothless, looked like any baby he’d ever seen, except that her eyes were already turning green to match her mother’s, and no Big baby ever sprouted those ornately-whorled ears. The points were just a little softer than an adult’s, the way a kitten’s ears were rounder than a cat’s. Asrai recognized Keith and cooed at him before her attention wandered off again after the next pretty shadow. He cradled her on one elbow and felt around in his pocket.

  “Asrai?” he said softly. “Hey, baldy, I’m talking to you.”

  The baby’s cloudy eyes wandered up to his face, and focused just for a second. With surprising speed, her tiny fist shot up and grabbed. She pulled down, trying to get her captured handful into her mouth.

  “Aaagh!” Keith breathed, trying not to yell. He put his hand up to get between the baby and his cheek. “Holl, help. She’s got my whiskers.” Keith’s whiskers, a magical Christmas present from the Little Folk some three years before, were tangible but invisible to the average eye.

  Holl sprang forward to undo Asrai’s fist, and picked the invisible strands by touch one by one from between her fingers. “There, there. Well, there’s no doubt now she’s got the second sight, is there?”

  “You sound pleased,” Keith said, rubbing the sore place where his offended vibrissae were rooted. “Why didn’t you tell me she’d grab?”

  “My apologies. She’s always taking handfuls of her mother’s hair,” Holl explained, a little embarrassed, “but yours was too short to catch. I didn’t think of the whiskers. We don’t know what she can see, if you follow. We’re new at being parents. Any fresh discovery is as if it’s the first time it’s ever happened in the world. Is it all right?”

  “No problem,” Keith said. “I guess they can’t be pulled out, can they?” He glanced down at the baby, who wasn’t at all upset to have her new discovery taken away from her. He put his hand back into his pocket. “Hey, kid, you know I brought you something for yourself.” The baby’s eyes fixed on his hand as he waved a blue rubber ring at her. “Look. Teething toy.”

  “It’s a little soon for that, Keith Doyle,” Holl protested.

  “Nope, my mom said teething always starts before you expect it.” Keith fitted the tiny fingers around the ring. They barely closed on the other side. Asrai was so small she looked more like a baby doll than a baby. “Hmm. That was the smallest one I could find.”

  “She’ll grow,” Holl said, gruff with pride. The child immediately drew the vanilla-scented ring to her face and put her mouth to the edge. Her little pink tongue explored the bumps on the blue rubber surface, and she looked surprised.

  Holl watched her adoringly. Keith glanced up. In contrast to the flower-petal complexion of his daughter, Holl’s face seemed for the first time to be creased and tired. Keith was concerned for his friend, but he made light of it.

  “Fatherhood’s made an older man of you, Holl.”

  “And it has,” Holl said with a sigh. “For no reason at all the babe wakes in the night and cries. She isn’t hungry, and she isn’t wet, but she cries. It’s amazing to me how loud she can get. I’m glad it’s only Marm next door to us. He never minds a thing when he sleeps, and Ranna can ignore everything, but the wailing keeps us wide awake.”

  “Trouble,” Keith said, shaking his head. His eyes danced with mischief “What do your folk say when they’re fed up with their kids? ‘I wish the humans would come and take you away?’”

  Holl favored him with a sour expression. “Very funny, Keith Doyle. May I offer you a snack? You’ve come a long way.”

  Keith looked around the interior of the cottage. The floor, covered with smooth tiles of wood, was well swept. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture, except for a pair of chairs, a large table and a small one, and bookshelves built cunningly into the walls. Holl caught the sense of his gaze.

  “Oh, the food’s in the larder under a hatch in the floor. It’s not too big, just enough for a pat of butter and a drop of milk, or what have you,” Holl said, rising heavily to his feet. “There might be a heel of bread as well.”

  With concern, Keith watched him go. Holl looked genuinely tired. Keith’s mother had said that the first six months after a birth were the hardest. At least Holl and Maura were in the back stretch, now that Asrai had hit the three-month mark. He couldn’t believe that this tiny baby who just barely overlapped his hands could yell so loudly.

  “Less insulation to hold down the sou
nd, huh, punkin?” he asked her. The baby, wisely asleep with the ring clutched to her cheek, said nothing.

  Keith knew better than to trust Holl’s assertion that there was no more food on hand than drops and heels. The Little Folk might eat less in proportion, but they liked plenty of good things to eat as much as their Big cousins. Holl returned with a handsomely carved wooden tray bearing a tall pitcher whose foaming, white contents slopped gently from side to side, and a basket of rolls with a good chunk of primrose-yellow butter on a small dish in the center.

  “Keva’s doing,” Holl explained at Keith’s question. “They all knew you were coming for a visit, and she insisted on leaving these to break our fast.”

  Keith’s own particular mug, a long-ago present from the Little Folk, was here on a framed shelf beside those belonging to Holl and Maura. He accepted milk and a handful of rolls. “What, no beer?” he asked impishly.

  “Not when I’m on nursery duty, if you please,” Holl said, grimacing. “Whew! It was a long night last night down here. A good thing we’re out as we are in the middle of the sky. Under the library, she’d have shouted the stacks down. They’d have thought there was a banshee trapped in the steam tunnels! Maura and I share duties. It’s my shift with the babe. She’s inside the big house helping prepare the lunch before class.”

  “She’s not having to cut short her education because of the baby, is she?” Keith asked.

  “Oh, no, don’t you fear it,” Holl said easily. “You don’t know the benefits of communal living. When there’s not an adult with time to help us care for the little one, Dola or some of the other medium sized children help out in between. She’ll be here soon, and glad to see you, I won’t doubt.”

  Keith smiled. Dola was Tay’s daughter, a sweet, blond child who had a strangling crush on him. She’d accepted Diane’s preeminence with Keith only under protest, and had often expressed herself willing to step in as a substitute should Diane be unable to continue as Keith’s girlfriend. Dola had a special talent of forming illusions on a length of thin cloth. Keith decided that as a babysitter, that wasn’t a half bad knack to have.

  “So this is a different thing for you,” Holl said, pouring a mugful for himself. “You’re not in a class, but you’re still earning a grade?”

  “It’s called an internship,” Keith explained. “I’m working in the Chicago office of Perkins Delaney Queen, the advertising agency. They’re shuffling me and three other students around the departments until I find the one that will take me for the rest of the semester. I was interested in the business office at first, and then there was research, but I’m having more fun in the design department. If they like me, they’ll let me stay on for the spring term, and maybe there’ll be a job opening after graduation.”

  “I am sure you are well liked,” Holl said, the corner of his mouth going up in a wry smile. “You have a way of worming yourself into good regard.”

  “I hope I can make it.” Keith sighed. “But it’s a tough business. I miss college. I called Pat to see how it’s going, and he said it’s been a lot quieter without me.” He pulled a face, and Holl laughed.

  “You don’t live on the premises?”

  “Heck, no,” Keith said, shaking his head. “It’s an office building.”

  “Don’t act as if I ought to know that,” Holl admonished him. “We lived in an office building.”

  Keith shrugged. “Well, usually people don’t,” he said. “I’m back in my old room at home. I miss living with Pat Morgan. We got along really well, all things considered. My brother Jeff resents like hell having me back. He had our whole room to himself for three years, and now he’s got to deal with having me crowding him for an entire year, if not for good. Jeff’s done everything but draw a line down the middle of the room to mark his territory. I’m glad we don’t have a sink in the corner, like we did in the dorm. I’d end up with half the basin and one tap. If the soap’s on the wrong side, forget it. Laser beam time.” Keith’s finger drilled an imaginary hole into his chest. Holl tilted his head to one side.

  “Not literally, I hope. It sounds as if it’s nearly time for you to have a nest of your own, Keith Doyle,” Holl said, nodding. “If you chose, you know you’d always be welcome here, permanently, or whenever you dropped in from above.” Holl pointed toward the ceiling.

  Keith smiled, genuinely pleased and touched. “That’d be great, but it depends on what I’ll be doing after graduation. It’s a real temptation. You’ve sure done a lot with the property. It’s shaped up incredibly since last summer. I may take you up on your offer so I can live in a country manor with all the amenities instead of a dinky apartment.”

  Holl scowled. “Your ‘dinky’ accommodations might have more to offer you. It is not easy being homeowners. Everything constantly needs repairs. The water continues bad. We allowed a sample to concentrate of the stinking mess we were filtering out, and matched it to the seepage from Gilbreth Feed and Fertilizer Company.”

  “What, that place across town?” Keith asked. “How’s their runoff getting over here?”

  “We’ve written to ask how it’s possible that we’re getting pollutants from their factory,” Holl said. “But there’s no doubt it’s theirs. Tay and Olanda went over there one night to compare.”

  “They’re dumping,” Keith said, frowning darkly. “I wish I could be here to help handle it. Complain. If they don’t respond to you, you can write private letters threatening them with the Environmental Protection Agency.”

  “Oh, we’re sending appropriate letters to the editor, and having a fine extended argument with the owner of the company on the side. But let us put the gloomy matters away. The Master would like to see you, if you please.”

  Keith felt a momentary surge of guilt at the thought of being called before the formidable little teacher. He was up to date on his mail-in essays; what could the Master want him for? “He would?”

  Holl must have guessed his thoughts, because he laughed heartily. “A visit, you impossible infant! You’re not behind in any assignments from him, unless it’s to show your face and be welcomed more often than you are. As soon as Dola comes to look after the babe, we’ll go up to the barn.”

  A shy tapping at the door heralded Dola’s arrival. The elf child, now twelve, was on the threshold of young womanhood. Slim and blond, with her elegant ears poking out from the shining tresses of her hair, she would have made a good model for the flower fairies in the books Keith’s mother had read to him as a child. In the hot weather, she wore only a knee-length green shift that softly outlined her body. Keith surreptitiously took note of the subtle changes in her figure, but she noticed. Comfortable though she was with Holl, Dola was self-conscious around him.

  “How do I look, then?” she demanded boldly, then blushed at her own forwardness.

  “All you need is lacy wings,” Keith said gravely. The compliment pleased Dola. She beamed, the long dimples in her cheeks throwing her high cheekbones and pointed chin into relief. Keith reached out and tweaked a lock of her hair. Dodging away coyly, she pirouetted lightly on her toes, coming to rest before Holl, who gently placed the baby in her arms.

  “Dola’s been the most zealous caretaker we could ask,” Holl said over the girl’s head. “She practically attended Maura at the birth. She’ll only share responsibilities with Ludmilla, my babe’s unofficial grandmother, and that not often.” Dola’s chin stuck out defiantly to show that even that sharing was unwilling. She clasped the baby close to her. Asrai, half asleep, roused enough to coo at her babysitter. Dola bent to kiss her on the forehead.

  “Well,” Keith said, watching with delight, “even the best babysitters need a day off. They deserve a little spoiling of their own.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that now and again,” Dola agreed. She kicked off her sock-like shoes and sat down in Holl’s chair.

  “I’ll see what we can arrange,” Keith promised. “Some weekend, okay?”

  “Oh, yes! Okay!” Dola said, much gratified.
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  “We’ll be at the barn, if there’s any need for us,” Holl said.

  “There’ll be no need,” Dola assured him. She began rocking. On her lap, the child’s eyes drifted closed, and her breathing slowed. Keith waved at them through the window, and followed Holl down the pebbled path toward the outbuildings.

  ***

  CHAPTER THREE

  “So what do you do in the meantime?” Holl asked over his shoulder, as he stumped down the narrow, sloping path toward the dull red-painted barn. “I can’t imagine you with only one activity to siphon off all your energies.”

  “Oh, pursuing my old interests,” Keith said casually. “Remember my theory? Air sprites?”

  Holl sighed. “And how could I not?”

  “The guy who flew me here is training for an around-the-world balloon marathon. He said he’d take me up whenever he’s around,” Keith said, ignoring his friend’s humorous expression. “If there’s anyone to be found in the upper atmosphere, I’ll find them.”

  “If anyone will,” Holl agreed, “you will.”

  From the outside, it looked like any barn Keith might have passed on the county highways. Inside, it had been transformed into a combination school, workshop, and living quarters. Little Folk hurried around like so many of Santa’s elves, carrying from here to there wooden handcrafts in varying stages of completion.

  The old barn had been converted nearly as much as the house had. Between the rafters its high ceiling was lined with the same fuzzy rows of light that had illuminated the Little Folks’ home beneath Gillington Library. The tiniest children dashed in and out of the old stalls, where their elders worked, each on his or her own particular task. The building still smelled pleasantly of hay, though its concrete floor was swept clean. Added to that scent was the spicy blended aroma of fresh sawdust, oil, and paint. Under a window with its shutters thrown fully back to let in the morning’s light, Enoch threw them a salute with his wood plane, then went back to smoothing the board he had propped on two saw horses. Keith thought it looked like he was building a new door. When Enoch upended his work on the sawhorses, Keith noticed that the door was constructed, as usual for the Little Folks’ woodcrafts, of assorted scrap culled from other projects. They wasted nothing, lending the dignity of utility to even the most hopeless leftovers, even bits of rubber or cloth scrap. Some of the wooden jewelry he’d been selling to the boutiques on behalf of Hollow Tree Industries featured beads laminated with ancient bits of calico and gingham. They had a neat antique-y look that went well with the natural luster of wood. Ms. Voordman, their most faithful customer, had been pleased by the hit the necklaces had made.