Mythology Abroad Read online

  “What’s your job?” Matthew asked, hurrying to make peace and defuse the argument.

  Keith, always eager to talk about the success of Hollow Tree Industries, began to explain. “I sell handmade woodcrafts to gift shops, made by some friends of mine. Holl, here …” his voice dropped when he realized what he might have been about to say. “Holl here has seen some of the items. Shortbread molds, toys, boxes, jewelry like necklaces, and so on. They’re pretty nice. Very good workmanship. I get a commission on the sales so my craftsmen don’t have to go out and find buyers themselves.” Holl nodded approval, and Keith beamed.

  “That can’t be easy,” Matthew acknowledged. “I work in a bakery near my home half days, starting early in the morning. I’m on holiday for the next month. Two weeks’ pay I’m losing at the end of this course, but like you, it’s credit toward graduation.”

  “You get four weeks’ vacation a year?” Keith gawked. “Wow. We only get two weeks.”

  “Have you ever had cider?” Martin inquired, getting up to put in their order at the bar. Hanging signs under the inverted bottles behind the counter advertised Tennant’s Ale and Strongbow.

  “Oh, sure. There’s lots of orchards near where I live,” Keith said. “You can get fresh cider every fall.” The two Scots exchanged glances, and Martin chuckled.

  “I’ll get the first round. We can order from the bar menu for lunch while we drink it.”

  “This is a St. Clements for you, lad,” Martin said, returning with a small round tray full of glasses. “Fizzy lemonade and orange, nothing toxic.”

  Holl took the light orange drink, and sipped cautiously. He nodded happily and ran his tongue across his lips to catch the thin foam. “That’s refreshing. Thank you.”

  “I got you a mild cider, Doyle,” Martin continued, innocently passing him a large glass of a cloudy, burnt gold fluid.

  Grinning at Holl’s watchful gaze, Keith drank. The other boys sat back nonchalantly, only their eyes alert and mischievous, waiting. “That’s good!”

  Martin did a double-take. “You knew it was alcoholic, did you?”

  “I do live near orchards, I told you.” Keith lifted the glass happily, and studied the color against the light. “This is the smoothest applejack I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Well, watch it,” Matthew warned him mildly, holding no grudge for being cheated of his fun. “You may think you know your capacity, but don’t trust cider. It sneaks up on you. You get apple-juice palsy well before you know you’ve had a drop too much.”

  “No problem,” Keith assured him. “Next round’s on me.”

  Holl took an interested sniff of the cider. Pity about the drinking laws, but he didn’t want to cause a fuss and draw attention to himself. Still, he felt the need for a calming drink after the trauma of plane travel. When the second round of St. Clement’s came to the table, he concentrated quietly on his glass, enhancing the sugars until they fermented into alcohol. He took an investigative sip. Not as good as one of Marm’s brews, but passable. The others, deep in their conversations, took no notice of him.

  They talked about their homes, comparing the differences between their early lives, and exclaiming over the many similarities. Keith found his two roommates to be outgoing and curious, and thankfully, less reticent than he’d been warned. He didn’t press them for details, and found that once the boys relaxed, they told him all about themselves without urging.

  “You’re not like we thought Americans would be,” Matthew admitted candidly. “I was sure you’d be posing us for pictures in front of every stone building and bobby. You know.” He pantomimed frantic snapping with an invisible camera.

  “I probably would have, but I haven’t got any film left,” Keith confessed, putting on an abashed expression, and the others laughed.

  “You’re a friendly lot, you Yanks,” Martin said. “If you’d been English, we’d probably not have talked to you.”

  “Too shirty and superior,” agreed Matthew, hoisting his nose in the air with a forefinger.

  “With a name like Doyle, there’s not much chance of that, is there? I don’t want to be offensive, but you sound almost English to me,” Keith continued apologetically. “You don’t have a burr in your voice. You talk like the BBC announcers. Cultured.”

  “We’ve gone to English day schools and colleges,” Martin explained. “I come from a wee place near Edinburgh.” He pronounced it ‘edin-burra,’ and Keith marked it for future use. “My dad’s in finance, and if I want to follow him, I can’t keep my old regional, even if I wanted to.”

  “Speak for yerself,” Matthew said, dropping into a thick burr. “Hey, Keith, hae you ey’r heard o’ Billy Connolly?”

  They chose their meals from a long list of entrees, each of which came with chips—French fried potatoes—and peas. Keith looked down the menu for fish and chips, but to his surprise, it wasn’t listed. “Have plaice, if you want good fish,” Matthew said, answering his tentative question. “It’ll be fresh, at least. Fresher than the cod.”

  “Why does everything come with peas?” Keith asked. “Was there a bumper crop this year?”

  The other two laughed uproariously. Baskets of greasy chicken and chips and peas, fish and chips and peas, and, to Keith’s amusement, lasagna with chips and peas, were set down before them. They washed down their lunch with more cider. The other youths seemed in no hurry to leave, and the bartender ignored them as long as they were relatively quiet.

  “Everyone comes into the pub. If you don’t know anybody in a town, you can wander into a pub for society. There’s not much else for young people without a lot of money to do in Glasgow, unless you want to skate at St. Enoch’s Center,” Martin explained.

  Holl chuckled, sharing the joke with Keith in an undertone. “I’ll certainly pull his leg hard when we get home. Saint Enoch.”

  “Though they’re all not as friendly in the wee places,” Matthew corrected his friend. “We’re in the local pub at home almost every evening. You’d like it, if you care for old places. The building is a restored inn, over 350 years old. You ought to come home with us some time at the weekend for a visit.”

  “You bet! Thanks,” Keith exclaimed.

  “But leave your camera at home,” Martin warned. “It’s not Trafalgar Square. Start making a place a tourist attraction, and the locals stay away. It defeats the whole point of a pub.”

  The Black Bull was a companionable place. Keith felt very much at home, surrounded by dark brown wooden paneling and beveled mirrors. No yuppie plants in the windows; this place was functional, not just for show. The only thing he couldn’t identify were designs cut out of circles of brass that hung on leather strips over the stone fireplace and from the ceiling beams. The colorful machines in the corner with whirling wheels and strips of lights that read “10p” had to be the local equivalent of arcade games. Matthew and Martin began to discuss Rugby football, which sounded more brutal even than American football. They explained the British game to Keith, who listened closely and offered comparisons.

  “What’s this apple juice palsy like?” Keith put in, setting down an empty pint glass. He was starting to feel a little light-headed, but put it down to jet lag. According to his watch, it was just after noon at home, but it felt as though he’d been awake for days. Holl reclined limply under his cap in the corner of the booth, offering a word or two when one of the others spoke directly to him.

  “Ach, you know,” Martin gestured, trying to conjure an image out of the air with his hands. “You go weak at the knees, and you see things like little pink lizards.”

  “Lizards?” Keith exclaimed, squinting impishly at the table. “Pink ones?”

  “Aye.” The boys’ cultured voices were sliding into homier dialects as their blood-alcohol ratio went down. “Snakes and bugs, too. And then you feel like your head wants to come off.”

  As Holl watched in horror, a finger-long pink lizard rose out of one of the spilled puddles of cider on the table and scooted toward Martin
. It made a run of about a foot before it reached a dry place on the table and popped. Martin jumped, and Keith grinned.

  “Did you see that, Matt?” the youth demanded, clutching his friend’s arm and pointing. “Lizards!”

  “Nae. Just a bit of reflection from the street,” the other reassured him distinctly. “Maybe from a lorry. I saw a little flash of pink in the slop. This table wants wiping. What a clumsy lot we are.” He rose unsteadily and went to the bar to borrow a towel.

  “You’re probably hallucinating,” Keith added. “This cider is insidious stuff, isn’t it?”

  Holl wasn’t fooled by Keith’s innocent expression, and eyed him as the other lad blotted up the spills. Enoch, the Master’s son, had been trading driving lessons in Keith’s car for magic instruction over the last few months. Evidently, the Big Person was getting good at simple tricks like cohesiveness and shaping. Holl was surprised and dismayed by his proficiency. Maybe there was something after all in the boy’s insistence that he was related to the Little Folk. But the red-haired student was losing all his inhibitions as he got more drunk. In a moment, he’d do something stupid, and expose them. Holl had no wish to wind up a museum exhibit in a foreign country thousands of miles from home, doing charms and tricks for a lot of scientists. The “extraterrestrial” movie Keith had brought once for the Folk to see had opened their eyes amazingly. Holl had had nightmares for weeks.

  “I’ve got to get some sleep, or I’ll be sick,” he spoke up suddenly, as the others were discussing another round of drinks. “My head’s pounding, and I haven’t had any cider.”

  “He can’t be sick here. You’d better take him back to the Hall,” Matthew told Keith worriedly.

  The American youth looked at Holl almost as if he’d never seen him before and shook his head to clear it. “Right. C’mon, Holl. I wouldn’t mind an hour’s nap either.” He slid out from behind the table and attempted to stand. His knees buckled, and Holl sprang to catch him as he clawed at the dark wooden walls of the booth for support.

  “There go your knees,” Martin crowed. “Apple juice palsy it is.”

  “Up you go, Uncle,” Holl gritted, supporting Keith’s weight on his shoulder. “You’ve had too much for one day.”

  O O O

  “How do you feel?” Matthew asked Keith the next morning on the way down to the refectory for breakfast.

  “I’ll never do that again,” Keith vowed. His face was pasty, with green showing just below the skin. “What a hangover. I think I was sick on the way back, but I don’t remember. My knees didn’t follow me back to the dorm until about 3 A.M. I saw the sunrise then. It was blinding.”

  “You might have a little less until you get used to it,” Matthew suggested kindly, without a suggestion of “I told you so.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I’ll just go teetotal for a while,” Keith said meekly. Holl had lectured him fiercely on the walk back to the dormitory on the responsible use of talent, and he felt contrite for his indiscretion. Secretly, he was pleased to have created such a realistic illusion, but after last night, he vowed to practice only in private. He felt thoroughly ashamed. After all, he had spent nearly a year making certain that no one would discover the Little Folks’ home and helping them move to a new place on Hollow Tree Farm, isolated from Big Folk. He had nearly blown it all in one night.

  “If you can’t hold your liquor better than that,” the elf had hissed at him, “then I’ll have to put a block on you so you can’t use charms at all. I don’t want to have strangers look too closely at me when queer things happen.”

  Keith could only agree. He carried his plate to the table and sat down gingerly next to Holl. His head hurt when he moved too quickly, and the sound of forks ringing against plates reverberated between his ears like the clapper in a bell. Holl didn’t say a word to him when he sat down. Keith poured himself a cup of dark brown liquid from the metal pot on the table and let the steam bathe his face, relaxing a knot or two behind his forehead. He shot a glance to his left, but Holl, focused on his breakfast, paid no attention to him.

  “Try the tea. It’s strong, but it’s pretty good,” he said to Holl. No answer.

  “Are you still mad?” he asked quietly, as he sawed a piece of bacon with his knife. It was louder to him than a hacksaw going through wood and he winced. The taste was like boiled and salted leather, but he felt he deserved no better. A glossy fried egg shone up at him like a plastic display dummy. He shuddered at it, and reached for a piece of toast from an upright rack on the table. It was cold. He scraped butter on it to the tune of Brazil nuts cracking in his ears.

  Holl sighed and set down his fork. “No. Do you feel as poorly as you look?”

  Keith grimaced. “Worse, I think. They were absolutely right. It feels like your head will come off. There’s got to be more than apples in that stuff. This never happened at home.”

  His friend clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Here, then.” Holl spread his fingers and planted his hand against Keith’s cranium. “Breathe in and out, and forget about me.”

  Keith closed his eyes gratefully. Instantly, the agony began to slip away from the inside of his head, like wax melting out of an inverted glass. In a few moments, he drew a deep breath. “Oh, that’s great,” he crooned, rocking his head from side to side and enjoying the sensation. “That’s terrific. My headache’s completely gone. I wish you could market that. You’d make a mint.”

  Holl watched him with a wry smile curling up one side of his mouth. “I can’t market it. But I’ll give your headache back in full force if you do such a silly thing ever again.”

  “I promise,” Keith said fervently.

  As she had assured Keith, Miss Anderson repeated her lecture of the day before, and dismissed the class before noon. “We’ll be taking the coach out to the dig site later, to meet the team of archaeologists, and begin work. You may not understand what you’re doing unless you’ve read the text, but please remember to follow their every instruction. We are there to make an accurate record of the past, and any errors, any deviation from the correct steps, could have long-range ramifications. Go have lunch, and meet me in the quad at half past one.”

  Like all the rest of the smaller information-gathering branches, the Secret Intelligence Service was second or third priority in getting their questions answered or their projects funded. A lot more attention was paid to the electronic wizards and their toys, but where would they be without the hard work and foot-slogging of the SIS, Michaels wanted to know. With difficulty, he had managed to get assignment of a small car and set out along the M8 in pursuit of the Educatours vehicle. In the most ordinary way possible, the coach had deposited its passengers, O’Day and his accomplice among them, in the heart of Glasgow. With the way the old buildings echoed, it was no problem to hear everything that went on in them. Michaels learned that the “boy” was carrying a formidable knife concealed in a pants pocket. O’Day was not notably a violent man. Perhaps his small associate was the one he ought to watch in a close-up fight. Personnel checks on the others in the tour would have to be made a priority. Unlikely as it seemed, one of them could be O’Day’s contact.

  ***

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The coach transported them along the M8 motorway leading to the southwest. Except for Keith and Holl, who were wearing jeans, the boys were dressed in corduroy or twill. To the surprise of the others, Narit had appeared wearing jeans too, and her long hair was braided into a tail that hung down her back.

  “Where’s the sari?” Keith had asked. “We half expected you to be formal.”

  Narit had laughed prettily, a quiet, tinkly sound. “I wear the traditional dress only to please my grandmother, when I visit her. I much prefer English fashions. They don’t get caught in doors.”

  The seating in the coach had worked out much the same way it had the day before. Keith, armed with his camera and a new roll of film, had a seat to himself, and took pictures of the landscape through the thick Plexiglas plate windows.
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  “Look, there’s nothing special out there. Just houses,” Matthew, behind him, pointed out.

  “They’re different from American houses,” Keith said happily. “The slope of the roof is a lot sharper. And you don’t see that many stone buildings around us. Nearly everything is frame and brick. And the color of the grass is different here.” He glanced upward. “So is the sky, though it’s hard to tell through the safety glass. Look! A milestone!” Keith crouched over his viewfinder, fumbling with the focusing ring on the lens.

  “Please yourself,” Matthew grumbled, sinking back into his seat. “It’s your film you’re wasting. Milestones.”

  Holl sat on the opposite side of the coach from Keith, also watching the scenery. They had quickly passed out of the city limits and into reassuringly rural countryside. None of the land lay in the ironing-board flat plains of the American Midwest, so it was unfamiliar and interesting to the eye. When he had excitedly named the characteristics of the hills and valleys they were passing to Keith Doyle, that one had teased him, accusing him of learning them out of a book. It was a fact. He had. So far in his short life, the geographic features he was seeing had been flat pictures to him. He was storing up all his impressions of the wide world, to bring back to the other Folk. So far, this part was big and wild and empty. Keith was correct about the houses, too. They had an air that held them apart from American construction, what little he’d seen of it. But they were hauntingly similar, in a generations-removed way, to the houses of the under-library village in which his Folk had lived. He wondered if Keith had seen the likeness. What connection was there between his folk and the people who lived here? What would his clan say about the resemblance? The younger ones would likely speculate, while the old ones, who might actually know, would very probably say nothing at all. It was frustrating how they kept the younger generations in the dark. But with evidence, he could start a controversy that might bring out useful revelations.