Land of Dreams (19 page)

There he was now. A hand shoved in through the broken window and pawed at the inside of the door, finding and pulling back the lock. The door swung to. In stepped a giant, nearly eight feet tall, but shrinking, of course, just as he himself was growing. In an hour, if the man were around that long, his clothes might fit too. And he
would
be around that long – an hour and a little more, wearing another man’s too-small clothes. Then he’d be on his way into the past, to try and fail to find the four-year-old Jack Portland at Willoughby’s boarded-up farm, to visit Viola Langley, to journey forward again and deliver the elixir, finally, and be chased by a cat into the tall grass and slip into the river and end up here, in the abandoned taxidermist’s shop, brewing up another batch of elixir, in a hurry now. All these unscheduled stops ate away at the few remaining precious hours of the Solstice; and his most important work still lay ahead.

He paused for a moment in the melting of the lumpy tar, remembering his wife. In a few hours, if everything worked ...

The giant stood in the doorway, looking at him stupidly. It embarrassed him to see it. ‘Close the damned door, idiot,’ he said. ‘They’ll see you.’

‘Who are
you?
’ the second man asked, closing the door.

But he knows, thought the small man, or at least he suspects. We look enough alike, heaven knows. And besides, I’ve been through this business before, so I
know
he knows, or is figuring it out fast. He resisted the temptation to bait the man, to confound him. He still had a few moments to do it in. He couldn’t take time for sport, though. ‘I’m you,’ he said. ‘From the future. Do I have to tell you that?’

‘No,’ came the reply, after a moment.

‘Then mash up those dandelions. We haven’t got a moment to spare.’

‘But tell me,’ said the giant, still staring, even though he understood things well enough suddenly. ‘Tell me what you know.’

‘You’ll find out. Just mash those dandelions and listen. Up to a point you’ll do all right. You’ll deliver the elixir, but not without considerable trouble. That’s right, quit gaping and grind them up. You know how; you’ve done it before. We won’t have enough elixir; you can see that.’

‘We’ve got to get more. You’re right, of course. I’ll go out after the stuff now.’

‘No, you won’t. You’d stand out like a hippo. And besides, here we are, mashing away, aren’t we? You’ll get to where you’re going, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, would I? It’s
me
we have to worry about. And Jensen too.’

‘Of course, Jensen. He’s missed out, hasn’t he? I regret having gone off with the formula and left poor Jensen to his own devices. They must have failed him.’

‘Don’t I know about your regrets? Do you have to tell me about your regrets? There’s hardly anything I do more of than avoid thinking about your regrets.’

‘I can’t see a damned thing without my glasses. We should have anticipated that.’

‘We should have anticipated a boatload of things, but we didn’t, did we? More regrets. We’ll undo a few before we’re done, though, see if we don’t.’ Together they mixed the dandelions and tar, deglazing the pan with ocean water.

‘That’s it!’ cried the big man as the elixir in the pan turned colour and started to steam. The aroma of it filled the air, wafting round on the little bit of ocean breeze that blew in through cracked panes.

‘Of
course
that’s it. Here I am, aren’t I? Ssh! There’s a noise through the window.’

The small man stepped across, trailing his rolled trouser legs, and shoved open the door. A girl stood outside, under the pepper tree, lost in reverie. She came to herself and looked at him, half surprised, as if she recognised him. He smiled at her – no use setting her off, after all; they still couldn’t afford to be found out. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, assuming that there might be some purpose in her spying on them.

‘I’m … Helen,’she said.’Excuse me for staring. You look just like a friend of mine. It’s uncanny, really.’

‘Is that right? What’s his name?’

‘Jack,’ she said, then turned to leave.

She was frightened; he could see that. But she knew Jack. He couldn’t let her go, but he couldn’t chase her either. ‘Wait!’ he shouted. She was running, though, even as he said it. ‘Tell Jack to try the Flying Toad!’ he hollered. ‘Please!’ It wasn’t exactly a comment meant to slow her down any, but maybe it would do the trick. He’d meant to leave a note, to do more than whisper into Jack’s ear, but the damned cat had spoiled the business. Well, there was no time to make amends. They’d do another batch, cook it all down, bottle it, and be off.

It was over an hour later when a ruckus started up outside again. It was dark out and raining off and on. There was a shout and a scuffle. ‘That’s yours,’ said the small man.

The big man was asleep on a table, catching forty winks, he’d said, leaving the boiling down to his smaller counterpart. He woke up now with a start. ‘What?’

‘This one’s yours.’ There was another cry and a terrible cursing. The tall man leapt for the door. Someone was in trouble out in the night. It wasn’t his business, but he couldn’t very well let it go.

The small man knew that as well as the other one did. He sighed, remembering the blow he was about to receive on the side of the head. He reached up and felt the lump it had raised, and as the door swung open he said, ‘Watch out! You’ll meet someone out there you recognise – Harbin. I’m certain of it. Take this with you; you won’t see me again, ever.’ He handed across ajar of elixir with the lid screwed on. There wasn’t much in it, but there was enough to get him back onto the train, so to speak, back to the depot. Along with it was a tiny stoppered bottle containing more of the same, a bottle the size that a mouse might carry, if a mouse were inclined to carry a bottle of elixir.

The giant shoved them into his pocket and wrenched the door open, looking back in wonder at his companion and nodding a goodbye. Then he pushed out into the wet night and was gone.

Helen hadn’t any desire to wander in the hills with Jack and Skeezix. Not really. She wasn’t wildly excited about magical lands. She was perfectly happy being where she was. Well, almost perfectly happy.

Helen wasn’t sure about Skeezix, though. He needed someone around to look after him sometimes. He talked very bravely, but Miss Flees was spiteful and jealous, and Skeezix had always been an easy mark. He was as close to being a brother to Helen as anyone would ever get. There’d been rough moments two years back when he’d fallen in love with her, or thought he had, and she’d had to put an end to it. Then he’d fallen in love with Elaine Potts, the baker’s daughter. Elaine Potts hadn’t put an end to it, even though sometimes she pretended that she didn’t care about him.

Helen could see the truth about Elaine Potts when they stopped in at the bakery. And it wasn’t surprising either. Skeezix was one of those plain sorts of people who become less and less plain the better you know them. Helen appreciated that sort of thing. One of her favourite authors had written that beautiful women should be saved for men with no imagination. The same could be said for men – really handsome men, that is. Skeezix had one of those interesting faces that, admittedly, would never become handsome, but would become – what was it? – attractive. That was it. He had the sort of face that would paint well, if you could capture what it was that made it so.

Elaine Potts seemed to sense that. She was the same way, although she didn’t know it. That’s part of what made Skeezix like her – her not knowing it.

Jack wasn’t anything much like a brother, and never had been. He was strange, in his way: gazing out of his loft window through his telescope, wandering in the woods, collecting glass bottles and old books. And now his elixir; he’d got it from a mouse, he’d said, or else from a tiny man dressed as a mouse. That was just like Jack.

Helen smiled. The High Street was almost empty. Everyone was at the carnival, Helen supposed. Only a single fisherman sat on the pier, whittling idly. The wind blew down the centre of the street, whirling a yellowed old sheet of newspaper into the air and picking up leaves. Helen was suddenly lonely. She wished that she
had
gone with Jack and Skeezix, and for a moment she thought of turning round and following them. But there was no telling, really, where they’d be by now. Jack was good company. It was too bad he was so solitary, kept so much to himself, although it was that, partly, that made him as interesting as he was. Interesting, thought Helen. What a rotten word for it.

There was the taxidermist’s shop. Jack and Skeezix and she had sneaked in there one night and stolen a stuffed ape that they’d given to Lantz. She’d felt bad about it for a long time, but that was two years ago, and bug-eaten animals still sat in there doing nothing. Riley the taxidermist was dead. He’d made a Visitation’ that morning at the carnival, or so she’d overheard some people to say, and he’d talked ceaselessly about the quality of glass eyes, carrying on until they’d pitched cold water in the face of the medium and shut the taxidermist up. There was a light in the shop now, way in the back, only a little light, like maybe someone was burning a candle in there.

It had nothing to do with her, of course. She had better things to do than be curious about candlelight. Jack and Skeezix would investigate, if they were there, and would probably end up being chased up the alley by a tramp. They’d investigate anything. Skeezix would come home gloating this afternoon, boasting about what he’d found, full of theories, clucking his tongue and shaking his head that Helen hadn’t been with him. What had she been doing? he’d ask, feigning interest. Then he’d nod broadly at whatever she’d been painting and say something smart about it and then sigh. Then he’d swagger off making furious faces, which, he’d imply, Helen was making at
him
. Helen wouldn’t be, of course. She’d ignore him utterly.

She found herself halfway around to the back of the taxidermist’s, tiptoeing along. She wouldn’t go home empty-handed. She’d have an adventure of her own, is what she’d have, and throw it in Skeezix’s face.

The rear windows were dusty and dark and had been covered with newspaper, glued on long ago. Here and there the newspaper had dried out and yellowed and peeled off in patches.

She glanced up and down the river. It was empty. The fisherman on the pier wasn’t in sight. She edged along the rear of the shop, wincing at the sound of gravel and trash scrunching underfoot. There was the light. She could see it past a ragged rent in the newsprint covering the window. She peered through, holding her breath, squinting against the dimness of the room within.

A number of stuffed animals littered the floor, looming half in shadow. She could just make out the head of a bear, the dorsal fin of a shark, a clutch of moony-eyed squid, mounted in a long line as if they drifted in the current atop an offshore reef. A hand moved. A man in an artist’s smock worked at a bench. It wasn’t candlelight after all; it was the glow of a little fire that was cooking a pan of something. Helen realised with a start that the heavy smell of ocean and tar on the air wasn’t blowing in on the sea wind after all; it hovered in the room beyond, leaking out through the hole in the window.

There were two men in the room, not one. One, in the smock, was far taller than the other. The smock was undersized, now that Helen had a moment to study it. The man worked at a bench, grinding something up. He was the tallest man Helen could remember having seen – easily seven feet tall, maybe taller. He bent over his work so that he looked at it from about an inch away, as if he were fearfully nearsighted but had lost his spectacles. The other man stirred the pan on the fire. He was a midget, for sure, not just small in relation to the giant that he laboured alongside, but shorter than the top of the bench. He stood on a stool to work, and he wore outsized clothes, his sleeves and trousers rolled. It was too dark in the taxidermist’s to make out much detail. The men might easily have been brothers, mismatched twins even.

What should she do? What would Jack or Skeezix do? She could walk away, but what she’d seen wouldn’t make much of a story later on. She’d tell it as well as she could, but then she’d get to the end and Skeezix would say, ‘What did you do then?’ She’d say, ‘Nothing. I came home.’ That wouldn’t do. The smell of tar and ocean was cut suddenly by the sharp odour of dandelion. The beaker bubbled and fizzled. A cloud of greenish vapour tumbled up out of it, dispersing through the room, and the smell of elixir, of Jack’s elixir, weighted the air.

Helen reeled back against the trunk of a pepper tree. Her eyes were misted by the elixir, and she was overwhelmed with longing’ and with regret for all the places she’d wanted to go in her life but hadn’t, for all the wonderful places she’d been and had to leave, for all the places she longed to see but wouldn’t. Before her eyes was the fleeting vision of rolling springtime countryside glimpsed through the window of a train car, and she anchored herself to a tree limb with one hand, fearing that she’d pitch over into the grass with dizziness. In her ears was the sound of the rush and surge of the ocean and of the clatter of train wheels on a railroad trestle, and for one brief moment she seemed to be standing on the train tracks above the bluffs, waving at a receding train and at a man and woman she didn’t know who waved back at her from where they stood on the last car. In an instant they diminished to specks on the far-flung landscape and disappeared.

She realised abruptly that someone was watching her. It was the small man. He’d pushed the rear door ajar and was looking out, smiling at her. She let go the tree limb, shook the mist out of her head, and smiled back, although it was a troubled smile. He had an oddly familiar face. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.