Mythology 101 (18 page)

Chapter 25

It wasn’t until Tuesday evening that he managed to get down to the village through the classroom passage. To his relief, Holl and Enoch were both there, no worse for their adventure, and had somehow managed to transport the supply of wood inside without attracting notice. When Keith pressed them for details, Holl would say only, “Old skills,” his favorite answer and Keith’s least favorite.

They had discussed all of their sightseeing with the others in their clans, and most of them were keen to take a tour themselves, with Keith’s fellow students wanting first go. He promised to figure out some way to do it, as soon as it was safe.

“I don’t think it’ll be a good idea for a few weeks,” he insisted. “There’s somebody out there who knows you’re here, and just wants to cause trouble.”

“No. The sooner the better,” Catra insisted. “We can’t find a new home by inspiration. We need to see what is available to us.”

“I’m concerned about the break-in. Who was it? Did anybody see him? Whoever it was must have been hammering on that stone for a good long time.”

“Of course we heard it,” Tay snapped, tugging distractedly at his beard. “Short of going up to ask who it was, there was nothing else to do.”

“I think you ought to have an evacuation plan or something.”

“I think,” said the Elf Master, coming up to the little group, “that ve can take care of ourselfs, and perhaps you should think about the examination that is about to take place.”

With a twinge of guilt, Keith and the others followed the red-haired teacher up the tunnel to the schoolroom.

O O O

If the other Big Folk students were surprised to see Keith emerging from the little door behind the elves, they didn’t show it. If anything, most of them took it in stride as a natural occurrence, based on what they’d come to know about Keith. Keith exchanged smiles and greetings, and made his way to the desk between Holl’s and Enoch’s.

In spite of his anxieties about Hollow Tree and the attempted invasion, Keith relaxed when he read the essay questions that the Elf Master scratched on the upright slate. Though he had been too busy to study over the weekend, he found the answers forming themselves in his mind almost quicker than he could write them down. As his confidence grew, inspiration took over, and he wrote faster. Even with the greater part of his mind involved with the test, he was aware of how the clarity of the teaching affected the amount of information he was able to retain. Holl was right: a smaller class gave the students an advantage in learning.

The Master promised to evaluate their papers right away. Keith felt smug. After this test, Freleng’s final would be no big deal.

O O O

Thursday afternoon, he sailed blithely past the librarian on duty, carrying a plastic bag which seemed to be very light for its immense size and kept trying to get away from him, and a box which he took great care to keep balanced. The woman waved away his explanations, obviously tired of hearing them, and watched him ring for the elevator.

Keith shifted from foot to foot with excitement. Even if he had blown the test completely, which he doubted, the end of such a stimulating semester was deserving of some kind of celebration. The doors finally opened, and he maneuvered the cake and his bag of helium-filled balloons and party hats inside.

O O O

The classroom looked a little bizarre with balloons floating drunkenly all over the ceiling and bumping into each other where they were tethered to the backs of chairs. Keith presented the cake to the Elf Master with a little speech he had prepared ahead of time and thoroughly rehearsed, remembering his usual incoherence.

“I want to express how grateful I am for being allowed to join this class. I think I’ve learned a lot more about Sociology than I thought I could. Shock does a lot for opening the mind to new experiences.” The others snickered, glancing sideways at the Master.

“It has not been one-sided,” the Master said, “but I am surprised you did not submit to me your thesis on interplanetary relations.”

“I thought about it,” Keith admitted. “Only I figured that the next time I opened a door in the library, I might find a lot of little green men and bug-eyed monsters.”

“I know of none here,” the Master assured him, over the class’s laughter.

“Well, all I have to say is thank you for drumming the subject into my head … and I’ll be happy with any grade I get—so long as it’s an A.” The rest of the class clapped and cheered. Keith bowed and sat down. The Elf Master got up, shaking his head in mock despair, and handed the papers out to the students one by one.

Beaming at the teacher, Keith took his and looked it over. “But there’s no grade on it,” he protested.

“Meester Doyle,” the Master sighed, rapping him on the head with the roll of exams. “I do not understand vhy you are trying so hard to impress me. You have demonstrated ample knowledge of your subject. If all you vish is a letter by which you can compare your attainment with that of others, then you have learned little.”

Keith turned red. Sometimes the Master reminded him of Professor Kingsfield from the
Paper Chase
. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have asked what your method of grading was.” Carl and the other male students regarded him smugly.

“I vould be happy to explain. I have marked on your test papers where your theory is false, or vhere your argument fails to support your premise.”

Abashed, Keith turned his paper over, and went through the pages. “Well, you didn’t mark anything on this at all.”

“Then you demonstrated no false theories, and defended those you did propose well.”

“Oh,” Keith said in a very small voice. “I guess I got an A.”

The Master sighed, this time in exasperation. “If you must express it in that limited fashion.”

“Yahoo!” Keith cheered. The others joined in.

“I vish only that I could be assured you were as delighted vith having accomplished learning as you seem to be vith a mere symbol.”

“How about it?” Keith asked Marcy, as the cake went around. “Can you take this one home to your parents?”

“Yes,” she said happily, displaying pages free of marginal comments.

“I meant the test,” Keith chided her mischievously, taking a fingerful of icing from her plate of cake. She blushed. It made her look prettier than before.

“Yes, that too.” Marcy glanced over at Enoch. The black haired elf smiled back at her.

O O O

As the other human students drifted out, Holl beckoned him into the passageway for a private talk.

“There’s a problem. I didn’t want to bring it up in front of the others. We’ve the rest of that order to finish before you leave for the winter break, and there just isn’t any way it can be done in that little time.”

Keith made a wry face. “So how can you speed it up?”

“I don’t know. We just cannot make our hands move any faster. I put in an order for power tools, but they ask payment in advance, and we have no reserves in the account. Also all are concerned about losing what money we have made so soon.”

“I know where you can get jobs,” Keith said, grinning, making points of his own ears with his forefingers, “with Christmas coming so soon. The work’s seasonal, but at least it’s high visibility, and the pay is good.” Holl groaned at him, smacking him on the arm with an open hand.

“Will you stay with the matter at hand and stop recruiting for Santa Claus, you widdy?”

“I am. I’m thinking. Power tools…?” The tall student snapped his fingers suddenly, the sound echoing down the hall. “I know where there are some we can borrow.”

O O O

“I don’t know about this, Keith. The school is fussy about insurance and things like that.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Scherer,” Keith said reassuringly. He patted the wood-shop teacher on the back. “We’ll give you a ‘hold harmless’ letter of agreement, if anyone asks. But since it’s the end of semester, no one will pay any attention anyway.”

Scherer looked around his workshop. He was a middle-sized, middle-aged man with a bald spot beginning in the midst of his black hair, and pretensions toward a pot belly. His usually good-natured face showed an uncharacteristic expression of worry, as he watched a whole bus-load of little kids messing around with his power tools.

It had taken a large dose of the famous Doyle diplomacy to arrange it, but half the inhabitants of the elf village were occupying the school woodshop. They had acceded grumpily to Keith’s insistence that only females and beardless males should go with him, even though Keith acknowledged that he would be leaving behind some of the top craftsmen. That still left him with fifteen or more workers. With admirable presence of mind, Keith taped a square of paper over the window in the door so that passersby couldn’t see in. Mr. Scherer, eager to avoid trouble with the Administration, not only allowed him to block the window, but locked the door for him as well.

“So what’s this all for?” the teacher asked curiously, walking among the be-hatted youngsters. The crease between his brows deepened as he watched his precious table saws run under the leather-gloved hands of a couple of pre-teenage girls, but a few moments convinced him he had nothing to worry about. He was impressed with their deftness. Keith was right. These kids really knew how to behave around dangerous equipment. And fast! He never saw anyone so quick to learn before. It had only taken one demonstration with the punch press, and the black-haired kid was handling it like he had lessons from nursery school on. Too bad he never got students like this for his classes. He averaged about one accident a week with the usual gang of idiots who took woodshop.

“Junior Achievement,” Keith said, gesturing broadly at the room full of boys and girls. “I got involved last fall.”

“Oh, yeah?” Scherer replied. “I used to be the adult advisor for a JA group. Only mine sold toilet roll covers and towel racks and easy stuff like that. So, how much is your stock selling for?”

“Stock?” Keith echoed blankly. “Right, stock.”

“Yeah, stock. The way they establish a company.”

“Oh, yes, of course, stock. I know that. Well, we haven’t printed the certificates yet, because we haven’t raised the money for the printer. That’s what you’re helping us to do right now. We sell these, and we’re on our way.”

“Alright,” the teacher said approvingly. “And what’s this? Ornamental lantern, huh? Nice, simple design: pierced screens, four pillars, peaked roof.” Candlepat smiled politely at him as she took the frame out of his hands and put the wooden candle into its socket inside. She gave the teacher a coy wink. “Pretty.”

“Uh, they’re children’s night lights,” Keith explained over the buzz of the table saws. “Their own design.”

“Oh,” Scherer said, looking admiringly at Candlepat. She raised a hand, delicately flicked her long, golden hair back over her shoulder, and gave him a big, wide-eyed gaze. Catra hissed a warning at her from the next table where she was attaching hinges to boxes. “Yeah, very pretty.” The man didn’t notice that the other “children” were moving in more closely around them, prepared to defend the girl with their lives, no matter if it was her own fault. It always was.

Keith, who knew how little they trusted Big People, leaped in to disarm the situation, and did his best to distract the teacher. He waved the others away with a hand behind his back. It occurred to him that they might have knives. He didn’t want one of Candlepat’s flirtations to turn into disaster.

“Mr. Scherer.
Mr. Scherer
,” Keith said, getting the teacher’s attention and dragging him away from Candlepat, with whom Keith exchanged black looks. She pouted after her admirer, but went back to work. “Sir, she’s twelve years old!” The teacher blanched, realizing how close he might have come to a fatal indiscretion. The administration frowned on statutory deviance. He didn’t look at her again. With the threat allayed, the defenders eased back into their places. Keith took a deep breath.

“Stupid!” her sister growled under her breath. Candlepat put her nose in the air and pretended not to hear.

“Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” Scherer grumbled, hoping Keith wouldn’t misjudge him. “Twelve, huh? Regular little siren. Wow! Think what she’ll look like when she’s eighteen.”

“Huh! She’ll never see eighteen again,” Catra growled into her work.

O O O

“You gotta promise to let me know when you’re ready to do business, Keith,” the teacher urged him as they finished cleaning up and prepared to leave. “I’ve never seen such good, fast work in my life. It’s almost magic.”

“Sure is, Mr. Scherer.”

“They look like Santa’s little helpers in their little caps,” the teacher chuckled heartily, patting one of the blond boys on the head. The kid wielding the broom turned and gave him a dirty look. Scherer shook hands with Keith and smiled at the others as they marched out into the snow. “Merry Christmas, kids. And good luck.”

***

Chapter 26

“He didn’t mean any harm by it,” Keith said, following the elves back toward the village. The bags of wooden toys and knickknacks were already in the trunk of his car, and he was planning out a route map for the next day in his head. Holl pulled out a glowing blue key to open the side entrance to Gillington. They stayed on the cleared path as far out of the street lights as possible, avoiding the scanty new fall of snow on the grass.

Keith was still a little alarmed at their reaction to the wood-shop teacher. It hadn’t struck him before, but he’d been underestimating them. Now he saw them as he should have, with a full range of feelings, defenses, worries. And there was nothing wrong with their sense of self-preservation. They might look like kids, but they weren’t. Not just cute mini-humans, but adults older than he was, and he of all their acquaintances should have known better. He wanted to kick himself for falling into the trap of anthropomorphic association. Wasn’t it just a little while ago he’d called Marcy out for doing the same thing?

“I know,” Holl said at last, making a face. “Ach, that man. I hate stereotypes!”

“Just call me Santa,” Keith chuckled, feeling relieved. “You weren’t really putting a spell on him, were you, siren?”

Candlepat was still offended. “
You’ll
never know.”

The door closed behind them just before the security patrol passed by on its hourly cruise of the Campus Common area.

O O O

“Well,” Keith said, a little wistfully, “I guess I won’t be seeing you guys again until January. Holl, will you stop by and pick up my mail every day? I am still waiting for our Employer I.D. number and things like that. We’re not official yet.”

“Of course,” Holl assured him. “But don’t be in such a hurry. We’ve got a custom of present-giving in this season, too. The most of us feel that we owe you something. Not that a small present would pay you back, but call it on account.”

“Thanks,” Keith said, flattered, “but you don’t owe me anything. When I was a little kid, I believed in brownies and gnomes. I never found any, but it was just because I was looking in the wrong places. Now I know: I check the basements of libraries every time. I feel that I owe
you
for my dream becoming real.”

Enoch wasn’t satisfied. “That’s not much of a gift.”

“It is to me,” Keith said. “I don’t know what else I’d want.”

“Name it,” Holl insisted. “We’d feel better.”

“Well,” Keith thought for a long moment. “Some of the things which you make have obviously got some sort of magic. Would you do a little magic for me?”

“Little is what it would be,” Catra told him. “There’s just not enough energy to make a great working last a long time.”

“It requires concentration beyond the simple existing life force of the creator,” Holl explained, but Keith still looked blank. “Look, it’s like this: Sion here could make his ears look rounded, and they would always look so if he wanted them to, without his concentrating, because his mere existing would supply the necessary energy for the spell to continue.”

“I wouldn’t do it, though,” Sion protested, fingering the points of his ears. “It’s a matter of pride.”

Holl nodded agreement. “Same with us all. Now, if Enoch wanted big fluffy wings …”

“Go on!” Enoch scoffed, putting aside the notion.

“… We’d all have to concentrate, and they wouldn’t last too long when we stopped. His own force isn’t enough to maintain that kind of circuit. Think of electricity. We’re all little batteries. Even you.”

“Wow,” Keith said. “Can you do something for me that would last?”

“What would you like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Well, my mom always said I was so curious I should have had cat’s whiskers.”

“Visible or invisible?” asked Dever.

“Invisible, of course,” Keith answered flippantly. “I’d never get another date otherwise. But you’re not serious.”

“Sure, we’re serious,” Holl said. “You wanted a little magic. Sit down here.” The blond elf stood facing Keith, his face eerily half shaded in the light from the streetlamp coming in through the crack between the door and lintel. One eye socket looked empty in the shadow, with a glint of silver deep under his brow: Keith felt a shiver go down his spine as Holl touched forefingers to his cheeks just an inch or so from the nose, and drew invisible lines outward. The fingers touched again, a little higher up and further out, and moved again, out of the line of Keith’s peripheral vision. He felt a third touch, below the second set. The others were gathered around, watching with interest, giggling.

“That’s it,” said Holl, dropping his hands to his side and shaking his wrists to relax them. “You can’t see them, but we can, and there they are.”

“Come on,” said Keith, reaching up to touch his face. “Without any magic words? Nothing happened, right?” He twitched his nose. Something tickled his palm. He tried the other side, and his look of bewilderment made the young ones laugh even more. He felt around the sides of his nose, and discovered two sets of thin, stiff wires, about the same diameter and texture as broom bristles. He bent one upward to get a look at it. There was nothing to be seen, but he felt the pull on the skin near his nose. “There
is
something.…” There was an impression in his fingers where the whiskers pressed, but whatever was making it was definitely invisible. He was delighted. “How long will it last?”

“Only until you can convince yourself that they don’t,” Holl said. “Maybe all your life. It wasn’t a difficult request.”

Keith wiggled his nose again and laughed with joy. “Well, I couldn’t have done it.” The headlights passed by again, drawing a long ribbon of light between them through the gap in the doorframe and sweeping it across the floor. Keith looked up, and glanced at his watch. “Uh oh. I’ll have to sneak back. Thanks for everything, all of you,” he said, his eyes going around to each of the elves.

“Save the soap,” Enoch said brusquely. “We’re in your debt.”

Keith twitched his whiskers, and with a salute to the elves, slipped out of the door. They were gone into the darkness before the door boomed shut behind him.

O O O

The periodical librarian at Gillington had a secret magazine subscription which was charged to the library budget, but never actually appeared in the archives. Since she had total charge of the mail, no one knew about it. So, every week on Wednesday, she would open and carefully abstract her copy of the
National Informer
and secrete her illicit “research digest” in her locker until she took time off for lunch. After lunch every Wednesday, she would hide the magazine again among her things, and go about her business. Within minutes after it was placed under her coat, it would be removed by careful elfin fingers and carried off to be perused by other eyes.

The librarian was aware that her magazine was being borrowed, but she never dared to say anything. For all she knew, it was Mrs. Hansen herself reading up on what it was inquiring minds wanted to know. Best not to rock the boat and have to pay for her own subscription.

Holl took it out of the locker on his way back from Keith’s mailbox in the second week of winter vacation. The collection in the box included a host of get-rich-quick schemes, ads, and three brown legal-sized envelopes with a box number in the corner and “penalty for improper use, $300” printed on each one. “IRS, eh?” Those would have to be answered, with his new supply of postage stamps and his hasty lessons from Keith on the workings of the U.S. Postal System. He tucked the mail under one arm, and thumbed through the digest on his way back home. There was a funny story on the second page about an actress who believed she was going to have alien twins, and the stacks of Gillington rang with ghostly laughter that sank into the lowest levels and then became silent as Holl passed through the hidden door. The librarian returning from her lunch heard the last echoes, and decided that she would be best employed spending the afternoon sorting the card catalog in the main lobby.

Usually, the village had a good laugh over the illustrated adventures of the spoiled and the gullible, but Orchadia, Enoch’s mother, was the first to notice one small article on page five. “Sightings of small alien humanoids rock college town.” In spite of the reporter’s vague style, there was no mistaking whom he must have meant. “Now they’re appearing in a national magazine!” Catra wailed to the Master, showing him the photocopied story, which she kept in her folder with the other clippings.

Holl begged her to be calm. “It’s a guess,” he assured her. “One of those jokers at the
Informer
picked up on that little girl’s story and improved on it, that’s all. Just another literary echo.”

“It’s that Doyle,” the elders agreed, and nothing Holl said could shake their opinion.

“It must be,” Curran said. “Who else ha’ seen us so close?”

After that, there was a careful perusal of every periodical that came into the library. Anyone leaving the village had to make doubly sure he or she was unobserved. The craftsmen were still working on reopening the back door, so they had to exit by way of the library stacks. It was more difficult during the holiday break with fewer bodies on campus. Any movement was notable. “We have no choice,” Curran said at last to his gathered clan. “We canna live on vegetables for three weeks. If the snow comes again, we’d be too easy to track.”

“I don’t want my children taking the risk of being carried off,” Shelogh said indignantly. Her brown hair had a thread of grey at the temples, but her face, in spite of its set expression, was as smooth as a child’s.

Catra sighed at her. “Mother!”

“When he gets back, we can have Keith Doyle look into that story,” Holl told them confidently. “I’ve heard nothing on radio or television. Could be someone caught a glimpse of one of us without the hat on and had a ‘hallucination.’”

“No one vould be dot careless,” Aylmer insisted.

“I hope not,” Candlepat said, alarmed. “When we three visited Teri Knox, we were all most careful. Swore to her companions it was too cold to uncover our heads.”

“Were they not suspicious?” Keva asked.

“No,” the blond girl giggled. “We’re her old summer campers, she tells them. Big Folk don’t look for difficult explanations. They’re so simple. She dined us on pizza, served from a flat box. It was very tasty, though untidy. May we make pizza some time for supper? The Big Ones would never know it wasn’t some of theirs. I can get a box.”

“No,” said Shelogh firmly.

“What kind of pizza was it?” demanded Dola, Tay’s only daughter, and Keva’s great-grand-daughter. She was ten, and had a crush on Keith Doyle. Anything the Big Folk did fascinated her.

“
Carryout
pizza.”

“Oooh.”

“I dinna like having adults masquerading as children,” Curran complained. “And as for Keith Doyle, who’s to say ’tisn’t he spreading the story himself.” The old elf snorted. “By purpose or no. He’s a fool.”

“And all from one unsubstantiated story,” Holl sighed. The Anti-Keithites were unappeased. “I wonder if he’s the only fool.” He put away Keith’s letters in a box in his hut.

***