Mythology 101 (23 page)

He felt his way in, hands out for the iron maidens. The room seemed much wider in the dark. Once he touched the wall, he eased first one way, then the other, feeling for the low door. His fingers showed him the lip of the entrance, and he crouched down and walked hunched over along the tunnel’s rough cement floor. His soft-soled shoes made a tiny “tok” sound each time he set down a foot, but he congratulated himself that he wasn’t making any noise.

O O O

Down at the tunnel’s far end, Dola, along with Moira and Borget, two of her friends, were playing in the empty dining hall. They had already detected his presence and reported it to the Elf Master down in the village, who was giving a lesson in map reading to a group of volunteers who had offered to be the first to move out to the farmhouse.

“It’s not Keith Doyle,” Dola said. She still had a minor crush on the tall Big One. She was sorry she was not allowed to talk to him anymore, but he hadn’t come back since that day she had kicked him.

“Zo?” enquired the Master, setting down his atlas and looking at them over the tops of his glasses. “Go and ask whomever it is vhat he vants.” His eyes twinkled. “But quietly. Other people do not vish to be disturbed.”

The young ones looked at each other gleefully and dashed back to the passage.

Dola waited by the entrance to the village, concentrating hard on a linen cloth woven by her mother, while the other two silently sneaked up on Carl in the passage. Though she was young, Dola’s talent of weaving illusions was one that the elders insisted she begin developing immediately. She was rather proud of it herself, but as yet couldn’t design anything in mid-air. She still needed a “canvas” on which to draw her magical pictures in mid-air. Dola preferred to create beautiful pictures, but the elders had decreed that for distracting intruders, she had to make an ugly, boring image. As Carl turned the corner and looked the rest of the way down the passage, Dola held up the cloth.

Looking straight at her, all Carl could see was a store-room, dimly lit by bare bulbs hanging on cords. Scattered on the floor were elderly cardboard cartons festooned with cobwebs and dust. Concentrating very hard, Dola made the image of a great, black spider walk across the floor. “Huh?” Carl gasped, and then realizing he had spoken, clapped his hand over his mouth, willing the sound to come back. He knew he must have missed the entrance. It was somewhere behind him. He turned and began to feel his way back up the corridor. Moira and Borget were huddled together against the wall behind him, holding hands. As soon as Carl passed them, Moira squeezed Borget’s hand.

“Eeeeeeeeeaah!” shrieked Moira at the top of her voice.

“Hmmhmmhmmhmmmhahahahaha …” laughed Borget, in as sinister a tone as he could manage.

In spite of himself, Carl straightened up to his full height, and bashed his head on the ceiling. There was another burst of ghostly laughter. Clutching his head with one hand, he felt his way out of the tunnel and school room, hotly pursued by his banshees. He screamed curses back at them, but they only laughed. An elvish trick!

“I’ll get you, too,” he swore as he ran up the stairs. He wasn’t going to get his evidence this way, that was sure. The two young elves laughed and ran back to Dola to share the joke.

The Elf Master was thoughtful as they reported their guest’s identity and actions. “This one will bear watching,” he said. “A burglar is the only guest who does not knock.”

“But what would be here to steal?” Moira asked. “We have no fancy possessions.”

The elder elf shrugged. “Our privacy is very valuable,” he said with a sigh.

***

Chapter 34

Something of great importance was definitely going on in the village, but Keith was being kept in the dark. Worse yet, he hadn’t been able to catch Holl outside of class. Every time he tried to strike up a conversation, one of the others would head off the blond elf and lead him away from Keith. The tall student felt it was important that the two of them should talk. Quarterly income taxes would be due soon, and by Keith’s calculations, the amount would far exceed the balance presently in the checkbook which Holl held. Though to be fair, Holl had the forms in hand, too, and he had been faithful about sending them in on time. If it got too close to the deadline, Keith would simply swallow his pride and ask the Elf Master for intervention.

Since he was deprived of his friends in the village, he had been spending more time with Diane, but as his anxiety increased, Diane complained that he was becoming distant.

“You’ve got something on your mind. Is it the craft business?” she demanded as he walked her home from Mythology class one evening. “How’s it doing?”

“I’m not too sure.” Keith replied, running a mental inventory of his available merchandise and groaning over the total. He wished he could ask someone if everything would be ready when needed. Diane studied him, and he flashed her a quick smile. She shook her head.

“Now I know something is wrong. You used to have every single fact at the tip of your tongue. It’s a sign that you’re probably doing too much.” She leaned down from the steps and kissed him. “If you want to talk, or if there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

“Mmm.” Keith reached for another kiss. “That helped a lot. Good night.”

“Good night. Oh, I just remembered. Ms. Voordman wants you to stop by. She wants to talk to you. Good night again.”

Diane disappeared behind the frosted glass of the front door and Keith turned away into the twilight.

The evening was quiet, with the hint of scent in the air that proved spring had arrived and it meant business. A few late birds chorused with the crickets that lived in the cellars of the ancient brownstones. Keith thought of stopping in to see Ludmilla and telling her his troubles. Her kindness and her warm sympathy were very soothing to miserable souls. She didn’t live far from Diane’s. He smiled. The two of them would probably get along very well. They were both strong and caring women.

A few early bicyclists whizzed past him along the curb. Keith heard the whirr of spokes and a burst of swearing as one of them accidentally flashed in front of a pedestrian in the crosswalk. He glanced back. There were two men at the intersection about half a block behind him. One of them was still swearing, and his buddy was holding him back from giving chase. It would have been pointless. The bicyclist was probably half a mile away already.

Keith had expected more foot traffic on a nice night in a campus town, but he put it down to the indoctrination of the elves that he walked more than he ever had before he met them. Most of his Big Folk classmates still drove wherever they could. Self-locomotion was only used when nothing else was available. He thought it was weird that these same students would jog or run eight miles every morning before dawn, but they’d rather die than walk to the movies. He turned a corner onto Ludmilla’s street.

After a while, he began to have a funny feeling between his shoulder blades. He looked back. The two men were still walking about half a block behind him. They weren’t exactly casual strollers. There was purpose in their stride. He thought that he recognized their forms: they looked like the union president’s men.

It could have been a coincidence. Keith walked past Ludmilla’s brownstone and turned left on the next street, reluctant to lead them to his friend. The men kept pace. He turned another corner, and another, and still his shadows stayed the same distance behind him. The streetlamps sprang alight high over his head. It was growing darker, and Keith found that he was nearly back to the Midwestern campus. The buildings were closer together here. He could hide. Closing the distance between them, the two thugs passed under a light and Keith caught a glimpse of their faces. It was the union men.

Keith panicked and started for the alleyway between the Science Building and the faculty garage. His only thought was to find a security guard, who would drive his pursuers away. There was a cry behind him. He threw a glance over his shoulder. The men had seen him break into a run and sprinted after him.

Keith ran down the ornamental paths on the other side of the Science Building and leaped over a marble bench onto the lawn next to the library, avoiding the thorn bushes that flanked it. He could open the stone facade and escape into the elves’ village. If he was fast enough. He didn’t know how far behind him the men were. Safety was getting closer. He ducked around the side of the thorn hedge, and swung past the sycamore tree by the boulder. There was rustling in the shrubbery to either side of him. To his dismay, the thugs had separated. One was bounding toward him across the grass, and one was heading off his other escape route, past the main entrance to Gillington. He couldn’t open the facade now; he’d give the elves’ secret away.

Rough hands caught him from behind and held his arms as he turned back into the thorn bushes. Keith cried out and kicked, striking his captor in the kneecap. The man swore and kicked back a few times, staggering Keith to his knees with the angry blows to his calves and buttocks.

The other thug moved in slowly, like a boxer under water. He smacked one gigantic fist into the other. It sounded like a pistol shot. Keith winced. “Mr. Lewandowski has been waiting for your list. It is bad business to keep him waiting.”

“Sorry,” Keith grimaced. “I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“Wrong answer,” the man told him, and the giant fist took Keith in the stomach. He folded over, gasping, seeing black stars against the darkness.

One of the ham-hands clutched his hair and his face was dragged up, away from the agony in his midsection. “You get that list, or you’re going to have real trouble, you hear me?” Keith nodded weakly. The man let go, and Keith sagged down against the thug behind him. He stared at the ground, trying to get up enough strength to say something, when he noticed that the thorn bushes were moving.

For a moment he was so fascinated he forgot about his pain. Thin switches of thorn, with the buds of new leaves gleaming at alternating intervals along their lengths, were weaving out of the hedges, along the ground, and twining themselves up around the legs of the man in front of him. And the man behind as well. The vines pulled taut.

“Didn’t you hear me, punk?” The man grabbed Keith’s hair again. When his face came up, Keith could see two pairs of bright eyes behind the bushes. Or rather, one pair of eyes and one pair of spectacles. The Master, and possibly Holl. “We mean business.”

“Yeah,” Keith grated out, not recognizing his own breathless voice. “I see what you’re doing.” The spectacles in the shrubbery glinted. Message received. With a heroic effort Keith straightened up. “No sale. Tell him I’m not interested.”

“I’m warning you, punk,” the man growled. He reached for Keith with both hands.

With a swift jerk, Keith pulled both arms free from the grasp of the gorilla’s assistant and jumped to the side. Both men twisted to grab him, and ended up flailing their arms wildly in the air for balance. They fell forward, emitting ululations of pain and obscenities; the dormant thorn bushes had nothing on them as yet to conceal or pad the inch-and-a-half-long thorns as sharp as roofing nails that grew between the buds.

Keith was not going to wait around for them to get free. He took to his heels and fled, searching for the security patrol. A mighty wrenching and ripping of cloth, accompanied by much swearing, suggested to him that one of the thugs was abandoning modesty and stripping off his trousers to come after Keith.

While they struggled, he dodged between the hedges and pelted down the ornamental path to the street. To his everlasting gratitude, a patrol car rolled into view as he rounded the corner of the library building. He leaped into the street to flag it down. The car screeched over to the curb. He dashed over to it.

“Help!” Keith yelled in the window at the two security guards, waving back toward the library. “Officer, two flashers out there near the library! Muggers!
Perverts
!” Steadying riot clubs and flashlights on their belts, the uniformed officers followed Keith’s energetic pointing, and were just in time to intercept the union men as they appeared around the angle of the building clad in jackets, socks, shoes and undershorts.

Spotlighting their captives with flashlights, the guards shoved the men against the wall of the library and started to frisk them. The senior guard shone his flashlight on the torn backside of one man’s peacock blue shorts. “You a streaker, bud? I don’t think your butt’s so pretty that you ought to show it. I wanna see some I.D. What are you doing on this campus without authorization?” He noticed Keith hanging around behind him, and shone his flashlight into Keith’s face. “What’s your name, son?”

“Keith Doyle, sir. Power Hall.”

“Okay, Doyle. We’ll want a statement from you in the morning. In the meantime, get out of here. Thanks for alerting us.”

“Sure thing!” Keith waved a jaunty salute, half to the security officers, half to the invisible figures in the bushes. “Thanks again.”

“I’m gonna get you, kid!” the muscular thug shouted. “Now it’s personal!”

“Up against the wall, you,” the guard growled, shoving him back into place.

***

Chapter 35

“Keith!” Marcy came running up to him as he walked Diane toward the Science Building for her Biology class. “Oh, Keith, I’m so glad to see you!”

“Hi, Marcy,” Keith greeted her warmly, and turned to Diane. “Diane Londen, this is Marcy Collier. We’re former fellow sufferers in Sociology class last semester. Marcy, Diane.”

“Hi,” Marcy said, a little offhandedly. It was clear she had something on her mind, but didn’t know how to convey it to Keith.

“Pleased to meet you,” Diane returned somewhat suspiciously. Keith saw the danger signals flaring in Diane’s eyes, and hastened to ask Marcy, “So how’s Enoch?”

There was nothing false about the glow which lit Marcy’s face. “Wonderful. I had the most marvelous time over the break. My mother didn’t understand why I didn’t come home, but …” She smiled again and blushed. Beside Keith, Diane relaxed.

“So how’s everything else?” Keith asked meaningfully. “I haven’t seen the Folks lately. Most of them aren’t speaking to me.”

Marcy nodded her comprehension. “Keith, I think Carl is planning to do something horrible. He wrote an article, a lot of unsubstantiated rumors.…”

Keith nodded. “I know someone did. They thought it was me.” Diane, puzzled, looked from one to the other but didn’t interrupt.

“Well, it was Carl! There are going to be more. Lots more. Says he’s got
evidence
to support his case. If it wasn’t about
family
, you might almost call it an exposé.”

“Oh, no!”

“He’s got an investigative reporter coming, Keith. Steven Arnold. You’ve heard of him?”

“Yes, I have! Have you told the family?”

“You must have some strange family,” Diane commented to Marcy. “This Carl your cousin?” They both looked at her. “Sorry. Just an impression.”

“I can’t. They wouldn’t believe me.” Marcy sounded desperate.

“Well, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. And Carl, too,” Keith promised with a glint in his eye. “I’ll upset all of his plans.”

O O O

“Good evening, Keith Doyle,” Holl said quietly from the doorway.

Keith looked up from his books and beckoned the young elf into the room. “Hi! I’m glad to see you. You weren’t home last time I dropped in.”

“No. We have business to straighten out.” His manner was stiff and strained, and Keith felt instantly uncomfortable.

“May I offer you something to drink?” he asked formally, gesturing Holl to a chair.

“No, thank you,” just as formally.

“Holl, you can’t honestly believe that I’d do anything.…”

The elf held up a hand. “I know what I believe, but I must side with my folk. No other way would I be allowed to come here.” He brought out a handful of papers from his jacket pocket. “We have work to do.”

Keith struggled to keep his voice level and reasonable. “We have a problem. There are a lot of people we promised merchandise to, they’re going to get upset if we don’t deliver.”

“They are only in contact with you. It doesn’t concern us directly. I have brought these papers by to do you a favor, as it’s your name on them.”

He tried again. “Marcy stopped me today. She told me that Carl was working on exposing the village.”

“Do you wish me to carry this tale back, so the pressure will be taken from your back?” Holl asked angrily. “Do you have any proof?”

“There’s no pressure on my back,” Keith shouted, “except the IRS and a bunch of short-sighted short people!”

“Do you imagine that is funny?” Holl demanded.

“Look, I wanted you to come by today so I could give you the proof.”

“If you could do that,” Holl said, hope brimming in his eyes, “you’d restore their faith. How?”

“I’ve got a plan.” Keith pricked up his ears. “Carl’s going to stop by. We’ll let him hang himself. You hide in there.” He pointed to his closet.

“Not for you or any other Big—”

“Shh! I hear—”

Holl promptly interrupted him. “I want to hear more—”

“Shh!” He swept Holl up and shoved him into the closet. The next second, as he pushed the double doors shut, there was a rap on the door. Keith swung it open. Carl strode in, suspiciously looking this way and that. Keith wondered if he was looking for contraband legends.

“Yo, Carl,” he said, running a hand through his hair and hoping Holl hadn’t left any recognizable possessions in the room.

“Hello, Doyle,” Carl said, eyeing him with amusement. “You left me a note. You say you’ve got something for me?”

“Started any good rumors lately?” Keith asked, with his best village idiot expression.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Carl replied smugly. “Thanks for bringing out the Hollow Tree stuff, Doyle. The best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Like it, huh?”

“Yep. Just the sort of thing successful news articles are made of. Proof.”

“So you DID do those articles I read, huh?” Keith asked, his voice full of surprise and admiration.

“Yeah,” Carl admitted proudly. “And there’ll be more. I called Steve Arnold, the investigative reporter from the paper, to come and interview me on Friday about legends and stuff.”

There was a gasp from the closet. Keith’s smile widened. There was his proof, right from the horse’s mouth.

“I’d sure like to come and hear what you have to say to the guy,” Keith gloated, rubbing his hands together. “You were certainly around there a long time.”

Carl was clearly preening. “I figure I know enough. I tried to get into the other part of their complex twice without their knowing, once through the classroom and once through the wall but I muffed it.” He gave a shamefaced little laugh. “I nearly blew myself up with a couple of M-80’s. That wall must be really strong. They have got to have a really powerful mechanism. I bet the construction industry would like to know about it.” He eyed Keith. “If you helped me find out, I’ll cut you in for ten percent of my profits. I’d get you into the article, too.”

“Hey, thanks. I’ve always wanted to have my name in the papers.”

“No problem. It’s a piece of cake. Those elves are going to make me a lot of money. And they don’t even know it. They’re so dumb. Every time they wander around town and someone sees ’em I can sell another story to the papers. No wonder fairies are extinct.”

Behind Keith, the doors gave a convulsive shove. Keith threw himself backwards, dislodging Holl who, judging by the sounds, sat down backwards on Keith’s boots. There was some muffled swearing, and Holl started pounding on the doors from the inside. “Stop it,” he hissed.

Carl blinked at the closet Keith was guarding. “Is someone in there?”

“Yes,” said Keith, thinking quickly. “It’s my girl, Diane, and um, we were interrupted.… So if you wouldn’t mind?” He gestured toward the hall. “You know, nice talking to you and all.”

Carl smirked. “Try a rubber band on the door knob next time, Keith. This being subtle stuff just gets you in trouble. See you on the front page.”

“Whew!” Keith turned the lock and opened the closet. A furious Holl sprang out into the room and reached for the door.

“We’ll get him!” he vowed, starting after Carl. “It was him all the time. I’ll take care of him, the traitor! I’ll make him stink!”

“No, you won’t,” Keith cautioned, hauling him back. “That’ll blow everything. He wants you to be seen. It’ll give credence to his newspaper stories. If that happens, it’ll never stop. Help me, and we’ll destroy his credibility.”

Holl regarded him with shame. “You knew, Keith Doyle. Why didn’t I voice my trust in you, as I have before? I knew you were honest. On behalf of myself and my folk, I apologize.”

“Save it,” Keith said flippantly. “I might need a real apology someday.”

There was a cautious tap at the door. “Come in,” Keith called out without thinking. Pat pushed in.

“Yo. Oh hi, kid. I met Carl in the hallway. He said he was just by here. Where’s the girl?”

“Um, she went home,” Keith babbled out.

“Oh. Minute-man, huh? You know, Carl is starting to sound just like you,” Pat told him, putting his books on the floor and stretching out full length on the bed. “Legends and fairy tales. Too bad he doesn’t like you. You could babble at each other, and leave me in peace. Giving me all this razzmatazz about legendary elves. In fact, he claims the campus is crawling with the little suckers.”

“Do tell,” Holl inquired blandly.

There was something about the way the boy spoke that made Pat really look at him. Something was different about him than the last time the dark-haired student had seen him. New haircut? No. He wasn’t wearing a hat now, so you could see his ears. Boy, what big ears the kid had…! “Those ears!” Pat gasped, sitting up. “Doyle, what on earth? I’ve been thinking all this time that your nephew here …”

“Holl,” said Holl.

“… Yeah,
Holl
, is just a kid with a Trek complex, but you’re one of ’em, aren’t you?” he asked, taking in Holl’s appearance carefully for the first time. “Carl’s right. You’re not a kid at all.” Pat got up and looked closely at the side of Holl’s head, tugging on the point of one ear.

“Ouch,” Holl said distinctly. “They’re attached, you know.”

“They’re real,” Pat breathed. “God damn.”

“Yup,” Keith told him. “Holl’s one of the ‘legendary elves’ Carl was writing about. At least I call ’em elves,” he finished doubtfully. “Can’t seem to get any confirmation from them on a scientific classification.”

“It’s all empirical anyhow,” Holl said casually.

“Wow,” sighed Pat, sitting down on the coffee table. “I suppose he isn’t really your nephew after all.”

“Nope,” Keith said regretfully.

“Fear not. We’re most likely distant kin,” Holl assured him. “Ten thousand research books can’t be all wrong.”

“Hey, great,” Keith crowed, diving for pen and notepad. “Can I quote you on that?”

“How’s it feel?” Pat wanted to know.

“Never a problem to me,” said Holl. “I was born normal, same as you. Oh, no,” he held up his hands, palms out, seeing that Pat was misinterpreting his words. “Not an oversized babe like yourself. A normal, healthy squaller that drinks milk and pulls hair.”

“Keith,” Pat said faintly, “I take back almost everything I ever said about you.”

“Carl is causing Holl and his family a lot of trouble.”

“Who’s his family?” Pat looked at him in amazement. “You mean the stuff with the investigative reporter? And the Inter-Hall Council?”

“They live in the basement of the library. For more than forty years now,” Keith added. “Their village chief is the reason I passed Sociology last semester.”

“Jeezus!”

Holl nodded. “It’s not easy finding housing for eighty. We must be able to escape notice.”

Pat eyed Keith. “So what’s your role in all this?”

“I went into business to raise money so they could buy a place to live.”

“You’re the ones he was going to teach to fish.”

Holl bowed to Pat. “I understand we owe the suggestion to you. It’s a good one, and perhaps Keith Doyle would never have come to it himself.”

“Much obliged. You know,” Pat said thoughtfully, “if Carl had told you what was going on in the beginning, you would never have come out in favor of tearing the library down.”

“That’s just one score of many we need to settle with him,” Holl said seriously. “You see how
you
react to encountering me, and Keith trusts you. I’ve no wish to be the object of gapers.”

Pat was still overwhelmed. “After living with Keith for two years, I should be better prepared to deal with you guys. Although this is the first time he’s actually brought home a research project. What can I do to help?”

“We’re planning,” Keith said. “But now that I think of it, you could help out if you want to. I’m happy that I can ask you openly. Meantime, there’s a few more people we ought to get involved with this. What we need to do is to call a council of war.” They sat down to conspire.

O O O

“Why’d we have to meet down here?” Teri said, hugging herself and looking around nervously at the steam tunnel. “Brr! I got dirt on my new toreador pants coming down that ladder. I bet it’s all grease. I’ll
never
get it out.”

“Shh!” Barry hissed. “These tunnels echo. We had beer parties down here my freshman year.”

“Mine, too,” Pat said. He was still watching Holl and the other Little Folk with open fascination. “That was normal. This is freaky.”

The elves stood away from the humans in a knot under the light of a hanging bulb. Maura, Holl and Keith conversed quietly with the other students near the entrance. Marcy and Enoch stayed together off on the side between the two groups.

“May ve know vhy ve are assembled in this place?” the Elf Master requested in a quiet voice.

“Just a moment,” Keith said. “Are we all here?”

“Two more coming,” Lee’s voice said from above them. They all looked up, expecting to see the big student backing down the ladder, but to everyone’s surprise, including Keith’s, a small elderly lady descended first.

“Mrs. Hempert!” Keith exclaimed, his sibilants echoing in the lonely hall. Lee came down next, grinning.

“She didn’t want to be left out.”

“But naturally,” Ludmilla said, smiling at Keith. She walked over to Marcy, kissed her on the cheek, and gathered her protectively under her arm. “Hello, my dear.”

Keith gestured to them all, gathering them closer. “Here’s the problem,” he said. “The elf village is about to have its cover blown,” he had to hold his hands up to silence comment. “But not by me, or anything I’m doing. You’ll notice that Carl isn’t here. He’s the one causing all the trouble. Just recently, he published a few articles,” Keith nodded to Catra, who held up a folder of news clippings from her archives.

“I heard him confess it,” Holl called out.

The murmuring grew louder. Keith raised his voice just a little to be heard over it. “And on Friday, he’s going to talk to a reporter whose job is to ferret out facts and make a big deal about them. They call him an exposé writer.”

There was a lot of muttering as the two groups, still separate, mulled over the information. Keith waited a moment for them to digest it, and then went on. “Now, there’s been a lot of hard feelings lately, with everybody suspecting everybody else. The only way that we can fix that is with cooperation. In fact, that just happens to be the only way we can get Carl to back off.”