The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three (54 page)

The speech I had rehearsed underground flew out of my head as the phone rang once, twice, three, four times. I had steeled myself to leave a dignified message when the magician's voice said, "Hello?"

"Hey," I said. My voice was so rough I coughed, and then repeated, "Hey."

"Hey," he said.

Silence stretched out.

"I want to come over," I said.

"Where are you?" he said. His voice was full of expectation. Maybe his wife still hadn't come home.

"Look, I can't—I don't want to—I can't, um, make out with you, okay?" I spat. I took a deep breath. "Can I just come over to talk?"

"Today isn't good," the magician said. "I'll see you at our usual time. Call me later in the week."

I was too shocked to respond. "Um. Okay," I said.

He hung up, and I stared at my phone's screen, as if an answer would appear to explain what had just happened. Nothing happened.

The car's engine took several tries before it turned over and slid into gear with a groan. I wasn't going to call him. I wasn't going back at my usual time. I didn't know what I was going to do. The car and I were moving; I hadn't noticed. I had exhumed myself, or sprouted. Farm land rolled by outside my window. The cornfields were dead and frozen, but in the corner of my eye they were seething beneath the frost. The earth was awake. So was I.

Joan Aiken was one of the great English fantasists. Born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge, Aiken worked for the BBC and the UNIC, before she started writing professionally, mainly children's books and thrillers including classics like
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
,
Black Hearts in Battersea,
and many, many others. For her books she received the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972). Aiken died in 2004. Her most recent book is the posthumously published,
The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories
.

The Armitage family had been to Cornwall for a week at the end of April. They did this every year, for April 30 was old Miss Thunderhurst's birthday. Miss Thunderhurst lived next door to the Armitages and the celebrations of her birthday grew louder and wilder every year. This year was her hundredth birthday and, as Mr. Armitage said, staying at home through the festivities was not to be thought of. So the Armitages went off to their usual rented seaside cottage in the little port of Gwendreavy where, if you wanted to buy a loaf of bread, you had to row across the estuary to South-the-Water on the other side. There was a wonderful secondhand bookshop in South-the-Water; when they were sent across for the bread Mark and Harriet put in a lot of time browsing there and came back with battered copies of treasures such as
What Katie Knew
,
The Herr of Poynton
,
Eric or Little Women
,
More About Rebecca of Manderley Farm
, and
Simple Peter Rabbit
. The family took their cat Walrus along with them on these holidays and he had a fine time catching fish.

So it was decidedly puzzling, when the family returned home after a five-hour drive, arriving in the middle of the night, to find a line of muddy cat footprints on the white paint of the front door, leading straight upwards, from the doorstep to the lintel.

"Cats don't walk up vertical walls," said Mr. Armitage indignantly, rummaging for the front door key.

"Here it is," said his wife, getting it out of her handbag. And she added, "I
have
seen Walrus bounce upwards off a wall when the jump to the top was a bit more than he reckoned he could manage."

"Granted, but not
walk up the whole wall
."

Walrus was sniffing suspiciously at the lowest of the footprints, and he let out a loud and disapproving noise between a hiss and a growl.

"Let's go in," said Mrs. Armitage hastily in case Walrus's challenge received an answer. "They are only kitten prints. And I'm dying for a cup of tea and bed."

"I'm surprised to see that marquee still there," grumbled her husband, carrying bags into the house.

Since Miss Thunderhurst's party had been planned for an extra big one this year, she had rented a marquee for the occasion, and got permission to put it in farmer Beezeley's field across the road. The car's headlights had caught the great grey-white canvas shape as the Armitages turned into their own driveway.

"So we still have all that nuisance ahead, poles clanking and trucks blocking the road while they take it down," growled Mr. Armitage, as ruffled as Walrus.

"Oh I expect they do that tomorrow while we're still getting unpacked," said his wife. "Here's your tea, dear. I'm going up."

But when Mrs. Armitage was halfway up the stairs, the most amazing noise started up outside the house. It seemed to be piano music played by giants. It was a fugue—the same tune played again and again, overlapping like tiles on a roof, in different keys, some high, some low.

"It's rather terrific," said Mark, impressed in spite of himself.

"Terrific? It's the most ear-splitting racket I ever heard! At three minutes to one a.m.? Are they out of their flagrant minds? I'm going across to give them what-for!"

"Oh, Gilbert! Do you think that's neighbourly? We don't want to be on bad terms with Miss Thunderhurst."

"How long does she expect her birthday to last? It's the fourth of May, dammit."

Mr. Armitage strode out of the front door, down the steps, across the road, and Mark followed him, curious to see what instruments produced that astonishing sound.

The door-flaps of the marquee were folded back. A dim glow inside was just enough to show that the big tent was completely packed with people—far more, surely, than even Miss Thunderhurst would have invited to her birthday celebrations—and Miss Thunderhurst knew every soul in the village.

"Where is Miss Thunderhurst? I want to speak to her," Mr. Armitage said to a shortish, stoutish person who met him in the entrance.

"Miss Thunderhurst has long since departed to her own place of residence."

"Oh,
indeed!
—well, who's in charge here? You are making a devilish rumpus and it has to stop. At once!"

"Oh, no, sir. That is not quite possible."

"Not possible? I should just about think it
is
possible! You are making an ear-splitting row. It has to stop. At once!"

"No, sir. To make music is our right."

"
Right?
Who the deuce do you think you are?"

"We are the Niffel people. Our own place of residence—Niffelheim-under-Lyme—has been rendered unfit for occupation. They set light to an opencast coal mine on top of our cave habitation, and the roof collapsed. Luckily there was no loss of life, but many were injured. Much damage. So we appealed to the County Council and they have found us this dwelling for the time. We are sadly cramped but it must serve until we find a more suitable home."

"Oh! I see! Very well. If the Council settled you here, that's different. I suppose you don't know how long you'll be here? . . . But you must,
immediately
, stop making that atrocious row. People need to sleep."

"No, sir. To make the music is our right. Is our need."

"Not at this time of night, dammit!"

"Sir, we are nocturnal people. Earthfolk. Gloam Goblins. Our work is done at nighttime. By day we sleep. Dark is our day. Day is our dark. Music is our stay."

"Who is in charge here? Who is your president—or whatever you have? Your head person?"

"I am the Spokesman. My name is Albrick," The small man said with dignity. "Our First Lady—our Sovereign—is the Lady Holdargh."

"Well let me speak to her."

"She is not here at this time. She travels. She seeks a place for us."

"Oh. Well—won't you, in the meantime,
please
stop making this hideous din!"

"No, sir. That we cannot do. It is our must." And as Mr. Armitage looked at him in incredulous outrage, he repeated with dignity, "It is our must."

"Come on, Dad." Mark plucked his father's arm. "We can't make a fuss if they are here by permission of the Council. I'll lend you a pair of earplugs."

Very unwillingly and reluctantly Mr. Armitage allowed himself to be led back across the road to his own house. There he was supplied with earplugs by Mark (who used them when practising with his Group) and a sleeping-pill by his wife.

Harriet, during this interval, had opened a tin of sardines for Walrus, who was upset and nervous at the traces of an intruder around his home. Mark and his father came back just as she was about to go out in search of them. Mr. Armitage stomped off gloomily upstairs, muttering, "Niffel people indeed!"

"What's going on?" Harriet asked Mark. "Couldn't Dad get them to stop?"

"No, he couldn't. They aren't Miss Thunderhurst's guests at all. They are goblins—displaced goblins."

"Goblins? I've never met a goblin. Who displaced them?"

"A burning coal mine. Coal is burned underground these days to make gas. The goblins were obliged to shift. They didn't seem unfriendly. Their spokesman was quite reasonable. They are nocturnal. They work at night. And they need music to work."

"I wonder what sort of work they do? Could you see? Were they doing it?"

"No, I couldn't see. There were a whole lot of them in the tent—several hundred at least. All crammed together in a very dim light."

"Well!" said Harriet. "Fancy having a group of hardworking goblins across the road. I can't wait to see what they make. I'll go across after breakfast."

"They'll all be asleep," her brother pointed out.

"Bother! So they will. But I suppose they start to get active after sunset, about half past seven. I'll go and call on them then. Now I'm off to bed. Come on, Walrus."

But Walrus was going out, to watch for Goblin cats, and, if necessary, beat them up.

The full moon had just worked its way round the corner of the house, and was blazing in at Harriet's bedroom window, throwing a great square of white light across her bedroom wall.—Harriet had once sat in a train opposite two women who were evidently sisters in some religious order. They wore black habits and white wimples. They were laughing a great deal and talking to each other nonstop in some foreign language that was full of s's and k's. Harriet could not at all understand what they were saying, but she somehow took a great liking to them and, when she got home, drew a picture of them from memory and hung it up on her bedroom wall. Two or three months later she noticed an interesting phenomenon: when the moon shone on her picture, she could see the two women's hands move about and sometimes catch a little of what they were saying. Now, too, she could partly understand the language, but one of the two women, the spectacled one, had a bad stammer, and Harriet only caught a word here and a word there.

"Refugees—immigrants—l-l-look after them somehow—p-p-poor d-d-dears—"

Tonight the moonlight was fully on the picture, and the two women were deeply engrossed in what they were saying.

"Hardworking—industrious—deserving."

"No place for them here—"

"Only l-l-lead to t-t-trouble—"

Harriet went and stood in front of the picture. "Excuse me—" she began politely. Then she realised that she was blocking off the moonlight from the picture and the ladies stopped talking and moving their hands.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt," said Harriet, and stepped to one side. But now a cloud had drifted across the moon and the ladies remained silent. Harriet waited for ten minutes, but by the time the cloud had floated away, the moon had moved also, and no longer shone in at the window.

"I'll try again tomorrow," thought Harriet, and went to bed, for she was tired.

In the morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Mark and Harriet raced across the road to inspect the new occupants of farmer Beezeley's meadow.

The Gloam Goblins were packing up their work materials and preparing their evening meal. They were evidently smiths and potters. They had portable kilns and forges.

"They seem to use solar heat," said Mark. "It's very adaptable of them! If they lived underground up to now they must have changed their habits very quickly."

"Oh look," said Harriet. "There are stalls with things for sale."

The things for sale were lace made of filigree iron, exquisitely fine and light; also iron jewellry, and pottery—bowls, plates, cups, jugs, also very light and delicate, ornamented with a dark-green and white glazed pattern resembling the foam on a wave crest.

"Ma would like these," said Harriet. Mrs. Armitage collected china and had brought back from Cornwall an enormous blue-and-white platter with a romantic landscape on it which she had found in a junk shop in South-the-Water.

"I'll come back later with some money and buy one of these," Harriet told the little woman behind the stall, who smiled and nodded.

The Goblins were about half the size of humans. Their skin was brown and weather-worn as if at sometime they had lived out of doors for centuries. Their faces were rugged, rather plain but friendly and honest-looking. Their manners were somewhat abrupt, as if all they wanted was to be left alone to get on with what they were doing. Mark and Harriet now felt rather embarrassed and apologetic at their plan to inspect the new arrivals like creatures in a zoo. They retreated from the doorway, taking in as quickly and unobtrusively as possible all the activities that were going on: pots of vegetable stew being stirred over small fires, bedding rolls pulled out of sacks and spread on the ground, children's faces being washed in basins of water. There were cats and dogs, too, of a size to match their owners.

"You don't mind us just looking?" Mark said to Albrick, the man who had talked to his father. Albrick was evidently a smith; he was packing up a small anvil and a portable forge and cooling off his tools in a pail of water.

"Very well cannot stop you, can I?" said Albrick gruffly. But he added, "You are alright. But some folk do more than just look—they want us to go. Where we stopped before here, we needed guards with swords and pistols. And the young ones needed to go out with guards. Folk in this village not bad—but not welcoming. What can we expect?"