Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  He paused to catch his breath. He turned on the flashlight again and swung it in a slow circle. He called out, “Hello? Is that the Guardian?”

  He heard a growl, low and impossibly deep. A heavy, guttural sound strong with menace. It was difficult to imagine what sort of a throat could have made that sound.

  He turned off the flashlight, put it in his pocket, took out the brooch, held it at arm’s length and turned around slowly.

  “Anna gave me this. She said it’d be all right . . .”

  He thought he detected a shape off to his right. An enormous head, pointed ears, an impression of size, a flash that could have been two eyes . . .

  And suddenly there was a roar so loud and malevolent that it shocked him to the core. He fell down as though he’d been hit by a Taser.

  His leg was bent painfully under him. There was something huge standing over him, mouth open, revealing jagged nightmare teeth. It was an animal, he couldn’t tell if it was a wolf or an ape or some combination of the two, and he was scrabbling around in the snow trying to find the brooch, saying, “Just a minute, give me a minute, it’s all right . . .”

  His fingers closed over the brooch and he held it up in both hands, but the creature, the Guardian, was ignoring it. The creature seemed to be both furious and confused, and Harry realized the thing must have been expecting Anna.

  “She sent me!” Harry shrieked, though he knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t understand him. “She said I was to come here! She said it would be all right—”

  The brooch was slipping again out of his chilled hand. He tried to regain his grip, but felt the creature picking it up in his teeth. A moment later, Harry was cradled by huge, hairy arms, and he was being carried up an almost vertical slope that mounted precipitously toward the sky. He lost consciousness for a few moments after that. The next thing he heard was the sound of voices coming from somewhere above him. He saw the flare of a torch.

  “What is it, Finn?”

  “It’s the Guardian, Hans. It’s got something for us.”

  “This is not right,” Hans said, sounding ill at ease. “This has never happened before. Perhaps we should consult with the Lady.”

  “You know she’s away on her journeying,” the older voice of Finn said. “And anyhow, the instructions are clear. Whom the Guardian brings, we are to receive.”

  “Yes, but he’s not lifting him high enough. I can’t reach him.”

  “Let me try,” Finn said. “Hold on to my legs.”

  For a while, Harry didn’t hear anything but the Guardian’s impatient snuffling. Then he felt a hand grasp one of his wrists, then the other.

  “Have you got him, Finn?”

  “Aye, I’ve got him all right. Now to heave him up . . .”

  The hands tightened, tugged, and then something went wrong and Harry felt himself slipping, and then the hands resumed their grip, and Finn was shouting, “Keep hold of me, I said!”

  And Hans was saying, “I didn’t know you were going to jerk so sudden like that! Don’t worry, I have you!”

  Harry felt himself lifted up again. He lost contact with the warm fur of the Guardian. He was dragged over something rough. And then the hands released him and he lay back against a large rough stone.

  The last words he remembered hearing were, Hans, the big, younger man, saying, “You have the brooch?”

  “Never fear me losing that!” Finn said.

  Then Harry passed out.

  When Harry came back to consciousness, he was lying under a light coverlet in a high, wooden-framed bed, propped on big eiderdown pillows. The room was filled with golden daylight, and there was a pleasant smell in the air which he couldn’t immediately identify. In a room close to the one he was in, he could hear a young woman singing.

  Looking around, he saw he was in a gingerbready sort of room, filled with wooden carvings, some of quaint little gnomes, other more sinister—crude wooden carvings that might have been hacked out with an axe and looked like they represented some ancient, shaggy-haired deities.

  He stirred in the bed. A voice behind him called out, “Ah, he’s waking up!” This was Finn, the round-cheeked little fellow whom Harry remembered lifted him out of the Guardian’s arms at some cost to his own safety.

  He turned his head. Finn was seated on a stool behind him. He stood up, and he was no more than four feet tall. He was wearing ancient-looking clothing of brown and green. He wore suspenders, and old-fashioned shoes with silver buckles. He had a small clay pipe clenched in his teeth. He looked to Harry like some old Irish or Germanic or Scandinavian legend come to life.

  Another man came in from the other room. Harry vaguely remembered this one, too. It was Hans, big and stalwart, with a square, placid face, ash blond hair cut straight across the forehead. He looked dull-witted but amiable.

  They both called out, “Helke, come see, the stranger is awake!”

  They pounded each other on the back in congratulation, Hans nearly knocking Finn over. Harry had time to think, “So this is what they do for excitement around here.” And then Helke came in.

  She could be no more than eighteen or so. And she was beautiful, with long brown hair in which she wore a chaplet of wild flowers. Her beauty was all the more striking because of the innocence of her expression. She clapped her hands together. “Oh, you’re alive! I’m so glad!”

  The three of them joined hands and danced around the room. Then they clustered around the bed again, all of them talking at the same time.

  “I saw the Guardian was up to something,” Hans said. “He usually doesn’t visit us, you know. He stays outside our little valley, and he keeps bad things out. But this time he came right up to the parapet that separates our world from the other one, and I said to myself, ‘Ho, something’s afoot!’ And I went and called Helke.”

  “I came right away,” Helke said, “even though Hans was talking to me. Hans can be something of a nuisance, always wanting to take my attention away from my embroidery. But I saw at once that there was something serious afoot, so I called for Finn, the cobbler, who lives in the next house.”

  “It’s a tumbledown little house, but I love it dearly,” Finn said. “I was just sitting in front of the fire, smoking my pipe, with a pot of porridge warming in the coals, when Helke, who is like a daughter to me, came in and told me I must come at once. And so I did. And I saw the Guardian with someone in his arms, standing on the steep mountaintop below the parapet. He was lifting a person up to Hans, and Hans was trying to reach him, but the distance was too great.”

  “I saw it was a stranger,” Helke said, “and I knew we had to do something, because he would perish in the cold, and the Guardian could come no further. This was the first time he had brought a stranger to us.”

  “I understood at once how it could be done,” Finn said. “I told Hans to hold my ankles, and I climbed over the parapet and got a good grip on the stranger here. And even though it was very slippery and dangerous, I managed to pull him up. Yes, and I saved the brooch, too, for I knew the Lady would want to see it.”

  “And here you are!” Helke cried to Harry. “And you’re alive! Wait until the Lady hears of this!”

  At mention of the Lady’s name, the three sobered up immediately. “Yes,” Finn said, “we must tell the Lady, just as soon as she gets back. I hope she won’t think we overstepped ourselves.”

  “Oh, I hope she doesn’t think that!” Hans said.

  “I do so hope the stranger can stay with us!” Finn said. “He could be my apprentice. I could teach him to cobble shoes.”

  “Or I could teach him to be a woodsman,” Hans said.

  Helke shook her head gravely. “We have only one of each. You know the rule.”

  They looked at her sorrowfully. There was a long silence. Then Helke said, “Well, it’s all in the hands of the Lady. She will decide. For our part, we must let our stranger rest. I am preparing some good chicken soup for him. It will help him grow strong. Stranger, what is your name
?”

  “Harry,” Harry said.

  They all repeated the name to themselves several times. At last Helke said, “How exotic!” She turned to the others. “Let Harry rest now, and I will prepare his soup. You can visit him again later.”

  The two men, Hans, very large and lumbering, Finn, almost a dwarf, left the room, their faces wreathed in smiles. Helke straightened the coverlet over Harry and bent over him, smiling, her face heartbreakingly beautiful. Then she heard a bubbling sound from the kitchen, cried, “My soup!” and hurried away.

  Harry lay back contentedly on the big pillows. He had given up any thought of making sense out of all this. He just wanted to lie back and enjoy it. The three—Helke, Hans, and Finn—seemed to him like big children, or like brightly illuminated figures from a child’s drawing book. But he was all right with that. How wonderful they were, he thought, and there was a hint of condescension in that thought: they were wonderful children, and he was an adult who could appreciate them.

  LATER THAT DAY, after rich chicken soup and a nap, Helke helped Harry to the balcony to give him a look at the Village. He saw what looked like a Walt Disney set for an alpine fantasy—quaint little houses with peaked roofs set into curving cobblestoned streets, people in old-fashioned costumes, everything in bright colors. It was all a little unreal, and, perhaps for that very reason, deeply satisfying. Harry loved this place at once, not least because the alternative was death.

  He and Helke ate soup together in the evening, and Finn came by to show off his latest handiwork—boots of a highly polished leather, shaped and turned on his own lasts. Harry was glad to see him. He had taken to the little cobbler right away. He was less pleased to see Hans, who came by after Finn, and who hung around for a long time making calf’s eyes at Helke.

  The Lady was expected every day, but a week passed before she made her appearance. By that time, Harry was in love with Helke. More to the point, she seemed utterly in love with him. She couldn’t stand being out of his company. They held hands in the parlor and made impossible plans. And when the Lady appeared again, and sent for Harry, she went to her bedroom and cried.

  The Lady lived in a big house in the very center of the Village. It was a beautiful wooden house, painted in cool whites, blues and grays, and with a lot of ornamental woodwork. The windows were high, and were covered with long white curtains.

  Helke walked with him as far as the little gate that led to the walk up to the house, and here she stopped.

  “Aren’t you going in with me?”

  She shook her head. “It is not allowed. The Lady asked for you, not for me.”

  Harry walked up to the front door of the Lady’s house. The door opened by itself. He hesitated a moment, then walked in. He was in a hallway. It was dark, but there was a brightening at its far end. He knew he should follow the light and he did so. The light led him to a flight of stairs, and he went up, and then down a corridor, and at last into a room.

  There, seated in a straight-backed chair, was the Lady. She was neither young nor old. Harry’s first impression was that she was timeless. She was slender and slight. She had long, light-colored hair, and her face was a pointed oval. In her hand was the silver brooch that Anna had given him.

  “You got this from my sister, Anna,” the Lady said. “When you saw her, was she well?”

  “She seemed tired,” Harry said. “Maybe not too well. I urged her to come with me to this place of yours. She refused.”

  The Lady nodded. “She still holds by the original choice she made, back when she decided to stay with the life of Earth, and I elected to come here.”

  “Can you tell me where ‘here’ is?” Harry asked.

  “You won’t find my Village on any map. This place exists outside of everything you have ever known.”

  “Do you mean we’re not on the Earth?”

  “You’re still on the Earth, but it’s not the same Earth you’ve known. This Village is in its own little fold of time and space. You can’t get here from the Earth that you know. Except through the Guardian. As you have seen.”

  Harry was struggling to understand. “How can such a place exist?”

  “Places like the Earth exist in many planes of existence, and each plane is sealed off from the others. People of my race are able, under certain circumstances, to move from one plane to another. It is the destiny of my people, the Tuatha dé Danaan, to live very long lives in secret places, together with the humans we bring with us.”

  “That must confer a great power on you,” Harry said.

  “It would, if we were humans. But we are not. We are Tuatha, we are not aggressive, we are not ambitious, we have no expansionistic tendencies. We live by simple rules, and we protect those who live with us by those rules, invariably applied. My sister Anna chose to turn away from the ways of our kind. She was attracted to the tumult and splendor of human life, its variety, its immense emotional range, its joys and pathos.”

  “Tuatha dé Danaan,” Harry mused. “I’ve heard those words before.”

  “It is one of the words your race has for mine. We are also known as The Little People, the fairies, and many more titles. We have been with humanity since earliest times, but almost always in secret places like this one, hidden away from human life, its changes, its ambitions.”

  “This place is just what I want,” Harry said.

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to come this difficult way in vain,” the Lady said. “You will have to leave.”

  “Hey, wait!” Harry said. “I can fit in!”

  “It’s not a question of that. Here in the Village the rule is simple, as it is in all Tuatha-ruled places. The rule is, just one of everything necessary. We already have, for example, a cobbler, a woodsman, an embroideress, a cook—”

  “But do you have a pastry chef? What about a master dyer so we could get some other colors in here? I noticed you have only apple and walnut trees. I could introduce some other species. There’s a lot I can do that wouldn’t be duplicating anything.”

  The Lady laughed. “That is ingenious. But ingenuity is exactly what we do not want here. I am the one who says what is necessary, and that is what we already have. We don’t need anything else. You will have to leave.”

  “Besides,” Harry said. “Helke and I—well, we love each other. I want to stay with her. She wants me.”

  “I am sorry, that cannot be.”

  “It isn’t fair!” Harry said.

  She looked at him curiously. “‘Fairness’ is such a human concept. We Tuatha don’t deal in it at all. Ours is not a universe governed by the terms of morality. We simply follow our rules. Now leave me, Harry. Take the rest of the day to make your preparations. But when tomorrow comes, you must be outside, or I will bring in the Guardian to carry you out.”

  She handed him Anna’s brooch. “Take this. It has not bought you admission.”

  Helke was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for him when Harry returned. She sprang up as soon as he walked in the door, threw her arms around his neck, kissed him, then kissed him a second time, lingeringly. She sighed and snuggled up close to him, and Harry felt a great wave of affection come over him for this beautiful girl. Their kisses grew more frequent, they began to touch, to stroke, to linger. And then Helke pulled herself away with an evident effort.

  “Time for that later! A lot of time! For I love you most dearly, wonderful stranger who has come into my life. But tell me of your talk with the Lady! I’m sure she took pity on you, on both of us, and found a place for you in our Village. Tell me at once that it is so, and relieve my fears.”

  “If only I could!” Harry said.

  “Do you mean she didn’t find you a place?”

  “She said I would have to leave tomorrow morning.”

  “Did you tell her about us?”

  “Yes, I did,” Harry said. “She said it couldn’t be helped. She said only one of each kind is allowed here.”

  Helke went to an armchair and sat in it. “Of course she ord
ered you to go! Why should the Lady care about little Helke’s broken heart? Helke is only supposed to do embroidery every day. Not to fall in love. And if Helke discovers love after these endless years of embroidering, well, Helke can just keep her mouth shut about it.”

  Helke’s mouth took a sullen, discontented turn. She looked quite unattractive for a moment. But then she pulled herself together again, and a determined look came into her face.

  “It’s those rules of hers,” Helke explained. “One of everything and nothing more. The same things every day and nothing different. They’re well enough when this life is all you know. But when you discover love, as I have, when you fall in love with a living man from the outside world, well, it simply won’t do any longer.”

  “Hey, I don’t want to go,” Harry said. “It means my death if I go out there.”

  Helke nodded absently. She wasn’t thinking of Harry’s life or death just now. She had other things on her mind. Her own life, which she had suddenly became aware of. Her own happiness, which she had lost in the moment of finding it.

  Nothing changed in the Village. That was the idea, anyhow. But even in the short time since Harry’s arrival, some things had changed. Helke, for example. The lovely, innocent girl had fallen in love with Harry. That had brought about changes in her, not all of them nice ones. She was very affectionate toward him. Harry liked that, though he sometimes found it just a tad tedious. She was peremptory toward Hans, whose love for her was evident, and who seemed to find it natural to do whatever she told him to do.

  And Hans had changed, too, though it was difficult to put your finger on exactly how. He looked at Helke in a new way. Interest in her showed in his rather dull face. An awakened lust burned in his china-blue eyes. And Helke used this interest to get Hans to do what she wanted him to do. Hans was willing enough, but there was a cunningness about him now that didn’t exactly square with his former straightforward character. He seemed to be waiting for something. Something that would profit him. Without doing anything about it, he was beginning to progress toward his own self-interest.