The two elves’ eyes met. “We don’t travel much,” Holl told Keith. “In fact, this is my first time outside town.”
“Ever?” The blond elf nodded. “Why don’t you travel?” Keith asked curiously.
“Well, why should we?” Holl countered. “Everything I love or want is right there in the compound. There’s no need for me to stray far beyond it. The school has kindly supplied experimental farm fields from which we can … borrow … without going too far. I can’t speak for anyone else, though.”
“I don’t mind traveling,” Enoch mused, looking up at the tracery of tree branches on the overcast sky. “So long as I can go home again afterwards.”
O O O
“There was another break-in attempt,” Holl told Keith. “The stonework is marked where our burglar tried to chisel his way in. The old ones are half panicked.”
“I don’t blame ’em,” Keith said, concerned. “It sounds like someone has seen you guys going in or out. Whoever it is might be watching us. You have to be more security conscious for a while. Especially until the Historical Society comes through.”
Enoch forgot his nervousness and scowled. “I’ll come and go as I please.”
Instead of looking alarmed, Keith smiled indulgently. He felt like a collegiate Cupid. “How’re things going with Marcy?”
“Oh, well, well. We get along just fine.” Noticing Keith’s wry look, Enoch asked, “Is there anything wrong with that?”
“No, nothing, nothing,” said Keith, a grin spreading across his face, as he swung the car around a corner. Wet gravel rattled under the tires. “Just looks to her roommates like she’s dating her little brother’s best friend.”
“Hmm,” said Enoch thoughtfully, studying his reflection in the car window. “Think I should grow a moustache? I’ve considered it anon.”
Keith imagined a big black handlebar moustache on Enoch’s face, and sputtered helplessly. He didn’t want to hurt the little guy’s feelings. Their detente was too recent to stand a fresh breach. But his imagination was too much for him, and he burst out with a hearty laugh. To his surprise and joy, Enoch joined in.
“It is a funny picture,” Enoch admitted. “But what do you think?”
“No,” Keith decided firmly. “Let ’em talk.”
“Aye, I’ll do that,” Enoch grunted, satisfied.
O O O
It took them several tries before they found a lumberyard with wood the elves considered to be suitable which was also willing to sell wholesale to an unestablished and undocumented company. Keith waited only long enough in each one to let the other two browse. If they gave him a signal of approval, he’d approach the owner. Many times, Enoch would give the place one sniff and stalk back outside to the car. Keith had to admit that he couldn’t tell what it was the little guy sensed, but they had to work with whatever it was he bought.
They reached Barn Door Lumber when the watery sun was at the top of the winter sky. Enoch and Holl fell to examining this place with alacrity, so Keith sought out the owner, Fred Orr, about a discount. Mr. Orr was a burly man, a couple inches over six feet tall, and almost that much width-wise, with his belly trying to make it six and a half. He much preferred to keep his profits intact. Keith, with a good deal of diplomacy aided by his natural enthusiasm, described the project the wood was needed for, and managed to negotiate a small cut in price. He promised they would present a resale number the next time they stopped in. “We really need the wood right away,” he explained plaintively.
“Well … okay,” the owner said. While they were talking, Holl and Enoch, both respectably hatted, wove between skids of boards and panels, picking out the best of the raw materials. The man watched them running their hands over the timber and smelling it closely to determine its age. He rocked back on his heels and gave a thoughtful sniff. “Okay,” he said, squinting meditatively at Keith. “You look honest enough. But no credit. Cash now and you’ve got a deal.”
“Will you take a check?” Keith asked, relieved.
“Uh-huh. If you’ve got some I.D.”
The pleasantly fresh smell of sawn wood made Keith breathe in again deeply. The dust tickled his nose, threatening to make him sneeze. He followed the proprietor to the rolling metal cart on which the two “boys” had stacked their choices. The bill was calculated, and Keith wrote out a check, cringing at the amount, which brought the balance for Hollow Tree Industries very close to zero. Holl watched closely, his head at Keith’s elbow, doing the mathematics in his head and pointing out where he made mistakes in addition. Mr. Orr grinned at them, and held the door as they carried their purchase outside.
“Couple of smart kids you’ve got there,” he told Keith.
“You bet,” Keith said. “Sometimes they act about four times their age.” Enoch stepped on his foot passing through to the parking lot. “Ouch!”
O O O
With the wood secured under the sheet of oilcloth, Keith felt more relaxed, but hollow inside. A glance at his watch surprised him. It was already after one o’clock. He hadn’t eaten in hours. “How about some lunch?” Keith asked the others, now seated next to him, as he started the car. The elves again exchanged glances.
“We didn’t bring any with us,” Holl said apologetically.
“No.” Keith studied their faces curiously. “I meant we could stop in a restaurant. Personally, I’m starving. Yes?”
“Yes!”
They rolled away from Barn Door Lumber, and started looking out for a good place to eat.
O O O
They pulled into the parking lot of Grandma’s Kitchen, a franchise family restaurant that Keith favored, about fifteen miles outside of town. It was the perfect place for college students, who tended to use it as a distant rendezvous, or a way station on long trips back and forth to school. It was clean, well lit, kept open 24 hours a day, and was fairly cheap in spite of the high quality of food it served. There were a few snickers from the back seat when he drove in. The place was a study in plastic quaintness. It was built to draw potential diners to it by oozing wholesomeness. In point of fact, it looked silly. The green and yellow building facade, visible from a considerable distance, resembled a bastard cross between a Swiss chalet and a thatched cottage.
There were no other students there from Midwestern that Keith recognized. He wondered what he would have done if Carl or Lee, or any other members of the “I Hate Keith” Society had been eating there that day. Probably spun on his heel and walked out again. If no one stopped him. He was grateful that he didn’t have to find out. The last thing he wanted to do was give the elves their first experience in dining out at a McDonalds.
“Kind of a nice clientele we’re building up,” Keith said in an undertone, while they were waiting to be seated. “Eleven customers, and six or seven others that are possibles, with five more who said they’d wait and see if we died or not. Not shabby for amateurs, huh?” He felt a small surge of pride as the two elves exchanged approving glances. He unzipped his jacket but kept his hat on to keep the restaurant staff from particularly noticing that the “boys” hadn’t removed theirs. They fumbled with the wooden buttons on the front of their coats, looking around curiously at their surroundings.
“So, the charm worked,” Enoch said to Holl, also keeping his voice low. Holl nodded agreement.
“Charm? What charm?” Keith asked. The elves looked guilty, but finally Enoch spoke up.
“Well … it enhances the attractiveness of things, if you know what I mean.”
“Is that why everyone made orders so quickly?” Keith exclaimed, disappointed. “I thought it was because they liked the products.”
“Well, I’m sure they did, but we wanted to make certain,” Holl said. “We have a strong stake in the success of this venture. Have we done anything wrong?”
“Mmm—” Keith squirmed. “Well … not really. But it isn’t completely ethical. I think.”
“According to the marketing studies, most companies use a form of suggested selli
ng for their products,” Enoch pointed out. “Doyle Dane Bernbach uses images considered to be unexpec—”
“Shall we stop it?” Holl asked, interrupting his friend. “We meant only to help.”
Keith sighed. “How strong is this charm?”
“Not very. By definition, it’s a compulsion, though not a strong one. What it does is to persuade one to drop the inhibitions against seeing the true beauty and usefulness of a thing. More of a simplification than anything else.”
“Doesn’t falsely enhance the item, does it?” Keith asked. “They call that ‘fraud,’ you know.”
“Oh, not at all. An enhancement would make a shortbread mold more profoundly a shortbread mold, but not a more attractive one.”
Keith thought about it for a moment. “I guess you can keep doing it. Those things wouldn’t be yours if they didn’t have a little magic in ’em.”
The hostess signaled to them, and showed them to a table by the window. The two elves gazed around them with avid interest, taking in the brightly colored vinyl-upholstered benches in the booths, the glass-roofed salad bar, and the six-foot-high glassed-in carousel of desserts that spun under lights in the center of the restaurant.
“Look at that,” Holl nudged his friend. “Vardin would eat himself sick.”
“Aye, he would,” Enoch said, trying to contain feelings of panic. This place was stuffed full with more Big Ones than he had ever seen together in one place. He stuck close to Keith, whom he trusted, and slid into the deepest part of the semi-circular booth by which the hostess was waiting. She beamed down at him, seeing a shy twelve year old boy. He managed a sickly smile in return, and accepted the tall plastic-coated menu she handed him. It was like a picture book of food. The number of choices was overwhelming.
Holl was already perusing his, appearing to compare the appearance of Grandma’s Kitchen’s food favorably over that of the Power Hall cafeteria. Keith didn’t blame him.
On the way over to their table Keith had observed the size of the portions being served to other customers. They were enormous. He remembered suddenly how little his two guests ate. A little self-consciously, he thought of his favorite meal at Grandma’s Kitchen: a broad ring of thick-cut French fries surrounding a hamburger covered in cheese and bacon strips that was almost eight inches across. To him or one of his other friends, that would be a decent snack. To Holl or Enoch, it might be a little daunting. When the waitress came by, a tall woman with bleached hair and a dark vestigial moustache, Keith appealed to her to bring a couple of kiddie menus. “They’re growing boys,” he said amiably, “but not that fast.” The waitress smiled maternally down at them and departed.
Enoch let out an opened-mouth squawk, but Holl burst out laughing. Abashed, Keith pointed surreptitiously to the tables around them, and both had to agree he had a point.
“Any of those’d be a week’s food in the village,” Holl calculated. “We’ve never had a bought meal before.”
“Great,” Keith said, passing them the smaller children’s menus. “Order whatever you want. Try something new. How about chocolate chip pancakes?” He looked up to find both of them studying him uncomfortably. “What’s the matter?”
“We don’t know how we’ll repay you for all your help,” Holl said seriously. Keith didn’t think he meant just the meal.
“Repay me?” he scoffed, deliberately misconstruing Holl’s meaning and keeping his tone light. “What’s with these ‘pay me backs’? I’m not laying anything out but some time. Look,” he said, pouncing on an inspiration, “this lunch is a business meeting, so it qualifies as an expense. As such it comes out of the company treasury. And, since you own the company, you’re really taking me out. Can the company afford it? Shall I pay you back later?” The two elves frowned at one another.
Enoch said gravely, “We would be most honored if you would join us for lunch. Please order anything you want. You may use the big menu. You growing boys need to eat.”
“Thank you,” Keith smiled with equal gravity. The waitress reappeared as soon as they closed the menus, and took their orders to the kitchen.
“We haven’t heard lately about the famous paper you had to write or die, Keith Doyle,” Holl chided him. “The one about legendary peoples, specifically ourselves.”
“Oh, yeah,” Keith laughed self-consciously, caught off guard. “I guess I haven’t thought about it too much lately. It’s more fun to rub elbows with the real thing. I may write it one day. Maybe,” he said dreamily, “as a series of reminiscences. My memoirs.” He snapped out of his daydream when Holl gave him the raspberry.
“You missed a lot in your research,” Enoch pointed out. “There’re a lot of articles in old magazines. All rubbish, of course, but scholars consider it to be proper research only if it’s written.”
“Of course,” Keith agreed politely. “Just like Dr. Freleng, my other Sociology professor. But I’m too busy to write right now. Business, you know.” The waitress arrived and plunked platters of food down before them.
Over their lunch, they chatted about the class and their classmates. Keith listened with interest as the two elves discussed facets of his fellow students that filled him with admiration for their perception. Teri acted shallow, but it was all for show. She actually had a fine brain for spatial mathematics. Barry was afraid of women, probably because of his family life. Lee used the class as a sort of security blanket, and the Little Folk were worried about his dependency, seeing as how he was supposed to graduate in June.
Around a mouthful of hamburger, Keith inquired, “Why isn’t the class bigger? I can think of dozens of kids who need tutoring as badly as I do, but there’s only the privileged ‘we.’”
“Because those of us in it stand a chance of actually learning something from what we’re told. Would you assimilate as much if the class was big?” Holl asked.
“Probably not,” Keith admitted frankly. “I always go to sleep in lecture halls. I meant, why haven’t the students brought in more students?”
Enoch scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably, and looked out of the window. Holl studied his sandwich for inspiration. “It’s got to do with the same sort of … compulsion that’s on the shortbread cutters,” he explained. “One comes in, and he asks the next one, and that one invites the one after that.”
“Oh,” said Keith. “Like a chain letter. You’re invited, and you eventually invite one person to join the class, and then they ask one person. How do you know who to choose? And how do you keep from asking more than one person?”
“Well, it sort of happens to you,” Enoch explained, making sure no one was in earshot. “When the need is greatest, the newest of you gravitates toward the student in need, and then that one comes in. Marcy fought asking you, partly because she is … inhibited as she is. One day, you’ll find someone who needs us. Whether or not you know they need help.
“The Master accepts only serious students. We have had a bad one or two, but the ones who come to gape never stay long. Their memory fades away, until they don’t really believe that they’ve seen us.”
“They might remember a discussion group, but to them, it was taught by a short man with red hair who brought his kids with him to class.” Holl indicated Enoch and himself. “Not very interesting.”
“Ah,” Keith nodded, comprehending some of it. “A geas. This magic stuff is complicated. But interesting. I want to know all about it. Can you grant wishes?”
Enoch sputtered. “Do we look like genii?”
“Nope,” said Keith gaily. “Leprechauns.”
O O O
By the time they left the restaurant the sky had cleared. Keith calculated there would still be two or three hours of sunlight. “If you’re not in a hurry to get back, I could just drive you around the countryside for a while. Since this is your first look-see at the world outside Midwestern, that is.” He gestured invitingly at the road ahead.
“Yes,” said Holl, without hesitation.
“Absolutely.” Enoch no
dded enthusiastic agreement.
At random, they took a road leading west, and turned corners when it pleased them. For the most part, Keith followed his nose, keeping track of the route only enough to be able to find his way back. Some snow had already fallen hereabout, but it remained only in gullies and hillsides sheltered from the sun. In the cold wind, the countryside looked lonely, but there was an occasional house set far back from the road with cheery yellow lights showing through the curtained windows. Cats watched them go by from comfortable seats on top of gateposts and mailboxes, or folded into gaps in the bare, black flowerbeds. Dogs barked at them from fenced yards, and one bold collie, smiling, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, paced the car along one long slow stretch. On more than a few properties, “For Sale” signs quivered hopefully in the wind over fields cleared of crops. Barns with the paint peeling off the walls appeared unexpectedly over the rise, and a few cold cows huddled together on the ground in the corner of a fenced meadow.
A few miles after passing through a small town with only two traffic signals and one strip of stores on its main street, they took a sharp right turn onto a half-paved county road that led them up a low hill past leaf-less trees. Keith spotted a narrow track leading off to the left that wound around, diving into the crease between two high fields where the cornstalks lay in broken rows. They crossed a bridge over a shallow brown river, and watched a tributary flowing diagonally away from them the length of the heavily wooded lot on their right. Lights winked from the windows of the big house, standing on its own hill deep within the boundaries, almost invisible behind the trees. There was a “For Sale” sign next to the road there, too. Holl, Enoch, and Keith sighed in unison.
“Nice place,” Keith decided, pulling over to study it.
“That’d be a perfect place to live,” Enoch said longingly.
“It would,” Holl agreed. “It has good spirit about it.”
“Yeah, but it’s probably fifteen hundred dollars an acre, and we don’t know how big the parcel is. Land isn’t cheap, especially with its own buildings.”
Mythology 101 Page 19
