Firebirds Rising

by Sharyn November

  That’s because you were dreaming, she told herself.

  But it certainly felt as though it had been real.

  She lay in bed for a while, remembering the punky six-inch-tall Elizabeth with her neon blue hair and enough attitude for a half-dozen full-size girls.

  It would have been cool if she had been real.

  After a while T.J. got up and turned on her computer. While she waited for it to boot up, she knelt on the floor where, in her dream, a door had opened in the baseboard. She couldn’t see any sign of it now—except for maybe there. But that was probably only where one board had ended and another had been laid in.

  When she returned to her computer, she went online and Googled the word “Little.” Her screen cleared and then the first ten entries of two hundred and fifteen million appeared on her screen.

  Well, that hadn’t been a particularly good idea.

  She tried refining the search by adding “people” and got links to toy lines, the Little People of America site, an archaeological news report on the finding of the remains of a miniature woman on an island in Indonesia—except since her head was the size of a grapefruit, she wasn’t exactly tiny. T.J. scrolled through a few more pages, but nothing was useful, even if there were only some forty-seven million hits this time.

  “Little magical people” got her thirty-seven hits that were closer to what she was looking for, but nothing that resembled Elizabeth.

  What? she asked herself. You were expecting something from a dream to show up on the Net?

  She tried “Littles” and that was no help either.

  Finally, she tried “little people living behind the baseboards” and was surprised when something came up—a site called “Fairies, Ghosts and Monsters.” It sounded pretty Game Boy-useless, but she clicked through anyway. It turned out to be run by a professor who used to teach at one of the local universities and contained an odd mix of stories and scholarly essays.

  She found the Littles a few pages in, under “miniature secret people.” The article cited literary references like Gulliver’s Travels and Mistress Masham’s Repose, the Borrowers of Mary Norton’s books, the Brownies from a Sunday comic strip that was long gone, and the Smalls from a book written by some old English guy named William Dunthorn.

  There were two anecdotal entries, both about little people who lived behind the baseboards. One talked about “pennymen,” who turned into pennies when people looked their way. And then there were the Littles. The way they were described seemed very close to what Elizabeth had told her. There was even a children’s picture book about them: The Travelling Littles, written and illustrated by someone named Sheri Piper, who, like the professor whose Web site this was, also lived in town.

  According to Piper’s book, Littles had originally been birds who got too lazy to fly on after they’d found a particularly good feed. Eventually, they lost their wings and became these little people who had to live by their wits, taking up residence in people’s houses, where they foraged for food and whatever else they needed.

  She Googled the author, but the only links that came up were to eBay and used-book stores. Apparently, the book was long out of print, although she had written a number of others. None of those seemed to be about Littles. At least, she couldn’t tell from the few links she clicked on to get more information.

  She made a note of the author’s name and the title of the one relevant book so that she could look them up at the library, then went to have a shower and some breakfast.

  When she came into the kitchen her mother was just about to let Oscar out the back door.

  “Don’t let him out!” T.J. cried.

  What if he came upon Elizabeth’s scent and tracked her down to where she was hiding?

  Her imaginary scent, the logical part of her corrected.

  “Why ever not?” her mother asked.

  “Because…I…I want to brush him first.”

  Her mother gave her a look that said, “When have you ever willingly brushed the cat?”

  “Can you just leave him in?” T.J. asked. “Just until I’ve had breakfast and can brush him.”

  “Stop you from taking on a responsibility?” her mother said. “Not this mom.”

  “Ha ha.”

  But her mother left the cat inside. Oscar complained at the door, then shot T.J. a dirty look as though he was well aware of who was responsible for his lack of freedom before he stalked off down the hall.

  T.J. poured herself some orange juice and took a box of cereal from the cupboard before joining her mother at the kitchen table.

  “We’re almost out of milk,” her mother said. “Better use it before your dad gets up and takes it for his coffee.”

  “I will.”

  “So what has you up so early? Surely not just to brush the cat.”

  Saturday morning everyone in the house slept in except for T.J.’s mother. Back on the farm, T.J. had gotten up early, too, but she didn’t have Red to look after anymore, and so had gotten into the habit of staying up late at night and sleeping in as long as possible.

  T.J. shrugged. “Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”

  “Well, I’m happy for the company.”

  T.J. shook cereal into her bowl. She looked over at her mother as she reached for the milk.

  “So, when you were a kid,” she said, “did anyone ever take something away from you that you really, really cared about?”

  Her mother sighed. “Please, T.J. I know you feel terrible about having to give up Red. Believe it or not, I feel terrible about it, too. But we have to move on.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I was wondering about you. What did you do? How did you move on?”

  Did you make up imaginary six-inch-high Littles to help you cope? she added to herself.

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “I don’t know. I…”

  T.J. knew she couldn’t talk about the Littles. For one thing, she’d promised not to. For another, her mom would think she was nuts. So she improvised.

  “It’s just there was this girl in the park yesterday,” she said, “and we got to talking about…you know, stuff. And it turns out she was running away from home because she hates her parents, and the reason she hates them—or at least the main one, I guess—is that they made her get rid of her…um, pet dog that she’d had forever. So I was wondering—”

  “What’s her name?” her mother asked. “We need to tell her parents.”

  “Mom. We can’t do that. It’s not our business.”

  Her mother shook her head. “Sometimes we have to involve ourselves in other people’s lives, whether they want us to or not.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about her. I don’t even know if she lives around here. I just met her in the park and she was already on her way.”

  “T.J., this is serious.”

  “I know. But it’s something that’s already done, and that wasn’t the point of it anyway.”

  Her mother studied her for a moment.

  “Do you hate us?” she asked.

  T.J. shook her head. “I get mad whenever I think of how you made me lose Red, but…I don’t know. It’s not like it’d make me hate you.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Not like I hate living here.”

  “We’ve been through the why of it a hundred times.”

  “I know. I was just mentioning it, since you brought it up.”

  Her mother gave her a look.

  “Okay,” T.J. said. “So I did. But you still didn’t answer my question.”

  “What exactly are you worried about?”

  “That I’ll end up hating you like this Elizabeth does her parents. So that’s why I was wondering if something like this had ever happened to you.”

  “No,” her mother said. “It never did. And don’t think either your father or I are even remotely happy that things have turned out this way. We know how much you loved that horse.”

  “Red. His name’s Red
.” T.J. had to look down at her cereal and blink back the start of tears. Her mother’s hand reached across the table and held hers.

  “I know, sweetheart,” she said. “I really am so sorry.”

  “I guess.”

  “And I don’t think you’ll start hating us—at least I hope to God you won’t, because that would be just too much to bear. But if we can still have a talk like this, then I think we’re okay.”

  Except they weren’t, T.J. thought. At least she wasn’t.

  She didn’t hate her parents. But that didn’t help the big hole in her chest where Red used to be.

  T.J. dutifully brushed Oscar after breakfast—a chore that neither of them appreciated very much—then reluctantly, she let him outside. Surely, Elizabeth would have taken cats into account and hidden herself away in some place where they wouldn’t be able to find her. Assuming Elizabeth was even real.

  And speaking of real…once she’d closed the door behind the cat, she went up to her room and knelt down by the wall where last night a little door had opened in the baseboard.

  “I don’t know if you’re still in there,” she said, “or if you can even trust me—but I just want you to know that no matter what happens, your secret’s safe with me. I mean, it’s not like someone hasn’t already written a book about you, and you can be looked up on the Web. But I won’t add my two cents—not even if someone asks me, point-blank. I already lied to my mother about you, and I hated having to do that. I’ve never done it before. But that’s how seriously I take keeping my word.”

  There was no reply.

  Well, she hadn’t exactly been expecting one. It was just something she felt she’d needed to say.

  A week went by, and then another. T.J. didn’t hear any more noises behind the baseboards. She didn’t see any little people, or even signs of them. She did find The Travelling Littles at the library and read it. The book didn’t tell her any more than she’d already known from Elizabeth and the Web site. It was kind of a little kids’ story, but she liked the artwork. The Littles in the pictures were old-fashioned, but old-fashioned in an interesting way.

  Goody Two-shoes, she remembered Elizabeth saying.

  Maybe she should get a new haircut—something cooler.

  She laughed at the thought. Right. Get a makeover because of a put-down by an imaginary, miniature girl.

  But that was the odd thing about it. Although she was about ninety-five percent sure she’d just dreamed the whole business, the memory of it didn’t go away the way dreams usually did. She kept finding herself worrying about Elizabeth, out there in the big world on her own. And what about her family? What had happened to them? Had they moved? They must have moved, because it was so quiet behind the walls now. Even Oscar had stopped staring at the baseboards.

  But maybe they were just being really, really careful now.

  They had some of Sheri Piper’s other books in the library, and she was surprised to find a second book about the Littles. It was called Mr. Pennyinch’s Wings and was about how the Littles regained their ability to turn into birds. She wondered if Elizabeth and her family knew about it.

  Of course, it was just a book. That didn’t mean the story was real.

  It didn’t even mean Littles were real. Just that someone was writing about them.

  She was true to her word and never said anything to anyone. The only time she felt guilty was when she was talking on the phone to Julie. They’d never had secrets before and now she had a Big One.

  Maybe this was what happened when best friends were separated by a distance. You started keeping things to yourself, then you started calling each other less. And then finally, you stopped being best friends. She hoped that wasn’t going to happen, but there’d already been a day last week when she hadn’t phoned or messaged Julie.

  The thought made her feel sad and sent her into a whole blue mood that started with Julie, and took her all the way back to the memory of the day they’d had to walk Red into the horse trailer and take him to his new home.

  The closest she came to telling Julie was a week after she’d had her encounter with Elizabeth, when they were on the phone.

  “Have you ever seen a fairy?” T.J. found herself asking.

  “Oh, sure. Duncan’s father is supposed to be one.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what Melissa told me. But you shouldn’t call them that. Just say they’re gay.”

  “No, I meant a real fairy.”

  Julie started to laugh. “What, with little wings and everything? God, what’s that city doing to you? I thought only country bumpkins like me were supposed to believe in things like that.”

  “I still feel like a bumpkin.”

  “So does that mean you believe in fairies?” Julie asked.

  Elizabeth hadn’t had wings, T.J. thought, so technically, she couldn’t be considered a fairy and there was no need to lie.

  “Of course I don’t,” she said.

  “So are there any cute guys there or what?”

  “There’s lots of cute guys. They just never think I’m cute.”

  “The dummies.”

  “Totally.”

  T.J. had taken to brushing Oscar on a regular basis.

  It had started out as a continuation of her cover-up that first morning when Elizabeth had run away, but now they’d both come to enjoy it. T.J. would sit with Oscar out on the back porch, where the view of the one maple and three spruce in the yard let her pretend she was still back on the farm. At least, it worked if she looked up into their branches, instead of across at the neighbour’s backyard.

  She’d hold the cat on her lap and brush him with long gentle strokes, carefully working out the mats. Oscar would soon start purring and T.J. would slip into the same sort of contemplative mood that used to come over her when she was currying Red.

  She was staring dreamily off into space one morning, hand on a sleeping Oscar, the brushing long finished, when her brother, Derek, interrupted her.

  “Hey, doofus,” he said. “Still playing with dolls?”

  When she looked up, he tossed something at her. She caught it before she could see what it was, startling Oscar, who bolted across the lawn.

  “You are such a moron,” she started to tell him.

  But then she looked at the small duffel bag she held in her hand and she could feel her face go pale. Luckily, Derek didn’t appear to notice.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked him, standing up.

  “In the shed. Or should we start calling it the dolly house?”

  “In the shed?”

  “Yeah. I needed to replace the brake on my in-line skates and was looking for my spare. That thing fell off a shelf when I was moving some boxes around. What were you doing in there with your dollies?”

  “Nothing.”

  He cocked his head, then asked, “So it’s not yours?”

  “Did you look inside it?”

  “Sure. It’s full of doll clothes.”

  Of course it would seem that way, T.J. thought. It belonged to Elizabeth. Who was real. How long had she been living in the shed? Was she even still there? Had Derek crushed her, moving around boxes?

  Derek was still looking at her. To cover for Elizabeth, T.J. swallowed her pride.

  “Of course it’s mine. I was just…you know…”

  Derek laughed. “Nope, I don’t. And I don’t want to either.”

  He grinned at her and walked off, shaking his head.

  She waited until he’d gone around the side of the house and into the garage, then ran for the shed. It was hard to see in there, shadows deepening the farther she looked. It smelled icky, like machinery and the gas for the mower.

  “Elizabeth?” she called softly. “Are you in here?”

  There was no answer.

  Oh God. She’d been eaten by a cat. Or a…a weasel or something.

  “Elizabeth, please say something.”

  She looked everywhere, but there was nobody to be found.
Especially not a six-inch Little with bright blue hair.

  It was all T.J. could think about for the rest of the day.

  She went back into the shed twice more with no better luck. That night, lying in bed, she couldn’t stand it. She certainly couldn’t sleep. So she got dressed, found a flashlight, and went back out to the shed once more, the little duffel bag stuck in the pocket of her jacket.

  She’d never been afraid of the dark, but it was spookier than she liked at the back of the yard. The shed door made a loud creak when she opened it and she stood silent, holding her breath. But no lights came on in the house behind her. Allowing herself to breathe again, she flicked on the flashlight and stepped inside.

  The first thing its beam found was a disheveled Elizabeth sitting on a spool of wire on the middle shelf. She blocked the light from her eyes with one hand and frowned.

  T.J. aimed the light at the floor.

  “Thank God you’re okay,” she said.

  “Piss off.”

  “What?”

  “I said, piss off. I don’t need your stupid sympathy. I’m doing just fine, okay?”

  “But why are you still here?”

  “Maybe I like it here.”

  T.J. never liked to make trouble or impose where she obviously wasn’t wanted. It was what was making it so hard for her to make new friends in the neighbourhood and at school. So her first inclination was to leave Elizabeth alone. But then she remembered what her mother had said.

  Sometimes we have to involve ourselves in other people’s lives, whether they want us to or not.

  “I don’t think you do,” T.J. said. “God, what have you been living on out here?”

  She didn’t add that it was obvious Elizabeth could really use a bath and to wash her hair.

  Elizabeth shrugged. “I found an old bag of birdseed and put out a container to catch rainwater.”

  “You have to come back to the house with me. I’ll get you some real food.”

  “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

  “You mean your family?”

  “No, the zits on your butt. Of course I mean my family.”

  “I don’t know,” T.J. said. “Maybe they’re just being really quiet.”