by Tanya Huff
Five men peered up at her. The tallest had to have been less than a metre high or she'd have been able to see the top of his head from her chair. All five wore old-fashioned clothing in varying shades of brown: waistcoats and jackets, loose trousers and cotton shirts, handkerchiefs knotted loosely around tanned necks. All five had brown hair and brown eyes. In fact, they looked remarkably like…
She leaned out a little further, half afraid she'd see hairy feet.
Thank God. Brown shoes.
"Take a picture," grumbled one. "Lasts longer."
The other four seemed to find that very funny, but even during all the sniggering, not one expectant gaze had left her face. They were clearly waiting for her to say something.
All right.
"Sign up for what?" she asked.
The tallest little man sighed. "We're Brownies, ain't we? We heared this is where you sign up."
Suddenly, sitting down seemed like an excellent idea.
"Oi! Where'd she go?"
"I'm thinking she fainted, like. Took one look at your ugly puss and fell right… OW!"
"Don't be daft. If she was on the floor, we could see her."
They had accents; a soft burr on voices that rose and fell like her Uncle Dave's after an evening at the Legion. A clattering that a part of her brain translated as wooden soles against tile – she'd worn wood and leather clogs back in the seventies – and all five came around the corner of the desk. Only four of them were in wooden-soled shoes, the fifth wore modern trainers, although she'd never realized they came in brown.
"Right then, there you are." The tallest folded his arms. "Let's get on with it, we ain't got all night."
"Yes, we do."
"Shut it!" he snapped without turning or unlocking his gaze from her face. "You the Brownie leader, then?"
She had to clear her throat to find her voice. "Yes, but…"
"So what's the problem?"
"You're not…" A rudimentary sense of self-preservation cut her off before she could finish with the right kind of Brownies. "…the kind of Brownies I usually deal with."
Their spokesman folded his arms belligerently, his action mirrored by the other four. "So?"
"This organization is for little girls."
"Little girls?"
"Yes."
"But we're Brownies!"
She spread her hands in the universal gesture for that's not really relevant, and there's nothing I can do about it anyway.
"But, but…"
A small but hoary fist smacked him on the shoulder. "I told you this'd never work, you great git!"
"Little girls," snorted another.
"It'll never happen for us," sighed a third.
Raised fists fell. Feet lifted to kick settled back onto the ground. A mouthful of damp sleeve was spit slowly out. What had clearly been about to descend into violence, became, instead, five dispirited little men.
Shoulders slumped, they turned away.
"Sorry for bothering you, Missus."
"Wait!" Not until they started to turn did she realize she'd been the one to call them back. After a moment's silent panic, she figured she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and a moment later decided that might not be the best simile she could have used as a couple of the little men looked like they'd rustled a sheep or two in their day. "If you're already Brownies…"
"If?" A bit of the belligerence returned.
"Sorry. Since you're already Brownies, why do you want to join my troop?"
"Why?"
"Yes, why?"
"Right, then." A gnarled finger indicated she should hold that thought, and the Brownies huddled up.
"If she can't help, she doesn't need to know."
"If she knows, maybe she can help."
"But then she'll know too much."
"We could kill her."
"Sure and what century are you living in? We'd have CSI all over us before we could say Killicrankie."
"You know, I've never understood why we'd say Killicrankie. It's daft. Totally bloody daft."
"Oh, shut your pie hole."
She wondered if they knew or cared she could hear every word. A short scuffle later, the vote to tell her went four to one. After the forceful application of a clog to the dissenter's nether regions, it ended five votes in favour. As they jumped up to sit on the edge of the desk…
"Right, then, that's a mite easier on the back of the neck."
…she handed out tissues and fished a box of last season's classic cookies out of her bag. All hands were still busy blotting bloody noses and minor bites, so she left the open box on the desk, took a chocolate and a vanilla, and sat back in her chair.
The tallest Brownie gave her a thoughtful look – his shiner already beginning to fade – took a cookie of each flavour, and passed the box along. "It's like this, Missus," he said, "we're tired of being Brownies…"
"All the cleaning."
"And the serving."
"And the not being appreciated."
"Or believed in."
"…and we heard you can make us something else."
"Something else?"
"That's what we heard." He tapped a fingertip to the side of one hirsute nostril.
"Well, my girls fly up to be Guides, but…"
"Guides!" Unsurprisingly, his smile was missing a couple of teeth. "Then that's what we'll be. We'll be Guides."
Agreement from the others emerged slightly muffled by the cookies.
She thought she was taking this remarkably well, all things considered. "You don't understand; Guides are another level in a worldwide organization."
"Aye. And we're Brownies."
"You'll be making us Guides," added the Brownie in the running shoes.
They really weren't getting it. "It's not Guides the same way that you're Brownies. It's more a name given to acknowledge that the girls are ready to move on."
"Aye." The tallest Brownie nodded. "And so are we."
"Past ready."
"Way past."
"Long past."
"Oi, Missus! Got any more cookies?"
"No. You've eaten the whole box, any more and you'll make yourself sick." When they accepted that without argument, she took a deep breath and tried again. "Brownies are part of an all-female organization. They're eight- and nine-year-old girls. You're not girls, and even if you were, you'd be too old."
"But we are Brownies."
"Yes, but…"
"Que Sera."
"He starts to sing, I'm for stuffin' my fist down his gullet."
"That'd improve things."
"What's he gotta use them fancy foreign words for anyways?"
"Too big for his bloody britches."
"Stop it." To her surprise, they did – if not immediately, after only some minor bruising. "That kind of behaviour is not good citizenship."
"What does that mean when it's home?"
But the tallest answered before she could. "It means she's taken us on; doesn't it, Missus?"
The clock showed twenty past nine. They were alone in the basement, just her and five Brownies.
"Yes," she told them. "That's what it means." After all, the latest Strategic Plan listed increasing the diversity of membership as a key priority.
* * * *
Their names were Big Tam, Little Tam, Callum, Conner, and Ewan. There was a reason they sounded like her Uncle Dave.
"Have you looked in your phone book lately," Big Tam snorted. "Two pages of Mc's and near three of Mac's, plus Campbells and Buchanans and Browns and Kerrs. We came across the big pond with them, didn't we. Course, Ewan's working for a Singh now, his last Campbell married over."
Ewan grinned. "I'll take a nice curry over a bloody bowl of milk and a bannock any night."
When she pointed to the curse cup, he sighed and dropped in a coin. She didn't ask where he got the money. She suspected she didn't want to know.
* * * *
Only Callum, the Brownie in the running shoes, coul
d read and write. The others thought he was full of himself and too quick to take up newfangled ideas. After three fights and a small fire no one would admit to setting, she'd taken the registration forms away and told them she'd fill them in herself. It was important to register them. If they weren't registered then they weren't real Brownies, and it would mean nothing when they flew up. She'd feminized their names and added Scottish family names for everyone except for Ewan – who became Eula. He was a Singh. Over the years, she'd helped fill in enough of these forms that the lies came easily.
Too easily, considering that honesty was a part of the Brownie law.
I'll sell extra cookies to make up for it.
* * * *
The registration fee was $75 dollars each.
"Bugger that!"
Big Tam grabbed Conner by the collar and hauled him back into the circle. "You want to be serving 'til the end of time, then? You want to spend eternity cookin' and cleanin' and muckin' out their shite and grinding their flour? Well, there's not much flour grinding of late, but you take my meaning." He shook the smaller Brownie so hard a confused-looking squirrel fell out of his pocket. "Hand it over," he commanded as Conner grabbed the squirrel and tucked it back out of sight.
She had to drive into the city to sell some of the registration money at a rare coin store. Even considering that half of what they'd offered her had disappeared when the sun hit it, she had more than enough to cover the fees for all five and order each of them a badge vest. Back in her day, they'd have been wearing skorts and knee socks, and, as imagination supplied the visuals, she thanked God that uniform choices had become more flexible.
* * * *
They met every Tuesday evening in the church hall basement. She intended to run this troop the way she'd run every troop – well, except for the curse cup. That was an idea she'd picked up from a Guide leader who dealt with a very rough group of inner-city tweens.
"Oi, Missus! What's with the sodding mushroom?"
She waited until his coin hit the curse cup before she answered. "It's not a mushroom, it's a toadstool, and it's very old."
"Old?" Conner scoffed, right index finger buried knuckle deep in his nose. "I got boogers older than that there."
"It's old," she repeated. The toadstool had spent every Tuesday evening in the basement for as long as she had. It had been the focus of thousands of circles of girls.
Big Tam stared at her for a long moment. "It's no' old to us."
"But you don't want to be you anymore, do you?"
His brows dipped so deep they met over his nose. "You're daft, Missus."
"Probably." But she was going to turn these Brownies into Guides. That's why they'd come to her, and that's what she did. "Each of you take a cushion and sit in a circle around the toadstool. Oh, and stop calling me Missus. Address me as Brown Owl."
Their reactions put another seventy-five cents, two doubloons, and a farthing in the curse cup, although she'd had to guess that Little Tam's tirade was obscene since she was unfamiliar with all of the words and half the gestures.
It was a small circle, she realized when they were seated, the smallest she'd ever had.
"Don't be worrying about that, Missus," Callum told her reassuringly when she voiced the observation. "Size don't matter."
"You'd say that, would you?" Big Tam snorted, leaping to his feet and reaching into his trousers. "Them what says that, they ain't got size enough to matter. Now, me, what I got…"
"Put it away."
"But…"
"Now."
"Fine. Still bigger," he muttered, sitting down.
Never let them know they'd flustered you. Little girls reacted to weakness like wolves – which was not particularly fair to wolves, who were, on the whole, noble creatures. But saying that little girls reacted to weakness like chickens, who were known to peck their companions to death, didn't have the same kind of mythic power behind it, even though it was more biologically accurate.
"Missus?"
Right.
She cleared her throat and dried her palms on her thighs. "We'll start with the Brownie law."
"Well," Conner said thoughtfully, "we ain't allowed to be rewarded for our services."
"Though that's really more of a guideline than an actual law," Ewan pointed out.
Little Tam nodded. "You're supposed to be leaving stuff out for us."
"Good stuff," Callum qualified. "No shite."
"And a little appreciation for services rendered, that don't go amiss," Big Tam added, to a chorus of: "Oh, aye."
She absolutely was not thinking of what service Big Tam could render. "This is a different Brownie law, for the kinds of Brownies who become Guides."
"Let's have it then, Missus. Owl. Missus Owl."
Close enough.
* * * *
They learned the law and the promise, and could soon recite them both.
"Honest and kind? This lot?" Conner pulled his finger from his nose and stared at the tip. "That's a laugh."
"You calling me a liar, you miserable little shite?"
"You want kind? Have a knuckle sandwich!"
"I'm gonna feed you my friggin' boot!"
"Up yours, asswipe!"
She got the toadstool back in essentially one piece, and, as she disinfected it before repainting, figured first aid had better be the initial Key Badge.
The curse cup already held enough money for various bandages, analgesic creams, and cold packs. It took three weeks for them to stop using the slings to tie each other into anatomically impossible positions, and a week after that to stop eating the creams, but, eventually, they learned how to deal with black eyes, bloody noses, scraped knuckles, wrenched shoulders, and swollen genitalia – the latter a necessary addition to the basic course material.
"Who'd have thought that frozen water'd feel so fine nestled up against the 'nads," Little Tam sighed, adjusting the ice pack.
* * * *
They sold the Classic Cookies in the fall – the chocolate and vanilla, centre cream cookies stamped with the Guide trefoil. She had regular customers who'd bought boxes for years and didn't care if they came from smiling little girls or scowling little men as long as they got their fix.
New customers found themselves holding boxes in one hand and an empty wallet in the other without being entirely certain how it had happened. She was pleasantly surprised to find that, although a few people were over cookied, no one was ever short changed.
"Brownies are honest," Ewan reminded her, as the entire troop looked a bit insulted by the surprised part of her reaction.
She made it up to them by presenting Money Talk badges all around.
They were heading for a record year when she realized they were in danger of attracting too much attention. "You've done remarkably well," she said, choosing to ignore the baby swapped for a doll made of cookies that she'd managed to swap back just in time. "But record numbers will bring us to provincial attention, maybe even national, and Brownies are supposed to be secretive folk, who keep out of sight."
"No one saw us, Missus Owl."
"But they'll know something is going on, and someone will come to investigate."
"Ah," Little Tam nodded. "CSI."
They all watched too much television, but she'd dealt with that before. The best way to counteract it was to lead them into the limitless worlds of imagination that came with books.
Half an hour of every meeting was devoted to teaching four of her five brownies how to read; unfortunately, without much success.
"It's not that they don't want to learn, Missus Owl," Callum confided after the other four had vanished from the basement muttering about just what they'd like to do to Dick and Jane. "It's just you gotta teach them from stories they're interested in."
"Myths and legends?"
He snorted. "Not quite."
* * * *
"Dear Penthouse forum. Last night when my girlfriend and I were getting…"
"Sound it out, Little Tam."
/>
"Int. I. Mate. Intimate!"
"Very good."
"Hey! Let's see them pictures!"
"Back off! It's my turn to read!"
"Git!"
"Arse!"
"Who remembers how to apply the ice pack?"
* * * *
For the Halloween meeting, she dressed as an Indian Princess. She always dressed as an Indian Princess; the costume had moved past traditional some years earlier and was approaching legendary. This year, the beaded, buckskin dress felt restrictive and uninspiring, but it was too late to change.
Big Tam dressed up as a Boggart, Little Tam as a Hobgoblin, Conner as a Bodach, Ewan as a Red Cap, and Callum, always a bit more progressive than the others, as Liza Minnelli. His story about her comeback concert was terrifying.
* * * *
In November, they used the kitchen upstairs in the church hall to bake a Sugar Pie.
"Or, as the Acadians call it," she told them as Big Tam sprinkled cream on the maple sugar, "la tarte au sucre."
The old oven was a bit temperamental and she had to call the minister's wife over to help get it going. The Brownies stayed out of sight – she explained they were down in the basement working on a project – and didn't reappear until the minister's wife was gone and the pie was in the oven.
While it baked, they traced the route of the dispossessed Acadian exiles out on a map.
She cut the pie into small pieces, but that hardly mattered when everyone had seconds. And thirds.
That night, persons unknown repaved the parking lot behind the town hall, causing incidental damage to five pigeons and 1988 Buick. The pigeons recovered, the owner of the Buick found a bag of assorted coin worth twice the Blue Book value of the car in his trunk, and she resolved to be more careful with sugar in the future.
* * * *
By mid-December, the curse cup held three hundred and twelve dollars and forty-two cents as well as three wizened, black beans Conner swore were magic and should cover his contributions well into the new year.
"Oi! None of that, ya cheap bastard!"
Later, after a review of first aid basics, she suggested they use the money to help under-privileged children celebrate Christmas.
