The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  “It’s a cow,” Henkie said in the kind of voice that stated a plain fact.

  And of course, Denzil thought, being the philanderer he was, Henkie would know.

  “Keep that light on her,” Henkie said as he started to turn the boat and row towards the seal.

  Denzil rolled his eyes and glanced back at shore. His gaze caught and then focused on a figure that stood on the wharf of New Dock, watching them. Because of the distance and the dark, it was hard to make out more than a silhouette framed by a light in the market behind it, but that silhouette bore an uncanny likeness to the Widow Pender.

  A shiver went through Denzil and he couldn’t have said why. He looked away, then back again, but the figure was now gone.

  “My soul and body!” he heard Taupin exclaim.

  Feeling tired and irritable, and more than a little put upon with the night’s strange goings on, Denzil turned once more to see what had excited Taupin. And then his jaw went slack for the second time that night.

  3.

  Jodi was having the oddest sort of a dream.

  It was a late summer’s afternoon and the sea was quiet. She was in the bay near Yolen Rock, floating on the gentle waves in a carker‌—one of those little boats that the boys in the Tatters made from cork with a piece of slate or hoop-iron for a keel. When you were a Small, a carker was just the right size.

  All around her, in the sea and on the rocks about the craggy island of blue alvin stone that was the rookery, were the seals of Yolen Rock. Better than a hundred of them. Mated bulls and cows, bachelors and young females and pups. Sunning themselves. Floating as dreamily in the water as she did in her carker. And making such a racket. Barks and yelps filled the air‌—a kind of conversation that Jodi almost felt she could understand if she tried a little harder.

  She’d often come here when she was her proper size, Ollie snuggled in her jacket when it was cool, perched on her shoulder or rambling about on the ground in front, behind and on all sides when the summer sun shone warm. Sometimes she’d come here with Denzil, and they’d talk the hours away, or with Taupin, and they would sit up on the headland across from the Rock, sit there for hours, not saying a word, while they watched the herd.

  She’d never been this close to them before.

  A pod of the young pups had a slide near the water and were playing on it like otters‌—carrying on like a pack of Tatters children as they filled the air with their squeals and shouts. Her carker drifted closer to them, but then was intercepted by a bachelor. His sleek fur streamed water as he lifted his head to look at her.

  The stone, he said.

  When he spoke, the words sounded in Jodi’s ears‌—a sweet bell-like sound as unlike a seal’s vocal barking as a forest is lit by the sun and then the moon. It seemed familiar as well, as though she’d heard just that particular cadence before, that country burr‌—but with her ears, not in her mind.

  Trailing a hand lazily in the water, she looked at Yolen Rock where it rose from the water.

  “What about it?” she asked.

  Don’t forget the holed stone.

  An uncomfortable sensation awoke in the pit of her stomach. A dark memory stirred under the stimuli of sun and fair weather that had been warming her.

  “No,” she said.

  Nine times through.

  The feeling grew, spreading up to constrict her chest, bringing a shiver that traveled the length of her body. The memory expanded as well . . . something to do with the inner workings of clocks. . . .

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  At moonrise.

  A dull throbbing started up behind her eyes, a pinprick of pain that whistled into a shriek between her temples.

  “Please, don’t. . . .”

  But it was too late. Already she was remembering. The Widow and her creatures and what they’d done to Edern. What the little man was. A clockwork mechanism that had been smashed to pieces. Cogs and gears scattered all about while she plunged into dark water and drowned. . . .

  When you wake, the seal said, his huge liquid eyes engulfing her. Don’t forget the stone.

  “I don’t want to wake up.”

  Because being a Small here was lovely, but waking meant she’d be in a place where everything was horrible. Witches and their fetches. Bog creatures and little clockwork men who got torn to pieces. And the sea, always the dark waters of the sea, closing over her head the way they’d closed over her father’s. . . .

  “You can’t make me wake up.”

  But her surroundings were already smearing as though they’d only been so much condensation on glass and a huge hand was now wiping the glass clean.

  “I won’t!” she cried.

  But we need you.

  Now she recognized the voice’s familiarity.

  She floated in darkness‌—not the sea, but in a place where there was no up and no down, just that sensation of floating. And the darkness. But these shadows held no menace.

  I need you.

  She remembered the old seamen’s tales then‌—how seals carried in them the souls of dead piskies.

  She remembered a small man.

  Her clockwork man.

  Dead now.

  All too dead‌—if he’d ever even been alive in the first place.

  “Edern?”

  There was no reply.

  “Edern?” she tried again. “Were you real?”

  Too late now, for she was waking up in earnest and now even the floating sensation and the darkness were going away and she was waking to a bruised and aching body, and a light that shone so bright it stung her eyes and made them tear.

  4.

  “She’s so tiny,” Lizzie said, her eyes wide with astonishment. “Like a doll.”

  Henkie only grunted. He’d had a quick look himself, but now he concentrated more on keeping the boat steady to allow the seal with its odd little burden an easier approach than on the burden itself.

  Beside Lizzie, Denzil could only stare at the tiny figure carried through the waves on the seal’s head‌—tiny, but recognizable, God help him‌—and consider how either he had gone entirely mad, or else he needed to reconsider his complete outlook on the world. He took off his glasses to dry the salt spray that had splashed onto them from a particularly enthusiastic wave and set them back on the bridge of his nose.

  Everything had changed.

  What could be and what couldn’t. What was, what was probable, and what was impossible.

  Absolutely nothing made sense anymore and he no longer knew what to think. Relief at Jodi’s safety‌—no matter her size‌—warred with utter bewilderment at how she could be such a size in the first place. And he felt like a fool. Like such a silly, foolish old man. He could hear his own mocking “tee-ta-taw” at every mention of what he considered a scientifically unsound principle.

  How completely mortifying to know he’d been wrong all this time. But at the same time, an indefinable excitement was rising up inside him.

  That such a thing could be. It opened whole new worlds of possibilities and study.

  Denzil’s only consolation was that‌—except for Henkie, who seemed to grow grumpily taciturn whenever he was in the middle of something delicate and obviously approached any wonder in a matter-of-fact fashion‌—he wasn’t alone in his astonishment. Taupin and Lizzie seemed just as dumbfounded as he was himself.

  Dumbfounded and enchanted.

  For what could be so enchanting as the perfect tiny size that Jodi had become?

  Lizzie lifted her carefully from the seal’s head. Wrapping the tiny shivering body in a kerchief, she held her close to the lantern, murmuring cooing sounds that, Denzil knew, would drive Jodi mad if she were awake to hear them.

  Denzil leaned closer to have a look.

  “Is she . . . ?”

  “She’s had a terrible soaking,” Lizzie said, “and the poor little thing is trembling from the cold, but I think she’ll be all right. What do you think, Henkie?”

  Th
e big man, working the oars again as he rowed them back towards his warehouse at the end of the Old Quay, gave yet another grunt that could have meant anything. Denzil decided to take it as an affirmative. He was just as happy that Henkie kept his mind on the business at hand. It was a tricky business, navigating a way through the graveyard of ship masts and hulls that protruded from the water all along the Old Quay.

  Taupin was shining his lantern towards Lizzie, half standing to try to get a better look himself. The boat rocked back and forth.

  “Will you sit!” Henkie said.

  Taupin sat.

  Denzil tore his gaze away from the tiny figure and looked for the seal, but it was gone.

  “What an amazing thing,” he said softly. “You’ve my thanks, you!” he added, calling out over the water.

  Henkie gave him a look and a smile, but said nothing. The muscles of his arms rolled under his jersey as he rowed them across the harbour with long steady strokes. Denzil turned back in his seat and returned his attention to Jodi.

  There was a bump as they reached the shore. Denzil glanced up, surprised that they’d made the trip so quickly.

  “Changed your mind then, have you?” Henkie asked him as he stowed the oars.

  “About what?”

  “About everything.”

  “I suppose I have.”

  “Oh, look,” Lizzie said, her voice rising in pitch a few notes. “She’s coming around.”

  They all leaned forward to see the tiny eyelids fluttering open.

  “It’s a bloody miracle,” Henkie said. “Pity she doesn’t have wings, though. I’d love to see how real working wings would look.”

  “She’s not some Victorian fairy, you,” Denzil said.

  “But she’s a bit of magic all the same, isn’t she?”

  “Will you be quiet,” Lizzie hissed.

  They looked to see Jodi’s tiny features scrunched up, her hands over her ears.

  “Let’s bring her inside,” Henkie said as he moored the rowboat.

  He tried speaking quietly, but even his whispering had a booming quality about it.

  “Softly,” Lizzie said.

  Henkie nodded, muttering, “Bloody hell,” under his breath as he led the way into the warehouse.

  The others trooped in after him. Denzil was last and paused in the doorway to look down the dark stone walkway that spilled the length of the Old Quay all the way to New Dock. He looked for the Widow and saw no sign of her, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something out in the night was watching them all the same. There was a perplexing scent in the air, which he likened to disturbed bog water, but he could find no source for it either.

  He stood there for a few moments longer, then finally shook his head and followed the others inside.

  5.

  Once she got over the initial shock of having all those huge faces peering at her where she sat on the tabletop, and was warmed with a set of dry clothes taken from a doll that Henkie dragged out from somewhere in the vast confusion of boxes and shelves and crates that filled his warehouse, Jodi sipped from a thimbleful of tea and told her story. She was hoarse by the time she was done, even with the tea‌—laced with rum added to it a careful bead at a time from an eyedropper‌—to soothe her throat. Thankfully, the giants‌—which was how she’d come to think of her rescuers‌—spoke only in whispers so her ears had mostly stopped their ringing.

  “Makes me feel like we’re a band of conspirators,” Taupin remarked.

  “I suppose we are, in a way,” Henkie said.

  Of the four of them, his was the only voice that still made her ears ache. His idea of whispering was a dull, low-pitched growl that rumbled like distant thunder. Whenever he spoke, Jodi could feel the bones in her chest resonating with his deep bass tones.

  Like anyone who grew up in the Tatters, she was familiar with the eccentric painter, though this was the first time that she’d actually been inside his warehouse. It was everything that it had promised it would be from the spying glances that she and the other Tatters children had stolen through its dirty windows. She could easily spend hours in its cavernous depths‌—its immensity magnified still more due to her own present size.

  Which reminded her of the first problem at hand.

  “How can I get back to my own size?” she squeaked hoarsely.

  “First off,” Henkie said, “we’ll march straight over to the bloody Widow’s place and get that button.”

  “That won’t necessarily be so easy, you,” Denzil said.

  “And why would that be?” Henkie asked.

  “Because when we were out in the harbour, I saw her spying on us from New Dock. She’ll be warned and have the button well hidden by now.”

  “And she’s such an old grouch,” Lizzie added, “that she’ll never tell us where she’s gone and hidden it.”

  “Then we’ll bloody well beat the secret from her,” Henkie growled.

  “La,” Taupin said. “And won’t the constables take that in stride?”

  Denzil nodded. “Some of us aren’t exactly the most respected members of this community.”

  “Tremeer would jump at any chance to run you in,” Lizzie said.

  “There must be something we can do,” Henkie said.

  Jodi winced as the volume of his voice rose.

  “What about the stone?” she piped up. “The Men-an-Tol?”

  “That’s just a fairy tale,” Denzil said. “There’s about as much magic in a piece of stone, carved by the ancients or not, as there is in‌—in . . .”

  “In what?” Taupin asked with a grin.

  “Never you mind, you,” Denzil told him grumpily.

  Even Jodi had to laugh, though she put her hands over her ears when Henkie joined in.

  “Henkie,” Lizzie warned.

  He glanced at her, then at Jodi, and broke off immediately. Though he said nothing, Jodi saw his lips mouth the words, “Bloody hell.” It appeared to be his favorite expression.

  “This little man,” Taupin said. “You say he was actually a clockwork mechanism?”

  Jodi’s good humour drained away as she nodded.

  “And then you dreamed his spirit was in the body of a seal?”

  Another nod.

  “I thought only gods and angels spoke to one in a dream,” Denzil said, still unable to keep the sardonic tone from his voice.

  “Only if it’s a true dream,” Henkie said.

  “Perhaps that’s a potential of the piskies that we’ve not heard of before,” Taupin said thoughtfully.

  “What is?” Henkie asked. “Speaking in dreams?”

  “That, and the fact that they can slip their minds out of their own bodies and into the minds of others‌—borrowing the bodies of animals and inanimate objects when the need arises and their own bodies can’t fulfill the necessary task.”

  Denzil hrumphed, but said nothing.

  Taupin gave him a smile and added, “Surely, every time one turns about, the world proves to be a more marvelous place than it was the moment before.”

  Lizzie nodded. “Did you ever think of the way a cat just sits there sometimes, looking for all the world as though it was hanging on to your every word?”

  Taupin nodded. “It makes you think, doesn’t it just?”

  “So,” Denzil said a little wearily, “you think we should take Jodi to the stone and pass her nine times through its hole?”

  “At moonrise,” Jodi said.

  Denzil sighed. “But what will it do?”

  “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Henkie said.

  “But we’ll have to be careful of the Widow,” Jodi added. “She’s got that Windle to spy on us. Who knows what would happen if she followed us out to the stone.”

  “Now that fetch creature is something I’d like to paint,” Henkie said. He glanced at Jodi. “And you as well, all tiny as you are. I never knew Nettie had a daughter in the first place, little say one so pretty.”

  “I’m her niec
e,” Jodi said.

  “And she doesn’t want to be painted, you,” Denzil added.

  He shot a glance at the full-length portrait of Lizzie that was still on the artist’s easel, then quickly looked away. The movement earned him another of Henkie’s laughs.

  “I didn’t say in the buff,” the big man said.

  “It might be kind of fun,” Jodi said. “No one’s ever painted me before.”

  “And best it remain that way,” Denzil said. “What would your aunt say if‌—”

  “That creature,” Lizzie broke in. She’d been looking nervously around the warehouse. “Could it be spying on us at the moment?”

  They all fell silent and peered into the shadows that lay beyond their little circle of light.

  “Well, we’ve been whispering,” Henkie said, “so I doubt it’s heard anything.”

  “There’s also those sloch,” Jodi said. “The bog creatures. But Edern said that they won’t last out the night, and besides, we would have smelled them by now.”

  “Smelled them . . . ?” Denzil sat up straighter in his chair and adjusted his glasses, which had gone a little askew. “I did smell a terrible stink when we were coming inside. . . .”

  Henkie stood up so quickly that his chair fell to the floor behind him. The loud crash it made brought Jodi’s hands back to her ears once more. In a few long strides, the artist had crossed the open space to the door and flung it wide. He stood there for a long moment, taking in the grey dawn that was breaking over the town, then bent down to look at something that lay on the ground near the door.

  “What is it?” Taupin asked.

  “See for yourself.”

  They trooped over, Denzil carrying Jodi carefully in his cupped hands, to see the small puddles of marsh mud and vegetation that Henkie was crouched over.

  To Jodi, the smell was unmistakable. The horrible memory of Edern’s dying reared up in her mind and she turned away, holding tightly on to Denzil’s thumb.

  “How much do you think they heard?” Lizzie asked.

  “Depends,” Henkie replied, straightening up, “on how keen their hearing is.”

  He shooed them all back inside and closed the door firmly behind them.