Little, Big

by John Crowley

  “Help,” he said, or breathed. “Help, oh help.”

  He took steps across the rickety bridge beneath which the forest stream foamed. There was a glassless picture framed in an old gilt frame on his kitchen wall (though George had forgotten just now that it was there) which showed just such a dangerous bridge as this, and two children, innocent, unafraid or perhaps unaware of their danger, crossing it hand in hand, a blond girl, a dark, brave boy, while above them, watching, ready to stretch out a hand to them if a loose crosspiece broke or a foot was placed wrong, was an angel: a white angel, crowned with a gold fillet, vapid-faced in gauzy draperies but strong, strong to save the children. Just such a power George felt behind him then (though he didn’t dare turn to see it) and, taking Lilac’s hand, or was it Sylvie’s, he stepped bravely across the creaking slats to reach the other side.

  Then came a long, an endless because unremembered time; but at last George gained the top of the ravine, knees torn and hands weary. He came out between two rocks like upraised knees, and found himself—yes!—in a small glade spangled with flowers; and in the near distance, the row of guardian trees. Beyond them, it was clear now, was a fence of wattles, and a building or two, and a curl of smoke from a chimney. “Oh, yes,” George said, panting, “oh, yes.” Near him in the glade, a lamb stood; the noise George heard was not his own lost heart but its crying voice. It had got caught in some wicked trailing briar, and was hurting itself to free its leg.

  “There, there,” George said. “There, there.”

  “Baa, baa,” said the lamb.

  George freed its fragile black leg; the lamb stumbled forward, still crying—it was just newborn, how had it strayed from its mother? George went to it, and picked it up by its legs, he had seen this done but he forgot where, and slung it over his neck, holding it by its feebly kicking feet. And with it turning its silly sad face to try and look into his, he went on up to the gate in the fence of wattles beyond the row of guardian trees. The gate stood open.

  “Oh, yes,” George said, standing before it. “Oh, yes; I see. I see.”

  For this was clear enough; there was the small ramshackle house with horn windows, there the byre, there the goat shed; there was the plot of new-planted vegetables, in which someone was digging, a small brown man who when he saw George approach threw down his tool and hurried away muttering. There was the wellhouse and the root cellar, there the woodpile, with its axe upright in the block. And there, the hungry sheep shouldered at their fences, looking up to be fed. And all around the little clearing, there was the Wild Wood looking down, indifferent and dark.

  How he had come here he didn’t know, any more than he knew now where he had started from; but it was plain now where he was. He was home.

  He set down the lamb within the fold, and it skipped to where its mother scolded it. George wished that he could remember, just a little; but what the hell, he’d spent a lifetime in one enchantment or another, or one enchantment in another, in another; he was too old now to worry when it changed. This was real enough.

  “What the hell,” he said. “What the hell, it’s a living.” He turned to close his gate of palings, barring it and tying it closely in good husbandry against the dark Wild Wood and what lived there, and, brushing his hands together, went to his door.

  Middle of Nowhere

  A heaven, Ariel Hawksquill thought, deep within, a heaven no larger than the ball of one’s thumb. The island-garden of the Immortals, the valley where we are all kings forever. The rocking, clacking rhythm of the train drove the thought again and again around the track of her mind.

  Hawksquill was not one of those who find the motion of trains soothing. Rather it prodded and grated on her hideously, and though a dull rainy dawn looked to be near breaking in the flat landscape beyond the window, she had not slept, though she had given out, on boarding, that she would—that was only to keep the President, for a time, away from her door. When the aged, kindly porter had come to make up her bed, she had sent him away, and then called him back, and asked that a bottle of brandy be brought her, and that no one disturb her.

  “Sure you don’t want that bed made up, miz?”

  “No. That’s all.” Where had the President’s staff found these gentle, bowed black men, who had been old and slow and few even in her own youth? Come to that, where did he find these grand old cars, and where tracks that could still be traveled on?

  She poured brandy, grinding her teeth in nervous exhaustion, feeling that even her sturdiest memory mansions were being shaken to earth by this motion. Yet she needed, more than she had ever needed, to think clearly, fully, and not in circles. On the luggage rack above and opposite her was the alligator purse containing the cards.

  A heaven deep within, the island-garden of the Immortals. Yes: if it were so, and if it were in fact heaven or someplace like it, then the one thing that could be said with certainty about it was that, whatever other delightful qualities it might have, it must be more spacious than the common world we leave to reach it.

  More spacious: skies less limited, mountain peaks less reachable, seas deeper and less plumbable.

  But there, the Immortals themselves must dream and ponder too, and take their spiritual exercises, and search for an even smaller heaven within that heaven. And that heaven, if it exist, must be yet more wide, less limited, higher, broader, deeper than the first. And so on … “And the vastest point, the center, the infinity—Faëry, where the gigantic heroes ride across endless landscapes and sail sea upon sea and there is no end to possibility—that circle is so tiny it has no doors at all.”

  Yes, old Bramble might be right, only too simple—or rather too complex, with his fundibular other-worlds with doors attached. No, not two worlds; with Occam’s old razor she could slit the throat of that idea. One world only, but with different modes; what anyway was a “world?” The one she saw on television, “A World Elsewhere,” could fit without multiplication of entities into this one, it was molecule-thin but whole: it was only another mode, it was fiction.

  And in a mode like fiction, like make-believe, existed the land to which her cousins said she was invited to—no, told she must!—journey. Yes, journey; for if it was a land, the only way to get there was to travel.

  All that was clear enough, but no help.

  For Chinese heavens and make-believe lands had this in common, that however you reached them, it was your choice so to travel; in fact endless preparations were almost always required for such journeys, and a will or at least a dream of iron. And what had that to do with a mode which, against this world’s will, or without anyway asking its leave at all, invaded it piecemeal, siezing an architect’s fancy, a pentacle of five towns, a block of slum buildings, a Terminus ceiling—the Capital itself? Which fell on the citizens of this common mode and bore them away, or at least absorbed them willy-nilly in the advancing tide of its own being? The Holy Roman Empire, she had called it; she had been mistaken. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was only flotsam borne on this wave that moved the waters of Time, his sleep had been broken into as graves are broken into by the waters of a flood and the dead borne out, he was headed elsewhere.

  Unless she, who had no intention of ending up in some place ruled by who knew what masters, masters who might well take her revolt against them very badly, could turn him. Turn him, as a secret agent is turned by the side he is spying on. For this she had stolen the cards. With them she might rule him, or at least make him see reason.

  There was one great flaw in that scheme, however.

  What a pickle, what a pickle. She glanced up at the purse over on the luggage rack. She felt that her shift against this storm was as hopeless as any, as any sad hopeless shift of those caught in the path of something, something uncaring and oncoming, and far huger than they had imagined. Eigenblick had said it in every speech, and he had been right, and she blind. To welcome it was as futile as to defy it, it would have you anyway if it wanted you, Hawksquill was very sorry she had been smug but still she m
ust escape. Must.

  Footsteps: she sorted their progress down the corridor toward her bedroom from the regular clatter of the train wheels’ turning.

  No time to hide the cards, nowhere better anyway than in plain sight. This was all coming too rapidly to a head, she was after all only an old lady and no good at this, no good at all.

  Do not, she counseled herself, do not look toward the alligator purse.

  The door was flung open. Holding the jamb in his two hands to steady himself against the train’s motion, Russell Eigenblick stood before her. His somber tie was pulled awry, and sweat glistened on his forehead. He glared at Hawksquill. “I can smell them,” he said.

  There, there was the flaw in her scheme. She had glimpsed it first in the Oval Office on a certain snowy night. Now she was certain. The Emperor was mad: as mad as any hatter.

  “Smell what, sir?” she asked mildly.

  “I can smell them,” he said again.

  “You’re up very early,” she said. “Too early for a glass of this?” She showed him the brandy bottle.

  “Where are they?” he said, stumbling into the tiny chamber. “You have them, now, here somewhere.”

  Do not look toward the alligator purse. “Them?”

  “The cards,” he said. “You bitch.”

  “There’s a matter I must speak to you about,” she said, getting up. “I’m sorry I was delayed boarding last night until late, but …”

  He was lunging around the room, eyes shifting rapidly, nostrils flaring. “Where,” he said. “Where.”

  “Sir,” she said, drawing up but feeling hopelessness swim up in her, “sir you must listen.”

  “The cards.”

  “You’re acting on the wrong side.” She blurted it out, unable to frame it cleverly, feeling horribly drawn to stare at the purse which he had not seen on the luggage rack. He was tapping the walls for hiding places. “You must listen. Those who made promises to you. They have no intention of keeping them. Even if they could. But I …”

  “You!” he said, turning to her. “You!” He laughed hugely. “That’s rich!”

  “I want to help you.”

  He paused in his search. He looked at her, depths of sad reproach in his brown eyes. “Help,” he said. “You. Help. Me.”

  It had been an unfortunate choice of words. He knew—she could see it in his face—that helping him had never been what Hawksquill had intended, nor was it her intention now. Mad he might be, but he wasn’t stupid. The betrayal in his face made her look away. It was apparent that nothing she could say would move him. All he wanted from her now was what was useless to him without her, though even that she couldn’t think how to explain.

  She found herself staring at them, in their purse on the luggage rack. She could almost see them looking back at her.

  She snatched her look away, but the Tyrant had seen her. He made to shove her aside, reaching up.

  “Stop!” she said, flinging into the word powers she had once vowed never to use except at deepest need, and for good ends only. The Emperor stopped. He was still in mid-grasp; his bull’s strength struggled against Hawksquill’s command, but he couldn’t move. Hawksquill grabbed the alligator purse and fled from the room.

  In the corridor, she nearly collided with the stooped and slow-moving porter. “Ready to sleep, now, miz?” he inquired gently.

  “You sleep,” she said, and pushed past him. He slid down the wall, mouth open, eyes closed, asleep. Hawksquill, already crossing into the next car, heard Eigenblick roar out in rage and dismay. She shoved aside a heavy curtain that barred her way, and found herself in a sleeper, where at Eigenblick’s cry men had awakened and were now pulling aside the curtains on upper and lower berths and looking out, sleepy, alert, pale. They saw Hawksquill. She backed out through the curtain and into the car she had come from.

  There, in a niche in the wall, she saw that cord which she had often studied in her train-going, the cord that when pulled in fun or malice set the puller up for a stiff fine. She had never really believed that these slim ropes could actually stop a train, but, hearing steps and clamor in the far car, she pulled it now, and stepped quickly to the door, and grasped its handle.

  Within seconds the train came to a thrashing, crashing, jolting stop. Hawksquill, astonished at herself, wrenched open the door.

  Rain struck her. They were in the middle of nowhere, amid rainy, dark woods where last hillocks of snow melted. It was fiercely cold. Hawksquill leapt to the ground with a fainting heart and a cry. She struggled up the embankment, hampered by her skirt, hurrying herself lest the impossibility of her doing this at all catch up with her.

  Dawn was gray, almost in its paleness more opaque than night. At the top of the embankment, within the woods, panting, she looked back at the dark length of the stopped train. Lights were coming on inside. From the door she had left, a man jumped down, signalling behind him to another. Hawksquill, stumbling in snow-obscured undergrowth, ran deeper in. She heard calls behind her. The hunt was up.

  She turned behind a great tree and rested her back against it, sobbing painful cold breaths, listening. Twigs crackled, the woods were being beaten for her. A glance around showed her a dim figure, far off to the left, with something blunt, pointed and black in a gloved hand.

  Done secretly to death. No one the wiser.

  With trembling hands she opened the alligator purse. She clawed out from amid the loose cards a small morocco-leather envelope. Her breath condensing before her made it difficult to see, and her fingers shook uncontrollably. She pulled open the envelope and fumbled within it for the sliver of bone that it contained, one bone chosen from among the thousand-odd bones of a pure black cat. Where was the wretched thing. She felt it. She pinched it between two fingers. A crackle of brush that seemed close by startled her, she threw up her head, the tiny charm slipped from her fingers. She almost caught it as it fell catching along the stuff of her skirt, but her eager hand grasping for it brushed it away. It fell amid snow and black leaves. Hawksquill, crying a hopeless no, stepped unwittingly on the place where it had fallen.

  The calling of those who followed her was soft, confident, coming closer. Hawksquill fled from her shelter, glimpsing as she did so the shade of another of Eigenblick’s soldiers, or the same one, anyway armed; and he saw her too.

  She had never given much thought to what in fact might happen to her mortal body, its soul securely hidden, if fatal things were done to it; if projectiles were passed violently through it, if its blood were spilled. She couldn’t die, she was certain of that. But what, exactly? What? She turned, and saw him aim. A shot was fired, she turned to run again, unable to tell if she had been struck or only shocked by the noise.

  Struck. She could distinguish the warm wetness of her blood from the cold wetness of the rain. Where was the pain? She ran on, plunging hopelessly out-of-kilter, one leg seemed not to be working. She fell against tall trees, hearing her pursuers guiding each other with brief words. They were quite near.

  There were escapes from this, there were other exits she could find, she was sure of it. But just at the moment she could remember none of them.

  Could not remember! All her arts were being taken from her. Well, that was just; for she had dishonored them, had lied, had stolen, had sought power with them in her height of pride; she had used powers she had forsworn, for ends of her own. It was quite just. She turned, at bay; she saw on all sides the dark shapes of her pursuers. They wanted to get quite close, no doubt, so as not to make a great fuss. One or two shots. But what would become of her? The pain she had thought not to feel was just now surging up her body, and was ghastly. Pointless to run any more; black mists were passing before her eyes. Yet she turned again to run. There was a path.

  There was a path, quite clear in the twilight. And there—well, she could go there, couldn’t she? To that little house in the clearing. A shot jolted her horribly, but as though a shaft of sunlight struck it, the house became clearer: a funny sort of house, in
deed the oddest little house that she had ever seen. What house did it remind her of? Gingerbreaded and many-colored, with chimney-pots like comic hats, and cheerful firelight showing in the deep small windows, and a round green door. A welcoming, a friendly green door; a door that just then opened; a door from which a broadly grinning face looked out to welcome her.

  Fifty-two Pickup

  They shot her, in fact, several times, being superstitious themselves; and certainly she looked as dead as any dead person they had ever seen, the same doll-like, heedless appearance to the limbs, the same vacated face. She didn’t move. No cloud of breath condensed above her lips. Satisfied at last, one snatched up the alligator purse, and they returned to the train.

  Weeping, shouting hoarse gouts of laughter, with the old cards (mixed backs and faces) pressed in a messy clutch against his bosom, at last, at last, Russell Eigenblick, the President, pulled at the cord which would start the train again. Blinded with fear and joy, he plunged through the cars of the train, almost knocked over when the train with a jolt started up again; the train plunged through his country, swept with rain, breathing clouds of steam. Between Sandusky and South Bend the rain turned unwillingly to snow and sleet and deepened to blizzard; the baffled engineer could see nothing. He cried out when there loomed up before him with great suddenness the mouth of a lightless tunnel, for he knew there could be no tunnel in this landscape, nor had ever been, but before he could take action (what action?) the train had roared into limitless darkness louder and darker even than Barbarossa’s triumph.

  When it arrived, quite empty of passengers, at the following station (an Indian-named town where no train had stopped for years) the porter whom Ariel Hawksquill had shouldered aside in her haste awoke.

  Now what on earth?

  He arose, and, slow with forty years’ service, walked the train, as astonished at himself for having slept, and at the train for having stopped unscheduled, as at the absence of his passengers.