The Little Country by Charles de Lint
“Does he always have to shout so?” she asked Denzil.
“Actually,” he replied, “I rather feel he’s been on his best behavior.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Well, from all I’ve heard—”
“Will you shut the door!” Henkie repeated, his voice booming louder.
Kara merely smiled at him, now that she could make him out in the gloom.
“The others are just coming,” she said, “so we might as well keep it open. What about my bike?”
“Toss it in the bay for all I care.”
Kara’s lips shaped a practiced moue. “You’re not being very friendly,” she announced. “Especially seeing as how we’re here to help you.”
Henkie glared down at her from the top of the ladder.
“Well, it’s true,” she added.
“Fine,” Henkie told her. “Leave the bloody door open. Let the witch’s creatures in so they can spy out all our secrets. We’ve only spent the last bloody hour blocking off these windows so that they can’t peer in, so naturally we’re delighted that you plan to leave the door wide open so that they can simply waltz in. Shall I put on some tea for them, do you think?”
“What’s he on about, then?” Kara asked Taupin.
“Never mind him. We’re happy to see you. Just do keep an eye on that doorway and make sure nothing comes in.”
“What sorts of nothing?”
Taupin shrugged. “I’m not sure. To be safe, how about nothing larger than a fly?”
Kara’s gaze panned from him to Henkie and Lizzie, then to where Denzil was sitting at a table, sewing doll’s clothes.
“Nothing larger than a fly?” she repeated.
Taupin nodded. “Just to be safe.”
“Will you send up another square of cardboard?” Henkie asked from above.
Taupin reached down to the stack by his foot and passed another piece up to Lizzie who stood on a rung about halfway up the ladder. She handed it on to Henkie.
“You’ve all gone mad, haven’t you?” Kara said.
“Not really,” Taupin said. “It just seems odd. Give us a few moments to finish up with this here and we’ll explain the whole business to you.”
“That’s all right,” she told him. “I like things when they get a bit mad.”
“Who’s mad?” a new voice asked.
Peter Moyle had come up behind Kara. He peered into the warehouse, over her shoulder.
“Hello there, Denzil,” he called. “What’s that you’ve got there on your shoulder—a new kind of monkey?”
“I’m going to give him such a thump,” Jodi said. “Once I’m a bit bigger, that is.”
“That’s not a monkey,” Kara said, her voice suddenly all aglow with wonder. “It’s a Small.”
They both stepped closer.
“No, it isn’t,” Peter said. “It’s Jodi!”
“The door!” Henkie shouted.
Peter glanced up at him. “It’s still there,” he called back.
“Shut. It.”
But neither of the children paid him any mind. They approached the table where Denzil was working, mouths open to form wondering O’s.
“However did you turn her into a Small?” Kara asked.
“Can you do me next?” Peter added.
“Bloody hell,” Henkie muttered. “See to the door, would you, Brengy?”
“But the ladder . . . ?”
“We’ll be fine.”
As Henkie turned back to lay the new sheet of cardboard over the window, Taupin went to shut the door only to be confronted by a gaggle of Tatters children who trooped in, all in a group, and were soon clustered around the table where Denzil was now holding court, speaking as though he’d known magic was real all his life and not in the least embarrassed by his abrupt about-face.
Taupin gave a quick glance outside. The children’s bicycles lay in a litter of metal and wheels all around the door, but that was all he could see. Or at least it was, until he turned his gaze a bit farther from the area directly in front of the warehouse. Then he caught a glimpse of someone in a black mantle ducking out of sight behind the seawall—there one moment, gone the next.
“She’s still out there,” he called inside.
It was quieter now, Denzil having admonished the children for their excited cries by explaining how their loud voices were hurting Jodi’s ears.
“Any sign of her wee beastie?” Henkie asked. “What’s its bloody name? Willow? Whimple?”
“Windle,” Lizzie supplied.
“Nothing that I can see,” Taupin called back.
“Then shut the bloody door!”
“Henkie,” Lizzie said. “Must you shout so?”
He looked down at her.
“Now don’t you start in on me,” he began, wagging a finger at her. “Ever since Brengy dragged us into this, it’s been nothing but ‘Henkie, don’t do this,’ and ‘Henkie, don’t do that’—”
He broke off as the ladder began to sway.
“Steady now,” he cried. “Steady.”
But it was his shifting his weight that was making it wobble and as he tried to compensate for the sway, he leaned too far over in the other direction. The ladder tottered for a moment, then pitched to one side. Lizzie jumped and landed on an old mattress that lay nearby, but Henkie was on the top and all he could do was hold on and ride the ladder down.
All conversation stopped in the warehouse as they watched him topple into a stack of paintings. The ladder skidded out across the floor, bouncing once or twice before coming to a stop. Henkie plunged into the paintings and the whole stack tumbled down in a cloud of dust. When the air finally cleared, it was to show Henkie sitting stunned amid the paintings.
He’d poked his hand through one, his foot through two others, but what made the Tatters children hoot with laughter was the painting that his head had gone through. It was a nude of a busty woman and hung before him like an apron, his head having gone through exactly where the model’s head had initially been painted.
He tugged it off with a steady stream of curses and lumbered to his feet, whereupon everyone fell still. There was something more than a little intimidating about an angry man his size.
“Right,” he said. “You and you”—he pointed to a pair of the children—“finish blocking off the windows. You”—his finger jabbed the air again—“listen by the door. The rest of you can help Denzil—you do know how to sew, don’t you?”
“I can.”
A gamine half the size of Kara stuck up a dirty little hand as she answered. She couldn’t have been older than seven. Her face was round and her hair a mop of tightly wound curls.
Henkie’s glare softened. “Can you now?”
The small girl nodded.
“And what’s your name?”
“Ethy.”
“Well, then, Ethy, you’ll be Denzil’s special helper.”
Her little face beamed.
“As for the rest of you,” Henkie went on.
“Wait up a minute,” Peter said. “We came to help—not to be ordered about like you were the law or something. We can get enough of that at home.”
“If you came to bloody help,” Henkie started, “then you can bloody well begin by listening to what I have to bloody tell you, or you can just bloody well bugger off and leave us to our . . .”
His voice trailed off as Lizzie gave him a kick in the shin.
“Have you gone mad, woman?” he demanded.
“They’re all mad,” Kara confided to the other children.
“Listen to yourself,” Lizzie said.
A rumbling growl began deep in Henkie’s chest.
“Listen,” Lizzie repeated.
For a moment it looked as though he was going to smash something. Everyone, except for Lizzie, took a step back. But then he sighed and nodded.
“I’m going to sit down in that chair over there,” he said, pointing to a corner, “and I’m going to
Lizzie stepped up on her tiptoes and bussed him lightly on the cheek before he went off.
“Ta,” she said.
The children parted like the Red Sea before Moses as Henkie stalked towards them, closing up again when he’d gone by. They watched him pour a full glass of whiskey and then sit down in the chair where he swallowed half the whiskey without so much as his eyes watering. Having tried the foul liquid themselves at various times—as children will—they were suitably impressed and more than a little awed.
When they turned their grimy faces back to Lizzie, she faced them and smiled.
“We’re very grateful to have your help,” she told them, “and though some of what needs to be done is boring, there’ll still be some fun at the end of it all.”
“What needs to be done?” Peter asked, obviously as charmed by her as he’d been put off by Henkie’s attempt at ordering them about.
Lizzie explained how they needed to finish blocking off the windows. There were any number of identical doll-sized outfits to be sewn. Wigs needed to be cut and pasted to dolls’ heads. A watch had to be kept against spying eyes and ears.
“What’s it all about?” another of the children asked.
Glancing over from her perch on Denzil’s shoulder, Jodi identified the speaker—Harvey Ross. He was a big, strapping boy who’d give Henkie a run for his money when he finally stopped growing. At twelve years old, he was already getting odd jobs on the fishing luggers, working side by side with the men.
“Do you know the Widow Pender?” Taupin asked.
“She’s a witch,” a boy replied.
Jodi didn’t have to look to recognize Ratty Friggens’s voice. As big as Harvey was for his age, Ratty was small. He was a year younger than Jodi, but topped tiny Ethy by no more than a pair of inches. His real name was Richard, but because of his twitchy nose, pointed features, and the way he liked to skulk about using his size to its best advantage, he’d been dubbed “Ratty” years ago and the name stuck.
“Exactly,” Taupin said to a chorus of in-drawn breaths from the children.
It was one thing to suppose there were such things as witches and Smalls, but quite another to find that they truly were more than tales.
“What we have to do is hide Jodi from her long enough to get her to the Men-an-Tol without the Widow being aware of what we’re up to.”
“What if she turns us all into Smalls for helping you?” Kara asked.
“She needs to know your name and repeat it three times before she can work her spells,” Taupin explained. “Surely you could run away from her in that time? Or at least block your ears?”
“And it has to be your true name, doesn’t it?” Ratty asked.
“The one that makes you who you are,” Taupin agreed. “The one that, in your mind, encompasses all that you see yourself to be. So if she was to try to enspell you, Ratty, she’d have to call you Ratty Richard Friggens, because I’m guessing that’s how you think of yourself.”
Ratty nodded.
“She can’t possibly know all your names,” Taupin said.
“But she could learn them, couldn’t she?” Ethy asked.
“I . . .”
Taupin looked helplessly at Lizzie who then took over once more. She went on to explain the rest of Henkie’s plan. By the time she was done, the children were grinning from ear to ear.
“This will be fun,” Kara said.
Then it was a matter of setting everyone to their task. All the children wanted to volunteer to help Denzil, because then they could look at the tiny Jodi perched on his shoulder and listen wide-eyed to her story, not to mention giggle at her high-pitched squeaky voice. There were a number of arguments—along the lines of “I had first dibs” and “She couldn’t sew if her life depended on it” and “Sod you, too”—but soon it was all sorted out fairly by the simple expediency of allowing everyone to have their turn at the sewing.
By the time everything was prepared—the plans laid out and every contingency that they could foresee argued out to a suitable solution—it was midafternoon and time to begin.
“Remember,” Taupin told the children as they all gathered by the door. “If worse comes to worst, you can always jump in the bay and neither she nor her creatures can touch you.”
“What about the drowned dead?” Ratty asked.
Various children nodded nervously.
Taupin glanced at Jodi. “Do you know anything about this?”
Jodi shook her head, fed up with how the children all giggled whenever she spoke. She was going to thump more than one of them when she was finally her own size again.
“It’s just what I’ve heard,” Ratty said. “That she can call up the dead from the sea and they come shambling out, dripping water and seaweed, to chew on the flesh of the living.”
“We have it from a very good source,” Taupin said, “that witches can’t abide the touch of salt.”
“Yes, but the sea dead won’t be touching her,” Ratty said.
Henkie rose from his chair like a bear leaving its den in the spring.
“If you don’t want to go, boy,” he said, “just bloody come out and say so.”
“I’m not scared,” Ratty said.
“Me either,” Ethy added. “I’m not scared at all.”
“Then let’s see what we can do,” Henkie said.
Kara was closest to the door. At a nod from Lizzie, she turned the knob, threw it open, and went outside to where her bicycle lay in the dirt.
2.
The Widow Pender wasn’t always a widow, nor a Pender.
She was born at that exact moment that lies equidistant between the last sliver of the old moon and the first sliver of the new. Her birthing took place in the bed of a donkey-pulled cart drawn up in back of a hawthorn hedge when the first winds of winter were shivering the trees and the hoarfrost lay black on the frozen ground.
It was an auspicious time for a birth—at least, it was deemed auspicious by her people, for they believed that it was by hardship that a spirit was tempered and made strong.
Her mother’s midwife had been a witch, and she was born into a family of witches, the third and last of three daughters to bear the surname of Scorce. Her people were considered travelers by those who knew no better; the traveling people themselves, however, knew exactly what the Scorces were and avoided them when they could, leaving their secret signs scratched into the dirt to warn the other traveling clans of the Scorces’ whereabouts.
The new babe was named Hedra in a curious ceremony a few weeks later, for that was the old word for October, the name of the month in which she was born. Her family gathered about a tall, craggy standing stone set high on a cliff overlooking the sea, and had there been observers to view the proceedings, they would have seen much gadding about in the raw, wordless chanting and mad dancing, the burning of small straw figures and charms in fires made of bones, and the crafting of fetishes that were each bound to the new babe’s name and her future. Each participant in the ceremony left with one such fetish that they would keep safe through the years to preserve the newly named child’s luck.
Under her stiff blouse, the Widow Pender still wore her fetish in a tiny leather pouch. She wore it to remind herself of those days when she had been Hedra Scorce and the world was a merry place of bright wonder, when shadows were only shadows and she had no knowledge of what hid behind their darkness, watching her every move, glittering eyes heavily lidded with cobwebs.
But she didn’t wear it for luck, because all her luck had long since fled.
The Scorces had traveled the country for many years—mother, aunt, and grandmother riding in the donkey cart, the girls walking alongside. Like other traveling people, they did odd jobs and mending, picking potatoes and other vegetables in season, selling the besom brooms and baskets that they made and the charms that, unlike those of the other travelers, were po
But times changed. They grew harder for all the traveling people as the constables shifted them from town and village green, until only the moors and cliffs were theirs; but they could gain no sustenance from those desolate reaches. The natural beauty and wonder sustained the spirit, but the body required more secular nourishment, and that they could only earn in the villages and towns.
Hard times.
Sometimes now, she could see those eyes, watching her from the shadows. And she’d hear a voice, whispering. And then a whole chorus of them.
“Don’t listen,” her grandmother told her when she asked about what lay in the shadows. “The mischiefs and evils of the world wait in the shadows to prey on children innocent as you. They will promise you anything. Follow their advice, accept their gifts, and your soul will grow bitter. It will shrivel and wither until you can no longer feel the Mother’s presence. When you leave her light, all that will remain for you is the shadows and I’d wish that on no one, not friend, not enemy.”
“But they say they can help us.”
“The sweeter the promise,” Grandmother replied, “the surer the lie.”
“But—”
“Remember the lesson that the Christians have forgotten: When Adam and Eve made their choice in Eden, it concerned neither blind obedience nor righteous piety. It was a choice of self over God, arrogance over faith.”
“We aren’t Christians,” Hedra objected.
“True. But our Mother of Light and their Christ are not so different—in our hearts we both follow the light; only the names differ. What speaks to you from the shadows is that same Eden serpent, child.”