The Little Country by Charles de Lint
Dennison had wondered about the hand, too, but hadn’t said a thing about it. Wasn’t his business. He’d learned that long ago. Never mind the white knight PI crap that TV and paperbacks foisted off on the public, the only way you got ahead in this business was by sticking strictly to the job. Leave the crusades for those who didn’t have to make a living.
What he didn’t like about having Grimes tagging along was that if Grimes was setting up a hit, then that left Dennison himself as an accessory. Maybe he wasn’t a white knight, but Dennison still had drawn lines between what was kosher and what wasn’t, and being involved in a hit was definitely stepping way over the line.
As soon as they left the train, Grimes vanished.
“We’d better be getting a hotel room soon,” Connie complained. “I’m sick of traveling. I feel like shit, you know what I’m saying? I need to wash up and get beautiful, pal.”
Dennison ignored her and took care of getting their luggage out on the platform.
“Hey, where’s poker-face?” she went on. “I thought we were, like, a big happy family.”
Dennison was wondering that as well. He scanned the platform, but except for some French hikers with their knapsacks, a family of four with luggage enough for twice that number who were obviously also tourists, and a pair of older gentlemen—probably businessmen—they had the area to themselves.
“You know I’m getting kind of sick of the silent treatment from you guys,” Connie said. “It’d be nice if you acted like I was here. I mean, just because you’ve got a pickle up your—”
“Shut up,” Dennison told her.
The few people present were all staring at her. He threw his raincoat at her, which she caught awkwardly.
“And put this on,” he added.
She started to throw it back at him. “Hey, don’t go getting all prissy on me, Mr. Big Shot Private Det—”
She broke off at the glare in his eyes. He didn’t say a word, just continued to give her a long hard stare until she slowly put the coat on. It was far too big for her and made her look like a bit of a clown with her high heels and stockinged calves underneath it and her teased blond hair and painted face above, but it also made her look the best she had since he’d first collected her at her Lower East Side apartment, where she’d met him at the door dressed in a baby-doll nightie right out of the pages of a Fredricks of Hollywood catalogue.
He stepped over to her and spoke in a voice pitched just loud enough for her to hear.
“Let’s get something straight,” he told her. “We’re both on a payroll. You screw up, and it looks bad on me, and I don’t like looking bad, got it?”
“Sure, I—”
“I don’t know what the hell Mr. Bett has got planned for you, but you can be damn sure it doesn’t include parading your ass all over town so that everybody who happens to be within a hundred yards of you will never forget you. So keep a lip on it and keep that coat on until we get a hotel room and then you’re going to change into something a little less—well, let’s be polite and only call it trashy.”
“C’mon,” Connie said. “Give me a break. It’s not like—”
“If Mr. Bett is paying you anything like he’s paying me, you owe him this much.” He lifted a fist between them. “I’m sick of your whining and I’m not one of those candyasses who wouldn’t lay a hand on a woman—not if that’s what it takes to shut ’em up.”
Her lip curled, but Dennison spoke before she could get a word out.
“I’m not jiving you, lady.”
Connie shrugged. “Screw you, too,” she said, but there was no force behind her words.
She lit up a cigarette and studiously ignored him.
Dennison sighed. He didn’t feel particularly proud about threatening her, but he was way beyond his usual limit of patience.
What the hell made her tick? He could see kids getting into the skin trade because it looked like a fast track to the good life, but surely a woman her age would have seen through the lie by now? What the hell made her still play out the party-girl image?
Getting old doesn’t mean you get smart, he answered himself. She probably just didn’t know any better.
Happily, Grimes chose that moment to reappear.
The guy moved like a ghost, Dennison thought, as Grimes collected his small traveling case from where Dennison had placed it on the platform.
“You missed our PI here playing the tough guy,” Connie said.
Grimes gave Dennison a glance. For a moment Dennison thought he saw a trace of humour behind the man’s flat gaze, but it was gone before he could be sure.
“What happened to you?” Dennison asked him.
“Saw someone I’m not ready to do business with yet,” Grimes replied.
So it was a hit, Dennison thought. He’d have to talk to Bett about this. No way he was going to be a part of this kind of a thing.
“Ready to find a hotel?” he asked.
Grimes shook his head. “Bett knows how to get in touch with me when the time’s right.”
“Do you need to know where we’re staying?”
“Can’t see why.”
Maybe things were going to work out after all, Dennison thought. With Grimes on his own track and if he could keep Hetherington quiet until Bett needed her, maybe he could salvage a little something for himself out of all of this. He’d enjoyed his previous trip here, but he’d only been playing the tourist then. Maybe he could fit in some real sight-seeing time before he had to head back to the States.
“Well, good luck,” he said.
Grimes smiled. “I’ve been waiting a long time to settle some unfinished business and I’ll tell you right now, it’s going to be a real pleasure finally getting the job done, but luck’s not going to have anything to do with it. Just patience.”
Dennison didn’t look at the prosthetic hand, but he knew that whatever Grimes was talking about had something to do with it. He gave Grimes a nod, then handed Connie her overnight case and picked up their other two cases.
“Let’s go, sunshine,” he said.
Connie butted her cigarette under the toe of her shoe and followed him with unfeigned reluctance.
Yeah, me, too, lady, Dennison thought. But we’re stuck with each other for the moment. He wasn’t going to say let’s make the best of it. All he wanted to do was get this crummy job over with.
Leppadumdowledum
For the moon’s shining high
and the dew is wet;
and on mossy moor,
they’re dancing yet.
—CORNISH RHYME
Jodi had suffered through her fair share of long, boring afternoons before, but she couldn’t remember one as tedious as this one that she spent tucked away for the most part in the pocket of the mayor of Bodbury’s secretary.
It made sense, of course, for her to go with Lizzie. Of all the conspirators to gather in Henkie Whale’s warehouse earlier that morning, Lizzie was the most likely candidate to take on the responsibility of hiding the Small that Jodi had become from the Widow Pender. It seemed logical that the Widow would pursue Denzil or Taupin, or any of the Tatters children, before she would think to confront Lizzie in her tiny office at the back of the town hall.
The logic was impeccable, everyone had agreed—especially Taupin, whose idea it had been. But logic didn’t make the hours go by any more quickly; nor did it relieve the boredom.
When they first arrived, Jodi had insisted that she be given the freedom of the desktop at the very least. As Lizzie rattled away on her typewriter, Jodi had wandered about the oversize desk, investigating common objects made strange by her new size: giant pens, a wooden letter opener as large as an oar, enormous sheets of paper as large as bedsheets and the like. She walked up and down the mayor’s correspondence, amused at reading words composed of letters that were each as big as her hand, and played soccer with a wadded-up bit of paper and two erasers as goalposts, but the novelty of it all soon palled.
She ended up sitting on Lizzie’s thesaurus, swinging her heels against its leather spine and wishing she were anywhere but where she was—until she was nearly caught by one of Lizzie’s coworkers, and Lizzie insisted that she remain out of sight. Then Jodi spent a half hour in a drawer, which was too dark, even with the slat of light that came through the crack that Lizzie had left open, and even more boring.
Eventually she went back into Lizzie’s pocket where she divided her time between dozing and peeking up over the edge of the pocket to look at the clock on the wall and gauge how much time had passed since the last time she’d looked. It was invariably less than ten minutes.
“Bother and damn,” she muttered. “What’s the point of being magical if this is all it gets you? Where’s the glamour and romance? Where’s the adventure?”
But then she thought of Edern—her Small who had turned out to be a clockwork man when he died, and then, in a dream, spoke to her from the mind of a seal. . . .
Oh, Edern. Why did you have to go and die? Were you ever even real in the first place?
That line of thought just made her feel depressed. And it brought back memories of the Widow, and the creatures at the witch’s command. Adventure? She realized that she could do without the adventure, thank you all the same.
But this endless monotony . . .
“I wish I could do something,” she said and kicked out against the fabric of the pocket in frustration.
“What are you doing?” Lizzie whispered.
Jodi stuck her head out of the pocket and stared up at Lizzie’s enormous face.
This is the world as a mouse sees it, she thought. Oh raw we. What if she was stuck like this forever?
“I’m going all kitey,” she shouted back in her high piping voice. “Desperately kitey.”
“Well do try to keep it down,” Lizzie replied, still whispering. “What if someone hears you?”
“Tell them it’s your stomach rumbling and you must go home for an early supper.”
Lizzie shook her head, which was a disconcerting gesture. It was like the top of a mountain moving back and forth. Her blond hair cascaded about her shoulders like a waterfall unable to make up its mind as to which course it would follow. It made Jodi’s head ache to watch.
“Stomach squeaking, rather,” Lizzie said.
“It’s not my fault I sound like this. Are you almost done for the day?”
Again the mountaintop moved back and forth. “We agreed it was best for us to stay here where the Widow won’t dare start a row—remember?”
All too bloody well, Jodi thought.
“I really am going mad,” she told Lizzie.
“You’ll survive.”
“Yes, but without a brain. It’ll have all turned to porridge in another few hours—truly it will. How can you stand to work here, day in, day out?”
“I like it. It gives me a chance to—”
“Who are you talking to, Lizzie?”
Jodi dropped back into the pocket as Lizzie started nervously and looked to the doorway where one of her coworkers stood.
“Just thinking aloud,” Lizzie replied.
The woman in the doorway smiled and shook her head. “That’s the first sign of madness,” she said, “talking to yourself.”
“I thought it was when you answered yourself,” Lizzie said.
“That, too.”
The woman went on to her own office and Lizzie looked down at her pocket.
“Do you see what I mean about keeping hidden?” she hissed. “You almost gave it all away.”
Jodi peeped above the top of Lizzie’s pocket again.
“I’m ever so frightened,” she said sulkily.
“Be good,” Lizzie said, “and I’ll leave early. We can get some ices and walk along the Old Quay before we meet the others.”
“Don’t. . .” Jodi began, then sighed.
Don’t talk to me as though I’m a child, she had been about to say, but she realized that Lizzie was only treating her like a child because she was acting like one. Lizzie was using the same tone of voice that Jodi did when she talked to Denzil’s monkey.
Bother and damn.
I’m even smaller than Ollie, she thought. And not nearly so well behaved.
“I think I’ll have another nap,” she said and dropped back into the pocket.
Lizzie went back to her typing.
Ten minutes later Jodi popped her head up to check the time once more. Only six minutes had passed.
Bother and damn, she thought as she sank back down into the pocket again.
2.
This was utter foolishness, Kara thought as she and Ethy approached the Widow’s cottage. They were supposed to be avoiding the Widow and her creatures, yet here they were bringing the wounded home to be tended. The Widow would probably work a spell with the snap of her fingers to heal the little beastie and then they’d simply have to deal with the fetch all over again.
That was if they didn’t run into the Widow at her home first. . . .
When Kara glanced at her companion, she could see that Ethy was having second thoughts as well, now that they were so close. What they should do was just drop the fetch right here within sight of the Widow’s cottage, lay it on the cobblestones, bundled up and all, and pedal off while they still had a chance.
That was the sensible thing to do.
Windle moved in her arm and made a piteous sound.
Kara sighed. Unfortunately, she wasn’t so hardhearted as to be able to do it. Not now, after having come this far. Not with the little creature so helpless. They’d given up the opportunity to be sensible from the moment they first set off with the wounded fetch in hand.
When they reached the last cottage before the Widow’s, Kara leaned her bicycle up against its garden wall and turned to Ethy.
“Wait for me here,” she said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Lay it on her doorstep.”
“I can help.”
“There’s nothing for you to do,” Kara explained.
She left unsaid the fact that there was no need for them both to be at risk when one could do the task as well as two.
“But—” Ethy began.
“You can watch our bikes,” Kara said.
Keeping a careful grip on the fetch in its newspaper bundle, she crossed the road and darted into the Widow’s garden. From there it was only a few steps to the cottage stoop where she knelt and laid down the fetch.
Was that a sound from inside the cottage? she wondered nervously.
No. Just a shutter rattling somewhere.
She gave Windle a comforting pat and the fetch snapped feebly at her hand.
Wonderfully grateful creature, she thought. Wasn’t it just?
She straightened up and began to back away when she heard Ethy’s warning shout.
“Kara!”
She turned to see the Widow in the road, Ethy cowering near the garden wall where their bicycles were leaning.
“Monsters!” the Widow cried. “Murderers!”
“Get away!” Kara shouted to Ethy, but the little girl was too frightened to move.
“I’ll fry you both,” the Widow said, her voice dropping to a menacing growl. “I’ll cook you in a pie and feed you to the crows. I’ll pull off your fingers, one by one, and make a necklace of them that I’ll hang about my neck.”
“W-we—we brought him back,” Kara stuttered.
The Widow was standing directly by her gate now, blocking Kara’s escape. Kara glanced at Ethy, willing her friend to flee, then looked about the garden for another gate, but there was none. Still, the hedgerow wasn’t that thick. Perhaps she could squeeze through and give the Widow the slip. Only that left Ethy, frozen by their bicycles . . .
The Widow was still cataloging the terrible fates she had for the pair of them.
“I’ll pop your eyes and boil them in a soup. I’ll make shoes of your skin and laugh as I dance in them.”
<
“You—you just keep back,” she said, advancing towards the gate.
The Widow’s eyes narrowed. “What have you got there girl?”
“Keep back or I’ll throw this,” Kara replied.
“What have you got?”
But Kara could tell that the Widow already knew. She backed up as Kara continued to move forward, gaze fixed on the balloon filled with seawater that Kara held in her hand.
When she reached the road, Kara edged around so that she was still facing the Widow, but each step brought her closer to where Ethy was standing near their bicycles.
“Kara Faull,” the Widow said.
Kara shivered. Three times named was what it took for the witch to work her spells—that’s what Taupin had told them this morning. So the Widow had just spoken the first third of a spell.
“You shut your gob,” Kara cried, hoisting the balloon higher “or I will throw it.”
“I have you marked,” the Widow said. “You, and Ethy Welet, there, and all your miserable friends. Don’t think that I haven’t.”
Kara had reached the bicycles now. She nudged Ethy with her foot, but got no response, so she gave the smaller girl a light kick on the shin with her toe.
Ethy blinked and shivered.
“Get on your bike,” Kara told her.
“I’ll bake you in an oven until your heads pop open and your brains spill out,” the Widow said. “I’ll crack your bones and suck out their marrow.”
Kara got on her own bike.
“Go,” she told Ethy. “I’ll be right behind you. She won’t harm you.”
“Harm her?” the Widow cried. “I’ll unarm her. I’ll pull off her legs and use them to stir a stew.”