The Little Country by Charles de Lint
Felix lost his grip on the man’s shoulder. He buckled over, catching hold of what proved to be a box of papers and magazines. The man struggled for a moment, trying to regain ownership of the box, his features still hidden in shadow. Then a door opened in the cottage next door. At the neighbour’s cry, the man shoved the box harder against Felix and fled. By the time Felix regained his balance once more and stepped out into the courtyard, he could see the man fleeing up Duck Street towards Mousehole Lane.
He set the box down on the doorstep and turned to face the Gaffer’s neighbour, struggling for a moment before he remembered the man’s name.
“Mr. Bodener?” he asked. His voice was husky as he caught his breath.
George Bodener was a few years the Gaffer’s senior, and like the Gaffer, he was a Mousehole native, although he’d never traveled farther than Plymouth in the whole of his life. He was thin and grey-haired, but he had a round piskie’s face that was rarely without a smile. That smile was missing just now, however. He had a cane upraised in his hand and peered carefully at Felix before he finally brought it down to his side.
“Felix, isn’t it?” he asked. “Janey’s musician friend?”
Felix nodded. “I surprised a burglar—”
“A burglar? In Mousehole? La, Jey! But I never.” He took a few steps closer. “Did you take a hurt, you?”
“No, I’m fine. Just a bit shook up.”
But thinking of the moment of violence, he looked worriedly back into the Gaffer’s cottage. Had the man hurt Janey or her grandfather?
“Don’t you be worrying about them, you,” George said. “Gone out, they have, up to Boyd’s farm. It’s Friday night, isn’t it just?”
Friday night meant a session at Charlie Boyd’s, Felix remembered. Some things never changed. But what was Janey doing, going to a session, when she was supposed to be in trouble?
Supposed to be? Felix amended. Then what did he call the burglar he’d just surprised? A houseguest?
“My gar,” George said as he joined Felix in the hallway and peered inside. “Made a bit of a mess.”
Felix nodded. There was a floor lamp lying on the carpet, its glass shade broken. A scatter of books lay on the floor around the hearth. Pillows were pulled from the sofa and the Gaffer’s club chair by the window. He looked down at the box he’d rescued from the burglar. It was filled with papers and what appeared to be a book. Who burgled a house for this kind of thing?
“Would you like some tea, you?” George asked him.
Felix shook his head. “I think I’ll try to clean this up before Janey and the Gaffer get back—lessen the shock a bit.”
“Now there’s a kind thought.”
“Been much trouble about here lately?” Felix asked, keeping his voice casual.
George blinked in surprise. “Trouble? In Mousehole? It’s not London, you. Not even Penzance.”
Felix gave him a smile. “I wasn’t thinking,” he said.
“No crime in that,” George said. He gave a last look around the living room. “Well, it’s back to the telly for me, Felix. Come ’round in the morning, why don’t you just, and tell me a tale of far-off ports.”
“I’ll do that.”
He collected his belongings from the courtyard and brought them and the box of papers inside as George returned to his home. Then he spent a half hour straightening the room and repairing what damage he could before he put on some tea.
An odd thing to steal, he thought as he took the box into the kitchen. He looked through the papers and saw that they were manuscripts and articles by the Gaffer’s old mate, Billy Dunthorn. There was a book, too, with a title that wasn’t familiar to Felix, but that was hardly surprising. He’d never had much of a head for authors’ names or how many books they’d published. He just read what came to hand and either enjoyed it, or didn’t.
But he knew Dunthorn because Janey never tired of talking about the man and his work.
Taking his tea into the now-tidy living room, he sat down in the Gaffer’s chair with the book and idly flipped through its pages while he waited for Janey and her grandfather to come home.
The Creeping Mouse
Thumbkin, Pointer, Middleman big,
Sillyman, Weeman, rig-a-jig-jig.
—NURSERY RHYME
Jodi couldn’t help herself—she had to know.
Of course there was no such thing as a Small. How could there be? And the Widow Pender wasn’t a witch. She had no mysterious powers to wield over the living, nor could she call up the dead. To think otherwise was to live in a fairy tale.
The world was a strange and wonderful place as it was, Denzil never tired of reminding her. What need was there to go prying about, chasing after supernatural oddities that couldn’t possibly exist when the mysteries of nature itself were barely understood?
Yes, and of course, and I do agree, Jodi would reply.
But there were always the stories—so many of them. Of ghosts and hauntings and things that went bump in the night. Of fairies and giants and impossible creatures. Where did they come from? Out of our heads, and that was it? Surely something had sparked their authors to imagine the incredible. Surely, somehow, there was some tiny grain of truth to the tale that set it spinning through the author’s mind.
What if impossibilities were true marvels?
And what if the moon was made of cheese, Denzil would reply dryly. The question then would be, who ate it, night by night, and how did it come back again, piece by piece, just as good as new?
So Jodi would nod in reluctant agreement, but no matter how sensible she tried to be, she couldn’t stop that little voice that whispered in the back of her mind.
What if the marvels were real? What if?
She just had to know.
So late that night, when the last of the night’s customers was gone and Aunt Nettie and her girls were finally off to bed, Jodi crept out of her window, slid down the drainpipe, and set off through Bodbury’s cobblestone streets, heading for the Widow Pender’s house.
And it was a night for mystery, wasn’t it just? Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding the moon, waking shadows. The sea murmured to itself like an old woman, slapping the pilings of the quay that fronted the Tatters, phosphorus glistening on the tide. There wasn’t a light in a single window she passed—not even in Denzil’s workshop.
She walked with a swing in her step, breathing in the salty tang of the night air, her soft-soled shoes silent on the cobblestones. She wasn’t even a bit nervous—her sense of adventure overriding any such possibility—until she finally reached the outskirts of town and the Widow’s cottage came into view. Then she slowed down, pausing when she reached the protective cover of the last cottage before the Widow’s.
The two-story stone building that belonged to the Widow Pender rose in gloomy foreboding from its shadowed gardens. A flicker of light came from one ground-floor window. Occasionally a shadow passed the window, as though the Widow were pacing back and forth.
She’d be going out soon, Jodi thought as she settled down by the wall of the neighbouring cottage to wait. In the Tatters it was well known that the Widow went out late each night, when all the town was asleep, and stood on the headland across from her house to watch the sea.
Remembering her husband, the townsfolk said.
Conversing with the sea dead, the children of the Tatters whispered to one another.
The latter seemed all too possible to Jodi as she crouched nervously against the wall, watching the Widow’s cottage. The night had changed around her. There was a nasty undercurrent in the murmur of the tide now. The light wind coming in from the water seemed more like breathing than a sea breeze. Trees groaned ominously. Unseen things rustled in the hedges.
The warm comfort of her bed seemed very far away, and most appealing, but she chewed at her lower lip and kept to her vigil, refusing to be unnerved. It was a time for bravery, and she was determined to be just that. Yet as she waited there, she could
Jodi wished she hadn’t thought of him. Now all she could hear was his soft footfall on the street behind her. It was too easy to imagine him creeping towards her, catching her with his knobbly fingers, sharp thorn nails digging into her arms.
She shivered and peered over her shoulder so often that she almost missed the Widow finally leaving her cottage. Jodi watched her go, then rose quickly to her feet. Keeping an eye on the Widow’s receding back, afraid to even breathe, she darted over to the lit window and peered in.
And saw nothing out of the ordinary.
She looked in on what appeared to be the Widow’s sitting room and what she saw was common enough to make her yawn. A coal fire burned in the hearth. On the mantel above it, two fat white candles sat in silver candlesticks, throwing their flickering light across the room. There were a pair of comfortable chairs by the fire, knitting lying upon the seat of one; a sideboard displaying china plates—mostly with scenes depicting Bodbury and the surrounding countryside; another long table by another wall that reminded her of one of Denzil’s worktables as it was littered with various woodworking tools and pieces of wood and cloth; and a bookcase, with as many knickknacks as there were books on its shelves. Paintings and samplers hung on the walls. A cozy thick wool rug lay on the floor.
But nothing magical. None of the paraphernalia associated with witches—no cauldrons bubbling on the fire, no bundles of herbs and odd charms. And of course there wouldn’t be, would there? If the Widow was a witch, she’d hide the tools of her trade. In the attic, perhaps. Or the cellar.
Jodi’s attention returned to the worktable. At the far end was a square box covered with a piece of velvet. She glanced in the direction that the Widow had taken, but there was no sign of her return yet.
Did she dare? She’d come so far, but to actually enter the woman’s house and poke about in her belongings . . .
She hesitated for a long moment, then went ’round by the door and tried the knob. It turned easily under her hand, the door swinging open silently when she gave it a push. She hesitated again on the threshold, before taking a deep breath and stepping in.
She stood there in the hallway, expecting she knew not what. An alarm of some sort, she supposed. A cat to lunge at her, hissing and spitting. A raven to come screeching down the hallway towards her. A black dog to rear up from the floor at her feet, appearing out of a cloud of dense smoke, red-eyed and snarling. But there was nothing.
And why should there be? There were no such things as witches. The Widow Pender was merely a lonely old woman, making do with her loneliness and her pension, and here Jodi was, entering her cottage uninvited and undoubtedly unwelcome.
Ratty Friggens says she’s got a Small in that old house of hers. . . .
But Smalls were no more real than witches, were they?
A little wee man that she keeps in a jar.
She moved down the hall towards the sitting room. It appeared as innocuous from her present vantage point as it had from the window she’d peered through. It could be any old woman’s room, the fire cheery, a vague scent of dried flowers in the air.
She stepped inside, running a hand along the smooth wooden surface of the sideboard, and moved towards the worktable. She paused when she reached it, looking curiously at what the Widow had been working on.
Doll’s furniture.
A little wee man.
There could be a hundred good reasons she was making doll’s furniture.
She’s got a Small. . . .
Jodi put her hand on the cloth covering the box at the end of the table and slowly pulled the cloth away to reveal an aquarium. But unlike the ones in Denzil’s loft, this one was furnished like a doll’s house. There was a small table with two chairs; a miniature hearth with a coal in it, the stovepipe rising up the side of the aquarium and escaping from the back through a circular hole in the glass; a wardrobe and a dresser; a tiny woven rug; a bed, complete with bedclothes and pillow. There was even a doll lying under the covers. But then the doll turned around and looked up at Jodi and her heart rose up into her throat and lodged there.
The Small.
Oh raw we, there truly was a little man.
He was no bigger than a mouse; a miniature man, perfectly formed, blinking up at her from his glass prison. He clutched his bedclothes tightly to his throat, eyes wide and a look of alarm on his tiny features.
She bent closer to the glass side of the aquarium, moving as slow as she could so as not to startle him more, when she felt a draft of cold air on the back of her neck. Still moving slowly, but from fear now, she straightened once more and turned to face the doorway.
The Widow stood there, a look of amusement in her dark eyes. She leaned on her cane, the dark folds of her mantle falling about her to the tops of her high, laced boots.
“What have we here?” she said. “Come spying on me, have you, Jodi Shepherd?”
There was no place to hide—it was too late for that anyway—and no place to flee either, so Jodi held her ground, knees knocking against each other as she faced the Widow.
Something moved in the doorway by the Widow’s feet, drawing Jodi’s gaze. Half-numbed already—both from the existence of the Small and having been caught by the Widow—she could only stare at the little creature that crouched there.
It was no bigger than a cat, or Denzil’s monkey, but its body was hairless. Spindly limbs supported its round-bellied torso. It had a triangular face with a wild thatch of dark red hair above it. Ears like clam shells stuck out at right angles from its head. It clung to the hem of the Widow’s mantle, staring back at Jodi from its saucer-wide eyes. The flicker of a grin touched the wide gape of its mouth.
Jodi dragged her gaze back to the Widow’s face.
“What—what are you going to do to me?” she managed finally.
“Well, that’s the question now, isn’t it?” the Widow replied.
Her tone was mild, but there was a look in her eyes that made Jodi shiver.
Oh, how could she have been such a fool to come here and no one knowing where she’d gone?
She was doomed to spend the rest of her life as a toad or a newt or whatever the Widow decided to turn her into for trespassing in her cottage and discovering her secrets.
“I—I didn’t mean any . . .”
Harm, she wanted to say, but her throat just closed up on her and she couldn’t get the word out.
“My little man’s so lonely,” the Widow said.
By her feet, the odd little creature began to titter. Jodi tried to back up, but there was only the worktable behind her and she was already pressed up against it.
“Please,” Jodi tried.
The Widow spoke a word that seemed to hang in the air between them.
It was in no language that Jodi knew, but still, she could almost understand it. She felt queasy, hearing the repetition of its three syllables, as though her body subconsciously inferred its meaning and shied away from its import.
Then the Widow said Jodi’s name. She repeated it, and again. Three times in all.
Now Jodi felt light-headed.
I won’t faint, she thought as she reeled away from the table.
A stifling sense of closeness came over her, seeming to rush in at her from all sides. At the same time, the walls sped away in the opposite direction.
Dizzy, staggering, and disoriented, Jodi fought to keep her balance, but the floor rose up to meet her all the same.
The Hunt
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began—
A mighty hunter, and his p
—ALEXANDER POPE, from “Windsor Forest”
West of Mousehole, far west; past the craggy cliffs of Land’s End, across the Atlantic Ocean, and farther west still; across the North American continent to the southern tip of Vancouver Island . . . There, in an immaculately kept Tudor-styled house in the residential section of Victoria known as James Bay, an old man woke from a light sleep and sat up in his bed.
In his late eighties, John Madden was still as fit as he’d been in his mid-sixties, and he’d been fit then—enough so that his doctor had remarked at the time, “If you hadn’t been my patient for the past twenty years, John, I’d swear you weren’t a day over fifty.”
It was true that the shock of black hair belonging to the young man he’d been had turned to grey and thinned some. He moved more slowly now, as well, his lean frame feeling the brittleness of his years so that bones ached in inclement weather, muscles were stiff when he rose in the morning, or from a long session at his desk. But he still saw to his own portfolios with all the shrewdness that had made him a very rich man many times over, and his mind was as sharp and discerning as it had ever been.
He was a marvel in the circles in which he moved—always a leader, never a sycophant. His associates wondered at his acumen and his uncommon health for his age, though never in his presence. But he could see it in their eyes, more so as year followed year and he remained essentially unchanged while they fell by the wayside, young turks taking their place—the same questions eventually coming into their eyes.
But the secret to his success rested in neither the quick faculties of his mind, nor in the superb condition of his aging body. The key lay, instead, in the small image of a grey dove that was tattooed on the inside of his left wrist, placed just so that his watchband hid it from a casual glance.
Flicking on the light above his bed, Madden pressed a button on the intercom that sat beside the telephone on his night table.