Afternoon of the Elves (2 page)

“Sara-Kate Connolly thinks she's got elves,” Hillary told her mother when she came home, rather late, from looking at the village. The yards of the two families backed up to each other, a source of irritation to Hillary's father, who believed that property should be kept up to standard. But who could he complain to? Sara-Kate's father did not live there anymore. (“He's away on a trip,” Sara-Kate always said.) And Sara-Kate's mother didn't care about yards. She hardly ever went outside. She kept the shades of the house drawn down tight, even in summer.

“Elves?” Mrs. Lenox repeated.

“They're living in her backyard,” Hillary said. “They have little houses and a well. I said it must be something else but Sara-Kate is sure it's elves. It couldn't be, could it?”

“I don't like you playing in that yard,” Hillary's mother told her. “It's not a safe place for children. If you want to see Sara-Kate, invite her over here.”

“Sara-Kate won't come over here. She never goes to other people's houses. And she never invites anyone to her house,” Hillary added significantly. She tried to flick her hair over her shoulder the way Sara-Kate had done it that afternoon. But the sides were too short and refused to stay back.

“It seems that Sara-Kate is beginning to change her mind about invitations,” Mrs. Lenox said then, with an unhappy bend in the corners of her mouth.

But how could Hillary invite Sara-Kate to play? And play with what? The elves were not in Hillary's backyard, which was neat and well-tended, with an apple tree to climb and a round garden filled with autumn flowers. Hillary's father had bought a stone birdbath at a garden shop and placed it on a small mound at the center of the garden. He'd planted ivy on the mound and trained it to grow up the birdbath's fluted stem. Birds came from all over the neighborhood to swim there, and even squirrels and chipmunks dashed through for a dip. The birdbath made the garden beautiful.

“Now it's a real garden,” Hillary's father had said proudly, and, until that afternoon, Hillary had agreed. She had thought it was among the most perfect gardens on earth.

Sara-Kate's elves began to change things almost immediately, however. Not that Hillary really believed in them. No, she didn't. Why should she? Sara-Kate was not her friend. But, even without being believed, magic can begin to change things. It moves invisibly through the air, dissolving the usual ways of seeing, allowing new ways to creep in, secretly, quietly, like a stray cat sliding through bushes.

“Sara-Kate says elves don't like being out in the open,” Hillary remarked that evening as she and her father strolled across their garden's well-mowed lawn. She found herself examining the birdbath with new, critical eyes.

“She says they need weeds and bushes to hide under, and bottlecaps and string lying around to make their wells.”

Mr. Lenox didn't answer. He had bent over to fix a piece of ivy that had come free from the birdbath.

“And stones on their driveways,” Hillary added, turning to gaze at her own driveway, which was tarred down smooth and flat.

She turned toward Sara-Kate's house next. Its dark form loomed behind the hedge at the bottom of the yard. Though evening had come, no light showed in any of the windows.

Now that Hillary thought about it, she could not remember ever seeing many lights down there. Gray and expressionless was how the house generally appeared. What could Sara-Kate and her mother be doing inside? Hillary wondered, and, for a moment, she had a rather grim vision of two shapes sitting motionless at a table in the dark.

Then she remembered the shades. Mrs. Connolly's shades must be drawn so tightly that not a ray of light could escape. Behind them, Sara-Kate was probably having dinner in the kitchen, or she was doing her homework.

“What happened at school today?” her mother would be asking her. Or, “Please don't talk with your mouth full!”

Hillary imagined Sara-Kate Connolly frowning after this remark. She felt sure that Sara-Kate was too old to be reminded of her manners. Too old and too tough. Not really the kind of person to have elves in her backyard, Hillary thought.

“I'm going inside!” Hillary's father's voice sounded from across the lawn. The rest of him was swallowed up by dark.

“Wait for me. Wait!” Hillary cried. She didn't want to be left behind. Night had fallen so quickly, like a great black curtain on a stage. In a minute she might have been quite frightened except that suddenly, through the garden, the twinkling lights of the fireflies burst forth. It was as if the little bugs had waited all day for this moment to leap out of hiding. Or had they been there all along, blinking steadily but invisibly in the daylight? Hillary paused and looked about.

“Hillary! Where are you?”

“Coming,” she called, and turned to run in. A gust of wind slid across her cheek. Like lanterns in the grip of magic hands, the tiny lights flickered over the lawn.

Hillary dreamed about elves during the night. By morning it was clear that the magic of Sara-Kate's elves must be real, for while Hillary slept, it crept, mysterious and cat-like as ever, out of the Connollys' backyard, up the hill and through the half-opened window of Hillary's bedroom. There she woke beneath its spell shortly after dawn and immediately was seized by a mad desire to run down to Sara-Kate's yard in her nightgown.

But what would Sara-Kate have thought? And suppose the elves were not such early risers? Hillary imagined them surprised in their beds, leaping for cover as her giant bare feet thudded over the ground toward the fragile village. She made herself dress for school instead. She gathered her school books with unusual attention to orderliness and went downstairs to the kitchen. Hillary was determined to visit the elf village again soon, that very afternoon if Sara-Kate would have her. In the meantime, she ate a large breakfast of pancakes and milk, walked to school four blocks away, and spoke privately to Jane Webster and Alison Mancini about what she had seen in the Connollys' yard.

“Elves!” shrieked Jane and Alison together.

They were standing in front of their lockers taking off their denim jackets, which were identical, each with silver stars sewn on the shoulders and down the front. Hillary was wearing the same jacket, too. Their mothers had bought them in the same store downtown even though they were rather expensive. It was such fun to dress alike, as if they were members of a select club.

“What kind of elves?” Alison asked suspiciously.

Hillary told them about the little yards. She described the stones bordering the yards and the neatness of it all.

“Are there gates?” Alison wanted to know.

“I don't think so,” Hillary said.

“Are there chimneys? How about mailboxes?”

Hillary shook her head to both. “There's no furniture or anything inside. They're just, you know, little houses.”

Alison shrugged. She and Jane looked at each other.

“I bet she made them herself,” Jane said.

“Maybe she did,” Hillary replied. “And maybe she didn't. You should come see.”

“All right, we will,” Alison said, pushing the sleeves of her sweater up her arms with two smart strokes. She was the best dressed of the three. Jane was brighter, though. Her mother was a lawyer. Why they had alighted upon baby-faced Hillary for the third in their group even Hillary didn't know. She was often awed by their sophisticated conversations.

“We'll come, but don't think we'll be fooled for a minute,” Alison said.

Jane put on the sweet and innocent face that always meant something awful was coming. “I'd be interested to see if anything can live in that sickening backyard,” she said to Hillary as the bell for class rang. “Besides Sara-Kate, that is.”

She was not allowed to find out because Sara-Kate refused to have her. Sara-Kate refused to invite Alison either, though Hillary asked as nicely as possible. Jane and Alison waited out of sight in an empty classroom.

“But why?” Hillary begged. “You've got to let them come.”

The thin girl shook her head and raised her voice slightly. “These elves are private people. They aren't for public display. You can come if you want, but not those two creeps.”

“They're not creeps. We're friends,” Hillary protested.

But Sara-Kate, who didn't have any friends, who spit at people when they made her mad and walked around all day in a pair of men's boots, only smiled faintly.

“Some friends!” she announced, in a voice that carried straight down the hall to Jane and Alison's furious ears.

“Sara-Kate Connolly is not a nice person,” Alison said to the group when Hillary returned. “She gets in trouble a lot. Hillary should be careful of her.”

Jane nodded. “Anyone can say she has an elf village in her backyard if she wants to. The point is, where are the elves? I bet Sara-Kate is the only person who ever sees them.”

“Nobody sees them,” Hillary said. “Not even Sara-Kate. They go away when they hear people coming. Elves are very private persons. Sara-Kate said they used to be seen in the old days, but not now because there are too many people around and they're frightened. Elves haven't been seen for over a hundred years.”

“If these elves are so real, why doesn't Sara-Kate want us to come look?” Jane inquired, casting a shrewd glance at Alison.

“Because they're fake,” Alison answered without waiting for Hillary to reply. “Just like Sara-Kate.”

“She's definitely not a person you want to trust,” Jane agreed. She lowered her voice and drew the friends closer. “Do you remember that new bike she was riding to school last spring? Do you remember how she boasted about it and said she had a job on a paper route? Have you noticed how she isn't riding it anymore this fall?”

Alison nodded.

“What happened?” Hillary asked.

“She stole it,” Jane whispered. “From a store downtown. Everybody knows. The police came to Sara-Kate's house and she was arrested. Only, she gave the bike back so nothing happened. They're watching her, though, in case she steals something else.”

Hillary was shocked. “How awful!”

For the rest of the day she kept away from Sara-Kate. When she walked home from school, she saw her thin shape in the distance and it looked dangerous suddenly. It looked like the shape of someone who was bad, someone who lived in a bad house and came from a bad family.

If magic had truly invaded Hillary's room, now it slithered away again. It was gone by the time she reached home that day, and Hillary was relieved. She felt as if she had made a narrow escape and laughed at herself for being so easily fooled. She began to remember other incidents connected with Sara-Kate Connolly. They were little things—a lost pencil case, a series of small disappearances from the art room, a mean note left in someone's desk. Taken together, they added up to something larger in Hillary's mind.

“I do think it's best not to spend time down in that yard,” Mrs. Lenox said, approvingly, at dinner. “Heaven knows what you might catch or step on.”

Two days later, Hillary had put the elf village almost completely out of her mind when Sara-Kate appeared at her elbow in the hall at school. She appeared so suddenly, and at such an odd time—all the other fifth graders were at sports—that Hillary jumped.

Sara-Kate leaned toward her and spoke in a high, breathless voice.

“Where have you been? I thought you were coming again. The elves have built a playground. They have a swimming pool and a Ferris wheel now.” She flung a string of hair over her shoulder and smiled nervously. “You should come see,” she told Hillary.

“A Ferris wheel!” In spite of herself, Hillary felt a jab of excitement. “How did they build that?”

“With Popsicle sticks and two bicycle wheels. It really goes around. The elves come out at night and play on it. Really and truly,” said Sara-Kate, looking into Hillary's eyes. “I can tell it's been used in the morning.”

Hillary glanced away, down at the floor, where she noticed that both of Sara-Kate's boots were newly speckled with mud. Her legs rose out of them, two raw, white stalks that disappeared under her skirt's ragged hem. She didn't seem to be wearing any socks at all. Half of Hillary was repelled. No one in the school was so badly dressed as Sara-Kate, or so mean and unhealthy-looking. And yet, another half was strangely tempted.

“Maybe I could come over this afternoon,” she told the older girl. “Just for a minute, though. I've got a lot of things to do.”

Sara-Kate's small eyes narrowed. “In that case, don't bother.”

“I want to,” Hillary said, “but my mother—”