Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection (26 page)

The room always had a bit of a damp smell about it. The walls were bare except for two old posters: one sponsored a community rummage sale, now long past; the other was an advertisement for a Jilly Coppercorn one-woman show at the The Green Man Gallery featuring a reproduction of the firehall that had been taken from the artist’s
In Lower Crowsea
series of street scenes. It, too, was long out of date.

Much of the room was taken up by a sturdy oak desk. A computer sat on its broad surface, always surrounded by a clutter of manu-scripts waiting to be put on diskette, spot art, advertisements, sheets of Lettraset, glue sticks, pens, pencils, scratch pads and the like. Its printer was relegated to an apple crate on the floor. A large cork board in easy reach of the desk held a bewildering array of pinned-up slips of paper with almost indecipherable notes and appointments jotted on them. Post-its laureled the frame of the cork board and the sides of the computer like festive yellow decorations. A battered metal filing cabinet held back issues of the newspaper. On top of it was a vase with dried flowers—not so much an arrangement as a forgotten bouquet. One week of the month, the entire desk was covered with the current issue in progress in its various stages of layout.

It was not a room that appeared conducive to music, despite the presence of two small music stands taken from their storage spot behind the filing cabinet and set out in the open space between the desk and door along with a pair of straight-backed wooden chairs, salvaged twice a week from a closet down the hall. But music has its own enchantment and the first few notes of an old tune are all that it requires to transform any site into a place of magic, even if that location is no more than a windowless office cubicle in the Old Firehall’s basement.

Meran taught an old style of flute-playing. Her instrument of choice was that enduring cousin of the silver transverse orchestral flute: a simpler wooden instrument, side-blown as well, though it lacked a lip plate to help direct the airstream; keyless with only six holes. It was popularly referred to as an Irish flute since it was used for the playing of traditional Irish and Scottish dance music and the plaintive slow airs native to those same countries, but it had relatives in most countries of the world as well as in baroque orchestras.

In one form or another, it was one of the first implements created by ancient people to give voice to the mysteries that words cannot encompass, but that they had a need to express; only the drum was older.

With her last student of the day just out the door, Meran began the ritual of cleaning her instrument in preparation to packing it away and going home herself. She separated the flute into its three parts, swabbing dry the inside of each piece with a piece of soft cotton attached to a flute-rod. As she was putting the instrument away in its case, she realized that there was a woman standing in the doorway, a hesitant presence, reluctant to disturb the ritual until Meran was ready to notice her.

“Mrs. Batterberry,” Meran said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were there.”

The mother of her last student was in her late thirties, a striking, well-dressed woman whose attractiveness was undermined by an obvious lack of self-esteem.

“I hope I’m not intruding ... ?”

“Not at all; I’m just packing up. Please have a seat.”

Meran indicated the second chair, which Mrs. Batterberry’s daughter had so recently vacated. The woman walked gingerly into the room and perched on the edge of the chair, handbag clutched in both hands. She looked for all the world like a bird that was ready at any moment to erupt into flight and be gone.

“How can I help you, Mrs. Batterberry?” Meran asked. “Please, call me Anna.”

“Anna it is.”

Meran waited expectantly.

“I ... it’s about Lesli,” Mrs. Batterberry finally began.

Meran nodded encouragingly. “She’s doing very well. I think she has a real gift.”

“Here perhaps, but ... well, look at this.”

Drawing a handful of folded papers from her handbag, she passed them over to Meran. There were about five sheets of neat, closely-written lines of what appeared to be a school essay. Meran recog-nized the handwriting as Lesli’s. She read the teacher’s remarks, written in red ink at the top of the first page—“Well written and imaginative, but the next time, please stick to the assigned topic”—then quickly scanned through the pages. The last two paragraphs bore rereading:

“The old gods and their magics did not dwindle away into murky memories of brownies and little fairies more at home in a Disney cartoon; rather, they changed. The coming of Christ and Christians actually freed them. They were no longer bound to people’s expec-tations but could now become anything that they could imagine themselves to be.

“They are still here, walking among us. We just don’t recognize them anymore.”

Meran looked up from the paper. “It’s quite evocative.”

“The essay was supposed to be on one of the ethnic minorities of Newford,” Mrs. Batterberry said.

“Then, to a believer in Faerie,” Meran said with a smile, “Lesli’s essay would seem most apropos.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Batterberry said, “but I can’t find any humor in this situation. This—” she indicated the essay “—it just makes me uncomfortable.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Meran said. “I didn’t mean to make light of your worries, but I’m also afraid that I don’t under-stand them.”

Mrs. Batterberry looked more uncomfortable than ever. “It ... it just seems so obvious. She must be involved with the occult, or drugs. Perhaps both.”

“Just because of this essay?” Meran asked. She only just managed to keep the incredulity from her voice.

“Fairies and magic are all she ever talks about—or did talk about, I should say. We don’t seem to have much luck communicating anymore.”

Mrs. Batterberry fell silent then. Meran looked down at the essay, reading more of it as she waited for Lesli’s mother to go on. After a few moments, she looked up to find Mrs. Batterberry regarding her hopefully.

Meran cleared her throat. “I’m not exactly sure why it is that you’ve come to me,” she said finally.

“I was hoping you’d talk to her—to Lesli. She adores you. I’m sure she’d listen to you.”

“And tell her what?”

“That this sort of thinking—” Mrs. Batterberry waved a hand in the general direction of the essay that Meran was holding “—is wrong.”

“I’m not sure that I can—”

Before Meran could complete her sentence with “do that,” Mrs. Batterberry reached over and gripped her hand.

“Please,” the woman said. “I don’t know where else to turn. She’s going to be sixteen in a few days.

Legally, she can live on her own then and I’m afraid she’s just going to leave home if we can’t get this settled. I won’t have drugs or ... or occult things in my house. But I ...” Her eyes were suddenly swimming with unshed tears. “I don’t—Want to lose her ....”

She drew back. From her handbag, she fished out a handkerchief which she used to dab at her eyes.

Meran sighed. “All right,” she said. “Lesli has another lesson with me on Thursday—a makeup one for having missed one last week. I’ll talk to her then, but I can’t promise you anything.”

Mrs. Batterberry looked embarrassed, but relieved. “I’m sure you’ll be able to help.”

Meran had no such assurances, but Lesli’s mother was already on her feet and heading for the door, forestalling any attempt Meran might have tried to muster to back out of the situation. Mrs. Batter-berry paused in the doorway and looked back.

“Thank you so much,” she said, and then she was gone. Meran stared sourly at the space Mrs.

Batterberry had occupied. “Well, isn’t this just wonderful,” she said.

From Lesli’s diary, entry dated October 12th:

I saw another one today! It wasn’t at all the same as the one I spied on the Common last week. That one was more like a wizened little monkey, dressed up like an Arthur Rackham leprechaun. If I’d told anybody about him, they’d say that it
was
just a dressed-up monkey, but we know better, don’t we?

This is just so wonderful. I’ve always known they were there, of course. All around. But they were just hints, things I’d see out of the corner of my eye, snatches of music or conversation that I’d hear in a park or the backyard, when no one else was around. But ever since Midsummer’s Eve, I’ve actually been able to see them.

I feel like a birder, noting each new separate species I spot down here on your pages, but was there ever a birdwatcher that could claim to have seen the marvels I have? It’s like, all of a sudden, I’ve finally learned how to
see.

This one was at the Old Firehall of all places. I was having my weekly lesson with Meran—I get two this week because she was out of town last week. Anyway, we were playing my new tune—the one with the arpeggio bit in the second part that I’m sup-posed to be practicing but can’t quite get the hang of. It’s easy when Meran’s playing along with me, but when I try to do it on my own, my fingers get all fumbly and I keep muddling up the middle D.

I seem to have gotten sidetracked. Where was I? Oh yes. We were playing “Touch Me If You Dare” and it really sounded nice with both of us playing. Meran just seemed to pull my playing along with hers until it got lost in her music and you couldn’t tell which instrument was which, or even how many there were play-ing.

It was one of those perfect moments. I felt like I was in a trance or something. I had my eyes closed, but then I felt the air getting all thick. There was this weird sort of pressure on my skin, as though gravity had just doubled or something. I kept on playing, but I opened my eyes and that’s when I saw her—hovering up behind Meran’s shoulders.

She was the neatest thing I’ve ever seen—just the tiniest little faerie, ever so pretty, with gossamer wings that moved so quickly to keep her aloft that they were just a blur. They moved like a hum-mingbird’s wings. She looked just like the faeries on a pair of earrings I got a few years ago at a stall in the Market—sort of a Mucha design and all delicate and airy. But she wasn’t two-dimensional or just one color.

Her wings were like a rainbow blaze. Her hair was like honey, her skin a soft-burnished gold. She was wearing—now don’t blush, diary—nothing at all on top and just a gauzy skirt that seemed to be made of little leaves that kept changing colour, now sort of pink, now mauve, now bluish.

I was so surprised that I almost dropped my flute. I didn’t—wouldn’t that give Mom something to yell at me for if I broke id—but I did muddle the tune. As soon as the music faltered—just like that, as though the only thing that was keeping her in this world was that tune—she disappeared.

I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to what Meran was saying for the rest of the lesson, but I don’t think she noticed. I couldn’t get the faerie out of my mind. I still can’t. I wish Mom had been there to see her, or stupid old Mr. Allen. They couldn’t say it was just my imagination then!

Of course they probably wouldn’t have been able to see her anyway. That’s the thing with magic.

You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.

After my lesson, Mom went in to talk to Meran and made me wait in the car. She wouldn’t say what they’d talked about, but she seemed to be in a way better mood than usual when she got back. God, I wish she wouldn’t get so uptight.

“So,” Cerin said finally, setting aside his book. Meran had been moping about the house for the whole of the hour since she’d gotten home from the Firehall. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“You’ll just say I told you so.”

“Told you so how?”

Meran sighed. “Oh, you know. How did you put it? ‘The prob-lem with teaching children is that you have to put up with their parents.’ It was something like that.”

Cerin joined her in the windowseat, where she’d been staring out at the garden. He looked out at the giant old oaks that surrounded the house and said nothing for a long moment. In the fading after-noon light, he could see little brown men scurrying about in the leaves like so many monkeys.

“But the kids are worth it,”
he
said
finally.

“I don’t see you teaching children.”

“There’s just not many parents that can afford a harp for their prodigies.”

“But still ...”

“Still,” he agreed. “You’re perfectly right. I don’t like dealing with their parents; never did. When I see children put into little boxes, their enthusiasms stifled ... Everything gets regimented into what’s proper and what’s not, into recitals and passing examinations instead of just playing—” he began to mimic a hoity-toity voice “—I don’t care if you want to play in a rock band, you’ll learn what I tell you to learn ....”

His voice trailed off. In the back of his eyes, a dark light gleamed—not quite anger, more frustration.

“It makes you want to give them a good whack,” Meran said. “Exactly. So did you?”

Meran shook her head. “It wasn’t like that, but it was almost as bad. No, maybe it was worse.”

She told her husband about what Lesli’s mother had asked of her, handing over the English essay when she was done so that he could read it for himself.

“This is quite good, isn’t it?” he said when he reached the end. Meran nodded. “But how can I tell Lesli that none of it’s true when I know it is?”

“You can’t.”

Cerin laid the essay down on the windowsill and looked out at the oaks again. The twilight had crept up on the garden while they were talking. All the trees wore thick mantles of shadow now—poor recompense for the glorious cloaks of leaves that the season had stolen from them over the past few weeks. At the base of one fat trunk, the little monkeymen were roasting skewers of mushrooms and acorns over a small, almost smokeless fire.