Once...

  It seemed that everything had ground to a halt once more. The faeries hovered in the air like humming birds, the beast stayed its leap forward and the tiny man was now hanging from a bookshelf gawking at Thom.

  It was over. Thom knew it was over. And so did the beast.

  As he turned to face the succubus, Thom saw that something – spirit? Purpose? – had left it. It glared, it ranted, but it made no further move towards him. And as if encouraged by Thom’s actions, the faeries resumed their attack, flying dangerously close, tickling its stubby nose, throwing dust like confetti, pulling at its ears, all the while ululating in their sweet, sing-songy way as the pixie-man called out encouragement.

  With one last roaring howl, the succubus ran back across the table and leapt towards the front door, in its fury misjudging the distance and smashing into wood. It howled again, a wretched screech, and clumsily yanked at the doorhandle. The door flew open and the beast was gone, out into the night. Darkness quickly swallowed up the shambling figure, but Thom could hear it crashing through the trees and undergrowth for long moments afterwards. The faeries’ melodious cries reached a crescendo until they, too, went through the door and out into the deep indigo night, two of the larger ones, Thom noticed, carrying their injured companion between them. Like a silver-golden slipstream following the brightest comet, they swerved around the trees and obstacles and were soon gone from view.

  Although relieved, he was also disappointed. The cottage felt suddenly empty. Totally empty, as though its soul had left with the faeries. Besides, he was still in awe of those wonderful ethereal flying creatures and, now that the fear had been removed, he wanted to learn more about them. He wanted to know their secrets, their genesis. But he was alone.

  Well, almost alone. The little man suddenly appeared, sitting on the edge of the table.

  THEY TALKED long into the night, Thom fascinated while sometimes doubting his own sanity. How could he be sitting here talking to a tiny man – who was sitting cross-ankled in the middle of the table, the old book closed before him, and who would have been at least a foot tall if standing – proclaiming himself to be an elf, keeper of the cottage, and guardian to Thom?

  Thom had been dog-weary when the excitement was over – no, wrong, the danger was gone, but the conversation they now were having raised a different excitement – but as if from out of nowhere, the elf – the elf? Could there be such a thing? – had produced a pitcher of juice (the stone pitcher was not one Thom had seen before), containing the same kind of juice he had found waiting for him a couple of mornings ago. As before, although without the same intensity, he was suddenly refreshed, invigorated even, his mind clear, much of the tiredness gone. It was a delicious sensation, a natural one, as if toxins in his body had been removed. His troubled mind was calmed, his tension soothed, and the remnants of exhaustion still lodged within even became pleasurable. No drug could work this way, for clarity was its essence, the sense of wellbeing a by-product. He had downed a full glass in three large gulps, but the elf had refused him any more.

  ‘Toomochanyeel – not want to sleep for a week.’ The sentence had started garbled and had only made sense halfway through. ‘Too much and ye’ll not want to sleep for a week.’ There was no accent, but there was a lilt in the voice, and most of what the little man said from then on was perfectly coherent to Thom.

  Thom asked if there was something special in the juice, some magic ingredient, and it was odd that the word magic did not sound ridiculous, nor even imply trickery.

  ‘Naw,’ came the reply, the elf grinning from pointed ear to pointed ear, pixie eyes almost closed with the fun of it. ‘Everyday herbs and things ye’ll find in yer own woods, mixed with lake water and plum juice.’

  ‘Lake water?’ Thom examined the empty glass as if it still contained the liquid. ‘I swam in the lake when I was a kid. It didn’t taste special.’

  The imp grinned even more, revealing tiny and almost pointed teeth. In the artificial light from above Thom saw that his face and hands were brownish, like parchment, and his hair, that which he could see sticking out from under the floppy, pointed hat, was black. It was impossible to tell the mysterious being’s age because although his face was strangely wizened there was not a wrinkle in sight. With his tilted eyes and coffee skin he might have been Chinese, or even Mongolian, but in truth, he actually looked neither, something else about him that was weird.

  Thom rested his elbows on the table, loosely clenched hands parallel but apart. ‘Will you please tell me who you are?’ he all but pleaded.

  ‘Dontchano?’ Don’t you know? ‘Kinchamemba?’ Can’t you remember?

  Thom shook his head and the minikin gave an exaggerated sigh.

  ‘Y’all lose it.’

  The more Thom listened, the plainer the words became. It was as if he were remembering a dialect rather than learning a new one.

  ‘Y’all lose it an’ some never be havin’ it,’ the man said.

  ‘What? Tell me what.’

  ‘The perception. It be deadin’ as the ’magination fades.’

  ‘There are people with fantastic imaginations,’ Thom insisted. ‘Artists, poets, composers . . . plenty.’

  ‘Still their minds bint open no matter how theys tries. I think yous call it “maturity” when the knowin’ goes. Never that simple though, there be much more to it.’

  ‘You have to believe? You have to want to believe?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ The reprimand was short, no-nonsense. ‘If that be the case, there’d be millions seein’ of us. Yous lose the magic.’

  That word again. Magic.

  ‘An’ that’s right an’ proper, s’how it should be. Yous not be in the same spectrum, y’see, no, not at all. Yous lose the ability to move yer vision an’ minds up a few notches. That’s why, if we likes, we be come down to yer level. An’ even then, yous might not be seein’ of us.’

  ‘I don’t understand any of this.’

  The little man rested his wrists on his raised knees. ‘What d’yer want explainin’?’

  ‘Oh, just about everything.’

  ‘Well let’s be makin’ a start. I know yer doesn’t remember me, but d’yer be knowin’ what I am?’

  ‘A pixie?’ Thom felt no embarrassment in using the word.

  ‘Elf, pixie, brownie, bwca – it be takin’ too long to explain, and then yer wouldn’t be understandin’ anyway. Settle fer elf, that’ll do fer now.’

  ‘But elves aren’t real, they only exist in storybooks.’

  ‘Aye, an’ so be faeries, an’ yer’ve just seen ’em. An’ so be the succubus, fer yer’ve just seen that evil thing too.’

  ‘But . . . but you’re real. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, what’s just happened . . .’

  ‘We be real enough,’ the – elf? – said gruffly. ‘Used to be known as fatae – the fates – but that be changed through the centuries. Don’t yer be rememberin’ anything of us? Y’used to play with the faeries when yerself were wee.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Yeh, impossible. Just like me. An’ yet yer be sittin’ there talkin’ to me.’

  ‘I know I’m not dreaming.’

  The little man chuckled and shook his head. Thom watched as he shrunk a couple of inches.

  ‘Why do you keep doing that?’ he asked, vexed.

  The elf shrugged. ‘S’up to ye, really. Yer’ve not quite settled on the size yer want me to be.’

  ‘Up to me? I’ve got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Listen.’ The elf leaned forward over his knees and spoke in a hushed voice. ‘Humans be governed by the limits of their own spectrum. Yous do not see the infinite vibrations between. If ye like, we be exist between yer finites. Understand me?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  Thom felt heady, either from the brew he had just consumed, or from relief that the terror – not just the beast, but the terror within himself – was gone. He was eager to learn, exhaustion for the moment allayed both by curiosity and
the drink.

  The elf-man sighed again, an almost comical gesture. He wasn’t cute, not like the elves or pixies you saw in illustrated storybooks, but his size and features did lend him some kind of eccentric charm. No Disney character this, but bewitchingly intriguing all the same.

  ‘Forget the senses yer know about – yer could when you were little. Those five senses are too dense, they have no finesse.’

  A strange thing was happening to the elf’s manner of speech as he went on. Initially, it had almost been incoherent gobbledegook as far as Thom was concerned, then it had began to make sense and he could understand almost every word. Now it was becoming even plainer, the odd lilt still present, but the main inflections growing more like Thom’s own. ‘Yer’ had become ‘you’ and the annoying ‘bes’ – it be this, it be that – dropped altogether. It was a relief, for the concept was difficult enough to follow without having to decipher every sentence as well.

  ‘And because we choose to remain hidden,’ the elf went on, his voice still a high tone but the words well formed, ‘and because your senses are not in tune with ours, we remain invisible to humans. Most of the time, anyway. We live in different dimensions, you and I, but there is a link. To begin with, though, you have to understand that the cosmos consists more of energy and consciousness than it does of physical matter.’

  Now Thom was convinced that his own subconscious was making sense of the elf’s language, that the more he heard the easier it became to follow. He remembered the flutey-whistling sounds of the faeries, how they had gradually changed to little singing voices to his ear, as if familiarity were making sense of it all. His subconscious mind was the translator, the process . . .? Magical.

  ‘Unfortunately, the more materialistic humans have become – the more civilized, you would say. Pah! – the more you’ve lost sight of the grand consciousness. If you gave it proper attention, you’d be amazed at how logical – and how wonderful – it all is.’ He shook his small head sadly. ‘You’ve chosen otherwise, though.’

  Thom spoke up. ‘I don’t get it. Why would we do that?’

  ‘Human contrariness. It’s the way you are. Some of you can’t even appreciate fine music, art, beautiful prose – some of you even think the act of sex, that funny, exquisite pastime, should be conducted behind closed doors. Others have even forgotten the wonder in a baby’s chuckle.’

  ‘But that’s different.’

  ‘Not much so.’

  ‘Most are a matter of preference, or taste. Or judgement.’

  ‘It amounts to the same.’

  Stumped, Thom closed his mouth.

  ‘You’ve lost the ability, y’see, to understand that the consciousness is the thing between atoms and molecules and particles, the unseen glue that holds everything together. It has its own patterns – billions, trillions and whatever comes next . . .’ (another hint here that nothing the elf said was going beyond Thom’s grasp, for his own subconscious was the go-between; nonetheless, it was so, so strange to hear this funny little guy sprouting such things) ‘. . . and it’s consciousness, which is energy, that binds the patterns and forms shapes, matter, if you like. Some of your scientists are getting pretty close to the discovery though, so it won’t be too long before you have the technical skill to divine it. And boy-oh-boy, are you humans in for some surprises.’

  The elf on the table slapped his knee and chortled.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Thom pretested. ‘How come I can see you? There’s nothing special about me.’

  The little man eyed him for a moment or two. ‘Isn’t there, now?’ he said at last. ‘You’ve an awful lot to learn, but it can’t be done all at once. Try and think back, Thom. Remember when you were a boy.’

  Thom thought long and hard, but was still perplexed. ‘Bethan – that was my mother – told me lots of stories about faeries and little people like yourself.’

  ‘Not people, Thom. Elementals.’

  ‘Whatever. But they were just that – stories, made-up fantasies to amuse a kid.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  ‘Come on. All mothers tell their toddlers faery stories.’

  ‘And where d’you think those stories come from?’

  ‘Myth, invention. Sure, part are folklore passed down through the ages.’

  The elf shook his head. ‘Memories, Thom. Most are race memories. Handed down from one generation to the next, like your genes. The little humans, your infants, believe, and so sometimes we show ourselves to them.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because we like them and they’re safe, no danger to us. For the same reason, we often reveal ourselves to your ancients. You call them senile when they speak of us.’

  ‘I don’t see how we can be a risk to you.’

  Another laugh, a short one. ‘You’re even a risk to yourselves. One day it all might change, perhaps when you lose your cynicism and regain the simple knowledge. But I think the scientists will discover us first – or at least, discover the possibility of our existence. We’ll see.’

  Thom was desperately trying to absorb everything he had been told so far. It was difficult.

  ‘Okay,’ he said eventually, still leaning forward on the table. ‘So why me? Why me now?’

  ‘Because your life is in jeopardy.’

  In jeopardy. Beautifully quaint, but still within Thom’s own vocabulary.

  ‘The thing?’ he shuddered at the thought. ‘What was it you called it?’

  ‘The succubus. It’s a sexual creature used by someone who wishes another harm. If you had been female, an incubus might have come to you. It wanted to steal from you, Thom.’

  ‘But when I woke it was—’

  ‘Stealing your life-juices.’

  Thom slumped back in the chair, shocked.

  ‘Why? Who—?

  ‘Haven’t you realized the peril you’re in?’ The little man’s eyes were almost closed, so intense was their gaze.

  Thom could only return the stare, his jaw dropped, mouth open. His hands gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles white.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ He repeated it: ‘No, I don’t understand.’

  A night breeze circled the kitchen and Thom moved to close the front door. He bolted it, then gave the handle a tug to reassure himself. The door rattled in its frame.

  He came back to the table and faced the elf once more. ‘Will you please stay the one size?’ Thom complained. ‘I’ve got enough to deal with without you shape-shifting.’

  ‘I told you, my size depends on you. You can make it what you like, although I don’t necessarily have to comply.’

  Was this another hint that this was all in his own mind? Thom wondered. No, it couldn’t be. He was neither imagining, nor dreaming. And he was perfectly sane (as most madmen choose to believe of themselves).

  ‘I’ll soon settle,’ the elf assured him and, as an afterthought, added: ‘They call me Rigwit, by the way. Sometimes they call me Philibert, other times Xerxes. But Rigwit is the name I’ve become used to. All right with you?’

  Thom nodded, although he was not particularly interested in names at that moment. ‘You . . . you said I’m in danger. From who? Who would want to hurt me?’

  ‘She would. You know – the one humans might call a hellhagge, ogress, midnighthagge, wiccawoman – there are many names for them.’

  ‘Witch.’

  ‘Your most popular choice.’

  ‘You’re talking about Nell Quick, aren’t you?’

  The elf – Rigwit? all right: Rigwit, it was – nodded his coffee-coloured head.

  ‘She despises you,’ he said.

  ‘She hardly knows me,’ Thom protested. ‘Anyway, earlier today . . .’ he had not realized it was now well past midnight ‘. . . she tried—’ He stopped abruptly. How did you explain seduction to an . . . to an elf, for Christ’s sake? Instead, he threw a question back at his pint-sized companion. ‘What makes you think she’s a witch?’

  ‘We know when evil is
afoot. And we always know who the dark ones are. Nell is no mystery to us.’

  ‘But what’s she got against me?’ True, he had felt uneasy in her presence since the first time they’d met, but he had assumed it was because her intentions were so clear. He wasn’t against being seduced, it was just that she was so blatant about it. And there was something distinctly weird about Nell Quick; she was certainly attractive, even ravishing, with her wild black hair and scarlet lips, but there was a look in those dark eyes that was, well . . . wicked.

  ‘We don’t yet know the answer to that, Thom,’ replied the elf. ‘But this night she wanted your fertility to help work her evil against you. That’s why she summoned the succubus and sent it to you.’

  Thom just shook his head in confusion. Then: ‘Who do you mean by “we”?’

  ‘We the faerefolkis. Your neighbours. The forest dwellers.’

  ‘That’s crazy. I spent my childhood here – I know the woods. I used to explore every . . .’

  His words began to fade as memories struggled to find their way through the layered veils of maturity. There came only unfocused and mystifying glimpses.

  ‘Hell!’ he said with an anger borne out of frustration.

  ‘You can almost see, can’t you?’ Rigwit said artfully. ‘You can almost conjure the pictures in your head. But you were very young then, and the dreadful shock of losing your dear mother damaged you in more ways than one. Life for you changed abruptly and you shed your innocence very swiftly. Grief and circumstance robbed you of the hidden knowledge and time stole its memory.’ Rigwit gave yet another deep sigh. ‘Unfortunately, it has always been so, not just for you, but for others who have known the secrets. I suppose it has to be that way, for the scepticism and distrust that comes with senescence would surely weaken and destroy us.’

  It had become impossible for Thom to embrace any more. Tiredness, despite the nectar, the wonderful juice he had drunk earlier, was overcoming both body and mind, pure exhaustion defeating all further curiosity. He yawned.