Faerie Tale, Page 5

  “Sorry to yell,” he said, “but there’s a nasty bit of a turn in the trail ahead and a deadfall, then you hit the bridge, and that’s tricky. Like I said, this isn’t a riding trail.”

  “Sorry.” Gabbie turned forward, lapsing into silence. Something awkward had come between them and neither seemed sure of how to repair the damage.

  Finally Jack said, “Look, I’m really sorry.”

  Petulantly Gabbie responded, “I said I was sorry.”

  With a fierce expression, Jack raised his voice slightly. “Well, I’m sorrier than you are.”

  Gabbie made a face and shouted, “Ya! Well, I’m sorrier than you’ll ever be!”

  They both continued the mock argument for a moment, then rode past the deadfall and discovered the bridge. Gabbie’s horse shied and attempted to turn around. “Hey!” She put her leg to My Dandelion as the mare attempted to jig sideways. As the horse began to toss her head, Gabbie took firm rein and said, “Stop that!” The horse obeyed. Looking at Jack, Gabbie said, “What?”

  “That’s the Troll Bridge.”

  She groaned at the pun. “That’s retarded.”

  “Well, that’s what the kids call it. I don’t think there’s a troll waiting under it for billy goats, but for some reason the horses don’t like to cross.” To demonstrate the point, he had to use a firm rein and some vigorous kicks to get John Adams across the bridge. Gabbie followed suit and found My Dandelion reluctant to step upon the ancient stones, until Gabbie put her heels hard into her horse’s sides. But as soon as the mare was halfway across, she nearly bolted forward, as if anxious to be off.

  “That’s pretty weird.”

  Jack nodded. “I don’t know. Horses can be pretty funny. Maybe they smell something. Anyway, these woods are supposed to be haunted—”

  “Haunted!” interrupted Gabbie, with a note of derision.

  “I didn’t say I believed, but some pretty strange things have gone on around here.”

  She rode forward, saying, “Like what?”

  “Lights in the woods, you know? Like fox fire, but there’s no marsh nearby. Maybe St. Elmo’s fire. Anyway, some folks say they’ve heard music deep in the woods, and there’s a story about some kids disappearing.”

  “Kidnapping?”

  “No one knows. It happened almost a hundred years ago. Seems some folks went out for a Fourth of July picnic one time, and a couple of kids got lost in the woods.”

  “Sounds like a movie I once saw.”

  Jack grinned. “Yes, it was the same sort of thing. These woods can get you pretty turned around, and it was a heck of a lot rougher back then. No highway a mile to the west, just wagon roads. Pittsville was about a tenth the size it is today. No developments, or malls, only a few spread-out farms and a lot of woods. Anyway, they searched a long time and came up with nothing. No bodies, nothing. Some think the Indians killed them.”

  “Indians?”

  “There was a reservation nearby. A small band of Cattaraugus, Alleganies, or some such. They shut it down a long time ago. But anyway, a bunch of farmers marched over there and were ready to start shooting. The Indians said it was spirits got the kids. And the funny thing was the farmers just turned round and went home. There’s been a lot of other stuff like that over the years. These woods have a fair reputation for odd goings-on.”

  “For a southern boy you know a lot about these woods.”

  “Aggie,” he said with an affectionate smile. “She’s something of an expert. It’s sort of a hobby with her. You’ll see what I mean when you meet her. You’re going next Sunday, aren’t you?”

  She smiled at his barely hidden interest. “I guess.”

  They cleared a thick stand of trees, then suddenly found themselves facing a large bald hillock. It rose to a height of twenty-five feet, dominating the clearing. Not a single plant save grasses grew on it, no tree or bush.

  “A fairy mound!” said Gabbie with obvious delight.

  “Erlkönighügel.”

  “What?”

  “Erlkönighügel. Erl King Hill, literally. Hill of the Elf King, in German; it’s what Old Man Kessler’s father called it. Erl King Hill is what the farm is officially called in the title deeds, though everyone hereabouts calls it the Old Kessler Place.”

  “Far out. Is there a story?”

  Moving his horse in a lazy circle about the hill, Jack said, “Usually is about such things. But I don’t know any. Just that the locals have called this place the Fairy Woods since Pittsville was founded in 1820. I guess that’s where Old Man Kessler’s father got the notion when he showed up eighty-odd years ago. They’ve got fairy myths in Germany. Anyway, ‘Der Erlkönig’ is a poem by Goethe. It’s pretty scary stuff.”

  They left the hill behind and moved down a slight grade toward a path leading back to the farm. As they left, Gabbie cast a rearward glance at the hillock. For some reason she was left with the feeling the place was waiting. Brushing aside the strange notion, she turned her thoughts to how she was going to get Jack to call her again.

  9

  Agatha Grant’s farm was a sea of green bordered by a shoreline of condos. Most of the surrounding land had been sold off over the years, and a new housing development, Colonial Woodlands, loomed up less than a hundred yards behind her barn. Only a large rambling meadow to the north of the house and the woods to the south protected the farm from the encroaching urban sprawl. She literally lived on the edge of Pittsville. The house was another turn-of-the-century marvel, though from the outside it appeared that considerably more thought had gone into its decor, mused Gloria.

  Agatha stood waiting for them upon the front stoop, a bright-eyed elderly woman who appeared fit and upright despite the ivory-topped cane she held in her left hand. She greeted Philip warmly and bestowed polite kisses on Gloria’s and Gabbie’s cheeks. She ushered everyone into the large parlor, where Jack Cole waited, and invited them to take seats. The boys, as one, chose a love seat, fascinated by the strange two-way facing design. Gabbie and Gloria took comfortable stuffed chairs, while Aggie sat beside Phil on a large sofa, his hand held in hers.

  Jack opened a breakfront, revealing a fine assortment of liquor, asked people their pleasure, and began pouring drinks. He handed a glass to Phil, who sipped and was pleased to discover a pungent, single-malt scotch. “Glenfiddich?”

  “Glenfiddich.”

  “Thank you, sir,” observed Phil with deep appreciation.

  Agatha said, “Have you something for the boys?”

  Jack presented a pair of tumblers. “Coke. Okay?”

  The boys took the offered pair of glasses. Jack passed around the other drinks, then remained at Agatha’s side. After a moment Agatha said, “Jack, quit hovering over me. Go sit by that pretty girl over there, that’s a good boy.” Jack obeyed with a grin, settling upon the arm of Gabbie’s chair. Agatha smiled, and Gloria now understood why her husband held her in such deep affection. She was a person of warmth, able to put strangers quickly at ease. She said to Phil, “When Malcolm Bishop ran that little piece in the Pittsville Herald saying you’d come home, I could scarcely believe it. What brought you back here?”

  Phil laughed, glancing at Gloria. “I decided to return to writing novels.”

  “No, I mean why William Pitt County?” There was something in her manner of looking at Phil that caused Gloria a moment of discomfort. Somehow this elderly woman still held Phil accountable, as if he were still her student, and from Phil’s expression he still felt somewhat accountable to her.

  “It’s my home. The old family house is small, only two bedrooms, and in a section of town that’s pretty rundown now. So I looked around for something bigger and found the Old Kessler Place.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was sick of Los Angeles and the film business. I remember the fields and fishing at Doak’s Pond. I remember the stories told about the Fairy Woods being haunted, and how we dared each other to go through them on Halloween and none of us ever did. I can remember the sandlot baseball games an
d riding my beat-up old bike down dusty roads during the summer. The dumb jokes the kids from Charlestown High used to make about Pits-ville High and how we used to get so mad at them and then say the same things ourselves. I remember … a home.”

  She nodded. “Well, you’ll find it’s changed a lot in twenty-five years.” Then she smiled and suddenly the tension vanished. “But there’s a lot that hasn’t changed.” Noticing that the boys had finished their drinks, she said, “Why don’t you two run outside and play? We’ve some new additions in the barn. Our cat’s had kittens.”

  The boys glanced at their mother, who nodded, and quickly made good their escape. Phil laughed. “I used to hate ‘grown-up’ talk when I was their age.”

  Agatha indicated agreement. “As did we all. Now, are you writing?”

  “Yes, though it’s tougher than I remember.”

  “It always is.”

  Jack laughed at the remark. “I say the same thing when I’m trying to organize her papers.”

  “This boy is almost as big an oaf as you were, which means he’s a slightly better graduate assistant.” Phil seemed unconcerned with the comparison. “Though, of my students, you have done better than most. I am glad you’ve returned to books. Those films were less than art.”

  Talk turned to the differences between screenplays and novels, and they settled in for a while, enjoying the rediscovered friendship between Agatha and Phil, and the new friendship between Jack and Gabbie. Gloria remained distant, observing her husband. Phil responded to Aggie’s questions, and in a way her prodding produced more revelations about his work in minutes than Gloria had managed to extract in weeks. Not sure of her own reaction, Gloria settled in, considering.

  She regretted Phil hadn’t volunteered as much to her as to Aggie, but then Aggie was a special person to him. After his parents had died in a car crash, Phil had been raised by his aunt Jane Hastings. But Aggie Grant, Jane’s best friend from college, and her husband, Henry, had been frequent visitors. When Phil had graduated from the University of Buffalo he had gone to Cornell to study with Aggie. And Aggie had secured the fellowship that had allowed Phil to attend the university. Gloria conceded that Aggie had been the single biggest influence in Phil’s career. She had been a courtesy aunt, but, more than family, she was his mentor, then his graduate adviser, and remained the one person he held in unswerving professional regard. Gloria had read two of Agatha’s books on literary criticism, and they had been a revelation. The woman’s mind was a wonder, with her ability almost to intuit the author’s thought processes at the time of writing from the finished work. She had never gained wide recognition outside of academia and she had her critics, but even the most vociferous conceded that her opinions were worthy of consideration. Somehow Aggie Grant posited theories about dead authors that just felt right. Still, in the field of literature, Gloria was simply a reader, not a critic, and some of what had been covered in Aggie’s books seemed rites reserved for the initiates of the inner temple. No, if Agatha could get Phil talking about his work, and his problems, Gloria was thankful. Still, she felt a little left out.

  Suddenly Agatha was addressing her. “And what do you think of all this?”

  Gloria improvised, her actress’s training coming to the fore. Somehow she didn’t wish it known she had been musing, not following the conversation. “The work? Or the move?”

  Agatha regarded her with a penetrating look, then smiled. “I meant the move. It must be something of a change for you, after Hollywood and all.”

  “Well, the East isn’t new to me. I’m a California girl, but I lived in New York City for several years while I worked in theater. Still, this is my first stint as a farmer’s wife.”

  “Hardly a farmer’s wife, my dear. Herman Kessler kept only enough livestock to qualify for federal tax exemptions: a dozen sheep and lots of ducks and chickens. That farm has never been worked. Herman’s father, Fredrick Kessler, never allowed it, nor did Herman. The meadows have not known the plow or the woodlands the ax for over a century. And this area was never as heavily harvested as others nearby to begin with. The woods behind your home may not be the forest primeval, but they are some of the densest in ten thousand square miles, perhaps the only such parcel of uncleared lowland woods in the entire state of New York.”

  Phil said, “I was meaning to ask you: When we were at Cornell you were firmly established up in Ithaca. Now you show up in my old hometown. Why?”

  She rose and went over to a sliding door. “A moment.” She moved the door aside and vanished from view, reappearing almost immediately with a large blue three-ring binder. She returned to the couch and handed the binder to Phil as she sat down.

  He opened it and read the first page. “‘On the Migration of Irish Folk Myth and Legend to America in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. A critical study by Agatha Grant.’” He closed it. “I thought you’d retired.”

  “I’m retired, not dead. This has been a hobby piece of mine for more years than I can recall.” She seemed to consider. “I began it shortly after my Henry died. I was working on it when I was your adviser; I just never told you about it. Aarne and Thompson did some fine classification that came out in 1961. What I’m doing is using their motif index in following up on the work of Reidar Christiansen. He compared and studied Scandinavian and Irish folklore. Fm trying to do something like that with the older Celtic myths and the Irish folktales which have come to America.”

  She addressed Gloria and Gabbie as well as Phil. “When I was a girl, growing up at East Hampton, we had a lovely governess, an Irish woman named Colleen O’Mara. Miss O’Mara would tell my brother and me the most wonderful tales of elves and fairies, leprechauns and brownies. All my life I’ve been fascinated by folk myth. My formal education was in classics and contemporary literature, but I read Yeats’s fairy tales as readily as his poetry—perhaps with more enthusiasm. In any event, that is my work now. There were many immigrations from Ireland—besides the famous ‘potato famine’ one—and thousands of poor, rural Irish came to America. Now, most of those who came settled in the big cities or went west to work the railroads. But Pittsville was one of the few rural communities to capture several waves of these Irish immigrants, many of whom remained farmers. This area is almost a ‘little Ireland.’ I’m no stranger to the area, having visited my darling Jane many times over the years.” She shared a fond look with Phil at the mention of his late aunt. “When I was offered the chair at Fredonia, I didn’t pause a moment in deciding where to live. I like Pittsville. We’re only a half hour from the campus here. And there were unexpected bonuses.”

  Phil showed he didn’t understand, and Jack offered, “Marcus Blackman lives nearby.” He pointed absently toward the west.

  “The occult guy?” asked Phil, with obvious interest.

  Jack said, “That’s him.”

  “Who’s Blackman?” asked Gabbie.

  Jack said, “Blackman’s a writer, a scholar, a bit of everything. He’s something of a character and pretty controversial. He’s written a lot of odd books about magic and the occult that have gotten the academic community upset. And he’s Aggie’s favorite debating opponent.”

  Agatha said, “Mark Blackman’s a bit of a rogue in research and full of indefensible opinions, but he’s absolutely charming. You’ll meet him shortly. He’ll join us for dinner.”

  “Wonderful,” said Phil.

  “He’s also a fund of information on just the sort of things I’m digging into,” said Agatha. “In his library he has some very rare books—a first edition of Thomas Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, if you can believe—and an amazing number of personal journals and diaries. His help has been invaluable.”

  “What is Blackman doing in Pittsville?”

  “You can ask him. I’ve gotten nothing like a reasonable answer, though he’s very amusing in his avoidance. He has ventured he is working on a new book, though the subject matter is unknown to me. That is all.” Agatha p
aused as she considered. “I find the man fascinating, but also a little irritating with his secrecy.”

  Phil laughed. “Agatha believes in spreading ideas around.” He made the remark to the others over Agatha’s protests. “When I began writing fiction on the side, as a grad student, she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t show it to her until it was done.”

  To Gabbie, Agatha said, “Child, your father doesn’t write. He brews magic in a cave and woe unto him who breaks the spell before it’s done.”

  Phil joined in the general laughter, and the talk turned to old friends and colleagues from their days together at Cornell.

  10

  Patrick and Sean hovered over the box in the barn. The cat regarded the boys with indifference as they petted and played with her kittens. Her babies were at that awkward stage just after their eyes had opened, their clumsy antics provoking laughter from the boys.

  Patrick picked up a kitten, who mewed slightly. He petted it and said, “Pretty neat, huh?”

  Sean nodded as he reached out and stroked another. A scurrying in the hay near the darkest corner of the barn caught his attention. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Over there—something moving in the hay.” He pointed. Patrick put down the kitten and rose. He walked purposefully toward the dark corner as Sean said, “Don’t!”

  Patrick hesitated and turned to face his brother. “Why!” he demanded.

  Sean reluctantly came over to stand by his brother. “Maybe it’s a rat or something.”

  “Oh brother!” said Patrick. “You’re such a baby.” He glanced around and saw an old rusty pitchfork by the door. He fetched it from the wall, barely able to balance the long tool. Slowly he moved toward the corner and began poking at the old straw. For a long moment there was no hint that anything but straw rested beneath the rusty tines Patrick waved before him. Gingerly he poked the fork deeper into the straw, moving it aside.