The conjure man polished one of the buttons of his bright blue jacket.
“I believe I do,” he said. He patted the brown satchel that rode on his back carrier. “John has a thermos filled with the very best tea, right here in his bag. Why don’t we find ourselves a comfortable place to sit and he’ll tell you how he got this bicycle of his over a hot cuppa.”
He started to pedal off down the street, without waiting for her response. Wendy stared after him, her gaze catching the little terrier, sitting erect in her basket and looking back at her.
There seemed to be a humming in the air that woke a kind of singing feeling in her chest. The wind rose up and caught her hair, pushing it playfully into her eyes. As she swept it back from her face with her hand, she thought of the sapling sitting in its pot on her back steps, thought of the wind, and knew that stories were already being harvested without the necessity of her having to pass them on.
But she wanted to hear them all the same.
Getting on her ten-speed, she hurried to catch up with the conjure man.
[For J. R. R. Tolkien; may his own branch of the tree live on forever.]
The Halfling House
Dennis L. McKiernan
We sent Tynvyr on ahead, riding her fox, while the rest of us slithered through the slip and squish of the alley.
“Ow, Fiz!” someone hissed, Marley I think. “Keep your filthy wings to yourself! You nearly poked my eye out.”
“Listen, Gnome,” shot back Fiz, her silvery voice gone all iron, “you keep your scuzzy eye out of my wings.”
Great, just great. Here we were in the middle of the night on a secret rescue mission, and already the Gnome and Pixie were at each other’s throats.
And our tempers weren’t improved by the reek of sewage and rot that hung upon the air, putrid to the nose and causing our gorges to rise until we were near to gagging. Too, a trickle of foul water seemed always underfoot, and we slithered and slipped in the mud and the slime, jerking this way and that to keep from falling.
“Bork,” came Fiz’s voice back to me, “tell me again the stupid reason I’ve got to muck along in this muck instead of flying.”
Before I could answer, Rafferty spoke up. “Faith, lass, isn‘t’t told that this divil hisself has wingedy creatures, anow? Blood-suckin’ bats and sich, they say. Flyin’ about up there in th’ dark. Sure and wouldn’t they jist love t‘get a bit o’ y’r delicate, delicious self?”
If Rafferty’s source had been right, Khassan did have creatures of the night patrolling above. We’d have to be wary of them, too, especially if they were owls.
Big owls.
Big enough to carry any one of us off in its talons.
And if owls or bats didn’t get us, then surely the alley rats would snatch us away down some dark hole.
“Oof!” grunted Marley, stepping in a rut slsh! full of malodorous water. “I can’t see a blasted thing.”
Well, he was after all just a Gnome, and their Fairy Vision is worse than that of nearly all the Wee Folk. Of course, mine isn’t much to be proud of either, not like Tynvyr’s or Fiz’s.
Oh, if only the overcast fouling the night sky would blow away, so that just a little starlight shone down, or better yet if the Moon was up and full and the clouds gone, well then, none of us would have even the tiniest bit of trouble.
But as it was, the night was dark and overcast, and here we were in a pitch black alley—a Pixie, a Gnome, a Leprechaun, and a Brownie … while somewhere ahead was a Pysk riding a fox—all of us sneaking among the ramshackle buildings looming up in the ebon darkness all about, trying to avoid the owls and bats and rats, any one of which could probably rip us to shreds.
I mean, when you stand only a foot or two high, these things are terrible foes.
And the stinking alley and the stinking night seemed to be filled with their stinking menace. And we couldn’t see and we didn’t know exactly where we were going or what we were going to do once we got there, or even whether or not we were on the right trail.
Hel, I didn’t even know who it was we were out to rescue!
Talk about your bright plans—I mean, what else could go wrong?
And then we heard the Mmrrawing yowl of an alley cat hunting for something to eat.
Damn!
It all started a day or so ago, when, after finishing up a solid month of cobbling shoes, I decided to go on holiday while I had a chance. You see, the Halfling House had appeared in the glen a week earlier, and I knew that it wouldn’t be about too long. And since I’d heard it was the very best way to travel, to see new and wonderful places, I thought I would take a room before it and the entire inn vanished.
So in the daytime, when there are no owls about, I betook myself down to the glen and there it stood, where nothing had been just a week earlier: the Halfling House.
How the inn arrives, none that I had spoken to knew. Rudd and Meech, a couple of barn Bwca—cousins of mine, you might say—tell that it materializes out of thin air … but then, they had been drinking when they claimed they had witnessed its appearance, and who can believe anything seen through the eyes of drunken Bwca?
Others say that it seeps up from the ground … after all, the roof is made of sod.
In any case, it seems to come overnight from nowhere, and if that’s true then the other tales about it are probably true, too, and some dark-tide soon or late it will vanish just as well!
At least that was what I was counting on.
If the tales were true.
Yet whether it did or did not materialize in the wee witching hours, the fact is, here it was where nought had been before, in the glen, at least for the time present.
I took a long hard look. Some would say that the building was quaint and pastoral, and it did fit right in with the surroundings. I could see by the placement of oddly shaped windows that it was nearly three storeys tall, and I gauged the peak of the low-canted sod roof to be some fifteen feet above the ground. That would make the ceilings inside some four to five feet high. More than tall enough for me at my eighteen inches. Truly, this had to be an inn large enough for Halflings, though I’d been told that all Wee Folk were welcome.
As I approached the small, roofed-over front porch, I noted that although the windows adorning the white stuccoed walls seemed normal, there appeared to be something strange and slightly sparkly about the light reflecting from the glass. When I stepped up to the windows by the door and tried to peer through, the view to the inside was oddly distorted, as if the panes were utterly muddled, yet each seemed clear and smooth to the touch.
The way in was through a stout oaken door some four feet tall, iron banded, with latches and handles placed at varying heights, as if for the convenience of different-sized Wee Folk. In the center of the door was mounted a plaque proclaiming:
The Halfling House
Any and All
Halflings and Wee Folk
WELCOME
Dando Thistledown, Prop.
This was the place, alright.
Grasping one of the handles and raising its latch, I pushed, expecting a struggle; but the door swung smoothly open, and I stepped into the inn.
Like all places of its kind, it was larger on the inside than out.
Before I could get much more than a glimpse, though, this pointy-eared fellow, a tall Halfling with Elfy-welfy slanty but jewellike eyes came over. Hey, he had to be more than twice my height, three foot five if he was an inch—a regular high pockets.
He peered down from his lofty height at me. “Welcome to the Halfling House. My name is Dando Thistledown, and I’m the proprietor. Will you be needing a room?”