Ellowan looked eagerly at the remains of the supper, and his mouth watered hotly, but he managed a smile, and his voice was determined. “Thank’ee kindly, mistress, but I can’t. It’s one of the rules I must live by not to beg or take what I cannot earn. But I’ll be thanking you both for the thought, and wishing you a very good night.”
They followed him to the door, and the dog trotted behind him until its master’s whistle called it back. Then the elf was alone on the road again, hunting a place to sleep. There was a haystack back off the road that would make a good bed, and he headed for that. Well, hay was hardly nourishing, but chewing on it was better than nothing: Ellowan was up with the sun again, brushing the dirt off his jerkin. As an experiment, he shook the runes out on the ground and studied them for a few minutes. “Eh, well,” he muttered, tossing them back in the bag, “they speak well, but it’s little faith I’d have in them for what is to come. It’s too easy to shake them the way I’d want them to be. But perchance there’ll be a berry or so in the woods yonder.”
There were no berries, and the acorns were still green. Ellowan struck the highway again, drawing faint pleasure from the fact that few cars were on the road at that hour. He wondered again why their fumes, though unpleasant, bothered him as little as they did. His brothers, up in the grotto hidden in the Adirondacks, found even the smoke from the factories a deadening poison.
The smell of a good wood fire, or the fumes from alcohol in the glass-blower’s lamp were pleasant to them. But with the coming of coal, a slow lethargy had crept over them, driving them back one by one into the hills to sleep. It had been bad enough when coal was burned in the hearths, but that Scotchman, Watts, had found that power could be drawn from steam, and the factories began spewing forth the murky fumes of acrid coal smoke. And the Little Folk had fled hopelessly from the poison, until Ellowan Coppersmith alone was left. In time, even he had joined his brothers up in the hills.
Now he had awakened again, without rhyme or reason, when the stench of the liquid called gasoline was added to that of coal. All along the highway were pumps that supplied it to the endless cars, and the taint of it in the air was omnipresent.
“Eh, well,” he thought. “My brothers were ever filled with foolish pranks instead of honest work, while I found my pleasure in labor. Methinks the pranks weakened them against the poison, and the work gives strength; it was only after I hexed the factory owner that the sleep crept into my head, and six score years must surely pay the price of one such trick. Yet, when I first awakened, it’s thinking I was that there was some good purpose that drew, me forth.”
The sight of an orchard near the road caught his attention, and the elf searched carefully along the strip of grass outside the fence in the hope that an apple might have been blown outside. But only inside was there fruit, and to cross the fence would be stealing. He left the orchard reluctantly and started to turn in at the road leading to the farmhouse. Then he paused.
After all, the farms were equipped exactly as the city now, and such faint luck as he’d had yesterday had been in the village. There was little sense in wasting his effort among the scattered houses of the country, in the unlikely chance that he might find copper. In the city, at least, there was little time wasted, and it was only by covering as many places as he could that he might hope to find work. Ellowan shrugged, and turned back on the highway; he’d save his time and energy until he reached Northville.
It was nearly an hour later when he came on the boy, sitting beside the road and fussing over some machine. Ellowan stopped as he saw the scattered parts and the worried frown on the lad’s face. Little troubles seemed great to twelve-year-olds.
“Eh, now, lad,” he asked, “is it trouble you’ve having there? And what might be that contrivance of bars and wheels?”
“It’s a bicycle; ever’body knows that.” From the sound of the boy’s voice, tragedy had reared a large and ugly head. “And I’ve only had it since last Christmas. Now it’s broke and I can’t fix it.”
He held up a piece that had come from the hub of the rear wheel. “See? That’s the part that swells up when I brake it. It’s all broken, and a new coaster brake costs five dollars.”
Ellowan took the pieces and smelled them; his eyes had not been deceived. It was brass. “So?” he asked. “Now that’s a shame, indeed. And a very pretty machine it was. But perchance I can fix it.”
The boy looked up hopefully as he watched the elf draw out the brazier and tools. Then his face fell. “Naw, mister. I ain’t got the money. All I got’s a quarter, and I can’t get it, ‘cause it’s in my bank, and mom won’t let me open it.”
The elf’s reviving hopes of breakfast faded away, but he smiled casually. “Eh, so? Well, lad, there are other things than money. Let’s see what we’ll be making of this.”
His eyes picked out the relation of the various parts, and his admiration for the creator of the machine rose. That hub was meant to drive the machine, to roll free, or to brake as the user desired. The broken piece was a split cylinder of brass that was arranged to expand against the inside of the hub when braking. How it could have been damaged was a mystery, but the ability of boys to destroy was no novelty to Ellowan.
Under his hands, the rough edges were smoothed down in a twinkling, and he ran his strongest solder into the break, filling and drawing it together, then scraping and abrading the metal smooth again. The boy’s eyes widened.
“Say, mister, you’re good! Them fellers in the city can’t do it like that, and they’ve got all kinds of tools, too.” He took the repaired piece and began threading the parts back on the spindle. “Gosh, you’re little. D’you come out of a circus?”
Ellowan shook his head, smiling faintly. The questions of children had always been candid, and honest replies could be given them. “That I did not, lad, and I’m not a midget, if that’s what you’d be thinking. Now didn’t your grandmother tell you the old tales of the elves?”
“An elf!” The boy stopped twisting the nuts back on. “Go on! There ain’t such things—I don’t guess.” His voice grew doubtful, though, as he studied the little brown figure. “Say, you do look like the pi’tures I seen, at that, and it sure looked like magic the way you fixed my brake. Can you really do magic?”
“It’s never much use I had for magic, lad. I had no time for learning it, when business was better. The h6n-est tricks of my trade were enough for me, with a certain skill that was ever mine. And I wouldn’t be mentioning this to your parents, if I were you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t; they’d say I was nuts.” The boy climbed on the saddle, and tested the brake with obvious satisfaction. “You goin’ to town? Hop on and put your bag in the basket here. I’m goin’ down within a mile of there—if you can ride on the rack.”
“It would be a heavy load for you, lad, I’m thinking.” Ellowan was none too sure of the security of such a vehicle, but the ride would be most welcome.
“Naw. Hop on. I’ve carried my brother, and he’s heavier’n you. Anyway, that’s a Mussimer two-speed brake. Dad got it special for Christmas.” He reached over for Ellowan’s bag, and was surprised by its lightness. Those who help an elf usually found things easier than they expected. “Anyway, I owe you sumpin’ for fixin’it.”
Ellowan climbed on the luggage rack at the rear and clutched the boy tightly at first. The rack was hard, but the paving smoothed out the ride, and it was far easier than walking. He relaxed and watched the road go by in a quarter of the time he could have traveled it on foot. If fortune smiled on him, breakfast might be earned sooner than he had hoped.