Mythology 101

Dedication

To Bill,

Who believes in me.

***

An Introduction to Jody Lynn Nye

Whimsy is a delicate and dangerous kind of writing to attempt. It requires, not the wild and fancy-free turn of mind you might expect, but iron control and a sure ear for what will work. Those of us who attempt this particular brand of fantasy spend many hours trying to work out whether that next plot twist, that new character or bizarre circumstance you’ve invented, will break the slender cord suspending the reader’s disbelief and dump both of you back into the real world again, bruised to the bone and determined not to let it happen again. To make it work takes a special kind of writer, one skilled at splicing the real world together with the new and unreal one seamlessly enough not to leave any telltale roughness around the interface. Some writers, surprisingly good ones, never get it right. But Jody Lynn Nye has mastered this difficult art, and succeeds in making it look easy, which is a lot more work than you’d suspect.

Jetlagged elves, diaphanous telepathic wind sprites and cranky subterranean-dwelling
bodachs
coexist in this world, or move cheek-by-jowl through it, alongside crooked and weasel-like politicians, confused British secret service operatives, hot-air balloon freaks and various other mostly unsuspecting or basically clueless mortals, almost none of them willing to believe the evidence of their eyes when magic happens right in front of them. (But would
you
…?) Then add to this mix the engaging and (mostly) guileless Keith Doyle, a university student who stumbles on a bemusing fact—that there are fairies, not at the bottom of the garden, but living downstairs in the college library, illegal aliens with a difference—and helps them come to terms with the cultural barbed-wire tangle of modern North America, and the result is a leisurely and nonlethal explosive mixture that goes off,
bang,
in gales of laughter, when you least expect it. The good-hearted Keith manages to juggle his studies and interests with the never-ending business of helping his new friends solve the problems of being an elf in modern America (for example, your small-child size and pointed ears can cause you to routinely be mistaken for a
Star Trek
fan). He is not hyper-competent: sometimes, faced with the complexities of learning to handle as much magic as is good for one of the Big People, he drops the ball—which makes him all the more endearing. Through the course of the books, trips to Scotland and Ireland for the enchanted flowers which will indirectly allow the birth of the first native American elf, and efforts to stop unscrupulous local industries from polluting the elves’ smallholding, combine to help not only Keith, but the Little People with whom he works, grow into more than any of them could have been without the others.

These books are a graceful and enjoyable romp through a world that looks like ours … but has some delightful differences. I hope you enjoy your sojourn there as much as I have.

Diane Duane

May 2000

***

Chapter 1

“Are all now present?” the Master enquired, squinting over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles. The light of two dozen burning lanterns hanging around the huge room flickered off the glass and metal frames. It glinted almost as brightly from the Master’s coppery red beard and hair. Even his pointed ears had tufts of red hair sticking out of them.

On the benches around the wooden meeting table, the Folk shifted to position themselves comfortably. It wasn’t often the whole Council attended a village meeting, so though the benches were long, the regulars had to suck in their sides to make room for their more occasional companions. It was a sign of the seriousness of the situation that there was no banter, no friendly arguments between the young Progressives and the older Conservatives.

“Gut. Then I declare that the meeting is open,” the Master continued familiarly. “I recognize the Archivist.” He nodded to Catra, a young female who wore her long brown hair in a severe braid.

Catra stood up and shook two sheets of paper at the assembly. “These I borrowed from the very desk of the Big Folk Chancellor himself. They detail a proposal to demolish our very home! They wish to build on this site a new library building of great height and size. It will have a new foundation made by filling in all the lower levels with concrete.” She shuddered at the image of a wave of concrete rolling over their village and handed the document to the Master, who blew on the wick of a lantern to ignite it, and read the document through by its light. He nodded affirmation to the others.

“We’re lost!” Keva shrieked. For all her hundred and seventy eight years, she had a voice that carried shrilly to the distant walls and echoed off of them. Her fellow villagers looked around cautiously as if the Chancellor and his minions might hear her. “We must flee!” Her fellow Conservatives nodded solemnly.

“It’s only a proposal at present,” Aylmer said in a calm voice. He was a Conservative, too, but didn’t approve of alarmism.

Holl, a chunky young fellow with thick blond hair, scratched thoughtfully at one tall pointed ear. “I think we should call in the help of the Big Ones who are our fellow students.”

There was a general outcry. “No! You can’t trust the Big Ones. They’re too stupid.” “They wouldn’t help us. It’s their own Chancellor and his Administrators who seek to put us out of our home.” “Yes, ask them!” “Progressive! You want us to be annihilated; to have our culture swept away.”

“The separation of aur folk fro’ theirs must an’ will continue,” Curran, Holl’s white-haired clan chief, told him severely.

“I think there are some that can be trusted not to do more than we ask,” Holl insisted. “Ludmilla. No question of her, I hope. Fair Marcy, for example. And there’s always Lee.”

“Yes,” agreed Enoch, a more somber-faced youth with black hair. “I know these well, and there are others, but I am not sure I would involve the young folk even if I trusted them.”

“What about those peculiar walkings-about we keep hearing? Who’s responsible for that? One of your trustworthy fellow students? You don’t know either!” Curran snapped at Holl.

“I put it to a vote, then,” the Master said, signaling for silence. “Those in favor uf asking for help vrom the Big Ones, raise your right hands.” He counted. “Hands down, please. Those against, the left.” There were no surprises. The Progressives voted in favor of Holl’s suggestion. The Conservatives voted against the Progressives, whom they outnumbered two to one. He and Catra abstained. The Master felt that the Headman must remain neutral. Catra often declared that an Archivist could not take sides or it would ruin her objectivity. “Very vell. The motion is defeated at present. I adjure all uf you to put your minds to a solution, or ve may truly be homeless.”

“I must return the document to the Chancellor’s office before dawn,” Catra reminded him.

“Qvite right. I must have a copy to study the details.” The Master blew out his lantern. He picked up a sheet of handmade parchment slightly larger than both pieces of paper and laid it over the document. Stretching out both hands palm down above the parchment, the red-haired leader closed his eyes to concentrate. Under each of his hands, a shimmering blob of black print appeared and spread across to meet the other, then the joined mass rippled outward to perfectly straight square margins. No one made a sound until he was finished. It was a difficult task for one of their kind to work from paper that had been printed with iron and steel.

“There,” he said, examining the big sheet. “Vell enough. It vill do.”

“Master,” Catra chided him gently. “I could have used the Xerox machine.”

***

Chapter 2

“Mr. Doyle?” inquired Dr. Freleng, holding a thesis paper in the air with disgusted thumb and forefinger. The teacher’s grey moustache lifted on one side as his lip curled. “This is Sociology 430. Don’t you think this paper should better have been submitted to your Fiction Writing teacher instead?”

“Well, I’m not taking that course this semester,” stammered Keith Doyle, scrambling to sit upright from his comfortable slouch behind the large frame of Mary Lou Carson. He met the teacher’s eye and drooped back again. His narrow face turned red, only a few shades darker than his hair. “Um, no, sir. What’s the matter with it, sir?”

“Or perhaps this is Introduction to Mythology? What is the matter? ‘A Study of Human/Alien Interaction’? This paper was supposed to be on a documented facet of human behavior. Would you mind telling me when we made contact with extraterrestrials? I’m sure the government would be more than interested to know.” Dr. Freleng opened his fingers and let the paper fall to Keith’s desk, covering up the
Field Guide to the Little People
, which luckily the professor hadn’t noticed. The other students snickered. Freleng dusted his fingertips together and eyed Keith with an air of doubt.

“It’s a study based on theories I formed, speculations on the probable behavior of mankind when faced with alien cultures more technologically advanced than ourselves,” Keith explained with patient resignation. “Older extraterrestrial cultures. I based it on my research into recent western contacts with older civilizations, such as the Chinese.”

“Of which you seem most disparaging,” Freleng said, gesturing at the paper on which a circled red F adorned the title page. Keith stuck out his chin determinedly.

“I think nonwestern cultures suffer from the overeager come-on that they get from Western anthropologists. Think of the business of the desert tribe religion which believed in planets it couldn’t see, just because those researchers asked ’em leading questions. Look,” Keith said earnestly, “when zoologists are observing rare animals, they’re so careful not to interfere with their natural behavior. It’s almost like people don’t get the same privilege. It’s as if, well, because they’re different they’re told they have to change to conform.”

Freleng turned away from Keith’s indignant stare, fluttering a dismissive hand at him. “Preservationist poppycock. Field anthropologists act with more responsibility than that toward their subjects.”

“Yeah, sometimes, but what about Peace Corps volunteers? Missionaries? We make change look too attractive, too imperative, playing down the importance of their own diverse cultural facets,” Keith went on, his voice loud with conviction, quoting phrases from the Sociology textbook, which Freleng ignored. It was one of the professor’s own favorite tricks, and he hated to have students use it back to him. “They’ve done without Coca Cola for centuries. They don’t need it now either, but we dictate to them, the times when we don’t collapse at their feet and shout “teach me,” instead. We impose our impressions of how they should be on them. Our opinion molds them.”

“Yeah,” added a girl with brown-black hair, seated two rows ahead to Keith’s left. She had clear, pale skin with just a dusting of dark freckles across her nose and cheekbones, and Keith had been watching her avidly all semester. “Like little—I mean, short people. Tall ones tend to treat them just like children. They react to an unspoken assumption that if someone is smaller than you are, he must be younger, and not as mature. Or if they’re obviously older, they must be senile, or something less than mentally competent.”

Keith was amazed. Usually the majority of his fellow students sided with the teacher on how they felt about his peculiar essay topics. As a rule, they all thought he was crazy. He felt much encouraged by Marcy Collier’s unsolicited support. Not only was she beautiful, but she was a fellow philosopher.

“Yes, Miss Collier, I have your paper here,” Freleng turned on her. “You expressed your opinions on paper with
somewhat
more coherence than Mr. Doyle, though you failed to identify most of your research sources. I require clearer footnoting than that, as you are aware. It is worth fifteen percent of your grade on any paper.” Her paper fluttered down, marked with a circled C.

“Um,” Marcy Collier echoed Keith’s discomfort of a few minutes past. The teacher’s cold gaze made her writhe. Her eyes dropped, and she addressed her reply to her desk. “They were field study subjects. They asked me not to identify them by name.”

“I see. In those cases, it is traditional to supply a pseudonym with the actual age, sex, profession and social condition, so that we can judge as much by the subject as by their statements. However interesting such statements may be, they offer only half of the data we use in our studies. Your essays each constitute ten percent of your grade for this course. The final exam carries more weight, thirty percent, but displayed application of skills learned in class is twenty percent of your grade. Please bear that in mind.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do that next time, sir.” Red-cheeked, Marcy shoved the paper into her book bag. Keith glimpsed lots of red ink through the back of the last page before it vanished. Old Freleng had taken her bibliography to pieces. Hah. His own paper probably looked like a Rorschach test. He felt sorry for her. He felt sorry for himself He slumped back into obscurity behind Mary Lou. Her paper had an A on it, as usual.

O O O

At last, the bell rang. “That one was really dumb, Doyle,” Burke Slater jabbed Keith with an elbow as he jostled past the others out of the classroom. “Real comic relief.”

“I think you’re wonderful to stick up for the primitive tribes,” offered Abby Holt, a brown-haired girl in blue jeans who tended toward mystical topics herself.

Keith smiled and pushed past them into the hallway, running after Marcy as she maneuvered through the crowded corridor of Burke Hall. “Hey, wait! Marcy?”

“I’ve got a class in McInroe next period,” she said curtly, her eyes narrowed at him. Keith thought she cleared tears out of her throat. She wasn’t the type who usually got C’s, he decided, and she was taking it hard. He pulled his own crumpled essay out of his nylon backpack.

“I got an F,” he said, smiling at her winningly. “Wanna trade?”

She looked at his paper, and then met his eyes. The sullen mask broke. “Oh, God, what am I going to tell my parents?” Marcy wailed, tears dripping down her cheeks. “I’ve never gotten a C in my life. Dr. Freleng is a fiend. It’s too late for me to drop the course now. I’ve had all A’s all my life. My parents expect it. They just won’t understand. I’m failing.”

“I wouldn’t call a C failure,” Keith said, jumping forward to open the door for her and following her out into the brisk October air. Leaves swirled away from their feet as they dashed across the narrow streets toward McInroe Hall. “I’m a B man myself. I do get A’s but I don’t expect ’em. If you’re not in the front line you don’t get shot at as often.”

“Get what?” Marcy shouted, avoiding an ancient Volvo which screeched backward into a suddenly available parking space on the curb.

“Shot at!” Keith yelled. “Teachers love to pick on A-seekers. Besides, we’re Freleng’s favorite victims because we’re not seniors or grad students. We’re making it look like it’s too easy to take his class. He considers it a put down. I can’t blame him.”

“I wish I’d never taken it,” Marcy said miserably.

“It isn’t a total loss,” Keith soothed her. “It’s your only C, remember? Would you like to join forces against the evils of Sociology? We can study together. Misery loves company, you know.” He fished around in his pocket for a folded wad of tissues and wrapped her fingers around it.

“Well, I’m in a study group already.…” Marcy dabbed at her eyes, but her voice had steadied again.

“Oh, come on. I know about Honors study groups. They sit around and compare Daddy’s tax returns or talk about interesting atoms they have met.”

“It’s isn’t an Honors group. This is a different kind. Hey,” she said, changing the subject, “how’d you know I’m an Honor student?”

“It’s written all over you. Places you can’t see.” Keith waggled his eyebrows wickedly. “Besides, I’ve been watching you. Haven’t you noticed?”

Marcy shook her head. “I’d rather study alone. I get more done that way.”

“Well, just Soc. then.” Stairs, and then another door, opening into another echoing tiled hall full of hurrying figures. “Say, can I read your essay?” Keith asked suddenly. “It sounded really interesting to me. You can read mine, but I guess you’d probably think it was fiction, too,” he finished, suddenly sounding disgusted. “Nobody respects a scientist anymore.”

“Sure you can,” said Marcy, thrusting the paper into his hand. “Now I’m going to be late. Thanks for the Kleenex. See you.”

“See you.” Keith watched her dash away.

O O O

Level Fourteen of the Gillington Library stacks was quiet in the afternoon. Unlike the system most buildings used, the library stacks were numbered top to bottom, so the uppermost of the eight half-high floors above ground was Level One, and the lowest, in the third sub-sub basement was Fourteen. The library itself was numbered normally, its four full height floors numbered from the bottom to the top. It confused a lot of freshmen the first week of classes, but since there were separate elevators for the two sections, students got used to the concept in a hurry. They put it down to typical Administration baloney. One more thing to be ignored.

This level was devoted mainly to historical archives, a comprehensive collection of Americana of which the University was appropriately proud. Rare books were stored down here until they were called for in the usual way by users of the reading room upstairs. On occasion, masters’ degree candidates could get a special pass to peruse the shelves themselves, but they were rarely here during the afternoon. The archive librarian took advantage of the silence and pushed the book-cart through the rows of tiered shelves, listening to the sounds of the building as it settled, replacing returned books. She was a thin, pinched-faced woman who looked right with her salt-and-pepper hair tied into a tight bun. Fallen books she straightened up in their slots with a scolding expression as if they should have known better than to tip over.

With her narrow hands, she deftly sorted through a sheaf of old newspaper folios. The yellow-brown pages in their transparent folders were crisp and fragile. As she stacked them gently into a library box, she heard footsteps coming swiftly toward her, and turned away from her task to see who was running. Probably students who had forced the stairwell lock with a plastic I.D. card. “This level is restricted,” she said sternly. “No one is to be here without authorization. Did you hear me?”

No reply. She heard high-pitched giggles coming from that direction, shut the storage box with a snap, and started off to dispense some discipline.

Suddenly, the librarian heard the same giggle from behind her. She spun and ran back that way, her shoes flapping on the floor. No one was visible at that end of the aisle. She stopped. Again she heard running footsteps, the soles of the shoes grating with a sandpapery hiss on the concrete floor.

“Stop that!” she cried. “This is a library, not a racetrack. Who are you? Show yourself. Leave this building at once.” Her voice rang in the hanging metal beams. “I will call Security if you do not leave NOW!”

The giggles erupted echoingly into the silence. She ran toward the dancing sound, but it dissolved into silence before she found the source. “Hello?” she called softly.

“Helloooo,” came a whisper from behind her. She jumped and let out a small scream of frustration. The falsetto laughter bubbled up again as the footsteps ran away. This was not the first time she thought she had heard students chasing themselves around in the dark. Thought it was funny to flaunt their disobedience and startle her. They wanted to use her level in place of the back seats of their decrepit cars. “Horrible brats.” In all her years, she’d never been able to catch the miscreants, or even see who was making the noise. Gremlins, that’s what it was. Old places were said to have their own resident spirits. The echoes in here were positively uncanny. It might have been her own voice distorting into that insane laughter, but she wasn’t sure. They needed better lighting in this library. That was certain.

Looking this way and that, the librarian walked back to her cart to resume her task. The cart refused to roll forward. She kicked at the brake on the left front wheel, but to her surprise, it was off. She leaned all her weight against it. The cart would not move.

She pulled on it from the front. It wouldn’t come forward an inch. Neither would it move to either side. It was as if the cart was cemented to the floor. She stacked all of the books from it on the floor and tried to shake it loose. Nothing. The librarian was ready to sob with frustration. There was nothing physically wrong with the cart, no reason why it should not roll normally, but it was firmly rooted where it stood. She stacked the books back onto it, somewhat less neatly than before. Her hands were shaking.

Dealing the cart a final disgusted shove, she headed for the elevator to get the janitor. He would have to oil those wheels before she could continue. When she had turned around the head of the row, there was a loud creak and rumble. The woman scrambled back to see the cart rolling away by itself. For a moment, she thought about running after it, but a blast of mocking laughter sent her scurrying into the elevator instead, fleeing for the safety of the faculty lounge. Years ago the dark and dusty cubicle had been designated a Civil Defense fallout shelter, and that gave her twitching nerves a sense of security. No one would question her spending a few hours lying down on the couch. The old library was widely believed to be haunted. She would feel safer if she could finish up later, preferably with another librarian for company.

But when she did come back, the books would be on their shelves and the cart empty, and she knew it. It had all happened before.

O O O

“Well?” asked Pat Morgan, glancing unsympathetically at his roommate as Keith staggered across their dorm room and dropped with a melodramatic thud face first onto his bed. Pat went on watering houseplants. “So, tell Uncle Pat. What’d you get on the Sociology essay?”