“Why were you chosen?”
He had the decency to blush.
“Because they all say I’m too good-natured to offend anyone, or take offense.”
Sheri stifled a laugh. “Well,” she said. “I’m usually much less cranky when I’ve been awake for a little longer and have had at least one cup of coffee. Speaking of which, I need one now. I also have to have a pee.”
At that he went beet-red.
“What, you people don’t? Never mind,” she added. “That was just more crankiness. Can I pick you up?”
When he gave her a nervous nod, she lowered her hand so that he could step onto her palm, keeping her thumb upright so he’d have something to hang on to. She took him into the kitchen, deposited him on the table, plugged in the kettle, then went back down the hall to the washroom.
Ten minutes later she was sitting at the table with a coffee in front of her. Jenky sat on a paperback book, holding the thimbleful of coffee she’d given him. She broke off a little piece of a bran cookie and offered it to him before dipping the rest into her coffee.
“So why would you want to become birds again, anyway?” she asked.
“Look at the size of us. Can you imagine how hard it is for us to get around while still keeping our secret?”
“Point taken.”
Neither spoke while they ate their cookies. Sheri sipped at her coffee.
“Did your grandfather really tell you our story?” Jenky asked after a moment.
Sheri nodded.
“Could you bring me to him?”
“He passed away a couple of years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
Silence fell again between them.
“Look,” Sheri said after a moment. “I don’t know any more than what you read in my book, but I could look into it for you.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m actually way too busy. Joke,” she added as his face fell. “It was a joke.”
“Palko John said we could offer you a reward for your help.”
“What sort of reward?”
“Anything you want.”
“Like a magic wish?” Sheri asked, intrigued.
He nodded. “We only have the one left.”
“Why don’t you use it to make yourselves birds again?”
“They only work for other people.”
“Figures. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? But I don’t want your wish.”
He went all glum again. “So you won’t help us?”
“Didn’t I already say I would? I just don’t like the idea of magic wishes. There’s something creepy about them. I think we should earn what we get, not have it handed to us on a little silver platter.”
That earned her a warm smile.
“I think we definitely chose the right person to help us,” he said.
“Well, don’t start celebrating yet,” Sheri told him. “It’s not like I have any idea how to go about it. But like I said, I will look into it.”
“I’ve decided to give up men,” Sheri told Holly Rue later that day.
She’d arrived early at Holly’s store for the afternoon book club meeting that the used book shop hosted on the last Wednesday of every month. The book they’d be discussing today was Alice Hoffman’s The River King, which Sheri had adored. Since she had to wait for the others to get here to talk about it, she kept herself busy talking with Holly and fussing with Snippet, Holly’s Jack Russell terrier, much to the dog’s delight.
“I thought you’d already done that,” Holly said.
“I did. But this time I really mean it.”
“Have a bad date?”
“It’s not so much having a bad date as, A, not wanting to see him again after said date, but he does and keeps calling; or B, wanting to see him again because it seemed we were getting along so well, but he doesn’t call. I’m worn out from it all.”
“You could call him,” Holly said.
“I could. Would you?”
Holly sighed. “Not to ask him out.”
“I thought women’s lib was supposed to have sorted all of this out by now.”
“I think it’s not only society that’s supposed to change, but us, too. We have to think differently.”
“So why don’t we?”
Holly shook her head. “Same reason they don’t call, I guess. Give me a hob over a man any day.”
Sheri cocked her head and studied Holly for a long moment.
“What?” Holly said. “Did I grow an extra nose?”
“No, I’m just thinking about hobs. I wanted to talk to you about them.”
Holly’s gaze went to an empty chair near the beginning of the store’s furthest aisle, then came back to Sheri’s.
“What about them?” she asked.
There was now something guarded in the bookseller’s features, but Sheri plunged on anyway.
“Were you serious about having one living in your store?” she asked.
“Urn … serious as in, is it true?”
A few months ago they’d been out celebrating the nomination of one of Sheri’s books for a local writing award—she hadn’t won. That was when Holly had mentioned this hob, laughed it off when Sheri had asked for more details, and then changed the subject.
“Because the thing is,” Sheri said. “I could use some advice about little people right about now.”
“You’ve got a hob living in your apartment?”
“No, I’ve got a Little—though he’s only visiting.”
“But Littles aren’t—”
“Real,” Sheri finished for her. “Any more than hobs. We both know that. Yet there he is, waiting for me in my apartment all the same. I’ve set him up on a bookshelf with a ladder so that he can get up and down, and got some of my old Barbie furniture out of my storage space in the basement.”
“You kept your Barbie stuff?”
“And it’s a good thing I did, seeing how useful it’s proven to be today. Jenky—that’s his name, Jenky Wood—likes the size, though he’s not particularly enamoured with the colors.”
“You’re serious?”
“So it seems,” Sheri told her. “Apparently he thinks I can find out how they can all become birds again.”
“Like in your story.”
Sheri nodded. “Though I haven’t got the first clue.”
“Well, I—”
But just then the front door opened and Kathryn Whelan, one of the other members of their book club, came in.
“I think I know someone who can help you,” Holly said, before turning to smile at the new arrival.
Snippet lifted her head from Sheri’s lap with interest—hoping for another biscuit like the one Sheri had given her earlier, no doubt.
“Someone tall, dark and handsome—not to mention single?” Sheri asked after they’d exchanged hellos with Kathryn.
“Not exactly.”
“Who’s tall, dark and handsome?” Kathryn asked.
“The man of my dreams,” Sheri told her.
Kathryn smiled. “Aren’t they all?”
Sheri was helping Jenky rearrange the Barbie furniture on the bookshelf she’d cleared for his use when the doorbell rang.
“That’ll be her,” she said, suddenly nervous.
“Should I hide?” Jenky asked.
“Well, that would kind of defeat the whole purpose of this, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose. It’s just that letting myself be seen goes so against everything I’ve ever been told. My whole life has been a constant concentration of secrets and staying hidden.”
“Buck up,” Sheri told him. “If all goes well, you might be a bird again and it won’t matter who sees you.”
“I’d rather be both,” he said as she went to get the door.
She paused, hand on the knob. “Really?”
“Given a choice, wouldn’t you want to be able to go back and forth between bird and Little?”
She gave a slow nod. “I suppose I would.”
She turned back to open the door and everything just kind of melted away in her head. Jenky’s problem, the conversation they’d just had, the day of the week.
“Oh my,” Sheri said.
The words came out unbidden, for standing there in the hallway was the idealization of a character she’d been struggling with for weeks. The new picture book hadn’t exactly stalled, but she kept having to write around this one character because she couldn’t quite get her clear in her head. She’d filled pages in her sketchbook with drawings, particularly frustrated because while she knew what the character was supposed to look like, she was unable to get just the right image of her down on paper. Or perhaps a better way to put it was that she didn’t so much know what the woman should look like, she just knew when it was wrong.
But now here the perfect subject was, standing in the hallway. Where were her watercolors and some paper? Or just a pencil and the back of an envelope. Hell, she’d settle for a camera.
Though really, none of that would be necessary. Now that she’d seen her, it would be impossible for Sheri to forget her.
It wasn’t that the woman was particularly exotic, though there were those striking green streaks that ran through her nut-brown hair. She wasn’t dressed regally either, though her simple white blouse and long flower-print skirt nevertheless left an impression of royal vestments. It wasn’t even that she was so beautiful—there were any number of beautiful women in the world.
No, there was an air about her, a quality both mysterious and simple that had been escaping Sheri for weeks when she was doing her character sketches. But she had it now. She’d begin with a light golden wash, creating a nimbus of light behind the figure’s head, and then—
“I hope that’s a pleased ‘oh my,’ “ the woman said.
Her voice brought Sheri back into the present moment.
“What? Oh, yes. It was. I mean I was just…”
The woman offered her hand. “My name’s Meran Kelledy. Holly did tell you I was coming by, didn’t she?”
Her voice was soft and melodic with an underlying touch of gentle humor.
“I’m sorry,” Sheri said as she shook Meran’s hand. “I can’t believe I’ve left you standing out there in the hall.” She stood aside. “Please come in. It’s just that you caught me by surprise. See, you look exactly like the forest queen I need for this book I’m working on at the moment and …” She laughed. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
“What sort of forest is she the queen of?”
“An oak forest.”
Meran smiled. “Well, that’s all right, then.”
With that enigmatic comment, she came into the apartment. Sheri watched her for one drawn out moment longer, then shut the door to join Meran and Jenky in the living room.
“I should also tell you that there’s a wish up for grabs,” Sheri said after she and Jenky had taken turns telling their story.
The two women were sitting at the kitchen table, Jenky on the table in a pink plastic chair. They all had tea—Jenky in his thimble since he didn’t like the plastic Barbie dishware, the women in regular porcelain mugs.
“For the one who helps the Littles with this, I mean,” Sheri added.
Meran shook her head. “I have no need for wishes.”
Of course she wouldn’t.
Meran was probably the calmest woman that Sheri had ever met. Neither meeting the Little nor the story the two of them had told seemed to surprise her. She’d simply given Jenky a polite hello, then sat and nodded while they talked, occasionally asking a question to clarify one point or another.
What world does she live in? Sheri had found herself thinking.
A magical one, no doubt. Like the forest in Sheri’s latest picture book.
“You can have it,” Meran said.
But Sheri shook her head right back. “I don’t believe in something for nothing.”
“Good for you.”
What an odd response. But Sheri didn’t take the time to dwell on it.
“So can you help us turn them back into birds again?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, no. Odd as it came to be, the Littles have evolved into what they now are and that kind of thing can’t be turned back. It’s like making the first fish who came onto land return to the sea. Or forcing the monkeys to go back up into the trees once more instead of becoming men and women. Evolution doesn’t work that way. It moves forward, not back.”
“But magic…”
“Operates from what appears to be a different law of physics, I’ll admit, but that’s only because it’s misunderstood. If you have the right vocabulary, it can make perfect sense.”
Sheri sighed. “So we’re back where we started.”
“No, because the clock doesn’t turn backwards.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sheri might have felt dumb, but Jenky looked as confused as she was feeling and he was a piece of magic himself, so she decided not to worry about it.
“What’s to stop the Littles from continuing to evolve?” Meran asked. “Into, say, beings that can change from bird to Little at will, the way Jenky here has said he’d like to.”
“Well, for one thing, we don’t know how.”
“Now there I can help you. Or at least I can set the scene so that you can help him.”
“I’m still not following you.”
“There’s an old tribe of words,” Meran explained. “Not the kind we use today, but the ones that go back to the before, when a word spoken created a moment in which anything can happen.”
“The before?” Sheri asked.
“It’s just another way to say the first days of the world,” Jenky told her. “Our storytellers still tell the stories of those days, of Raven and Cody and the crow girls and all.”
“It was a time of Story,” Meran said. “Though of course every age has its stories, just as every person does. But these were the stories that shaped the world and part of that shaping had to do with this old tribe of words.”
“A tribe of words,” Sheri repeated, feeling way out of her depth here.
Meran nodded. “I can wake one of those words for you,” she said. “Not for a long time, but for long enough.”
“So you’ll just say one of these words and everything’ll be the way we want it to be?”
“Hardly,” Meran said with a smile. “I can only wake one of that old tribe. You will need to say the words. It’s a form of communal magic, which is mostly the kind I know. One person wakes it, another gives it focus.”
“But I wouldn’t know what to say. Maybe Jenky should do it.”
“No, this works better when a human speaks the words.”
That gave Sheri pause, the way Meran said the word “human.” It was the way humans spoke of other species. She wanted to ask Meran what she was, but she supposed now wasn’t the time. And it would probably be impolite.
“So what words do I say?” she asked instead.
“You’ll know when the time is right.”
“But…”
Meran gave her another of her smiles. “Don’t worry so much.”
“Okay.”
Sheri looked from the magical woman sitting across the table from her to the even more magical little man sitting on a Barbie kitchen chair between them. Jenky watched her expectantly. Meran said nothing, did nothing. There was an odd, unfocused look to her gaze, but otherwise she seemed to merely be waiting, managing to do so without conveying the vaguest sense of pressure.
But there was pressure all the same—self-imposed on Sheri’s part, but no less urgent for that.
What if she didn’t say the right thing? How much was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to know when the time was right?
It was all so nebulous.
“So when do we start?” Sheri asked.
Meran’s gaze came into focus and found Sheri’s.
“Breathe,” she said. “Slowly. Try to still the conversations that rise up in your head and don’t c
oncentrate on anything until you feel a change. You’ll know it when you feel it.”
Then she slowly closed her eyes.
Sheri copied her, closing her own eyes. Breathing deeply and slowly, she tried to feel this change. Something, anything. Maybe a difference in the air. Some sense that they were sideways from the world as she knew it, inhabiting a pocket of the world where magic could happen.
If magic was real, that was.
If it…
She wasn’t sure where it originated, the sudden impression of assurance that came whispering through her, calm and sure and secret. She felt like she was at the center of some enormous wheel and that all the possibilities of what might be were radiating out from her like a hundred thousand filigreed spokes. It was like floating, like coming apart and reconnecting with everything. But it was also like being utterly focused as well. She could look at all those threads arcing away from her and easily find and hold the one that was needed in her mind.
“Hope,” she said.
“Is that word for them or for you?”
As soon as Meran asked the question, Sheri saw how it could go. She realized that under the connection she felt to this wheel of possibilities, she’d continued to harbor her own need, continued to reach for that elusive partner every single person looked for,whether they admit it or not. He could be called to her with Meran’s old tribal word. The right partner, the perfect partner. All she had to do was say, “for me.”
Because magic was real, she knew that now. At least this magic was real. It could bring him to her.
But then she opened her eyes. Her gaze went to Jenky, watching her with expectant eyes and held breath.
Promises made. Promises broken.
What good were promises if you didn’t keep them? How could you respect yourself, never mind expect anyone else to respect you, if you could break them so easily? What would the perfect man think of her when he learned how she’d brought him to her?
Not to mention what she’d said barely ten minutes ago, how it wasn’t right to have something for nothing.
But that was before she’d realized it could really be made to happen.
That was before all the lonely nights were washed away with the promise of just the right man coming into her life.