“Fairies don’t exist.”
“What is he, then?” as she pointed to Banner. His ear tips just visible from
beneath the auburn of his hair. One of his exotic eyebrows marched toward his hairline.
“An elf.” Elgin said, not even bothering to look up from the ring on which he had begun
Working.
“I thought you said Fairies don’t exist?”
“Nope! They don’t” Elgin reaffirmed.
‘But, if…”
“Fairy, as a word, conjures an image of a tiny humanoid, who either can do
magic, or just plain IS magic. No such thing. Sorry, Miss Amy.” Elgin smiled kindly at
the young woman.
“Oh, well. And Mister Curt?” She was getting a slightly glazed look on her face
as she scanned the room. Excitement and confused hope all bundled together.
“My lovely, lanky friend, Mister Weathers, is a dragon. No damsel jokes, please.”
“He doesn’t look like a dragon…” Amy was confused and tired enough to no
longer question real versus make believe, and while he was tall and broad shouldered,
Curt was certainly not a giant winged reptile-like thing.
Laughter bubbled up from the corner where Mister Trout… er, Trutt, was running his fingers over rings with a rasping squeaking noise. “He’s also a troll! HA!” The diminutive
heckler dropped a newly brilliantly polished ring into a tray, picked up another, and began the
rasping running of his fingers over its rough surface. “And watch his arms!” Trout giggled smugly to himself over …whatever that comment had meant. And by the look on Amy’s face it meant something.
Curt’s face began to color as Mister Trutt continued to laugh loudly. Almost loud
enough to cover the squeaking noises his fingers made as they caressed the surface of a
now amazingly shiny solitaire ring.
“M-M-Manners, Mister Trutt, puh-please.” The slight figure of Cole, motionless and almost invisible near the doorway, was rigid with irritation at the outburst of laughter from the small acerbic man. “What he means is that many humans over time have seen the power of Mister Weathers’ people, as they age, their skin gets a mottled coloration. And they tend to develop scaly, harsh patches… and their tails, some of them have tails. Some humans do too, it’s called an ‘atavism.’ Curt’s People have a 60 percent chance of being born with tails. But, anyway, and they’ve, the people who ran into them in the dark, they’ve gone on to tell stories. The more honest ones are tales that turn into stories of ‘trolls.’ Those as told by folks trying to embellish as hard as they could, talk about big, strong, vicious creatures! Giants and Jotun, but… those titles are held by other People. The idea of Dragons and such start to get thrown around. ‘What got my sheep couldn’t have just been a big, scary man…’ No, it had to be something bigger. Something mythic. If you and your people could go by the name Dragon, or by Troll, honestly, which would you choose?”
His almost colorless hazel eyes lit from within with glee as he animatedly told Ms. Lang the awkward truth of the origins of dragons from the tavern drunk’s perspective. “’And it had a TAIL!’” he whooped and slurred, “But one couldn’t stop there could you, why be attacked by a big guy with a tail, why not by a giant, with a tail! Covered in scales! Oh! With WINGS!” Cole held up his arms, fingers spread like claws as he took big bouncing steps through the shop, rye brown hair flipping from side to side as he tried to imitate the idea of dragons as they had been portrayed throughout time. “Oooooh! And flaming breath! Blaahhh!” His eyes went, impossibly, even wider as his mouth gaped and his tongue flailed fishily from his maw.
“Cole, please…” All the embarrassment Mister Weathers could possibly hold was
there on his face for any to see. With his sparse brown hair receding back as far as it had, everyone in the room could see the blush creep well past his cheeks to redden his pate.
He then turned to Amy and Ellen with a look of abject apology. “My people, just like
everyone in this room, descended from the same ancestor. While we still have tails, we are still a type of…um… well, um…primate, I guess. Just like y'all. Some of us blend in with the world at large really well. Mister Cole’s folks were grocers down in Shockoe for years. Most of the folk who didn’t quite fit in were slaughtered aways back. We all have our survival strategies; some of us just are better than others at it.” His golden eyes turned to fix on Ellen, then to Amy.
With an embarrassed cough he continued. “Humans, the ‘base model’ anyway, outbreed us all. That’s your edge. Kill as many of y'all as we might; you just come streaming back in no time. Big, two legged bunnies.”
The shocked silence from the women made Curt quickly look down at his bench to continue working. “Anyway …sorry…” he muttered.
“Right…so…What about him?” Pointing now to the short wiry frame of Cole
now sitting at the engraving machine.
“Goblin…” said Curt and Cole quickly in unison. “But we are all just different types of people, cousins on the evolutionary tree, as it were.” Cole supplied. “And that woman with the red skin and really pretty long white hair?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“As I said earlier, my daughter, Celia. She is, as my friend here asserts, part D’jinni, and part human. Well, human such as I am.” Elgin looked sheepish at that moment. “Human…” he said with amusement in his rich voice.
“So there is no magic…” The room seemed to gain a slight blur around its edges
as Amy beheld the death of so many childhood fantasies; the slaughter of her dreams was
taking place right before her eyes.
“What, young lady, would EVER make you say such a terrible thing as that?” Elgin, eyes wide and scandalized at the very thought, as if someone had just overturned a large trash can at the nicest tea party.
“Magic is all around you! Open your eyes, please. Just because six inch high humanoids with bug wings don’t exist, and giant fire breathing reptiles are drunken lies and fancy, please never get so sad as to say ‘there is no magic.’ I have any number of magical items in this shop alone. Old swords that sing, literally; a golden bowl that always has fresh apples in it…Golden apples that eternally drip hard cider that will keep you healthy if not young…rings I made in my youth that cause more mischief than they ever caused good have all been placed in a very same box in my safe.Oh, no, miss…never say there is no magic.”
His hand darted behind him to the work bench and grasped a pair of fussy, pointy
nosed little pliers. Without taking his gaze from those around him, Elgin continued to repair the
brooch in his hands. “Why, just last night you saw a car ripped asunder by a man’s hands,
another fellow ran across the top of several bushes without bruising a leaf, and you must
have seen the way those nasty fellows folded down to sleep? No magic indeed!”
His voice traveled up and down the register as he spoke, retaining its jolly tones of a
grandfather teaching a small child all the while. “It is a rare thing to see magic happen around you; it always has been, too. Even in prehistory, magic might never be glimpsed by a person in the entirety of their lives. Rare, yes; nonexistent? Certainly not, Miss Amy. Later today, ask your grandmama to teach you to Weave. Or to Dance. You will be delighted. So will she, I can promise you.”
Brushing glittering dust from his hands into the tray resting above his lap but below where his hands were working, Elgin turned to take a frank look at the young lady sitting in the old wooden chair.
“Magic is a function of sentience. Sort of like the black belt level of being able to think, if I could put it to you that way. It’s not a great analogy, but I’ll run with it as such for a moment. A life form has to rise to the level of abstract thought to be able to perform what you would call magic. A brain needs a certain amount of mass to be able to make the jump from the instinctual, to the truly intelligent. And then you have to go further. Being able to conceptualize will only take you so far; then you must wonder what is making the noises in the night. You have to wish for things to be better than they have any rational right to be. That is where magic starts to leak in around the edges.”
Reaching back behind himself to the bench clutter, Elgin fished out a battered old gray mug that almost looked like a goblet. Raising it to his lips, he made a sour face at the contents, and made an exasperated gesture over the liquid inside. It began to steam as he took a huge swallow before resuming.
“Dolphins, whales, leviathans, krakens all have done so in the seas. Elephants here on land, very solemn and faithful beings, are all about to make that jump. Many other beings have made that jump already, as well.”
He shook his head in regret. “Most of them, like mastodons… extinct now. But at about the size of a big bug, a mouse, or a bat? Squishy little brains? No, not enough between the ears to make that leap. Eons past there were some very small human-like peoples, but they never made it past the basic tool making stage for one reason or another. One or two might have, it’s been a long time since I thought about them. But none of them were as small as a ‘pixie.’ And no wings. Magic? Souls? Higher thought? Some creatures are on the edge of that, as I said, even now; souls, and magic and the whole ball of gooey bee stuff. But will they become sentient? Do they need to be? What does a mountain gorilla need with the theories of socialism, they live it. Or the concept of a soul? It would be like believing in a grape. It exists regardless of belief.”
The old man was on a roll now, and Ellen thought this might be a speech he had made too many times. “A bear can learn, adapt, think on an instinctual level, but does our ursine friend need the ability to postulate on existentialism? Does it really need to spend time wondering about its own mortality? Dire wolves made that step and look at where they are now. And even
if they do, it’s still another great leap one has to make to get to what we all call ‘magic.’”
Curt looked up from his engraving, confusion etched on his large, hard face. “My
Grandpa told us kids the dire wolves died out because they had no thumbs. His father, my
great granpappy, said they died out with the horrible knowledge that they were dying out.
Couldn’t make tools to fight the humans for their hunting grounds with just some big dew
claws to work with…”
“I’m afraid that might have been a part of it.” Said Elgin with a sad shake of his head. “And the knowing that they were dying out, that is a fact. But your grandfather, as I knew him, often wanted to over simplify on many accounts. I never met your great grandfather, though. Can’t comment on the idea of them making tools and weapons; maybe that’s how they thought of it all in the end.”
With a mischievous grin he turned to the women, holding up the now fixed lapel pin. The image was a delicate gold filigree… pixie. Very Art Nouveau, with silver accents, and small red and blue gems scattered about its tiny wings, and even accenting her little floral slippers and improbably leafy bikini. With a narrowing of his eyes, and a beetling of his prominent brow, Elgin muttered a word and blew a puff of wind over the piece, suddenly animating it to apparent life.
The small nude metal woman on his palm yawned and stretched as she stood up. Her wings clattered together with a faint rattle, and then she shot into the air, eliciting a gasp from both Ellen and Amy.
The little figure raced through the air over the heads of the men, so close she even
knocked the green felt hat from Trutt’s head.
“Buggerdamnsod! Stop showin’ off, ye git!” the stocky little man growled at
Elgin as he stooped below his bench to find his hat. After three looping courses around
the studio, the little bejeweled pixie landed in the tray by Mister Trutt to be polished, all
life having fled its little gold and enameled form.
“I and many others have used that trick over the years to confuse the gullible and easily
tricked. It birthed many a silly story, and many a fruitless chase. But most often it was what we used to stay hidden.”
With a sigh, he turned back to his bench. More work to do while they waited. “Showing someone a little lie, or even a big lie, can be a great way to hide a much bigger lie, if you can do it with style. At one time, in what we now call the Renaissance, I always carried a small necklace with several little pewter fey women dangling from it. If anyone ever saw it, I would tell them some lie about it belonging to my daughter.” Another sigh escaped the confines of his down turned head.
Excitement returned slowly to Amy, now turning her glare on Ellen, “What is she?” Amy’s arm shooting out to indicate a now freshly affronted Ellen.
“A nurse, I believe’” said Elgin; and with a squint, “Most likely some kind of trauma or emergency would be my guess. Maybe intensive care?” Ellen looked up, startled, eyes wide as if a secret had been loosed to fly about the room like the pixie broach had done.