The Woods Out Back Page 4

Chapter 3 Sylvan Forest

 

  It was day - what the heck was going on?

  Gary felt the grass under his cheek. At first, he thought he had simply fallen asleep, and he was drowsy still, lying there so very comfortably. Then Gary remembered again the sprite archer and the dance of the fairies, and his eyes popped open wide. It took considerable effort to lift his head and prop himself up on his elbows; the poison, or whatever it was, weighed heavily in his limbs. But he managed it, and he looked around, and then he became even more confused.

  He was still in the blueberry patch; all the trees and bushes and paths were in the places he remembered them. They were somehow not the same, though - Gary knew that instinctively. It took him a moment to figure out exactly what was different, but once he recognized it clearly, there could be no doubt.

  The colors were different.

  The trees were brown and green, the grass and moss were green, and the dirt trail a grayish brown, but they were not the browns, greens, and grays of Gary's world. There was a luster to the colors, an inner vibrancy and richness beyond anything Gary had seen. He couldn't even begin to explain it to himself; the view was too vivid to be real, like some forest rendition by a surrealistic painter, a primordial viewpoint of a world undulled by reality and human pollution.

  Another shock greeted Gary when he turned his attention away from his immediate surroundings and looked out over the ridge, at the landscape beyond the school that had stolen his favorite valley. He saw no houses - he was sure that he had seen houses from this point before - but only distant, towering mountains.

  "Where did those come from?" Gary asked under his breath. He was still a bit disoriented, he decided, and he told himself that he had never really looked out over that ridge before, never allowed himself to register the magnificent sight. Of course the mountains had always been there, Gary had just never noticed how large and truly spectacular they were.

  At the snap of a twig, Gary turned to look over his shoulder. There stood the sprite, half a foot tall, paying him little heed and leaning casually on its longbow. "What are you?" Gary asked, too confused to question his sanity.

  The diminutive creature made no move to respond; gave no indication that it had heard the question at all.

  "What. . . ," Gary started to ask again, but he changed his mind. What indeed was this creature, and this dream? For it had to be a dream, Gary rationally told himself, as any respectable, intelligent person awaiting the dawn of the twenty-first century would tell himself.

  It didn't feel like one, though. There were too many real sounds and colors, no single-purposed visions common to nightmares. Gary was cognizant of his surroundings, could turn in any direction and see the forest clearly. And he had never experienced a dream, or even heard of anyone else experiencing a dream, where he consciously knew that he was dreaming.

  "Time to find out," he muttered under his breath. He had always thought himself pretty quick-handed, had even done some boxing in high school. His lunge at the sprite was pitifully slow, though; the creature was gone before he ever got near the spot. He followed the rustle stubbornly, pouncing on any noise, sweeping areas of dead leaves and low berry bushes with his arms.

  "Ow!" he cried, feeling a pinprick in his backside. He spun about. The sprite was a few feet behind him - he had no idea how the stupid thing got there - holding its bow and actually laughing at him!

  Gary turned slowly, never letting the creature out of his glowering stare. He leaned forward, his muscles tensed for a spring that would put him beyond the creature, cut off its expected escape route.

  Then Gary fell back on his elbows, eyes wide in heightened disbelief, as a second creature joined the first, this one taller, at least two feet from toes to top, and this one, Gary recognized.

  Gary was not of Irish decent, but that hardly mattered. He had seen this creature pictured a thousand times, and he marveled now at the accuracy of those images. The creature wore a beard, light brown, like its curly hair. Its overcoat was gray, like its sparkling, mischievous eyes, and its breeches green, with shiny black, curly-toed shoes. If the long-stemmed pipe in its mouth wasn't a dead giveaway, the tam-o'-shanter on its head certainly was.

  "So call it a dream, then," the creature said to him, "and be satisfied with that. It do' not matter. " Gary watched, stunned, as this newest sprite, this leprechaun - this frickenleprechaun! - walked over to the archer.

  "He's a big one," the leprechaun said. "I say, will he fit?"

  The archer chirped out something too squeaky for Gary to understand, but the leprechaun seemed appeased.

  "For yer troubles, then," the leprechaun said, and he handed over a four-leaf clover, the apparent payment for delivering Gary.

  The pixie archer bowed low in appreciation, cast a derisive chuckle Gary's way, and then was gone, disappearing into the underbrush too quickly and completely for Gary to even visually follow its movements.

  "Mickey McMickey at yer service," the leprechaun said politely, dipping into a low bow and tipping his tam-o'-shanter.

  Oh my God.

  The leprechaun, having completed its greeting, waited patiently.

  "If you're really at my service," Gary stuttered, startled even by the sound of his own voice, "then you'll answer a few questions. Like, what the hell is going on?"

  "Don't ye ask," Mickey advised. "Ye'd not be satisfied in hearing me answers. Not yet. But in time ye'll come to understand it all. Know now that ye're here for a service, and when ye're done with it, ye can return to yer own place. "

  "So I'm at your service," Gary reasoned. "And not the other way around. "

  Mickey scratched at his finely trimmed beard. "Not in service for me," he answered after some thought. "Though yer being here does do me a service, if ye follow me thinking. Ye're in service to an elf. "

  "The little guy?" Gary asked, pointing to the brush where the sprite had disappeared.

  "Not a pixie," Mickey replied. "An elf. Tylwyth Teg. " He paused, as if those strange words should mean something to Gary. With no response beyond a confused stare forthcoming, Mickey went on, somewhat exasperated.

  "Tylwyth Teg," he said again. "The Fair Family. Ye've not heard o' them?"

  Gary shook his head, his mouth hanging open.

  "Sad times ye're living in, ye poor lad," Mickey mumbled. He shrugged helplessly, a twittering, jerky movement for a creature as small as he, and finished his explanation. "These elfs are named the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Family. To be sure, they're the noblest race of the faerie folk, though a bit unbending to the ways of others. A great elf, too, this one ye'll soon be meeting, and one not for taking lightly. 'Twas him that catched me, ye see, and made me catch yerself. "

  "Why me?" Gary wondered why he'd asked that, why he was talking to this. . . whatever it was. . . at all. Would Alan Funt soon leap out at him, laughing and pointing to that elusive camera?

  "Because ye'll fit the armor," Mickey said as though the whole thing should make perfect sense. "The pixies took yer measures and say ye'll fit. As good yerself as another, that being the only requirement. " Mickey paused a moment, staring reflectively into Gary's eyes.

  "Green eyes?" the leprechaun remarked. "Ah, so were Cedric's. A good sign!"

  Gary's nod showed that he accepted, but certainly did not understand, what Mickey was saying. It really wasn't a big problem for Gary at that moment, though, for all that he could do was go along with these thoroughly unbelievable events and thoroughly unbelievable creatures. If he was dreaming, then fine; it might be enjoyable. And if not. . . well, Gary decided not to think about that possibility just then.

  What Gary did think about was his knowledge of leprechauns and the legends surrounding them. He knew the reward for catching a leprechaun and, dream or not, it sounded like a fun course to take. He reached a hand up behind his head, feigning an itch, then dove headlong at Mickey and came up clutching the little guy.

  "Ther
e," Gary declared triumphantly. "I've caught you and you have to lead me to your pot of gold! I know the rules, Mr. Mickey McMickey. "

  "Tsk, tsk, tsk," he heard from the side. He turned to see Mickey leaning casually against a tree stump, holding Gary's book,The Hobbit, open before him. Gary turned slowly back to his catch and saw that he held Mickey in his own two hands. "Sonofabitch," Gary mumbled under his breath, for this was a bit too confusing.

  "If ye know the rules, ye should know the game," Mickey - the Mickey leaning against the tree - said in response to Gary's blank stare.

  "How?" Gary stuttered.

  "Look closer, lad," Mickey said to him. "Then let go of the mushroom before ye get yer hands all dirty. "

  Gary studied his catch carefully. It remained a leprechaun as far as he could tell, though it didn't seem to be moving very much - not at all, actually. He looked back to the leaning leprechaun and shrugged.

  "Closer," Mickey implored.

  Gary eyed the figure a moment longer. Gradually the image transformed and he realized that he was indeed holding a large and dirty mushroom. He shook his head in disbelief and dropped it to the ground, then noticedThe Hobbit lying at his feet, right where he had left it. He looked back to Mickey by the tree trunk, now a mushroom again, and then back to the dropped mushroom, now a leprechaun brushing himself off.

  "Ye think it to be an easy thing, catching a leprechaun?" Mickey asked him sourly. "Well, if it was, do ye think any of us'd have any gold left to give out?" He walked right next to Gary to scoop up the strange book. Gary had a thought about grabbing him again, this time to hold on, but the leprechaun acted first.

  "Don't ye be reaching yer hands at me," Mickey ordered. "'Twas me that catched yerself, remember? And besides, grabbing at the likes o' Mickey McMickey, ye just don't know what ye might put them hands in! Been fooling stupid big folk longer than ye've been alive, I tell ye! I telled ye once. . . what did ye say yer name was?. . . don't ye make me tell ye again!"

  "Gary," Gary answered, straightening up and taking a prudent step away from the unpredictable sprite. "Gary Leger. "

  "Well met, then, Gary Leger," Mickey said absently. His thoughts now seemed to be fully on the book's cover, "Bilbo comes to the huts of the raft elfs," an original painting by Tolkien himself. Mickey nodded his approval, then opened the work. His face crinkled immediately and he mumbled a few words under his breath and waved a hand across the open page.

  "Much the better," he said.

  "What are you doing to my book?" Gary protested, leaning down to take it back. Just before he reached it, though, he realized that he was putting his hand into the fanged maw of some horrid, demonic thing, and he recoiled immediately, nearly falling over backwards.

  "Never know what ye might put yer hands into," Mickey said again absently, not bothering to look up at the startled man. "And really, Gary Leger, ye must learn to see more the clearly if we mean to finish this quest. Ye can't go playing with dragons if ye can't look through a simple illusion. Come along, then. " And Mickey started off, reading as he walked.

  "Dragons?" Gary muttered at the leprechaun's back, drawing no response. "Dragons?" Gary asked again, this time to himself. Really, he told himself, he shouldn't be so surprised.

  The fire road, too, was as Gary remembered it, except, of course, for the colors, which continued with their surrealistic vibrancy. As they moved along the path towards the main road, though, Gary thought that the woods seemed denser. On the way in, he had seen houses from this point, the new constructions he always tried not to notice. Now he wanted to see them, wanted to find some sense of normalcy in this crazy situation, but try as he may, his gaze could not penetrate the tangle of leaves and branches.

  When they came to the end of the fire road, Gary realized beyond doubt that more had changed about the world around him than unnoticed mountains and dense trees and strange colors. This time there could be no mistake of perception.

  Back in Lancashire, the fire road ended at the dirt continuation of the main road, the road that ran past his parents' house. Across from the juncture sat the chain-link cemetery fence.

  But there was no fence here, just more trees, endless trees.

  Mickey paused to wait for Gary, who stood staring, open-mouthed. "Well, are ye coming, then?" the leprechaun demanded after a long uneventful moment.

  "Where's the fence?" Gary asked, hardly able to find his breath.

  "Fence?" Mickey echoed. "What're ye talking about, lad?"

  "The cemetery fence," Gary tried to explain.

  "Who'd be putting a graveyard in the middle of the forest?" Mickey replied with a laugh. The leprechaun stopped short, seeing that Gary did not share in the joke, and then Mickey nodded his understanding.

  "Hear me, lad," the leprechaun began sympathetically. "Ye're not in yer own place - I telled ye that already. Ye're in me place now, in County Dilnamarra in the wood called Tir na n'Og. "

  "But I remember the blueberry patch," Gary protested, thinking he had caught the leprechaun in a logic trap. Surprisingly Mickey seemed almost saddened by Gary's words.

  "That ye do," the leprechaun began. "Ye remember the blueberries from yer own place, Real-earth, in a patch much like the one I found ye in. "

  "They were the same," Gary said stubbornly.

  "No, lad," Mickey replied. "There be bridges still between yer own world and this world, places alike yer blueberry patch that seem as the same in both the lands. "

  "This world?"

  "Sure that ye've heard of it," Mickey replied. "The world of the Faerie. "

  Gary crinkled his brow with incredulity, then tried to humor the leprechaun and hide his smile.

  "In such places," Mickey continued, not noticing Gary's obvious doubt, "some folk, the pixies mostly, can cross over, and within their dancing circle, they can bring a one such as yerself back. But alas, fewer the bridges get by the day - I fear that yer world'll soon lose its way to Faerie altogether. "

  "This has been done before?" Gary asked. "I mean, people from my world have crossed. . . "

  "Aren't ye listening? And have ye not heard the tales?" Mickey asked. He grabbed his pipe in one hand, plopped his hands on his hips, and gave a disgusted shake of his head.

  "I've heard of leprechauns," Gary offered hopefully.

  "Well, where are ye thinking the stories came from?" Mickey replied. "All the tales of wee folk and dancing elfs, and dragons in lairs full o' gold? Did ye not believe them, lad? Did ye think them stories for the children by a winter's fire?"

  "It's not that I don't want to believe them," Gary tried to explain.

  "Don't?" Mickey echoed. "Suren ye mean to say 'didn't. ' Ye've no choice but to believe the faerie tales now, seeing as ye've landed in one of them!"

  Gary only smiled noncommittally, though in fact he was truly enjoying this experience - whatever it might be. He shook his head at the thought. Whatever it might be? Oh my God!

  He asked no more questions as they made their way along footpaths through the marvelous colors and aromas of the sylvan forest. He did stop once to more closely regard the leprechaun, shuffling up ahead of him. Mickey crossed over a patch of dry brown leaves, but made not a whisper of a sound. Gary moved up behind as carefully as he could, noting his own crunching and crackling footsteps and feeling altogether clumsy and out of place next to the nimble Mickey.

  But if Gary was indeed an intruder here, the forest did not make him feel so. Birds and squirrels, a raccoon and a young deer, skipped by on their business not too far from him, paying no attention to him beyond a quick and curious glance. Gary could not help but feel at home here; the place was warm and dreamy, full of life and full of ease. And to Gary, it was still entirely in his mind, a fantasy, a dream, and perfectly safe.

  They arrived many minutes later at a small clearing centered by a huge and ancient oak tree - Gary figured it to be located on the spot normally occupied by downtown Lancashire's Dunkin'
Donuts. Apparently the leprechaun had set out with this destination in mind, for Mickey moved right up to the tree and plopped down on a mossy patch, pulling out a packet of weed for his pipe.

  "A rest?" Gary asked.

  "Here's the place," Mickey replied. "Kelsey's to meet us here, and then ye're on with him. I'll take me leave. "

  "You're not coming with us?"

  Mickey laughed, nearly choking as he simultaneously tried to light his pipe. "Yerself and Kelsey," he explained. "'Tis his quest and not me own. Rest and don't ye be fearing. I'll give ye some tips for handling that one. " He paused to finish lighting the pipe, and if he went on after that, Gary did not hear him.

  A song drifted down from the boughs of the great oak, high-pitched and charmingly sweet. It flittered on the very edges of Gary's hearing, teasing. . . teasing.

  Gary's gaze wandered up the massive oak, seeking the source.

  Teasing. . . teasing.

  And then he saw her, peeking around a thick lower branch. She was a tiny thing by human measures, five feet tall perhaps and never close to a hundred pounds, with a pixieish face and eyes too clear and hair too golden.

  And a voice too sweet.

  It took Gary a moment to even realize that she was naked - no, not naked, but wearing the sheerest veil of gossamer that barely blurred her form. Again, that edge-of-perception tease.

  "What are ye about?" Gary heard Mickey say from some distant place.

  The melody was more than a simple song, it was a call to Gary. "Come up to me," the notes implored him.

  He didn't have to be asked twice.

  "Oh, cobblestones," moaned Mickey, realizing then the source of Gary's distraction. The leprechaun pulled off his tam-o'-shanter and slapped it across his knee, angry at himself. He should have known better than to take so vulnerable a young human near the haunting grounds of Leshiye, the wood nymph.

  "Get yerself down, lad," he called to Gary. "There's not a thing up there ye're wanting. "

  Gary didn't bother to reply; it was obvious that he didn't agree. He swung a leg over the lowest branch and pulled himself up. The nymph was close now, smelling sweet, singing sweet, and so alluring in her translucent gown. And her song was so inviting, promising, teasing in ways that Gary could not resist.

  "Get yerself gone, Leshiye!" Mickey yelled from below, knowing that any further appeals he might make to Gary would fall on deaf ears. "We've business more important than yer hunting. Kelsey'll be here soon and he won't be pleased with ye. Not a bit!"

  The nymph's song went on undisturbed. Gary tried several routes through the branch tangle, then finally found one that would lead him to his goal.

  A huge snake appeared on the branch before him, coiled and hissing, with fangs all too prominent. Gary stopped short and tried to backtrack, eyes wide, and so frantic that he nearly toppled from the branch.

  Still, Leshiye sang, even heightened the sweetness of her song with laughter. She waved her hand and the snake was gone, and as far as the entranced Gary was concerned, the serpent had never appeared. He started up the tree again immediately, but now the branches began to dance under him, waving and seeming to multiply.

  Gary looked down at Mickey, guessing both the serpent and now this to be more of the leprechaun's illusionary tricks.

  "What are you doing?" he called down angrily. "Are you trying to make me fall?"

  "Leave her be, lad," Mickey replied. "Ye're not for mixing with one of her type. "

  Gary looked back at the nymph for a long, lingering while, then turned back sharply on Mickey. "Are you nuts?"

  Mickey's cherubic face twisted in confusion over the strange phrase for just a moment, but then he seemed to recognize the general meaning of the words. "And block yer ears, lad," Mickey went on stubbornly. "Don't ye let her charms fall over ye. Ye must be strong; in this tree, her home, I've no magics to outdo her illusions. "

  The leprechaun's warnings began to make some sense to Gary - until he looked back at the nymph, now reclining languidly on one stretching branch. Gary looked all about helplessly, trying to sort some safe way to get through to her.

  Leshiye laughed again - within the melodic boundaries of her continuing song. She drew her powers from the tree - this was her home base - and she easily defeated Mickey's illusionary maze, leaving the correct path open and obvious before Gary's eager eyes.

  Mickey slapped his tam-o'-shanter against his knee again and fell down to the moss, defeated. He could not win the attention of a young human male against the likes of a wood nymph. "Kelsey's not to be liking this," he muttered quietly and soberly, not thrilled at facing the stern and impatient elf with still more bad news.

  Leshiye had taken Gary's hand by then, and she led him higher into the tree, just over the second split in the thick trunk area to a small leafy hollow.

  "Oh, well," Mickey shrugged as they disappeared from sight. "I'll just have to go out and find another one fitting the armor. " He tapped his pipe against the tree and popped it into his mouth, then took out Gary's book and sat down for a good read.