Chapter 10
When Keith left the library complex, he ran all the way back to the dormitory and seized the phone. Pat was out, probably at play rehearsal. Keith felt if he didn’t share his experience with someone, he would explode. He dialed Marcy’s number and counted the rings impatiently until she answered.
“Hello?” She sounded irritated, probably interrupted in the middle of a good television program, or sleep, or something. Keith realized at that moment he had no idea what time it was.
“Hi,” he sang, sounding heady even in his own ears. “It’s Keith. I just had dinner with THEM. You know. Them.”
“What?” Marcy demanded sleepily. “Which them?”
“They, them. Holl and Tay and Maura and … I was right there, where they live. I saw. I just had to tell someone. You. I wanted to tell you. And, Marcy? Thanks for getting me in there. You don’t know what it means to me. Well,” all his breath came out in a rush on that one syllable, and he forced his tone to assume false casualness, “see you in class.” He hung up the phone.
“Wait!” came a shriek out of the receiver. “Keith—?”
O O O
Keith threw himself around the room for the next few hours, unable to settle anywhere in his excitement. He waggled a finger chidingly at the Field Guide and the other books on legendary creatures stacked anyhow on his shelves, feeling pleased with himself that he now knew something none of them did. “I’ve got your numbers, guys.” Real elves were more interesting than any of the pipe dreams and fictional illusions he’d ever read about. And how did those lights in the ceiling work? There were no wires or even fixtures.… More unexplained data, and he had to know.
The ringing of the telephone disturbed him, so he took the receiver off the hook and threw the whole instrument under the bed.
The arrangement he had seen in the library basement amazed him. To do as the elves had done, to have created a viable living environment inside a dark concrete box without letting anyone ever see them, or know what they were doing, and to continue to exist—even prosper, to a certain extent—surpassed all means or vocabulary Keith had for expressing admiration. They were survivors. They ate, slept, cooked, made clothes and houses and tools, played, and raised children, all in a space the college had forgotten, and would have dismissed as unimportant and unusable if reminded of it. What were discards to his spoiled generation became raw materials in the hands of those concealed craftsmen. Look at what they did with scrap lumber and used curtains.…
It troubled him that all their skill couldn’t disguise the poverty of their situation. True, they could make beauty and function out of garbage, but it was still garbage. Now that he thought about it, there probably wasn’t a whole two-by-four in the whole village. Then, too, there was the clothing. It was all of an old fashioned, loose, comfortable cut, intended to wear for a long time. None of it was way out of the ordinary, but remained far from fashionable. Just about every garment sported a patch, sometimes more than one. Keith thought guiltily of jeans he owned that had patches embroidered on them just for show. He would help supply his new friends with donations of fresh raw materials, anything they needed. He was good at finding things. What those elf seamstresses could do with pretty new fabrics—! It would take all his ingenuity to come up with a way to get what they needed; he certainly didn’t have unlimited money. Keith scowled impatiently out his window at the night, wishing it wasn’t too late an hour to start on his resolution. Textiles, food, lumber, kitchen utensils, tools …
The list was beginning to form in his head, when it occurred to him that he wasn’t alone in his eagerness to help out the little folk. Lee Eisley was already doing it, though he had never let on when Keith grilled him about their classmates. He would have to find Lee and talk to him, and find out what needed doing most.
O O O
“Very vell,” the Master said, leaning over the head of the table. “I declare that the Council of Elders is open, and all who need to speak vill be heard.” He sat down and looked around, waiting for someone to speak.
The old folk around the table glanced at one another, but no one opened his mouth. With a rueful shake of her head, Catra got to her feet. “I would speak, Master.”
“Gut. Vhat haf you to say?”
“You must already know, for I have not made a secret of my discovery.” She turned to the others, holding up a small, neatly trimmed piece of newsprint in the lantern light. “As archivist, it is my duty. I found a story in one of the weekly newspapers that leads me to believe we are in grave danger of discovery.” The room erupted into a hubbub of worried exclamations. “Now, wait. It doesn’t go so far as to mention any of us by name. All it says is that folk answering our general descriptions have been seen frequenting the streets of the Midwestern campus and town.”
“Frequenting!” Curran exploded. “There’s a bare few who go ‘round and about, and no’ often. Do we keep them from gaeng out, then?”
“No. Ve cannot keep them from their tasks. We need to do have them done.”
“Huh!” Dierdre, Catra’s clan leader, seated to her right, was glancing at the slip of paper. “… as if Santa was setting up shop right here in the Midwest. ’Tis an insult!”
“Stereotypes,” Ligan agreed. “Too few stories for to choose from here.” He was the eldest of the Master’s clan, though it was the Master who spoke for the whole of the village.
“But who can have written this? Why now?”
“Is there no one new in the village class, now?” Ligan wanted to know.
“Just the vun, Keith Doyle,” said the Master.
“You met him the other day at dinner,” Catra reminded them, venturing a cautious opinion. “I don’t think it could be he.”
“And why not?” Curran demanded.
Catra shrugged her shoulders. “He doesn’t seem the type.”
“Ve must be more careful,” the Elf Master said, peering at them all over the tops of his gold glasses. “Only at night shall the scavengers go forth, and hats worn. Approach no new Big Folk. If this is a security leak, ve shall stop it here and now.” The others sadly nodded their approval. “Now, is there any more to bring to our attention?” None of the others raised a hand or stood up. The Master rose heavily to his feet. “Then the Council is closed.”
***