Afternoon of the Elves Read online

  “Because they’re fake,” Alison answered without waiting for Hillary to reply. “Just like Sara-Kate.”

  “She’s definitely not a person you want to trust,” Jane agreed. She lowered her voice and drew the friends closer. “Do you remember that new bike she was riding to school last spring? Do you remember how she boasted about it and said she had a job on a paper route? Have you noticed how she isn’t riding it anymore this fall?”

  Alison nodded.

  “What happened?” Hillary asked.

  “She stole it,” Jane whispered. “From a store downtown. Everybody knows. The police came to Sara-Kate’s house and she was arrested. Only, she gave the bike back so nothing happened. They’re watching her, though, in case she steals something else.”

  Hillary was shocked. “How awful!”

  For the rest of the day she kept away from Sara-Kate. When she walked home from school, she saw her thin shape in the distance and it looked dangerous suddenly. It looked like the shape of someone who was bad, someone who lived in a bad house and came from a bad family.

  If magic had truly invaded Hillary’s room, now it slithered away again. It was gone by the time she reached home that day, and Hillary was relieved. She felt as if she had made a narrow escape and laughed at herself for being so easily fooled. She began to remember other incidents connected with Sara-Kate Connolly. They were little things—a lost pencil case, a series of small disappearances from the art room, a mean note left in someone’s desk. Taken together, they added up to something larger in Hillary’s mind.

  “I do think it’s best not to spend time down in that yard,” Mrs. Lenox said, approvingly, at dinner. “Heaven knows what you might catch or step on.”

  Two days later, Hillary had put the elf village almost completely out of her mind when Sara-Kate appeared at her elbow in the hall at school. She appeared so suddenly, and at such an odd time—all the other fifth graders were at sports—that Hillary jumped.

  Sara-Kate leaned toward her and spoke in a high, breathless voice.

  “Where have you been? I thought you were coming again. The elves have built a playground. They have a swimming pool and a Ferris wheel now.” She flung a string of hair over her shoulder and smiled nervously. “You should come see,” she told Hillary.

  “A Ferris wheel!” In spite of herself, Hillary felt a jab of excitement. “How did they build that?”

  “With Popsicle sticks and two bicycle wheels. It really goes around. The elves come out at night and play on it. Really and truly,” said Sara-Kate, looking into Hillary’s eyes. “I can tell it’s been used in the morning.”

  Hillary glanced away, down at the floor, where she noticed that both of Sara-Kate’s boots were newly speckled with mud. Her legs rose out of them, two raw, white stalks that disappeared under her skirt’s ragged hem. She didn’t seem to be wearing any socks at all. Half of Hillary was repelled. No one in the school was so badly dressed as Sara-Kate, or so mean and unhealthy-looking. And yet, another half was strangely tempted.

  “Maybe I could come over this afternoon,” she told the older girl. “Just for a minute, though. I’ve got a lot of things to do.”

  Sara-Kate’s small eyes narrowed. “In that case, don’t bother.”

  “I want to,” Hillary said, “but my mother—”

  “Who cares!” Sara-Kate interrupted. “Who cares about your stupid mother.”

  “She’s afraid I’ll catch poison ivy.”

  “Do I have poison ivy?” Sara-Kate extended one of her skinny arms for Hillary’s inspection. “Is there one bit of poison ivy on me?”

  Hillary shook her head. Sara-Kate’s skin was pale, but unmarked. Her nails were cut short and her hands were clean.

  “You won’t catch poison ivy, but don’t bother to come anyway,” Sara-Kate said. “These elves don’t like a lot of people looking at their stuff. They aren’t show-offs like most of the creeps around here.”

  “It isn’t that,” Hillary tried to say, but Sara-Kate had turned her back. She began to walk away, and Hillary could see from the stiffness in her shoulders and the line of her chin that she was hurt.

  “Wait a minute!” she called. “Wait! I forgot to ask you something.”

  But it was too late. Sara-Kate had passed beyond the limits of reasonable conversation.

  “I know what it is,” she sneered over her shoulder, “and I’m not answering. Even if I told you you wouldn’t believe me. You wouldn‘t, would you?” she shouted at Hillary, while other people in the hall stopped to stare at her: at her clothes and her boots and her hair falling over her face. “You just wouldn’t, none of you!” she shrieked, losing control in a way most unlike her. She began to run and hop along the hall in the strangest fashion, with knotted fists and flying feet. Like an elf, Hillary thought. Sara-Kate’s face had turned bright red. She looked exactly like a tiny, silly, cartoon elf trying to run away fast and getting nowhere.

  “Creeps!” Sara-Kate screamed, with her boots drumming into the floor.

  Along the corridor, groups of students moved carefully out of her way.

  Three

  At a little past three o’clock on the same afternoon, Hillary went through the hedge into the Connollys’ backyard. She sneaked through, looking first right, then left, but whether she was afraid of being seen by Mrs. Lenox, or by Sara-Kate on the other side, or by the elusive elves themselves, she didn’t know. She felt sure that she should not have come at all. Sara-Kate was too strange. Her house was too shabby. Hillary should have stayed home, safe in her kitchen. She should have read a book or baked a cake with her mother. There were ten other things she might have done, but, by the thinnest thread of enchantment, the elf village was drawing her.

  How did it do that? What was its magic? Hillary could not shut out pictures of the curious houses that crept into her head. She could not forget the leaf roofs. The little well appeared and disappeared, wavered and vanished in her imagination in a most maddening way, like Alice’s Cheshire Cat. The Ferris wheel was the strongest lure. She could not quite visualize how it would look, and came out her back door in a sort of trance from trying so hard to see.

  Hillary’s enchantment did not extend to Sara-Kate, however, and the closer she came to the Connollys’ yard, the more she hoped that Sara-Kate would not be there. The voices of Jane and Alison came back to her. She heard their sensible warnings again, but softer now, muffled by some other power.

  The boughs of the hemlock hedge presented Hillary with a thick, green curtain. Passing through, she was forced to raise her arms to protect her face, to close her eyes—and, for a moment, there was a frightening feeling of walking blind into a trap. But when she opened her eyes, only the Connollys’ backyard came into view, as weedy and trash-strewn as ever. Away to the right, a figure slouched on a pile of wooden planks, looking more like the lone survivor of a wreck at sea than the violent, unpredictable girl it must be. Hillary shoved her hands into her pockets. She approached warily and had come within a few feet of the woodpile when Sara-Kate’s head turned and her two tiny eyes flicked wide with surprise.

  “You!” Sara-Kate exclaimed. Then she sprang to her feet, and whatever had been bowed or sad about her before vanished in an instant. She leapt off the pile of planks, landing exactly beside Hillary. Her boots made almost no sound hitting the ground. Sara-Kate gathered her long, straw-colored hair behind her head with a sweep of one hand and let it fall down her back. She grinned and hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her old skirt.

  “Hi!” she said. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “Well, I did,” Hillary mumbled.

  “The Ferris wheel’s over there,” Sara-Kate said, pointing.

  They went to look right away. Hillary drew a deep breath. It was twice as big as she had expected, and constructed in such a complicated manner that one look told her it was the work of special hands. Two bicycle wheels without their rubber tires were suspended face to face above the ground on a metal rod that passed through t
he wheels’ centers. The rod’s tips rested on up-ended cinder blocks. The Popsicle sticks that Sara-Kate had mentioned were attached by strings to the wheels’ outer rims and hung down horizontally to act as long seats. Numerous pieces of wire linked the spokes of the two wheels, so that when they turned, they turned as one and a marvelous pattern of wires and spokes was woven before the eye.

  “How did it get here?” Hillary asked softly.

  “It just was here, yesterday morning when I came out of the house,” Sara-Kate replied, with such wonder in her own voice that Hillary had no doubt it was the truth. She looked at Sara-Kate with admiring eyes.

  “I’m still not sure how the elves make it go,” Sara-Kate went on. “I’ve gone over the whole thing and I can’t find a motor anywhere. Probably they have some power or current that we don’t know about. Naturally, we humans have to spin the wheel by hand.”

  She reached out as she spoke and spun the wheel hard, transforming the wires and sticks into a series of gold and silver flickers.

  “Now you try,” she said to Hillary. She didn’t mention her rage in the hall at school that morning. She treated Hillary respectfully, as if she were a special friend.

  “It doesn’t matter where you hold the wheel,” Sara-Kate said in a most reasonable and helpful voice. “Just grab it anywhere and spin.”

  Hillary, who had never ridden on a Ferris wheel, leaned forward shyly and turned the wheel. It was very large, so large that it would have lifted a person far, far off the ground, she thought ... if that person happened to be the size of an elf.

  Hillary crouched beside the Ferris wheel. She made her eyes level with the highest seat and looked to see what an elf’s view of the yard would be. There was the rusty white side of the washing machine rising through weeds like a mountain peak. There was the top of a tree stump appearing above the green jungle like the smoke stack of an ocean liner. The yard looked enormous from this vantage, and dense with greenery. In the distance, Sara-Kate’s house towered over all, a rather frightening gray fortress.

  “Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be an elf?” Hillary asked Sara-Kate. “I mean, how would it feel to be so strange and little?”

  Sara-Kate’s eyes jumped to Hillary’s face.

  “What do you mean ‘strange and little’?” she inquired sharply. “If you were an elf you wouldn’t feel strange or little. You’d feel like a normal, healthy elf.”

  “Sorry,” said Hillary, “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did,” Sara-Kate interrupted. She pushed Hillary’s hand away from the Ferris wheel and halted its spin with a single finger stabbed between the spokes. “I guess I’d better tell you something right now, before we go any further.” Her voice was soft but forceful. “Nobody insults these elves and gets away with it. Not while I’m here. Nobody insults them, and nobody insults them by mistake, either,” she added, seeing that Hillary was about to protest again. “Before you say anything, you’ve got to put yourself in the position of the elf. That way you don’t make mistakes, okay?”

  Hillary nodded. She leaned over and touched the Ferris wheel with the tip of her finger. She didn’t want to get into another fight. The Ferris wheel was so wonderful, and besides, she could see how Sara-Kate might be right, especially if there happened to be an elf nearby listening to their conversation.

  An elf nearby listening? Even as she thought this, Hillary felt an odd sensation on the back of her neck. It was as if a small hand had passed between her skin and the collar of her jacket. She glanced over her shoulder at a bush behind her.

  “I know. I felt it, too,” Sara-Kate said quietly, following the direction of Hillary’s eyes into the bush. “I have feelings like that all the time here.”

  “You do? Do you think it means ... ?”

  “It’s better not to talk about it,” Sara-Kate whispered. “It’s better to keep on doing things and not look.

  “Come and see the elves’ new pool!” she shouted suddenly, in a voice clearly intended for invisible ears. “It’s over here! Follow me!”

  Then: “Quick, come on,” she whispered, and rose swiftly from her knees. Hillary rose, too, and the two girls scampered away, feeling such a pressure of elfin eyes at their backs it seemed almost that they were propelled across the yard.

  That night, in bed, Hillary put her face against the window and tried to look through the dark. Now the elves were in their village. Now, if she could only see, they were walking in their front yards, sitting in their houses, talking in tiny voices among themselves. She could feel them out and about, mysterious little beings scurrying through Sara-Kate’s backyard, over the broken glass, around the washing machine. Was the Ferris wheel turning? She peered into the blackness.

  “Elves are almost invisible,” Sara-Kate had said. “It isn’t that they hide so much as that they decide not to be seen.”

  “But they have been seen. Some people have seen them,” Hillary said. “You said so yourself.”

  “Right,” answered Sara-Kate. “Some people. The right people. People they can trust.”

  “Do you think the elves could ever learn to trust us?” Hillary asked.

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” Sara-Kate said. “But don’t count on it,” she’d added immediately. “It takes a lot for an elf to get his trust working.”

  “But why?” Hillary had asked. “We wouldn’t hurt them.”

  “But a lot of people have,” Sara-Kate replied.

  Four

  Sara-Kate had said “put yourself in the position of the elf.” During the next week, Hillary found herself slipping into that position frequently and with remarkable ease. It did not feel odd or unnatural at all, especially with Sara-Kate hovering watchfully nearby, whispering, explaining, drawing upon an apparently endless supply of information about elves.

  She knew everything that could be known about them, it seemed to Hillary, whose eyes now often followed the older girl’s unusual figure at school, along halls, into classrooms. She began to wait for her near the cafeteria at lunchtime, to sit with her if Sara-Kate was willing, though she more often passed Hillary by and went to occupy a chair away by herself.

  Jane Webster and Alison Mancini watched their friend’s new attachment with alarm. They took Hillary aside and tried to warn her.

  “What is wrong with you?” Jane hissed one day outside the lunchroom, where she had come across Hillary standing rather pathetically against the door frame. “Sara-Kate Connolly is not a good person. She’s out to trick you and everybody knows it. Everybody keeps telling you to watch out, to stay away from her. But do you listen? No! You’re over at her house every afternoon. You’re walking home from school with her every day. And why are you standing around here waiting? She never sits with you anyway.”

  “Sometimes she does,” Hillary replied.

  Jane sighed and tried another approach.

  “Have you seen what Sara-Kate eats for lunch?” she asked. “She brings white mush from home and pours sugar on top. White mush! Can you believe it?” Jane’s eyes widened in horror.

  “It’s only Cream of Wheat cereal,” Hillary answered. “Sara-Kate has a delicate stomach. She can’t eat hamburgers and pizza and things like that. She cooks the Cream of Wheat herself in the morning and puts it in a thermos. That way, it’s hot for lunch. She told me.”

  “Do you know that Sara-Kate’s father is a criminal?” Alison asked Hillary later that day. “He’s in prison for armed robbery and will probably be there for a long time. A friend of my mother’s told her.”

  But Hillary only smiled. “He’s not in prison, he’s in Sarasota, Florida. Sara-Kate said so,” she replied with such honest conviction that Alison fled to Jane in a fright.

  “It’s as if Sara-Kate has put a spell on her!” she whispered to her friend. “Hillary believes everything she says. Everything!”

  Spell or no spell, magic or none, Hillary was getting more attached to the Connollys’ backyard with each passing day. There was a lot of work
to do around an elf village, she discovered. She could not just sit still and watch because even as she looked, a leaf roof would blow off and she’d have to run after it to bring it back. Or a line of pebbles would become crooked and need to be rearranged. The elves appreciated this kind of light repairwork. But they would not stand for too much meddling with their village, as Hillary soon discovered.

  During a rainstorm, two of the tiny houses entirely collapsed. Hillary and Sara-Kate found them the next day. Hillary kneeled right down to begin putting the structures back together, but Sara-Kate jumped in front of her and grabbed her wrists.

  “Don’t touch!” she yelled. “These are elf houses and only elves can build them right. People don’t know how!”

  Hillary snatched her hands away angrily. “You never told me that,” she said. “How am I supposed to know things you haven’t even told me yet?”

  “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Sara-Kate spat back. But then, seeing Hillary’s expression, she said in a kinder voice: “It’s all right. Don’t worry. We can help the elves with little things. We can leave presents for them. They would like that.”

  “What kind of presents?” Hillard asked.

  “Food!” announced Sara-Kate with a broad smile. “Elves love to eat.”

  Who would have thought there could be so much elf food in that brambly, neglected backyard? (“I guess that’s another reason the elves came here,” Hillary said to herself.)

  In the brambles grew bright red berries.

  “Elf apples,” explained Sara-Kate, picking them off with her thin fingers.

  Out of the mud appeared pure white mushrooms.

  “Poisonous to humans,” Sara-Kate said. “But to elves they are soft and sweet as cake.”

  There were also sticky green pods that contained tiny white seeds.

  “Elf salt?” asked Hillary.

  “Right,” said Sara-Kate.

  And there were blackberries and little pink flowers in the underbrush that Hillary’s father would have called weed flowers. There were no weed flowers left in Hillary’s backyard, and no place was muddy enough to grow mushrooms.