Elf Story

It was early spring, a time when the wind was still raw. The freezing rain and ice could still come in unannounced, like an arrogant army of occupation, and trample whatever was vulnerable. Blossoms that had opened too soon could fall. Creatures in frail health might not see the summer.

This March evening, the sleet began to make its tell-tale clatter on the window glass, and to sting Eleanor’s face as she searched in the bushes. Her calling and weeping had turned into sobs as she took cover inside the house. Her first day here, and she had let Lucius escape! Actually it appeared that the movers had left a side door open, but Eleanor blamed herself. She should have checked, checked everything, before letting Lucius out of his carrier. He wouldn’t know where he was. He could die out there…quickly, slowly…agonizingly either way. She thought she had locked every door, but the move had been so stressful…

It was too much. Too much. Eleanor sank to her knees between the rows of unpacked boxes, her face in her hands. Lucius, Bringer of Light. He had been the light of her lonely life for thirteen years, one of the best friends she had ever known.

Through tear-blurred eyes, Eleanor looked up toward the top of the stairs. The gray silhouette on the white wall of the landing was…the shape of a cat’s head! He was up there?! “Oh, Lucius,” Eleanor breathed, “thank God…” But something was not right, the shadow moved not a hair as she climbed the softly creaking steps. Her heart broke all over again, discovering that the shadow was being made by tissue paper blooming out of a gift bag.

Something inside Eleanor rallied, steeled itself. She was going to find her cat, if she had to crawl under every boxwood bush in the historic district, on her hands and knees in the driving sleet.

Eleanor went out into the frigid showers of ice. Frozen white buckshot assaulted the hood of her raincoat, the beam of her flashlight a long sword of jittering diamonds in the dark. “Lucius!” she howled.

He would take cover. She stabbed the flashlight beam under things, probing for a glimpse of his ermine-white fur. She crawled beneath the wooden shed out back, dragging herself through the mire of dead leaves and humus that had lain decaying there for years. It had the fragrance of an open grave. There, over in a far corner…

The floor was so low in the corner where Lucius was cowering, Eleanor would not be able to extend her arms into it. She was wedged in as far as she could go, wood beams grating on her back, her chest plowing a trough of rotten, muddy leaves. It was then that she saw them. Some fifteen or twenty of them, circled around the soiled, shivering cat. They were gazing at Eleanor with a smug, insolent look, their little eyes heavy-lidded with boredom and self-importance. They offered no greeting, showed no other emotion besides an air of impatience to get on with the deal. They would drive a hard bargain, Eleanor knew. Their kind always did.

Eleanor almost lowered her face into the earthy leaf-mulch in exasperation. “Alright,” she said. “What do you want?”

Tiny, tiny men with pointed hats and long, gossamer beards. They looked like the little figurines that Eleanor’s dentist liked to put in his windowsills, but they were not carvings.

Before she knew what she had agreed to, Eleanor found herself back in her living room. She was naked and dry under the softest of blankets, seated in an armchair by the fireplace. Delicious waves of warm air rolled from the radiators, and the tiny men were lighting a fresh oak fire. Fairy magic! A vague, half-memory of lying in a dark place, being pummeled by something heavy, but not hard enough to hurt…and now she was here.

No Lucius.

The tiny men were scurrying all through the old Victorian house, slitting open all the boxes, efficiently going through the contents. They were unpacking and putting everything neatly away. When they had emptied a box, it would simply vanish. When they would arrange themselves in certain formations around pieces of furniture, they could move the largest dressers and armoires without touching them. Fairy magic, but Eleanor was not impressed; she wasn’t even watching. Her head was back in her hands and she was weeping ragged, moaning sobs. No Lucius! She didn’t care if the elves unpacked, cleaned, or if they replaced the roof and the plumbing--she just wanted her friend, her Lucius.

She didn’t realize that the elves were carrying plenty of her belongings out of the house. Anything especially bright and sparkling, made purely for pleasure and ornamentation, was disappearing. Long silk scarves, gaudy costume jewelry, beaded velvet skirts: these would never be seen again. Of course, they didn’t matter.

None of the elves had yet spoken. They would make a bit of eye contact with Eleanor as they passed by her, but it was always the same impudent stare, as if she were just some mild distraction in their path. Which of course, she was. Elves, fairies, and for that matter, shape-changers and others from the spirit world, did not live on the same plane of reality that mortal humans did. They didn’t have the same emotional makeup, and they were following their own agenda, comprehensible only to them. The closest approximation of their relationship with living humans, Eleanor knew, was probably humans’ relationship with insects. We can see them, hear them, understand their basic needs, but we cannot see their world through their eyes, or feel what is in their hearts.

Basic needs…they had known enough to bring Eleanor into the house, put a blanket on her, light the fire. Maybe they had also known enough to give Lucius a warm dry place. Maybe they didn’t have a perception of the love between Eleanor and her cat, or would not care about it. But Lucius was another living creature. Maybe they had saved him on that basis.

How to communicate with them?

Eleanor fished her cell phone out of her purse. Plain, matte black, the little phone had thus far been ignored. Several of the tiny men stopped cold in their tracks, however, when Eleanor pressed the power key and the screen lit up. Wide and greedy were all the elf eyes, as they fixed on the digital glow.

She was about to call Dr. Bolla at home. The dentist with the elfin figurines. He might not believe in fairy folk, but his mother was from the Old Country. It was worth a try. Maybe Eleanor and Lucius were merely separated, and old Frau Bolla could help ask the elves where the cat was.

The shivers and sighs of elf pleasure were plain to see and hear, as Eleanor pressed the cell phone keys. Something about the sounds the phone made was music to their elf ears. Eleanor began to have ideas.

She held the roomful of tiny men spellbound, playing the various ring tones, flashing LCD images. The elves swayed and swooned. Gone was their insolent, sneering air. Goofy smiles and dancing everywhere; some were even drooling into their gray, cotton-candy beards. Then Eleanor sprang it on them.

It was a cell phone that could display digital photos and short videos. Eleanor turned on a home movie, one of Lucius walking across a room, batting a toy. She panned the screen around the room so that all could see. As the star of the picture looked up at the camera smiling, the screen suddenly went dark and cold. Eleanor the director and producer began to wail. She was loud, horrific, heart-rending. She held the little black lump of a phone next to her chest, bent her body at the waist, and shrieked her grief. Her blanket fell away as she stomped and turned like a rain dancer. Her hair whipped back and forth.

The leaders of the elf colony glared coldly at this undignified scene. Their former foolish grins curdled into scowls of disgust. Little arms folded across little chests, lots of lower lips protruding.

Eleanor stood still and glared back. She stuck out her lower lip, defiantly mocking the elves. It was a standoff.

How long did it last? Time expands and contracts in the strangest ways, in the presence of strong emotion. Love, grief, greed, anger…
At last, the bravest elf advanced closer to Eleanor and, still smoldering with disgust, extended his tiny open hand. It was a two-hundred-dollar cell phone, but Eleanor handed it over. It had performed the most important communications function that it ever would.

Four elves helped each other cart the phone out the door, and the rest followed. Passing by the naked woman, they each shot her a glance that said she was an unbelievable idiot and they wanted no more to do with her.

It was beyond imagining what the elf colony could have done for Eleanor, eventually, if she and they had cohabitated in any harmony. Replacing the roof would have been the least of it. But apparently they didn’t like cats. As soon as they waved their little arms, and Lucius materialized on a floor pillow in front of the fireplace, all the elves scuttled out into the icy night and were never seen again.