Ages of Wonder Read online

  Fox trotted up. “It is not a spirit.” Fox flicked her ears to indicate certainty. “It is bound to that form. It is not an animal. It thinks as a man does. Yet it has power, so it is not a man.”

  Waterman ruffled the spines on his back before dissolving his corporeal form. He could think more clearly when he dwelt in the flow of the water. “He is like me, bound to a place. His place is that body.” Waterman was sad for the strange spirit, bound to so small a place.

  Fox pawed the ground. “Fear rolls off it in waves.”

  Waterman murmured assent. He too felt the strange spirit’s fear. So much fear for such a small being. “He is out of place. Lost. That is why he fears.”

  Fox grinned bloodthirstily “Then we should drive it back where it came from. It has no place here.”

  “You are quick to judge.”

  Fox sat up in surprise. “You would let it stay?”

  Waterman ruffled the water. Then he ruffled it again. “He does no harm,” he answered at last. “We must watch and wait.”

  Fox scratched her foot against the ground in protest, but did not argue.

  Goibniu whisked through the house door with Samuel and scaled a beam to his perch in the rafters. The smell of food wafted up from the table below. Goibniu’s stomach rumbled. He eyed the pantry near the table. The risk of being seen was too high. He’d get food later. While he waited, Goibniu listened to the humans. Samuel’s voice was the sound of home, so different from the flat American accents of the others. Lulled by the cadences of conversation, Goibniu closed his eyes. A loud laugh startled him awake. Samuel was laughing. Goibniu had not heard such laughter from Samuel in years. Samuel had been a young boy when he last laughed so freely. Goibniu peeked to find the cause of his friend’s joy.

  Samuel sat at the table across from the daughter of the house, leaning toward her. She smiled broadly at him; completely focused on the joke they shared. All the pieces fell into place. The times that Samuel had stopped work on the mill and come to dinner early. The fact that Samuel did not talk to Goibniu as much. Samuel was in love with the girl.

  Goibniu scuttled along the beam to get a better look at the girl. She was not pretty. Girls in England were much prettier, and Samuel had left them behind.

  “So you will come to the picnic tomorrow?” The girl reached over and touched Samuel’s hand.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.” Samuel smiled again.

  Goibniu straightened as if shocked. Samuel was not going to work on the mill tomorrow. That girl was going to steal him away. Anger surged through Goibniu’s body. He stomped his feet. Then he scurried across the beam and kicked dust down on the girl’s head. It floated softly through the air and she did not even notice. He wanted to jump on her head and scratch her eyes out. To prevent himself from making so stupid an error, Goibniu ran to his nest and curled into a tight ball. Tears leaked from his eyes. The mill would stand empty tomorrow. Samuel would not be there to design new gears, or make them, or set them into place.

  Goibniu remembered vividly his one look at a working mill. Samuel was apprenticed to a mill overseer, and had regaled Goibniu with tales of intricate machinery. He had to see it for himself. He’d waited for the goblin, whose territory the mill was, to be asleep. He’d crept through a crack in the wall. The thrum of the machines vibrated his feet. The whirling spindles dazzled his eyes. His hands itched to touch and learn the workings of the machines. A few minutes were all that Goibniu dared to stay. He stretched them as long as he could, then crept away before the goblin woke. The memory of the whirling, thrumming machines haunted him. He had to find a way to have such machines for his own. But so weak a Fae as he could never hold such an amazing territory. Then Samuel had begun to talk of America.

  Dinner was over and the humans had gone to bed before Goibniu trusted himself not to do anything rash. His joints creaked as he uncoiled. One extra day was not the end of his dream. But what if this girl had another picnic? What if Samuel got married and forgot about Goibniu? Samuel’s father had done that.

  “Goibniu!” Samuel’s whispered voice drew Goibniu from his nest. He peered down into the room below. Samuel was in night clothes, holding a bowl, and searching the room for the Fae. The smell of bread and honey in milk wafted from the bowl. Samuel had not forgotten him. Goibniu’s spirits soared and his stomach rumbled. Lured by his favorite treat, he scuttled down a beam. Samuel put the bowl down on the floor. Goibniu ate voraciously.

  Samuel waited until Goibniu had slowed down before he spoke. “I won’t be working on the mill tomorrow.”

  Goibniu froze with a bite half to his mouth. He looked up at Samuel reproachfully.

  “It is just for one day,” Samuel placated. “Hannah and her friends are having a picnic.”

  Goibniu wasn’t hungry anymore. He dropped the bread back into the bowl.

  Samuel watched the action. “Are you all right?”

  The wood floor was smooth under Goibniu’s hand. He felt the softness of it. “You will work on the mill after tomorrow?”

  “Of course I will!” Samuel laughed. “Why would I travel this far, arrange finances, and board here with a blacksmith just to give it up now?”

  Goibniu fidgeted. “You like the girl.”

  Samuel sobered. “Hannah?” He looked toward the stairs that led to her room. “Yes. I like her very much.”

  Heaving a big sigh, Goibniu turned to leave. “Wait, what’s wrong?” Samuel’s voice called him back.

  Goibniu turned to look into Samuel’s concerned eyes. “You will marry her, leave the mill, and forget me.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Samuel’s face lightened. “I’m not my father. Grandfather didn’t forget you, did he?”

  Grudgingly, Goibniu shook his head.

  “I won’t either. Besides, I can’t possibly afford to get married until the mill is a huge success. I owe more money on that thing than you would believe.”

  Tension leaked out of Goibniu’s shoulders as he studied Samuel’s face. He could always tell when truth was being spoken. The mill would be finished. He would have his glorious machines. Goibniu smiled.

  Samuel smiled as well. “I think we may be able to test the machine soon. Not tomorrow, that’s the picnic, but the day after maybe.”

  Hungry again, the brown Fae finished off the last of the bread. Samuel sat next to him, lost in thought. Goibniu was using his finger to get the last bits of the honey when Samuel spoke again.

  “Do you like her? Hannah, I mean.”

  Goibniu sat back. “She is American.”

  Brow crinkled, Samuel replied “Not all Americans are like that man on the boat. Besides, he had good reason to suspect you were a demon after you ‘fixed’ the steam engine.”

  Goibniu hunched over. It wasn’t his fault that he’d never seen a steam engine before. He knew how it worked now. It had been as fascinating as the mill machines. But the man and his priest had made sure Goibniu could not stay.

  Samuel leaned toward his small friend “Hannah is different. I’ve been telling her about Fae and I think she almost believes me. Won’t you please meet her, speak with her?”

  Jaw clenched, the Fae shook his head. “No,” he whispered hoarsely. Then he scurried away to his nest.

  Waterman was sleeping when a change in the water rhythm woke him. He floated up the stream to find the disturbance. It came from the man-place straddling the waterway. Attached to the man-place was a wheel. Its paddles chopped the water endlessly. This close to the wheel, there were no rhythms to ride. He needed to get upstream. He needed the song of the rocks and the banks, not the endless slap of wood on water. Waterman coalesced and lifted his head high to see. No men were in sight. He pulled himself onto the bank and began the land traverse around the wheel. Every step was heavy. He tired quickly.

  The water-spirit was half through with his traverse when Fox came running up. She put her ears back to laugh at his predicament.

  Waterman did not stop his slow march. “What do you want, Fo
x?”

  “I felt the rumble through the ground and came to see what it was.”

  “Rumble?” Waterman put his hand to the ground, but earth did not speak to him.

  “The building thumps like war drums.”

  Waterman continued his walk. He needed the water. Fortunately the distance was short. He splashed back into the stream and sighed with pleasure. The song of rocks and banks filled him.

  Fox flicked her ears. “Are you finished watching and waiting now?”

  Waterman looked down the stream at the endlessly turning wheel. Beyond the wheel there were eddies and curves of the stream that were part of himself. He could not feel them. His stream had been cut in two. Waterman turned sad eyes to Fox. “Yes, I am finished waiting now.”

  Fox smiled.

  Goibniu danced impatiently. “Now?”

  Samuel sighed. “No, Goibniu. I have to fit these last three spindles into their shafts before we can turn the machine on.”

  Goibniu ran to watch the wheel shaft turn. On the other side of the wall the wheel itself slid through the water smoothly. Samuel had set it into motion an hour ago in preparation for the coming machinery test. Goibniu caressed the lever that would connect the mill gears with the wheel gears. He hopped from foot to foot while Samuel fit the spindles onto their shafts. Then Samuel took hold of the lever. Goibniu watched, breathless, as Samuel pulled the lever and the gears engaged.

  Creakily, the whole system came to life. The spindles began whirling. Wooden gears clattered against one another, making an ever-louder racket. The machine went faster and faster. Goibniu’s heart beat faster too. This was what he had come so far to have. The clank and clatter of the working mill sung in his bones. Here was a whole building that worked. It filled with the noise of things being made. The other mill had human workers who had scurried about like ants feeding the machine wool and pulling off skeins of thread. There would be workers here too. Dozens of workers. And the mill was his. No one could take it from him. Goibniu leaped and danced for joy. He did not even mind that tears rolled down his cheeks. Samuel wept too, while grinning from ear to ear. Goibniu pressed his face to a beam and reveled in the thrum of the machines. For the first time he was completely happy in this new land.

  CRACK! For a frozen instant neither Goibniu or Samuel could make sense of the sound. Then Goibniu knew. It was the sickening sound of wood smashing. Gears all over the mill slowed to a clanking and clattering halt.

  “No.” breathed Samuel. He began searching for the break. Goibniu turned as if drawn by a magnet toward the waterwheel. In the silence Goibniu could feel the terrible nearness of at least two spirits. They were just outside, beyond the wall. Goibniu shimmied along the wheel shaft and squeezed outside through the opening in the wall. He had to see.

  A whole section of the wheel was smashed. It sat motionless in the water. Movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned and saw a monster. It had the bulging eyes and wide mouth of a frog, but arms and legs like a man. Except no man had claws or razor spines all over his back. As Goibniu watched, the yellow monster submerged in the water and dissolved into nothing.

  Pieces of the wheel bobbed, caught in eddies of the stream. Goibniu stared at them. The wheel was broken. The only sound to be heard was the cheerful burbling of the stream. Behind him the mill sat silent, dead. His chest ached. His lungs cried out for air and he gasped his first breath since sighting the smashed wheel. A second shuddering breath followed the first. The third breath was steadier, but the fourth breath was a sob. Goibniu slid to the ground and clutched a fragment of wood.

  “Good heavens!” Samuel had come around the side of the mill. He stepped down the stream bank and into the water to get a better look. Water swirled around his knees as he examined the damage. “What on earth did this?”

  Samuel was not asking him, but Goibniu knew the answer. For the first time since his arrival here, there were no spirits nearby. Their sudden absence proclaimed guilt. They had done this. They had killed his beautiful mill. Samuel would surely fix the wheel, but the spirits could break it again. The board clutched in Goibniu’s hands snapped. He unwound his fingers from the pieces and let them fall to the ground. He stood and stalked toward his nest. There were herbs he’d brought from the old country that he would need. He had just enough for one powerful spell.

  “Waterman! Wake up!” Summoned from his timeless float in the rhythm of the stream, Waterman opened his senses. It was night now. Fox crouched on the stream bank looking toward the man-house. Beyond Fox the strange spirit worked on something. Fierce anger radiated from the stranger like rays from a dozen suns. Waterman coalesced so that he could see.

  The stranger had constructed a man-shape out of grasses. He was dancing around the man-shape and chanting. The world was filled with magic flowing freely, but each movement of the dance and each word chanted pulled on the flows. Waterman closed his eyes to observe more clearly. The stranger was drawing them in and weaving them around the man-shape. Raw anger was woven there too. Waterman had never seen flows treated so before. It was a powerful making. Occasionally the stranger paused to glare at Fox, but he did not see Waterman camouflaged in the reeds.

  Fox shifted, ready to flee. “What is it doing?”

  Waterman signed for silence. He opened his eyes to watch the dance. Then closed them to watch the flows. The stranger was tiring. As the spirits watched, he took an ember and thrust it into the man-shape. Flames licked over the form. Wisps of the smoke blew toward them and burned Waterman’s eyes. He blinked. His nostrils flared at the smell of burned dried plants. The plant smells were unfamiliar. They had come from far away. As the man-shape burned, it slumped and the magic weave shifted. The stranger began to push the burning pile toward the stream.

  Waterman gasped. His eyes widened. Fox retreated from the flames, but Waterman dared not flee. When the flames hit the water, the accumulated magic would disperse in a cloud. It would poison the entire area, forcing spirits away.

  Waterman surged up the bank. He seized the flaming man-shape in his large hands. The stranger, eyes wide, cried defiance, but he was too small to prevent Waterman from taking the bundle. One, two, three, strides away from the stream. Waterman’s hands burned, his body steamed. He could carry it no further, so he hurled it with all his strength. The bundle scattered into flaming pieces as it struck the ground.

  Waterman turned back to the water. His hands still burned though they no longer touched fire. He needed his stream. Something struck his back. It was the stranger, kicking, shrieking, and pummeling. Waterman twisted violently to shake him off, then dove into the soothing stream.

  Impact with the ground drove all the breath from Goibniu’s body. The ruins of his manikin lay in smoldering piles already growing dim. Still gasping, he struggled to his feet. A furry body struck him from the side, knocking him down again. The world was confusion of snarls, teeth, and red fur. Goibniu tried to strike back, but Fox was far too fast. Pain and terror overwhelmed all else. Goibniu tried to run. He stumbled. Pain lanced through his legs. He could not walk. He curled into a ball around his pain. Fox continued to savage him.

  “STOP!” A voice resonated. The attack ceased. Goibniu still huddled in a world filled with pain. Slowly the pain receded and focused to specific places on his body. His arms, legs, and back all throbbed with each beat of his heart. The shuffling step of a large foot crushing grass landed close to Goibniu’s ear. He looked up. Standing over him was the yellow monster. The one that had smashed the mill wheel. Death could not possibly cause more pain than he felt right now. Goibniu closed his eyes.

  “He is wounded. He will die without help.” The resonant voice came from the yellow monster.

  “Let it die.” This smaller sharper voice came from Fox.

  “He was angry because I damaged the wheel. A vixen will defend her cubs; she does not deserve to die for that.”

  “A wheel can not be a cub. It will put the wheel back. The wheel hurts you, Waterman.”

  The
monster, Waterman, was silent. Goibniu opened his eyes again. The Waterman had stepped back. It sat with arms skewed to prevent its blistered hands from touching anything. Fox stood nearby, ears flat against her head.

  Waterman tilted his head. “He may build the wheel again, but we still must help where we have injured. He must be taken to the men at the man-house.” Hope flared in Goibniu’s heart. They would take him to Samuel.

  Fox shifted from foot to foot. “You take it then.”

  Waterman turned a blistered palm toward Fox. “I am too slow. The men would see me.”

  “You ask too much.” Fox snarled.

  The Waterman turned his second palm to Fox, pleading.

  “Oh, fine!” Fox barked.

  Goibniu watched as Fox trotted closer, then gently grabbed and lifted him. Goibniu’s feet dragged along the ground. He was too large for Fox to simply carry. Each of Fox’s trotting steps caused pain. Goibniu stifled his gasps. He did not want his reluctant rescuer to abandon the task. He tried to watch the progress of the ungainly journey, but his vision kept fuzzing. Then the smooth boards of the porch were underneath him. He heard Fox scratching at the door and a human footstep.

  Goibniu opened his eyes to greet his friend, but it was not Samuel. It was the girl. Her eyes were wide as her gaze met his. Her hands were clutching a broom. In a moment she would strike him with it. Goibniu tried to push himself up on his hands, to flee. But his arms had no strength. He could not even crawl and Fox had gone.