[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
horseshoe of bleeding pinpricks.
Seated cross-legged on top of the lettuce keeper was a
wizened brown creature with a needle-toothed smile that slit
100 Esther M. Friesner
its face from ear to pointed ear. "Ah, ah, ah!" It wiggled a
stick finger at Peg. "Not nice to disturb. Ask Amanda Taylor.
She will tell you what happens to naughty ladies who don't let
brownies feed in peace."
"Feed?" Peg's face contorted with anguish.
The brownie folded down its ears and tucked in the tips
to shut out the shrillness. "Oooh, so loud! Don't mind, lady,
don't mind. Soon we'll be done." The Preserv-a-Pak bowl
burped itself, which was a change from the usual. The brownie
grinned. "See? All done!" It disappeared.
They waited until Lionel showed up to get Sandy, then
made him be the one to lift the bowl. All that was left was
Kwai-Chang Caine's collar and license and an oak leaf scrawled
with the spidery words: GOOD DOG.
The war had begun.
Chapter Eleven:
The Siege of Godwin's Corners
Cee-Cee Godwin Haines stood at the top of the base-
ment stairs and called down to her husband, "Dwight,
dear, have you found the problem yet? The bake sale on the
green's tomorrow and you know I can't do anything with no
water in the house."
"Glub," said Dwight, thrashing his legs in the waist-
high water.
"Oh, do be still, you graceless creature," the nixie
pouted. "A little water never hurt anybody."
Dwight thrashed his legs, though not out of any desire
to please. The supple water sprite had her legs wrapped around
his chest and was presently using both webby hands to keep
his head submerged.
"Dwight?" Cee-Cee caroled from above. "Dwight, I
didn't hear what you said. Dwight, do you want me to call the
plumber?" Her footsteps wandered to and from the basement
door several times, paused on the threshold, then made sharp,
determined echoes as she clomped down the steps.
ELF DEFENSE 101
Her scream echoed through the very dimly lit basement,
frightening the nixie into a deep dive. She was no more than a
flash of light and shadow to Cee-Cee's eyes, soon ignored and
dismissed from mind in the presence of the great scream-in-
spiring disaster. Dwight came up spluttering.
"Cee-Cee, honey, it's all right, I'm fine, don't worry,
she didn't drown m "
Dwight's gasped reassurances did nothing to comfort his
wife. She moaned like one in pain and exclaimed, "Look at all
this water! I don't know why you wouldn't let me call the
plumber. It's not as if we can't afford it. Oh, oh, ohhhh! I was
storing some of the PTO tag sale things down here and now
they're ruuuuuuined!"
Beneath the surface, the nixie swam between Dwight's
splayed legs and tickled.
"They're antiques," Jennifer Franklin glibly told a
browser. Of all the PTO mothers, she was the coolest under
fire, mistress of turning the skeptical glance of potential cus-
tomers into a helpless buying frenzy. A few words on the his-
tory, pedigree, and intrinsic value of some anonymous colonial
housewife's piece of trash, and a shapeless chunk of wood and
bad taste was transformed into a relic.
Had she lived in an earlier age, Jennifer would have done
well as one of those merchants in True Cross splinter futures.
But the age of great huckstering was gone and now she
sat behind a table full of old stuff, contributed by young fam-
ilies, and convinced one browser after another that here was
his chance to legitimize his own precarious toehold on the
American Dream. One eighteenth-century tin pie plate in the
house could do much to exorcise any dark-eyed ghost of Ellis
Island.
"See those water spots?" Jennifer was pushing one of
the items rescued from the Haines basement inundation. "This
piece was in the Johnstown Flood."
"What about this one?" The buyer-to-be was a short
man with a swarthy complexion and a Burberry overcoat, the
very personification of the perfect mark for Jennifer's spiel.
All around the PTO table were other stalls where more ethical
vendors of antiques held court. They never bothered to say as
much about their wares as Jennifer, but then, they also didn't
sell half as many items.
Jennifer looked at the piece her victim was holding up.
It was an alabaster egg, one of the Minimum Daily Adult sou-
102 Esther M. Priesner
venir requirements to be brought back by anyone who has ever
visited Italy. The eggs usually retained their popularity after
the trip for six months twice as long as it took for their owners
to misplace those charming tooled leather bookmarks from Flo-
rence. Then they hit the tag sale trail by the dozens.
"That is an Early American hand warmer," Jennifer rat-
tled off without a blink or a thought to whether one could heat
alabaster safely or not. ' 'The eighteenth-century ladies would
heat these up in a special basket hung over flie fireplace and
pop one into their muffs just before going off to church on those
cold winter mornings. Have you ever seen George Washing-
ton's famous letter to Martha from Valley Forge in which he
mentions how much he misses her hand warmers? No?" She
dimpled modestly. "There I go again, expecting everyone to
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]