was a pixie, actually,” Cutbelly said, sounding more melancholy than ever. This time Ethan noticed that his thoughts had been read. “And you were lucky to see one. There aren’t too many of them left. They got the grey crinkles worse than any of them.”
“The grey crinkles?”
In the trees to their left there was a sudden flutter, like the rustle of a curtain or a flag. A huge crow took to the sky with a raucous laugh and what Ethan would have sworn was a backwards glance at him and Cutbelly.
“It’s a great plague of the Summerlands,” Cutbelly said, his bright black eyes watching the crow as it flew off. “More of Coyote’s mischief. It’s horrible to see.”
Cutbelly puffed dourly on his pipe. It was clear that he didn’t care to say anything more on the sad subject of the vanishing pixies and the dreadful plague that had carried them off.
As is so often the case when one is in the presence of a truly gifted teacher, Cutbelly’s explanations had left Ethan with so many questions that he didn’t know where to begin. What happened when you got the grey crinkles? What did coyotes have to do with it?
“What’s the difference?” Ethan began. “I mean, between a pixie and a fair—a ferisher?”
Cutbelly clambered abruptly to his feet. The plug of charred weeds tumbled from the bowl of his shinbone pipe, and Ethan’s nostrils were soon tinged by the smell of burning fur.
“See for yourself,” Cutbelly said. “Hear for yourself, too.”
They travelled, like the ball clubs of old, in buses – only these buses could fly. They came tearing out of the birch forest in ragged formation, seven of them, trying to keep abreast of one another but continually dashing ahead of or dropping behind. They were shaped more or less like the Greyhound coaches you saw in old movies, at once bulbous and sleek. But they were much smaller than an ordinary bus – no bigger than an old station wagon. They were made not of steel or aluminium, but of gold wire, striped fabric, some strange, pearly silver glass, and all kinds of other substances and objects – clamshells and feathers, marbles and pennies and pencils. They were wild buses, somehow, the small, savage cousins of their domesticated kin. They dipped and rolled and swooped along the grass, bearing down on Ethan and Cutbelly. As they drew nearer, Ethan could hear the sound of laughter and curses and shouts. They were having a race, flying across the great sunny meadow in their ramshackle golden buses.
“Everything is a race or a contest, with the Neighbours,” Cutbelly said, sounding fairly fed up with them. “Somebody always has to lose, or they aren’t happy.”
At last one of the buses broke free of the pack for good. It shot across the diminishing space between it and Ethan’s head and then came, with a terrific screech of tyres against thin air, to a stop. There was a loud cheer from within, and then the other buses came squealing up. Immediately six or seven dozen very small people piled out of the doors and began shouting and arguing and trying to drown each other out. They snatched leather purses from their belts and waved them around. After a moment great stacks of gold coins began to change hands. At last most of them looked pleased or at least satisfied with the outcome of the race, and turned to Cutbelly and Ethan, jostling and elbowing one another to get a better look at the intruder.
Ethan stared back. They looked like a bunch of tiny Indians out of some old film or museum diorama. They were dressed in trousers and dresses of skin, dyed and beaded. They were laden with shells and feathers and glinting bits of gold. Their skins were the colour of cherry wood. Some were armed with bows and quivers of arrows. The idea of a lost tribe of pygmy Indians living in the woods of Clam Island made a brief appearance in Ethan’s mind before being laughed right out again. These creatures could never be mistaken for human. For one thing, though they were clearly adults, women with breasts, men with beards and moustaches, none stood much taller than a human infant. Their eyes were the colour of cider and beer, the pupils rectangular black slits like the pupils of goats. But it was more than their size or the strangeness of their pale gold eyes. Looking at them – just looking at them – raised the hair on the back of Ethan’s neck. On this dazzling summer day, he shuddered, from the inside out, as if he had a fever. His jaw trembled and he heard his teeth clicking against each other. His toes in his sneakers curled and uncurled.
“You’ll get used to seeing them in time,” Cutbelly whispered.
One of the ferishers, a little taller than the others, broke away from the troop. He was dressed in a pair of feathered trousers, a shirt of hide with horn buttons, and a green jacket with long orchestra-leader tails. On his head there was a high-crowned baseball cap, red with a black bill and a big silver O on the crown, and on his feet a tiny pair of black spikes, the old-fashioned kind such as you might have seen on the feet of Ty Cobb in an old photograph. He was as handsome as the king on a playing card, with the same unimpressed expression.
“A eleven-year-old boy,” he said, peering up at Ethan. “These is shrunken times indeed.”
“He goin’ to do fine,” said a familiar voice, creaky and scuffed-up as an old leather mitt. Ethan turned to find old Ringfinger Brown standing behind him. Today the old man’s suit was a three-piece, as pink as lipstick, except for the vest, which was exactly the colour of the Felds’ station wagon.
“He’ll hafta,” said the ferisher. “The Rade has come, just like Johnny Speakwater done foretold. An’ they brought their pruning shears, if ya know what I mean.”
“Yeah, we saw ’em, din’t we, boy?” Ringfinger said to Ethan. “Comin’ in with their shovels and their trucks and their steel-toe boots to do their rotten work.”
“I’m Cinquefoil,” the ferisher told Ethan. “Chief o’ this mob. And starting first baseman.”
Ethan noticed now that there was some murmuring among the ferishers. He looked inquiringly at Mr. Brown, who gestured towards the ground with his fingers. Ethan didn’t understand.
“You in the presence of royalty, son,” Mr. Brown said. “You ought to bow down when you meetin’ a chief, or a king, or some other type of top man or potentate. Not to mention the Home Run King of three worlds, Cinquefoil of the Boar Tooth mob.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Ethan said. He was very embarrassed, and felt that a simple bow would somehow not be enough to make up for his rudeness. So he got down on one knee, and lowered his head. If he had been wearing a hat, he would have doffed it. It was one of those things that you have seen done in movies a hundred times, but rarely get the chance to try. He must have looked pretty silly. The ferishers all burst out laughing, Cinquefoil loudest of all.
“That’s the way, little reuben,” he said.
Ethan waited for what he hoped was a respectful amount of time. Then he got back to his feet.
“How many home runs did you hit?” he asked.
Cinquefoil shrugged modestly. “Seventy-two thousand nine hundred and fifty-four,” he said. “Hit that very number just last night.” He pounded his mitt, which was about the size and colour of a Nilla wafer. “Catch.”
A small white sphere, stitched in red but no bigger than a gumball, came at Ethan. The air seemed to waver around it and it came faster than he expected. He got his hands up, just, and clutched hopefully at the air in front of his face. The ball stung him on the shoulder and then dropped with an embarrassing plop to the grass. All the ferishers let out their breath at once in a long deflated hiss. The ball rolled back towards Cinquefoil’s black spikes. He looked at
