Fabulous Creature Read online

  He moved more quickly than usual, pushing himself until he crossed the stream, where he slowed to a thoughtful amble and then stopped altogether. Here at the crossing, the creek was wide and shallow, but he could see where, only a hundred yards downstream, the water was already beginning to foam and tumble. It would be a long steep climb down to the cave where the mysterious ceremony was taking place. He started down the bank, stopped and sat down on a rock to think. What, he asked himself, was he thinking of? Going out of his way to spy on some kind of silly game. It was late, and he ought to be getting home. The internal argument was still going on when he heard voices and looked up to see the game players themselves picking their way among the boulders a few yards downstream.

  Watching them approach, James began to grin. He saw now that what he had taken to be a willowy woman—sylph, wood nymph, river goddess, or whatever—was nothing more than a half-grown kid. A girl at the age when some people shoot up a lot faster than they fill out—like James, himself, for instance. Except that this girl was obviously a lot younger than he—no more than twelve, perhaps, or possibly thirteen. Her odd, full-lipped, cat-shaped face had seemed quite mature from a distance, but from closer range it was clearly the face of a child. And the front of the slinky evening gown—no doubt borrowed from her mother—hung in two silver flaps over her very flat chest.

  The three of them had been carefully watching their feet as they picked their way over the rough terrain, but at last the little boy looked up, saw James and let out a loud gasp. “Hey look!” he said. “Look Grif. Is that him?”

  The girl in silver stopped, looked up, gazed at James intently for an embarrassingly long time and then nodded. Still nodding thoughtfully, she turned her back and, pulling the kids close to her, began to whisper. A long thick braid of dark blonde hair hung down the middle of her back, and below the hem of her dress, a draggle of frayed-out silver thread, her feet were bare. Both of the kids were looking excitedly from her to James and back again. When she came on toward him, the boy and girl were close behind, peeking around at him as if he were some kind of exotic beast. The girl in the silver dress scrambled over a last large boulder, a fairly graceful maneuver considering the tightness of her skirt, slid down directly in front of him and made a deep curtsey.

  “Welcome,” she said.

  Surprised into vocal paralysis, he could only stare in amazement as the two kids slid down beside her and did more or less the same thing—the boy bending stiffly from the waist, and the little girl, it was Laurel all right, pinching the sides of her blue jeans and curtseying. As she curtsied, Laurel said something that sounded like, “Welcome, Prince Person.”

  “No,” the boy whispered loudly, punching her in the shoulder. “Not Person. Pwah-son. Pwah!”

  “Welcome. Prince Pwah-son,” Laurel corrected herself.

  Without taking her eyes off James’ face, the girl in silver said, “Poisson.”

  “Fish?” James said incredulously. It was the first word he’d managed to say.

  Laurel made a gasping noise, and she and the boy stared at each other, as if the fact that James knew a little French was, somehow, terribly significant. They nodded at each other knowingly, and then looked back at James, still nodding. But then Laurel’s mouth flew open, and she stared at James in broad screen consternation. “Wait a minute!” she said. “I’ve seen him before. Griffin! I saw him already. He can’t be Prince Pwahson. I saw him in the Nymph’s Grove—with some groceries.” She stepped closer, her face registering suspicion, but her skepticism was clearly directed at James, himself, and not at the girl in silver; as if she had caught James in some crass attempt at impersonation. “Didn’t I,” she demanded.

  “I confess,” he said. “We’ve met before. Your name is Laurel Jarrett. Right?”

  “Griffin?” Laurel was clearly demanding an explanation.

  “Of course,” the girl in silver said. “Enchanted people get to return to their original form for short periods now and then. Like the prince in ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon.’ Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, yes!” Laurel was now doing sudden enlightenment—round-mouthed and -eyed. But then her face clouded again. “But he’d been shopping,” she whispered. “Do enchanted people—”

  “Look, Laurel,” the little boy said. Except for bigger ears and more freckles, he looked something like the girl in silver, and right at the moment he was looking fiercely indignant. “If you’d been eating nothing but bugs and mosquitoes for a hundred years, I’ll bet you’d go shopping too, if you got a chance.”

  The bigger girl put one arm around the little boy and gave him a hug. Smiling at him she said, “Shut up, Woody. You and Laurel go on and wait for me where the path goes into the trees. I have to talk to the prince alone for a minute. Okay?”

  The little kids went off slowly with much stopping and looking back and whispering. When they were out of sight, the girl turned to James and examined his face. It was the kind of long level look that ordinarily made him feel very uncomfortable, only this didn’t. There was something about this girl’s strange-looking face that made mutual staring almost acceptable—a kind of open, unprejudiced curiosity that somehow invited a similar response.

  “Hello,” she said after a while. “My name is Griffith Alexandra Donahue. But usually Griffin. What’s yours?”

  James grinned. “Prince Fish,” he said.

  She looked delighted. “It’s like this,” she said. “One hundred years ago an evil witch enchanted you and turned you into an enormous trout. And one day while Woody and Laurel and I were watching you swim around in a deep pool, way down there almost to the lake, you spoke to me and asked me to break the enchantment so that you could be a prince again. So today we did it. We had a spell-breaking ceremony, and just before you disappeared, you told me that the spell was broken but you couldn’t appear to us as a prince immediately because the witch was watching, but that you would very soon.”

  “Wow!” James shook his head, grinning. Watching Griffin’s steady slate blue eyes, exotically tilted and hypnotically intense, he was almost ready to believe the whole story. “Okay,” he said. “Got it. I’m a big fish, otherwise known as Prince Poisson. But maybe you ought to know that I’ve been leading a double life—or would it be triple? Anyway, my other alias is James. James Fielding.”

  She shrugged. “That’s all right. So do I.”

  “So do you, what?”

  “Lead a lot of different lives. A lot more than three.” She sat down on a rock and tucked up her bare feet. The long braid hung over one shoulder and down into her lap. The silver dress clung close to her thin, limber body, making her look a bit like a fish herself, or perhaps like a rather undeveloped mermaid. She stared at James thoughtfully for a moment before she said, “You want to know something funny? I knew it. The minute I saw you, I knew.”

  “That I’d go along with the gag?” James said.

  “No,” she said indignantly, but then she smiled. “Well, maybe that too. But what I meant was that you probably really are one. Or at least you were one once. Otherwise you wouldn’t have understood.”

  “I was what once?”

  “Like in another reincarnation. You probably were a prince in another reincarnation.”

  “Why not?” James said. Maybe that explained the Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great hang-ups. “How about you? Were you ever a princess?”

  “Me?” she said. “No, I don’t think so. I think I’ve usually been animals.”

  “Griffin!” The kids were calling from further up the canyon.

  She sighed. “Little kids. Sometimes I get very tired of little kids.”

  “How old are they?”

  “Well, Woody is seven. He’s my brother. And Laurel is just a few months older.”

  “And how about you? How old are you?”

  “In this reincarnation?”

  “Well, yes,” James said. “Let’s start with this one, anyway.”

  “All right. In this r
eincarnation I’m thirteen. But I’m actually a very old soul.”

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” James said.

  “Grif! Come on. We’re hungry.” Woody and Laurel had come back around the curve of the canyon wall,

  Griffin uncoiled herself and stood up. “I guess I’d better go.” She started towards the little kids and then, turning back to James, she curtsied again. “Good-by,” she said. “See you.”

  Further up the canyon Laurel and Woody bowed and curtsied and then jumped up and down waving and shouting, “Good-by, Prince. Good-by Prince.”

  James waved back. After they’d gone, he sat on the rock for quite a while, composing a letter to Max in his head. Max wasn’t going to believe this one.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE WAD OF paper arched neatly, bounced off the rim of the wastepaper basket and fell to the floor. It was very strange, since he’d been writing poetry all his life, that now when something really important had happened—the kind of thing that had inspired poets down through the ages—he suddenly seemed to have lost his touch. Of course, most of his poetry in the past had been humorous and satirical and in a style that wasn’t particularly suitable for what he had in mind at the moment. The trouble seemed to be that while what he was trying to express was incredibly exciting and original and significant at what you might call the gut level, it kept coming out at the verbal level sounding surprisingly ordinary and trite. He’d tried sonnets, triolets, ballad form, blank verse and anapestic pentameter, all with about the same results—another opportunity to practice basket shooting.

  He sighed, and pulling Jenkin’s A Man for All Ages across the desk, he opened it to page thirty-two, which was as far as he had gotten in a whole month at New Moon Lake. He might as well get some work done on the da Vinci thing. There probably wasn’t any new way to say what he had in mind anyway. After all, where could you go after “How do I love thee” and “My luv is like a red, red rose”?

  There was a knock, and Charlotte opened the door. When she saw James at his desk, she paused in the doorway. In the Fielding family one didn’t interrupt intellectual exercise unless it was absolutely necessary. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to interrupt your train of thought.”

  “Don’t worry,” James said. “It’s already derailed.”

  Charlotte glanced at the wads of paper in and around the wastepaper basket. “Having trouble with Leonardo?” she asked.

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “Well, what I came in to say is that we’re thinking about driving in to New Moon. Would you like to come along?”

  “No, I guess not, thanks. Now that I’ve finally gotten started on this thing, I guess I’d better keep at it awhile.”

  As Charlotte was leaving, James suddenly said, “Mom.” Charlotte had always been easy to talk to on almost any subject. At least comparatively easy, judging by what he’d heard about other people’s mothers. But when she stopped and came back, he changed his mind. There just didn’t seem to be any way to put his feelings about Diane into words without somehow trivializing them. “Oh, never mind,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “I’m in no particular hurry, if there’s something you’d like to talk about.”

  “No. It can wait. Right now I’d better stick with Leonardo.”

  He didn’t, however, stick with Leonardo for very long. When he heard the Volvo’s motor starting up, he went to the window. William was just getting into the passenger side of the front seat. Charlotte was driving as usual. It wasn’t that William was a bad driver. It was just that on longer trips he tended to start concentrating on some important issue and forgot to notice such minor details as stop signs or oncoming traffic. So Charlotte encouraged William to concentrate on his important issues and let her handle unimportant routines, particularly the ones that were potentially lethal. As James watched from his window, she deftly backed and turned the old Volvo and set off briskly down the narrow dirt road.

  James went back to his desk, poked at the da Vinci notes, wandered out the door and down the stairs. It wasn’t until he was in the front yard that he realized where he was heading. The week that the Jarretts were to have been in Sacramento wasn’t quite over yet, but it was possible that they might have decided to come back a little early. And even if they hadn’t, a game of tennis might be just what he needed to work off some tension and restlessness. In fact, right at the moment, a game of tennis would probably help the da Vinci more than anything else he could do. Relax his nerves and do great things for his powers of concentration. Halfway down the drive he stopped suddenly and went back to the cabin for his tennis racket.

  He’d played one set with a middle-aged lady and was sitting on the sidelines waiting for another partner possibility to present itself when he heard the sound of running feet on the path outside the courts. He turned around in time to see Laurel Jarrett dash through the gate, skid to a stop and then stand still, staring delightedly in his direction. He smiled, and she started toward him, balancing on the tips of her toes. In Laurel’s case, tiptoeing seemed to have more to do with the state of her emotions, than with any desire to move quietly. When she was directly in front of him, she came down off her toes and said, “Hi!” Then, glancing around and lowering her voice she said, “Prince Pwah-son.”

  “Hi, yourself,” James said, and then with a sudden surge of excitement, “Hey, are you back from Sacramento already?”

  “Oh, I didn’t go.”

  “But your mother and father went, didn’t they. Diane said your father was one of the judges.”

  She nodded. “They went. But they left me here with Susie. She’s my baby-sitter. They never take me when they go to swimming things because I’m the only one in the family who sinks.”

  “You—sink?”

  “Yes,” she said tragically. “It’s awful. I have the wrong kind of bones or something. Jacky doesn’t even sink as fast as I do, and he’s only two.”

  It was a real disappointment. For a moment he’d been sure that all the Jarretts must have returned. But Laurel was still standing in front of him doing her tragic heroine bit. “That’s too bad,” he said. “About the sinking.” He moved over to make room on the bench, and she scooted herself up beside him. She was wearing denim slacks and a flowered blouse. Her feet, in very small blue sneakers, swung back and forth about six inches from the blacktop. It really was too bad that they all went off and left her just because she couldn’t swim as well as the rest of them. She obviously felt very bad about it. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to go,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s all right. I didn’t want to. Besides, Griffin says it’s probably just an enchantment. The sinking. She says as soon as she figures out the right spells, she’s going to disenchant me and then I’ll probably be able to swim better than anybody.”

  “Oh, that’s great. Where’s Griffin today? I mean, how come you’re not working on some enchantment or other this morning?”

  Laurel sighed. Tragedy had returned. “She can’t. Woody has tonsillitis, and she has to take care of him.”

  “Where are their parents? Did they go to the swimming meet, too?”

  “No. I think they just went to a party. They usually go to parties. Is it nice not being a fish anymore? Or do you miss it sometimes? The secret pool and everything. Griffin says it’s not so bad being a fish as long as you’re smart enough not to get hooked. Griffin says she was a fish once, and it wasn’t too bad.”

  “Oh, well yes. I guess I’d say that Griffin was right. It wasn’t too bad, most of the time.” He grinned. “I did get tired of those mosquitoes though.”

  Laurel grinned back, her excited, lopsided smile. Slipping down off the bench, she picked up James’ tennis ball and ran in a circle bouncing it. James went back to watching the other tennis players and wondering if anyone else was going to need a partner any time soon. It didn’t look as if anyone was. When Laurel came back and scooted back up on to the bench, he said, “I guess I’m going to be
leaving now. Say hello to Griffin and Woody for me when you see them.”

  “Okay.” Laurel jumped down, and when James started off she ran along behind him, skipping and jumping and making a funny singsong noise. It was actually a little bit embarrassing, but every time he stopped and looked back at her she smiled at him lopsidedly, wrinkling her long, delicate nose and looking so pleased with herself that he couldn’t bring himself to chase her away. But when he came to the beginning of Anzio, he said, “I’m going up Anzio now to the west gate. Where are you going?”

  “I am, too. I’m going to Griffin’s house. Griffin’s house is number nineteen.”

  James remembered number nineteen. It was on the west side of Anzio, not far from where the trail began that led through the grove of pines to the west gate. So they went on together until they came to the driveway. The house, an immense A-frame set on a massive stone foundation, loomed over them at the end of a short, steep drive.

  “Come on up and see Griffin,” Laurel said, tugging at his hand. “Griffin hasn’t seen anybody but Woody and me for two whole days.” The tugging, along with a certain amount of curiosity, won. James allowed himself to be led up the drive and a flight of stone steps. Pushing open a sliding door, Laurel went in without knocking, and James followed. The living room towered, an enormous triangle of glass on one end, a stone fireplace wall on the other, and on each side huge sloping surfaces of rough-hewn wood. There was nothing in the room that actually looked like a piece of furniture. Vases and ash trays sat on white plastic mushrooms or clear glass cubes, books lined up along racks of chrome and glass, and in front of the fireplace was an enormous conversation pit, terraced in squashy velvet. On the walls and dangling overhead were several works of art that looked as if they’d been stolen from the opening sequences of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. At the moment the room also was decorated with an assortment of toys, newspapers, articles of clothing and dirty dishes. Griffin, dressed in a Mexican-looking smock with faded embroidery around the top, was lying on her stomach on the lower level of the conversation pit. She was reading a book, and all around her were dozens of other books. When Laurel said, “Hi, Griffin, look who I brought to see you,” she sat up quickly, looking startled.