Friday Fiction: There Is A Season

 

THERE IS A SEASON 

          Blake Martin squirmed on the worn old coach in his apartment and tried to bring the second-hand paperback novel into focus. The old pages had deepened to a dark yellow that made the print hard to distinguish, and the long blocks of letters were a blur on the page. Still, he persisted. It was an old Del Rey Adult Fantasy, E R. Eddison’s “The Worm Ouroborous,” and he was determined to get through it.

Blake had found it in a surprise cache of similar books at a garage sale last week; a surprise because they were going for a quarter each and he knew that many sellers were asking at least thirty dollars on e-Bay for them. Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies had caused another boom in older Fantasy. Blake had scooped up the lot, Eddisons and Morrises and Cabells, and brought them home. He needed Fantasy these days as a relaxation from his job.

His books lay in scattered piles all around the place, on the coffee table, by his bedside, even on the fridge. It was not as if his little apartment had much room, but it looked even smaller with the way he kept it. Blake didn’t mind. It was more where he lurked rather than where he lived. Mostly he was out on cases.

Blake frowned and turned on the floor lamp, but it didn’t help. The book was, as some character named Brandoch Daha had just complained on another matter, “writ somewhat crabbedly, and most damnably long.”  He tossed the green volume down – gently – and sat back, arms crossed. He couldn’t understand it.

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, two of his favorite literary heroes, had enjoyed it. That old magpie, Lin Carter, who always had a bright eye open for old gems, had chosen it for republication. Was it really as awful as it seemed? Was it just not Blake’s cup of tea? Or was there something wrong with him, some new twist in his psychology? Was he getting immune to the old thrills, and if so, would he need harder stuff to unwind?

It had been an intense ten months since he had joined the Department of Extranatural Activities. Leaving his little hometown in Texas and moving to Virginia to be on his own would be stressful enough even under normal circumstances. But working for the Bureau of Shadows was almost literally a new dimension of trouble.

Monsters and ghosts and witches were bad enough in individual encounters. But faced and piled up one on top of the other, as an agent must, left an increasing psychic smudge. The Bureau’s counsellors and psychologists had ways of countering the strain and knowing something about what you were getting into braced you for the shock, but there was still irreducible wear and tear to the spirit. Some agents drank. Blake read Fantasy.

In Fantasy, good and evil were clearly defined. In Fantasy, good could struggle but inevitably won, even if it’s by the skin of the teeth. In Fantasy, evil could be soundly defeated. In Fantasy, evil was inhuman. What disturbed Blake most wasn’t fighting monsters; it was so often finding humans behind so much wickedness – an old-fashioned term that he suddenly had found very relevant indeed. 

He knew Chesterton had said that children need fairy tales, not because the stories told them about dragons; children knew there were real monsters in the world. What the child needed to know was that there were knights, and that dragons could be fought. Blake hoped that he was a knight, if only a Fool Knight, and Fantasy kept those hopes up somehow.

His mouth quirked wryly. He knew religious agents who called upon the saints. Several times now, in some very tight corners, the thought of Gandalf facing down the Balrog had rallied his spirits and allowed him to bull through a tough encounter. What if he were losing that now?

He leaned back, barely thinking at all, eyes narrow and arms crossed. Several vacant minutes passed before he sat up, slapping both knees with a sudden thought. What if this were, indeed, some sort of attack on his mind? It seemed unlikely.

Blake snorted. At any rate, he was accomplishing nothing brooding on it. He would get up, get out, and check in with his overseers to see if there was any action going on. Perhaps that would shake him up. He grabbed his brown leather jacket against the cool September air and in minutes was out the door and on the road, headed north.

 

The first person he visited was old Mrs. Hay. Just how old she was, was a matter of speculation. She might have been a withered forty or a hale seventy; there was no telling. When he pulled up at her ancient ivied cottage, she was outside on the sidewalk, broom in hand like an irritable witch, trying to tease the debris out of a ratty brown doormat. She looked up as he pulled into the driveway, broke into a smile of a hundred wrinkles, and lifted her hand in a welcoming wave.   

“Hello, Mr. Blake! How are you? It’s been a while!”

“I’m all right, Mrs. Hay. How have you been?”

Her face fell.

“Ach, not so good. You remember my little dog, Bitsy? She passed away last week.”

Blake was taken aback.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Hay.”

“Well, she was very old.” She shrugged and went back to sweeping. “It happens to us all, in time. But I miss her funny little face. She was good company.”

“I do remember her. She was a cute little thing.” Cute, but kind of cranky. She had tried to nip Blake the last time he had come by. If she had had any teeth, there’s no telling what damage she could have done. “Have you thought about getting another dog? Maybe visiting the pound and getting a rescue?”

Mrs. Hay did not stop sweeping.

“No, no. I’ve had fifteen dogs in my time, and they’ve always come looking for me. When the universe is ready, another will be sent, I’m sure. We’ll need each other. That’s what I’m doing now: cleaning everything up, to be ready for it.” She stopped, pointing down. “There. That’s the last of Bitsy’s fuzz.”

“Oh.” Blake stepped back and glanced down at the tangled ball of grey fur.

Mrs. Hay stooped down, picked it up, and pushed it into her apron pocket.

“Well, Mr. Blake, what have you come to see me about?”

“Oh, uh … Nothing really, I guess. Just to see how you’re doing, and … and, ask whether you’ve noticed anything unusual going on?”

Her face went a little absent, considering.

“No, I can’t say that I have. In fact, it’s been unusually quiet, extranaturally speaking. I’ve been kept pretty busy, though. I’ve been catching Bitsy’s ghost out of the corner of my eye, so I’ve been giving the house a good deep clean. That should clear her away, let her rest in peace, as it were. But nothing odd.”

Blake grinned.

“Mrs. Hay, you have an odd definition of what constitutes odd.”

He left after a few more pleasantries and headed out to his next contact. This was Kurt Parkis; he lived in a more modern part of town than Mrs. Hay, in a neighborhood of depressingly similar ranch houses, shaded by quick-growing ash trees. When he knocked on the white-framed screen door, he was called through the house to the kitchen at the back. There he found Parkis surrounded by piles of cardboard boxes, like a child barricaded in a play fort.

Notes

I paused writing this story in March 2022. It is another Bureau of Shadows tale, and it features Blake Martin, who also appears in Blake and The Day Delphine Disappeared. It takes place in ... 2009, I think? I may have to do more calculations about that. I stopped at the time just when Mrs. Hay appeared. Last night, I brought it up to this point. I have a sheet of notes about what will happen; it is about halfway done. I mean to finish it in the next few days.

It is not a very dramatic tale, although it has its points of interest. It takes a look at the more up-to-date (but still quirky) Department of Extranural Affairs, including its present head, Henry Byrd. I was writing it in March, but it takes place in September. Maybe a closer seasonal proximity will help me along with it.

The Fool Knight is a trope in some legends of a hero who has good intentions but keeps making the wrong decisions. His inexperience causes him many problems, but his innocence sometimes protects him and may lead him to accomplishing his quest.