Charles de Lint - Big City Littles

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BIG CITY LITTLES

BY CHARLES DE LINT

FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY

ARE ALL VIRTUES, AND

SOMETIMES IT CAN BE DIFFICULT

— YET ESSENTIAL —

TO TELL THEM APART.

The Fates seem to take a perverse pleasure out of complicating our lives. I'm not sure why. We do such a good jo

it all on our own that their divine interference only seems to be overkill.

It's not that we deliberately set out to screw things up. We'd all like to be healthy and happy, not to mention

independently wealthy—or at least able to make our living doing something we care about, something we can take pr

in. But even when we know better, we invariably make a mess of everything, both in our private and our public lives.

Take my sister. She knows that boyfriends are only an option, not an answer, but that's never stopped her from

bouncing from one sorry relationship to another, barely stopping to catch her breath between one bad boy and the ne

But I should talk. It's all well and fine to be comfortable in your own skin, to make a life for yourself if there's no one

the scene to share it with you. But too often I still feel like the original spinster, doomed to end her days forever alone

some garret.

I guess for all the strides we've made with the women's movement, there are some things we can still accept only

an intellectual level. We never really believe them in our hearts.

THE LITTLE MAN SITTING ON SHERI PIPER'S pillow when she opened her eyes was a good candidate f

the last thing she would have expected to wake up to this morning. He wasn't really much bigger than the length from

tip of her middle finger to the heel of her palm, a small hamster-sized man, dressed in raggedy clothes with the look

ird about him. His eyes were wide set, his nose had a definite hook to it, his body was plump, but his limbs were thi

twigs. His hair was an unruly tangle of short, brown curls and he wore a pair of rectangular, wire-framed eyeglasses

much different than those Sheri wore for anything but close work.

She tried to guess his age. Older than herself, certainly. In his mid-forties, she decided. Unless tiny people aged i

something equivalent to dog years. If this were happening to one of the characters in the children's

ooks she wrote a

illustrated, now would be the time for astonishment and wonder, perhaps even a mild touch of alarm, since after all, t

though he was, he was still a strange man and she had woken up to find him in her bedroom. Instead, she felt oddly c

"I don't suppose I could be dreaming," she said.

The little man started the way a pedestrian might when an unexpected bus suddenly roars by the corner where he'

standing. Jumping up, he lost his balance and would have gone sliding down the long slope of her pillow if she hadn't

slipped a hand out from under the bedclothes and caught him.

He squeaked when she picked him up, but she meant him no harm and only deposited him carefully on her night

table. Backing away until he was up against the lamp, his tiny gaze darted from side to side as though searching for

escape, which seemed odd considering how, only moments ago, he'd been creeping around on her pillow mere inches

from her face.

Laying her head back down, she studied him. He weighed no more than a mouse, but he was definitely real. He h

substance the way dreams didn't. Unless she hadn't woken up yet and was still dreaming, which was a more likely

explanation.

"Don't talk so loud!" he cried as she opened her mouth to speak again.

His voice was high pitched and sounded like the whine of a bug in her ear.

"What are you?" she whispered.

He appeared to be recovering from his earlier nervousness. Brushing something from the sleeve of his jacket, he

"I'm not a what. I'm a who."

"Who then?"

He stood up straighter. "My name is Jenky Wood, at your service, and I come to you as an emissary."

"From where? Lilliput?"

Tiny eyes blinked in confusion. "No, from my people. The Kaldewen Tribe."

"Who live ... where? In my sock drawer? Behind the baseboards?"

Why couldn't this have happened after her first coffee of the morning when at least her brain would be slightly

functional.

He gave her a troubled look. "You're not like we expected."

"What were you expecting?"

"Someone ... kinder."

Sheri sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm not a morning person."

"That's apparent."

"Mind you, I do feel justified in being a little cranky. After all, you're the one who's come barging into my bedro

"I didn't barge. I crept in under the door, ever so quietly."

"OK, snuck into my bedroom then—which, by the way, doesn't give you points on any gentlemanly scale that I k

of." "It seemed the best time to get your attention without being accidentally stepped on, or swatted like a bug."

Sheri stopped herself from telling him that implying that her apartment might be overrun with bugs his size also

wasn't particularly endearing.

"Would it be too much to ask what you're doing in my bedroom?" she asked. "Not to mention on my bed."

"I might as well ask what you're doing in bed."

"Now who's being cranky?"

"The sun rose hours ago."

"Yes, and I was writing until 3 o'clock this morning so I think I'm entitled to sleep in." She paused to frown at hi

"Not that it's any of your business. And," she added as he began to reply, "you haven't answered my question."

"It's about your book," he said. "The Travelling Littles."

As soon as he said the title, she wondered how she could have missed the connection. Jenky Woods, at her servic

looked exactly like she'd painted the Littles in her book. Except...

"Littles aren't real," she said, knowing how dumb that sounded with an all-too-obvious example standing on her

table.

"But... you ... you told our history. ..."

"I told a story," Sheri said, feeling sorry for the little man now. "One that was told to me when I was a girl."

"So you can't help us?"

"It depends," she said, "on what you need my help for."

But she already knew. She didn't have to go into her office to take down a copy of the book from her brag shelf.

might have written and illustrated it almost 20 years ago. She might not have recognized the little man for what he w

until he'd told her himself. But she remembered the story.

It had been her first book and its modest, not to mention continuing, success was what had persuaded her to try to

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