Little, Big by John Crowley

Author:John Crowley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Masterwork, Magic, Family, Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Fairies, Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Families, General, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780061120053
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 1981-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

That's the Lot

The stork was fleeing Edgewood when Mrs. Underhill pulled herself together.

"Hold hard, hold hard," she said soothingly. "The harm's been done."

Lilac behind her had fallen silent.

"I just want," the stork said, leaving off her furious wing-beats, "none of the blame for this to fall on me."

"No blame," Mrs. Underhill said.

"If punishments are to be handed out. . ." the stork said.

"No punishments. Don't worry your long red beak about it."

The stork fell silent. Lilac thought she should volunteer to take whatever blame there might be, and soothe the beast, but didn't; she pressed her cheek into Mrs. Underhill's coarse cloak, filled again with rainy-day wonder.

"Another hundred years in this shape," the stork muttered, "is all I need."

"Enough," said Mrs. Underhill. "It may be all for the best. In fact how could it be otherwise? Now"—she tapped with her stick—"there's still much to see, with time a-wasting." The stork banked, turning back toward the multiple housetops. "Once more around the house and grounds," said Mrs. Underhill, "and then off."

As they climbed over the broken, every-which-way mountains and valleys of the roof, a small round window in a particularly peculiar cupola opened, and a small round face looked out, and down, and up. Lilac (though she had never seen his real face before) recognized Auberon, but Auberon didn't see her.

"Auberon," she said, not to call him (she'd be good now), but only to name him.

"Paul Pry," said the stork, for it was from this window that Doc had used to spy on her and her chicks when she had nested here. Thank it all, that part was over! The round window closed.

Mrs. Underhill pointed out long-legged Tacey as they came over the house. Gravel spun from beneath her bike's slim tires as she shot around a corner of the house, making for the once-trim little Norman farmhouse which had been stables once and then garage—the old wooden station wagon slept here in the dark—and was now also where Bumbum and Jane Doe and their many offspring had their hutches. Tacey dropped her bike at the back entrance (seeming, to Lilac over her head, to be a complex scurrying figure suddenly coming apart into two pieces) and the stork with a wingbeat rose out over the Park. Lily and Lucy walked a path there, arm in arm, singing; the sounds they made rose up to Lilac faintly. The path they walked intersected another, which ran past the leafless hedges wild now as madman's hair, stuck full of dead leaves and small birds' nests. Daily Alice loitered there, a rake in her hand, watching the hedge where perhaps she had seen a bird's or an animal's movement; and, when they had gained a bit more altitude, Lilac could see Smoky far down the same path, eyes on the ground, books under his arm.

"Is that . . ." Lilac asked.

"Yes," Mrs. Underhill said.

"My father," Lilac said.

"Well," Mrs. Underhill said, "one of them anyway," and guided the stork to swoop that way. "Now mind you mind, and no tricks.

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