Immortal

Chapter 8

More mushrooms in today’s meal and I only just realized I’m an idiot. They aren’t for me and never were.

    Evidently a certain somebody has been making herself useful in the kitchen. The only problem is, I’m pretty sure I can’t trust her. Not after all that’s happened. I guess it’s possible she’s also a captive of some kind but if she is, I’d wager she’s got much better digs than I do.

After lunch today, I took the fresh mushroom garnish and spread it around the vents. You know how in movies there always seems to be human-sized air vents just begging to be used by an escapee? No such luck here. These vents are along the wall on the floor and the ceiling, about a half inch wide and not fashioned for a decent escape attempt. Doesn’t mean something can’t get in through them, just that I can’t get out.

We’ll see if it works. Then maybe I can figure out what she’s really up to. Besides, I have nothing better to do.

*  *  *

It took the entire evening to explain to Iza exactly what I needed from her, a maddening procedure not unlike trying to deliver shoe-tying instructions to a retarded child who’s never seen a shoelace. Twice, Brenda threatened to eat Iza, just for the heck of it. Finally, when I was sure Iza had it down, I freed her with some hot water in the sink down the hall. (And permanently clogged the sink with molasses. Oh well.) Iza could have flown off after that, but this is where the artless nature of pixies is a good thing. It was beyond her grasp to consider not doing something she’d promised to do.

So, the next morning I stood across the street from the downtown police station, with a pixie on my shoulder and a fresh bottle of peppermint schnapps to keep me warm.

“Do you have the camera?” I asked under my breath.

“Uh-huh. Heavy.”

She had the smallest commercially available camera I could find strapped to her bosom. It was barely an inch long and a centimeter thick. Took digital images. Cost a bundle. When I’d bought it, I flashed back briefly on a Renaissance painter I knew who had to hire three men and a sturdy donkey to carry his painting gear around, and who took six months to complete a single portrait. Bet he would have hated the twenty-first century.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Iza okay.”

The camera was a necessity. I couldn’t rely on her to comprehend what she was being sent to examine, much less convey it to me. Ideally I would have asked Jerry to do it—he’s smarter, and would do it much more quickly in exchange for the bottle in my pocket—but it would have taken too long to find him. There are just too many bars to choose from. This way was imperfect, but ultimately faster.

“There’s an open window on the second floor. Do you see it?” I asked.

“Iza see.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

She buzzed off. One might think that even if the three-and-a-half inch pixie was difficult to see, the slate gray micro-camera flitting across the street would be obvious, but as I said, pixies are very fast. Not even owls bother with them. I lost sight of her myself and I knew to look. I still stood there for a few minutes, looking for some definite indication she’d made it to the window, but getting none, I moved on.

*  *  *

A pixie saved my life once, back in the first century AD. Of course, we didn’t call it that back then. We didn’t call it anything back then, because the Roman calendar was still in vogue. (Every time I come across a new calendar, I have this bizarre need to go back and figure out when everything happened in my life according to that calendar. It’s a bit anal, but I have a whole lot of free time. And between the Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Egyptian, early Christian, Islamic, Julian, and Gregorian calendars—among others—I had to do this quite a bit. My personal favorite calendar was one used by a small equatorial African tribe, which held that every day was Tuesday. Inaccurate, but very convenient.)

I was living in a small harbor town called Herculaneum, on the Bay of Naples. The whole area was a vacation spot for wealthy Romans, sort of an ancient equivalent of the Hamptons.

I liked it there. It was warm and breezy and pleasant, and I didn’t have to do any fishing, something I’d grown tired of. I worked as a gardener, of sorts. Farmer, really, which I’m pretty good at. (Most jobs I’ve had have been variations on hunter-gatherer and farmer. I was one of the first to say “Hey, if we grow our own food, we won’t have to hunt it down all the time.” Mostly, I was just tired of moving around constantly, but you have to admit it was a pretty good idea.) I was working for a fat old Roman named Adolphus. He was a retired prelate and acted like one, but he gave me room and board, appreciated the yield from the modest garden I tended, and otherwise left me alone, which was about all one could ask for.

I had been having a problem with my olive tree. I’d spent a couple of years nursing the thing to health after the last caretaker had nearly killed it by not watering it enough (olive trees need a ton of water) and this particular summer was supposed to bear the fruits of my success. But while it did produce healthier olives than before, the yield was still low. It was frustrating as all Hades. I was beginning to think maybe the tree was suffering from some sort of root disease, but that sort of thing usually manifests itself in the bark somewhere and I saw no evidence of that. It was baffling.

It took half the summer before I considered perhaps the problem wasn’t with the tree at all. Perhaps I had a vermin problem. Despite the difficulty of imagining a rat climbing the tree and dangling off a branch to prey on my olives, it was the only thing that made any sense.

Intent on solving the puzzle, at the next full moon I camped out at the edge of the garden—motionless, hidden beneath a sackcloth—and I waited.

Shortly after the moon reached its zenith, I caught some movement in the tree. Mind you, I didn’t see anything there, but the leaves on one of the branches twitched and an olive fell. A few seconds later, another branch jerked and another olive fell. Still, I didn’t see anyone or anything. I’d have thought a ghost was responsible, except there’s no such thing.

Unwilling to sit around and watch the whole tree being denuded before me, I sprang to my feet wielding a broom I’d brought for just this occasion, and went at the tree swinging.

It is a known fact that most creatures will run in the face of a well-swung broom. Even some larger creatures, like tigers. Honest. But instead of frightening whatever-it-was away, I just annoyed it.

“Hey!”

I stopped swinging, as evidently the tree had suddenly gained the power of speech.

“Almost hit!” The pixie hovered in front of my face and pointed at me accusingly.

“Oh. Uh, sorry,” I said. This was the first time I’d seen a pixie, but I had heard of them before, so I wasn’t completely stunned at the sight of one.

“Okay,” she said, then flitted to the ground and picked up one of the olives, which she proceeded to eat. This is what I mean by naive. Any other creature, when facing a human swinging a broom might think, “The human is trying to hit me with the broom. Perhaps I should flee.” A pixie thinks, “He was trying to brush the dust out of the air and didn’t see me.”

“Hey, stop that,” I protested.

“You want?” She offered me the olive. “Is good.”

“No, I mean stop eating the olives from this tree.”

“Is good,” she repeated, taking another bite.

“Yes, I know it’s good. It’s my tree. That’s why I want you to stop taking all the olives from it.”

“Silly.” She continued eating.

“No, not silly. Please don’t.” I repeated, “It’s my tree.”