[Original Novella] All the Little People, Part 1

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I don’t know why I keep trying to make friends. I guess I’m lonely. That’s really the smallest part of it though. I can be perfectly happy by myself most of the time, in fact that’s usually when I’m happiest. I guess my reasoning is that if I can’t make friends with this group, I won’t be able to with anybody.

So day after day I approach them at lunch or on the playground, try to ingratiate myself, tell some jokes. Only to wind up where I always do, face down in the mud behind the gym, blood streaming from my nose, as one of them force feeds me dead leaves and dirt.

I don’t understand it. I’m afraid I never will. Mom says I’ll grow into it, and fit in better by the time I’m in highschool or college. Does that mean I’ll become like them? Even if it means that the relentless pain, fear and humiliation finally end, I don’t want that. I like who I am now.

I’ve been spending more and more time in the principal’s office lately. This too is baffling. I don’t start the fights but I’m always the one who gets punished. How does that happen? It seems like the kids who beat on me are a lot better than I am at summoning crocodile tears and concocting a convincing narrative where I ran into their fist or something.

There’s little refuge at home, either. Mom always dotes on me when I’m bruised up, but when they took something expensive from my backpack like gameboy games or my pills, she scolds me as if I had the power to stop it. I don’t think she remembers being this small.

By the time I figured out not to bring anything with me to school besides the basics, all of my favorite comic books and games were already gone. School officials don’t care. Mom cares because she paid for them. My condition doesn’t seem to enter into anybody’s consideration but my own.

Dad tells me to toughen up. He wants me to turn into one of those sadistic ogres too. I tell him I don’t ever want to hurt anybody. That they shouldn’t hurt me to begin with. It’s madness. Was the world always like this? Is it supposed to be this bleak? Other kids look happy. But then, they’re part of it. Hornets are happy as can be in a hornet’s nest.

I call it “monster world”. Used to draw pictures of how I saw Earth and the sadistic ogres who inhabit it, which earned me some trips to a therapist. Mom and Dad resented the cost. It’s not like I wanted to be there either. I cooperated and spilled my guts.

He just told me more of the same. That to live here I would have to become one of the ogres. To casually inflict suffering here and there, to absorb it from others without flinching, like some perverse invisible economy. That’s what’s expected, and how human social dynamics seem to work. I don’t want any part of it but I can’t escape what I am, nor can I escape this world.

One of our exercises was to develop a dream. He told me if I had a dream to work towards, I could focus on that, and the slings and arrows of life would not wound me as much. My dream is to get as far away from other people as possible. A space station at first. He said that was a good start, but to boil it down to something I could realistically achieve. When I said I’d like to live in a cave he laughed and said to aim a bit higher than that.

We settled on a live-aboard sailboat. That’s certainly better. A cave is preferable to people, but truthfully, I am afraid of being underground. I know that’s where I’m headed when I’m very old, so I don’t want to spend any more time there than I have to until then.

I often lay awake at night picturing my withered old body in a casket, worms eating me up. Fair’s fair. I’ve been forced to eat plenty of them by now, they should have a turn at me. Maybe life would be better as a worm. Can worms hurt each other? I don’t see how. They don’t talk and haven’t got any teeth.

Today, they went further than usual. There are thick woods on the edge of the playground. The rumor, passed down from one generation of students to the next, is that a witch lives there. Or a gypsy? The details vary depending on who tells it. They say if you go deep enough into the woods, you don’t come out.

What she does with you also varies by who’s telling it. Some of them say she skins you, then roasts you over a fire for dinner. Others say she hypnotizes you and adds you to her army of servants, who feed her grapes and kiss her wrinkled, dirty feet. I didn’t know how much stock to put in any of this and didn’t care to find out.

My error was assuming I’d have any say in it. How foolish of me. I should’ve known this was coming. The time to plan a way out of it was days or weeks ago. Not while being lugged into the woods by the hands and feet. I don’t cry anymore, it’s just blood in the water. The more I cry, the more pleasure they get out of it.

I was mostly upset they’d taken my latest set of school supplies. I’d be scolded when I got home, I thought. That’s when I was still under the misapprehension that I’d be going home that night. They left me tied to a tree and made off with my backpack. Could they get away with something like this? Then again, they’d gotten away with everything else.

Once they were long gone I set about shouting for help until my voice was hoarse. I was warm from struggling until then, but as I sat there the cold began to work its way through me. The colors of Fall had come and gone. The leaves coating the ground were now simply brown and brittle.

Slowly decomposing. Everything seems to do that as winter approaches. Every time I thought I couldn’t be more miserable, something got worse. A light rain. The wind picked up. Then the sun began to go down. Now that the other boys were gone I let myself have a long, deep cry. Nobody to hide it from.

I’m supposed to hide it from myself. That’s the core idea mom, dad and the therapist tried to drill into me. Lie to myself about what I’m feeling until I am numb on the inside and thorny on the outside. If we only have to be that way because others are, what if nobody was? “The naive dreams of a child”. I closed my eyes and thought of the sailboat.

That’s when I felt something on my hand. I twitched and cried out. It stopped briefly but then resumed. I couldn’t work out what it was or what it was doing until my bonds came untied. When I got up and circled around the tree to see what it was, there was simply nothing there.

Light was fast running out. If I had any hope of finding the edge of the woods and making it to the school I’d have to run. But the twilight disoriented me. More than once I nearly ran face first into a tree that I didn’t see until I was just about on top of it. So when I came upon the village, at first I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at.

Who would build such a thing? Why out here, in the woods? It was by all appearances a fully apportioned scale model of a village in a very old fashioned style. Little houses made from twigs, streets paved with little bits of crushed pebble. And lanterns! Tiny glass lanterns with what I determined were bits of foxfire inside supplying a steady green light.

It was the damndest thing I’d ever seen. By the dim glow, for just a moment I thought I saw movement. What might’ve been a little face peering from one of the windows which disappeared into shadow when I looked at it directly. The scene so captivated me that I forgot where I was and the urgency of getting back to the school.

“Such skill they have to make this, no?” A raspy voice just behind me set me up and running, only to trip and fall on my face. I reached for my shoes. Sure enough, somehow the laces had been tied together while I was gawking at the little town. “Don’t eat me!” I blubbered. “Don’t eat me, witch! Don’t hypnotize me! I’m sorry, I just wanted-”

The cloaked figure laughed. “Oh child. Why I eat you? Skinny little thing. Come with me.” I tried to get up but found myself carried along behind her on what felt like a moving carpet beneath me. I struggled and shouted but some small creature climbed onto my face and gagged me. Terror and confusion took hold.

It’s one thing to be in a new place, or to encounter a stranger. But I truly had no idea what was happening or how it was possible. Only when we reached her odd round cabin was I able to begin making sense of things. Cabin, or tent? It was round, with a pitched ceiling held up by a central ornately carved wooden pole. The covering was made from deer skins, tanned and stitched together.

Cabinets and display cases of polished oak lined the outer wall. All manner of unfamiliar trinkets sat inside. Work spaces with rusting antique chemistry sets. Several bookshelves packed with thick, dusty old tomes. The ground was a wooden platform with bearskin rug. Light was supplied by lantern, containing not fire but some cool white light which did not flicker as a flame would.

“My parents will be looking for me. Teachers too. If you mean to eat me or make me kiss your wrinkled old feet, you’d better-” she again interrupted by breaking into hysterics. “Such stories they must tell! Kiss my feet you say? That’s rich. Relax, I will make soup.”

I thought to glance about for whatever had carried me in, but it was nowhere to be seen. Mysteries upon mysteries. I set about hurriedly untying my laces but before I could finish, she returned with two steaming bowls of what turned out to be astonishingly tasty soup. Beef barley but doctored with most of what you’d find in a stew.

My fear began to subside as I got a better look at her. She’d hung her cloak by the entry flap and I could see now that she was very old. Much older than I would have guessed by how energetically she moved about. The light in her eyes hinted at youth which was not so visible in her face. But she did not frighten me. I saw kindness there.

And kind she was. After the soup, I washed up in her great brass basin with water she boiled in the fireplace while she dried my clothes. “Boy, how did you get here? My little ones tell me they found you tied to a tree.” I began to recount it but stumbled over the words. To say it so frankly was embarrassing.

“Do not push yourself. I have eyes in these woods. I see all that goes on in them. Such cruel boys. Nothing changes, does it? Such shame that they behave in that way. Girls are no better! Oh, but is true. When I was your age, such cruelty. Sugar and spice, they say! Hah! A failure of their mothers and fathers to discipline them I think.”

I was astounded. Not by her dwelling. Or her cloak, belongings or the “little ones” she mentioned in passing. But because this was the first person I’d encountered in my life who did not blame me. “Why didn’t you fight back?” had been the reliable refrain from every adult I’d ever sought help from. Of course if I fought back I only got into worse trouble, and those same adults then scolded me for it. But not this one.

I eagerly finished the soup only to discover that cocoa was next. Rich, spiced cocoa with cinnamon, mint and those little marshmallows that aren’t good for much else. “Have you got more of these? They’re my favorite.” She smiled warmly and snapped her fingers. What happened next was unlike anything I’d yet witnessed.

A little hatch in the center of the table opened. As I gaped, tiny little people climbed out, each carrying one of the little marshmallows. None were any bigger than my thumb. The mallow was to them as a large pillow. When they reached my cup I recoiled slightly and looked at the old woman for reassurance. She did not look alarmed.

The little people climbed onto one anothers’ shoulders and began to dump the mallows into my cocoa. When they’d done this with all of them, they climbed back down, retreated through the hatch in the center of the table, and closed it.

I stared at the crone, waiting for an explanation. As is often the case with people her age, it came in the form of a long winded story. “Boy”, she said, “when I was not much older than you, I came here from the old country. With my aunt. My mother and father gave everything to deliver me safely here. A kind of special police stopped them from coming too, as they planned.”

None of it meant anything to me, but I was nonetheless enraptured. “Things were bad. We could not stay. It started out so well. A revolution, to see that every man, woman and child has a roof over their head and food to eat. Those were the good intentions which paved the road to Hell, at the end of which was a set of forged passports for myself and my aunt, and a trip to the labor camp for my mother and father. I do not clearly remember their faces, however I try.”

All fear was now gone. I could see tears forming in her cloudy eyes, which then collected in the bags beneath them. “It was my dear aunt who taught me these hidden arts. I immerse myself in their study. Much as you, I could not bear poisonous nature of those I grew up surrounded by. Only my aunt showed me kindness. And how to make my own little world, as I knew it should be.”

I’d now spotted the little people here and there about her home. Dusting, moving glass containers about. Subtly, as if by habit. When you’re that size, no doubt survival hinges on not being seen. “I come out to live in these woods for to get as far away from the teeming masses of humanity as I could.” I exclaimed that I had the same idea, but with a sailboat.

She grinned, a set of well polished wooden teeth on display. “Boy, that is beautiful dream. I tell you, if I thought of it back then I would be at sea now. But I cannot leave. The homunculi depend on me.” I furrowed my brow and tried to pronounce the strange word. She clarified, to spare me the trouble. “Little men. Fashioned by arcane means.”

She got up and strode to one of the work surfaces. When I stood beside her on my toes I could see the most bizarre spectacle, even on top of what I’d witnessed earlier. It looked like an assembly line. Starting with wire, which was twisted into the shape of a person. The next few had red clay layered on, finely sculpted into organs, veins and muscle. Then came pink clay for the skin. One of them lay in the center of an elaborate drawing. Geometric patterns etched in charcoal, faintly glowing.

It wasn’t finished. That much was clear. It looked mostly human but had a waxy, doll-like quality to it. It writhed about it a stilted manner, like stop motion animation and both the mouth and eyes opened and shut at random like a fish out of water. “Is he in pain?” I plied. She shook her head. “He is in that liminal space between life and death. I infuse him with elan vital. Yet, without drop of blood he cannot complete his passage.”

She withdrew a needle, pricked her finger and allowed a single drop of blood to fall on the awkward little figure. It soaked into it as if it were a sponge. The features sharpened. The motion grew smoother. A look of awareness came over its face, and it stood. “Welcome to the world, little one. Go join the others.” She beamed at it. Dozens of the little creatures surrounded it, excitedly poking and prodding, welcoming their new sibling.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 2}