by David Castlewitz

Although he didn’t believe in spontaneous generation, Malcolm Fletcher checked the cage where the late Dr. Fitzmanner deposited used rags. The famous natural philosopher and accomplished alchemist went to his grave believing that field mice sprouted from grubby linen and morning dew, so every morning after his visit to the outhouse Malcolm walked another few yards up the pebbled path into House Fitzmanner’s back yard, where he bent over the cage, stuck a stick between the metal bars and poked around for proof of life.

The club the alchemist had founded, The Society for Studies Especial, held weekly meetings at the house, with the alchemist’s niece, a 28-year-old spinster named Sadie, as hostess. She prepared and served the food and drink, tended to the tidy arrangement of chairs around the long wooden table where members met on Wednesday nights, and tended to the used chamber pots as the occasion demanded.

Politics, especially anything involving Queen Anne and her lack of issue, or the possibility of the union of England, Wales and Scotland, were taboo subjects. Fitzmanner considered the antics of the royals and the machinations of politicians as the most feckless of topics. Science reigned.

Malcolm, newly arrived from his extended studies in France and Germany, with his eight years of public-school education and his matriculation from London’s University of Queens and Kings behind him, found his membership in the club both exhilarating and informative, and vital for his future worth.

At one of the last Wednesday nights of conjecture and argument, the elderly alchemist broke a long-standing precedent by inviting his niece, Sadie, to give a short presentation about an unusual observation she’d had had in the garden behind the house.

A small woman, her auburn hair full of luster and her large mouth graced by sculpted lips, Sadie struck Malcolm as someone quite capable of engaging in a worthy marriage. Like the other members of the small club, he knew the woman’s history. Unlike the others, he told himself, he sympathized. Sadie had grown up under the tutelage of her scholarly uncle. She’d been taught Latin and Greek, with a smattering of mathematics and even an introduction to Dr. Newton’s concept of integral calculus.

Sadly, the teenaged Sadie made a bad choice for marriage. Ten years earlier, she’d become betrothed to an adventurer who never lived up to his potential. He disappeared in the Americas soon after the engagement was announced, and Sadie awaited his return, certain he’d come back with the fortune he desired.

Malcolm often wished he had the courage to offer her a few words of solace. He sometimes wondered if he, as a member of the club, could gain her uncle’s permission to court her. After all, he reasoned, she was only a year or two his senior.

The night Sadie was invited to speak, a few of the club members took umbrage at the idea of her intrusion. She was their silent servant, scurrying from kitchen to dining room on slipper-covered feet, her only disturbance being the rustling of her petticoats beneath her voluminous dress. She didn’t deserve the right to address the assembly.

“Tell them, Sadie, of what you observed in the yard.” Fitzmanner gestured to her, bidding that she venture closer to the table.

She neared Malcolm and he inhaled deeply of her aroma. He smelled sweetness and wondered if, beneath her many petticoats, this spinster still possessed a child-like figure.

The thought made him flush. The heat reddened his neck, spreading to his jaw and cheeks. His ears burned. His eyes watered. Luckily, everyone was intent on watching Sadie, so his physical reaction passed unnoticed.

Fitzmanner prompted her with: “Tell everyone what you told me. Don’t leave anything out.”

Someone snorted. “Did you finally produce mice in that cage of yours?”

After a hesitant start, Sadie made a presentation that soon had everyone’s attention. She spoke with her hands clasped at her waist, a lace-bordered handkerchief twisting between her fingers, and told of finding tiny human-like creatures in the yard behind the house.

The beings didn’t attack her. Nor did they scurry off. They marched, she said, hacking their way through the grass that must have been like trees to them. Most of the tiny people were two inches tall, though some towered over others. At the end of their march, they huddled near a metal disc that, she supposed, they’d dragged from the shed.

She counted fifteen people. Men and women. No children. All dressed in colorful costumes with frilly collars, knee-high boots, and long shirts. Even the females were clothed like the males, their gender distinguished only by the shape of their bodies and the softness in their faces.

As if Malcolm’s memory of that night summoned her, Sadie appeared on the back porch when he approached the house.

“Have you noticed any of those little people?” Malcolm asked as he approached.

“You intend to have fun with me?” she retorted.

“Not at all, Miss Sadie.” Malcolm grinned, hoping to disarm her. “I’m genuinely curious.”

Something flickered in her eyes. Understanding, Malcolm hoped

“This way,” she said. She took small steps, her hands lifting her skirt’s hem. Malcolm caught a glimpse of dark stockings encasing shapely ankles. His heart raced.

Sadie stood a few feet away from the outhouse at the edge of the property. She pointed to the fence. A large rock lay against a weathered post, its whitewash long since given up to the elements. A pyramid of pebbles stood nearby.

Her pointing finger quivered. “The rocks. See how they’re arranged?”

Malcolm nodded. “And you saw them again? Here?”

Sadie shook her head. “Not since that very first time. Which I told you and the others about.”

Malcolm felt sad to recall that evening. Dr. Fitzmanner took ill soon after.

“The stones were not so arranged before?” he asked.

“Not that I saw. Must be like boulders to them.”

Malcolm nodded.

“Are you patronizing me?” she asked.

“Not at all. I value your observations and your ability to speak of them with such clarity. You do your uncle proud.” Malcolm looked down at the top of Sadie’s head, at her dark curls, the curve of her neck, the sweep of her back, the broadening of her hips.

She turned away. “Sometimes, I think they’re watching me, these little folk. They could even be in the house.”

“I have to wonder,” he said, “how involved your uncle may have been.”

 “Involved?” she asked. “How?”

“In creating them. We should investigate, Miss Sadie.” He thought of the voluminous notebooks Fitzmanner kept. He never shared the pages with the society members. “Perhaps something in his library offers a clue.”

“I haven’t been in there, not even to dust.”

“Someone needs to review the papers he left behind.”

“He’s always told me, no one is to enter the library when he’s not present.”

“That was when he was alive.”

Sadie drew in a deep breath, her chest rising. “His spirit is still there.”

“I don’t doubt. But he may have left something to be published. His personal ledger might tell us things we should know.” Malcolm’s heart beat fast, his curiosity rising. The society had decided to wait a full six months after Fitzmanner’s passing before perusing what papers and journals he left behind. Out of respect, they’d agreed.

Now Malcolm had an opportunity to leap ahead of everyone. There could be wisdom and valuable insights to be gained. What’s more, it would provide him with an excuse to spend time with Sadie.

In a daze, his mind reeling with heady thought, Malcolm stepped onto the back porch and then into the house, into the kitchen. Though he didn’t believe in ghosts or apparitions, he couldn’t discount the profound presence of a powerful man’s intellect. It permeated the walls and ceilings and every aspect of this abode.

Sadie led the way into the dining room, the site of the Wednesday night meetings. The library stood to the right, on the other side of heavy double doors. She paused with one hand on the doorknob and the other in the pocket of her apron.

“I’ve never unlocked the door without my uncle’s permission.”

“We should investigate. Knowing your uncle, I’d say he’d demand it. For all we know, he might be disappointed that we didn’t take this step sooner.”

“You do it, sir,” Sadie said, and handed Malcolm a heavy metal key, one with a large round ring attached to a thick rod with two jagged teeth. Such a key, Malcolm mused, must enable a very intricate lock, one as difficult to open as this woman’s heart.

He inserted the key and gave it one full turn. An audible click broke the silence and the door opened to the tune of sharp creaks and whines from the hinges. Without hesitation, he stepped into the library, a room he’d never visited. No one in the club had ever stepped foot in this room. Meetings were limited to the dining room. The old alchemist invited no one to visit the place where he often sat to think, where he tinkered, and where he enjoyed smoking a clay pipe full of the small amount of Virginia tobacco that he allowed himself once a fortnight.

The ceiling rose to the roof, where a skylight cast a cone of illumination. Thick candles stood at the ready on all the many tables. A large mound of gray ash sat in the fireplace, as though a log had been allowed to burn down. A slight chill hung in the air. Sadie hugged herself, the tips of her fingers somewhat purple.

Floor to ceiling shelves, all packed with leather bound books, ranged around the room. In places, cubby holes housed scrolls tied with ribbon. Two metal ladders on wheels graced the corners. A laboratory table held several glass beakers containing the dried-up contents of some liquid.

Dr. Fitzmanner’s large desk stood near the glass doors leading to a walled-in garden. A shawl draped over the back of a chair boasted a family crest that Malcolm didn’t recognize. Coarse paper littered much of the desktop. Many of the sheets were covered by closely spaced lettering. A thick book occupied one corner. Several glass jars of desiccated ink in a wooden tray lined the edge of the desk.

Elsewhere in the cavernous room, relics from the alchemist’s many experiments stood as testament to his creative mind. Dr. Fitzmanner had experimented with recording sound in soft wax cylinders – candles, actually. He explored how to amplify voices; he designed paper contraptions that vibrated in response to noise. He shared his dream of someday curing hearing loss.

On one side of a cluttered table, on a dinner plate decorated with red roses and yellow flowers of no particular species, sat a horrendous sight. Though repelled at first, Malcolm drew close to it, all the while making a vain attempt to shelter Sadie from the terrible display.

When she came to his side, he thought she’d scream. Or gasp. She didn’t. Malcolm failed to tamp down his own auditory response. It came unwillingly, sounding like a soft wheeze followed by a guttural cough, as he peered at a tiny spread-eagled figure. Obviously male, the man was secured to a straw mat with pins that ran through his open palms and the toes of his feet. He was naked, which caused Malcolm to blush. More horrific, his chest was cut open. Heart and lungs and intestines, along with the stomach and other organs, were exposed to view.

A strip of cloth covered the dead man’s face. Malcolm supposed that even the old alchemist had had a difficult time looking into the rigid features of death. Unable to stifle his growing curiosity, he gently lifted the cloth, but immediately let it drop. He couldn’t stand to look at the contorted features, the eyes open in obvious horror.

“What do you think Dr. Fitzmanner was up to?” Sadie asked in a timid voice, her wrinkled hands at her mouth. She hadn’t taken a step back from the table, but she hadn’t pressed forward either.

“We should look for notes,” Malcolm said, pulling a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He put the sheet of silk across the tiny body. He’d seen enough of this obscenity. Then, looking around the table, he came across a green leather-bound notebook. He turned the pages, all of which were covered with crammed strokes of black ink. It looked like code. Probably a secret language that the alchemist had invented. In some places, there were drawings and Malcolm recognized one from a presentation given a year earlier, when Dr. Fitzmanner concentrated his skills on chemical methods for affixing scenes from a camera obscura onto paper.

Sadie handed Malcolm a small round mirror that had been sitting near the dissected body. In reflection, the pages revealed a minute cursive hand, the words looking more Latin than English. Never comfortable with the classics, Malcolm had struggled to read any ancient Roman book.

“This is about when he discovered the little folk in the garden. Mini-folk, he called them.” She pointed at a few lines in the middle of the page.

“Did your uncle see them and then tell you to report the discovery, as if it were your own?”

“I did see them. In the garden. I’d gone outside to find Humpy, the cat, and the little demons were running for their lives. They went into a round metal plate to hide.”

“And you told Dr. Fitzmanner?”

“He knew all about them. But he swore me to secrecy. That’s when I suggested I tell my story to the club. To gauge everyone’s reaction.”

“You’ve seen that body before,” Malcolm stated, pointing at the dried out little man the alchemist had dissected.

“Dr. Fitzmanner didn’t kill him. He was dead already. From falling off the high step out back of the house. The little folk were trying to…” Her voice trailed off.

“Yes?” Malcolm asked, impatient with her hesitant manner. He tried to picture this small spinster working side-by-side with the great alchemist in some way, perhaps assisting in the autopsy of that tiny body. He knew that Fitzmanner had educated his niece, but he never imagined to such an extent.

“My uncle wished to communicate with the creatures,” Sadie said. She moved to the desk, where she opened a drawer and drew out a large notebook. From another drawer she extracted a three-foot-long square object made of thin wood panels. The book’s pages were covered with the same close-set mirror-writing but included drawings of a sound magnifying device.

Sadie showed Malcolm how the contraption worked. It employed crisscrossed interior baffles made of ribbed strips of wood interspersed with a membrane fashioned from a pig’s belly. Whatever was spoken at the top of the box was transferred to the bottom in softer tones for the mini-folks’ benefit. When the homunculus spoke, its barely discernible voice would be amplified for a human to hear.

“And this has worked? You’ve spoken to the creatures?” Malcolm asked.

“We’ve yet to try it. I – we – my uncle and myself – just completed it a few days before he took ill.” She withdrew from behind the desk, pushed open the glass door into the private garden, and signaled to Malcolm to follow.

Outside, on the flat flagstone floor, a slab of rotten meat full of wiggling maggots lay in a corner. Malcolm assumed this was part of another experiment.

Sadie put the sound device on the flagstones, next to the piece of meat. Malcolm pushed aside a small round table and a spindle-back chair, and dropped to his knees. At Sadie’s bidding, he pressed his ear to the top of the box and heard a loud crunching noise. It startled him and he jumped to his feet, nearly toppling Sadie squatting at his side.

 “You heard them?” Sadie asked as she rose to her feet.

He nodded.

“Let’s take it to the backyard,” she suggested.

Malcolm hesitated. “How do you know they’ll come?”  

“We won’t know if we don’t try.”

“How do we know the mini-folk will understand what we say.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Sadie said.

Malcolm felt that he’d now gained control of the situation. Whatever they did next would be his decision, not Sadie’s. As it should be. Perhaps Dr. Fitzmanner was content to share discoveries with his spinster niece, but Malcolm didn’t think he could ever be so open minded. What would the other club members say if they found out?

A narrow gate led from the private garden to the grounds at the side of the house. Malcolm walked to the fence, its wide white pickets standing like a row of sentries, the paint cracked and peeling, and in some places with their points blunted.

“What about the cat?” he asked. “Perhaps Humpy frightened them.”

“Humpy’s gone.”

“Run off?”

Sadie shook her head and a tear formed at the outside corners of both eyes as she told of finding the cat dead the day before, its body riddled with tiny holes and, in places, embedded with sharp sticks. Obviously, the mini-folk had fashioned spears and arrows to do away with the danger.

“He was a good mouser,” Malcolm said, thinking of nothing else to add to the moment.

At the pebble pyramid, Malcolm saw a colorfully dressed figure with ankle length boots, a blouse that blew up around his – or her – middle, and long hair tied up with string.

“Don’t run,” Malcolm shouted, but the miniature man ducked into the tall grass. In spite of that, Malcolm placed the sounding device on the ground and spoke into it, announcing his friendly intentions.

The miniature creature stepped out from behind tall blades of grass. It looked left and right. Another mini-folk, as Fitzmanner had called them, appeared. Then a third. Two were armed with spears. They looked desperate, the three of them. They chatted amongst themselves. Malcolm heard the voices as squeaks and squeals. He tapped the sound amplifier and spoke into it.

One of the mini-folk, who wasn’t armed and appeared to be a leader, approached the base of the box. Malcolm put his ear to the opening at his end. The squawks and peeps that ensued entered his ear at a normal audio level, as though he were speaking to a cohort. But in a language he didn’t know.  

Malcolm tossed a look of despair in Sadie’s direction. “Communicating with them will take some time.”

“Do we tell the others in the club?”

“Not until we’ve ascertained the meaning of this gibberish.” At that moment, Malcolm appreciated the problem the old alchemist had faced. Now he fully understood why Dr. Fitzmanner had gotten his niece to speak to the membership about these mini-folk. She could afford to be ridiculed. She had nothing to lose. She was just the old man’s spinster niece.

#

Over tea in the dining room, Malcolm relaxed, legs stretched beneath the table. The afternoon’s conversation had been enjoyable, though he remembered not an whit of it; he only recalled that Sadie had been a good listener and an agreeable companion.

“Those creatures should really have a decent home,” he remarked.

She nodded, her eyes wide. Suddenly, she stood and left the dining room, her heavy black shoes loudly hitting the floor and then the stairway, and, finally, overhead, where the floor boards creaked in sync with her steps.

A few minutes later, she reappeared, a large object in her hands. It had a slanted roof, a chimney covered in paper done up to resemble red brick, and the varying accoutrements of a house, including windows on either side of a door, green shutters partially closed, and a painted pebbled path leading to the entrance.

“My dollhouse as a child,” she said.

Malcolm took the two-story dollhouse from her and placed it on the dining room table. He inspected it carefully, removing the back wall to look closely at the interior, which was empty, lacking scale-model furnishings or tiny paintings on the papered walls. Dusty corners, revealed how long ago this toy had been a vital part of Sadie’s life. A vision of a curly haired little girl in a white pinafore frolicked in his imagination.

Back in the library, he placed the house on the worktable, clearing it first of the odious dissected little man and the autopsy tools used to cut him open.

“I’m not sure,” Malcolm began in a hesitant voice, “that I quite know how we’ll convince them to live in the house.”

“We can call to them,” Sadie said, and then amazed Malcolm with a guttural sound that arose from her throat and thrashed about on her tongue. “My uncle translated many of their sounds.” She rushed to the desk and fished through one of the drawers, coming up with a green leather-bound book full of mirror-writing. As she flipped through the pages she let loose a steady stream of squeaks and whistles. Malcolm wasn’t sure if he should be amazed by her ability to read her uncle’s coded writing without the aid of a looking glass or baffled by the realization that the alchemist must’ve been studying the creatures in his garden for much longer than he had imagined.

When he raised the question, Sadie answered. “Almost a year now,” she said. “My uncle wished to keep it very much a secret. He didn’t know if he had somehow created them through his spontaneous generation experiments or if they came here from some other land.”

Malcolm picked up the sounding device and Sadie carried the green leather-bound dictionary outside to the backyard. Together, they scoured the grass, overturned the pebbles of the pyramid, and explored along the base of the picket fence. At one point they bumped one another, which elicited a red-faced apology from Malcolm. The feel of Sadie’s soft rump lingered at his flank for a few cherished seconds afterwards and he allowed himself a brief fantasy of encountering the woman with her hair unpinned, those curls unfurled, her body not encased in corset and petticoats and gown.

“Here,” she called from the fence.

Malcolm joined her. She pressed her toe against the metal disk where the mini-folk had taken refuge before.

“They must’ve moved it somehow,” she said.

He bent to lift the disk and a sharp sting thwarted the effort. Several little men jumped out from inside, spears at the ready. Undaunted, Malcolm put the sounding device against the ground.

“Tell them we’re friends,” he suggested.

After referring to the odd dictionary, Sadie whistled and squeaked into the apparatus. The armed miniatures looked from one to the other. One laughed. One looked annoyed. From nearby clumps of grass, several little women emerged. They pushed carts and carried cloth bags on sticks. They ran for the disk and slipped inside. The spear-carrying men followed them.

“We can provide a better home than this. Tell them, Miss Sadie.”

“I don’t know how.”

Malcolm waited until no more mini-folk dashed for the disk. He hoped they all had taken cover. He didn’t want to leave any of them outside and at the mercy of wandering predators. The doll house was much better, both for their safety and their comfort.

Carefully, he lifted the mini-folk’s hiding place. Squeals erupted from inside.

“Tell them,” Malcolm called, “that we’re taking them to safety.”

Sadie held the sounding device close to the disk. She repeated the same squawks as before, followed by the exact same whistles.

The weight of the metal disk kept shifting. Malcolm attributed that to the little people inside moving around, probably in terror. Back he got it back inside the house and into the library where he removed the dollhouse’s back wall and set the disk down inside. He replaced the wall to prevent a mass escape.

After a few moments, a small opening appeared below the rim. Malcolm let himself touch the back of Sadie’s hand in a gesture of shared wondered. She blushed. Strands of her hair curled unfettered about her ears. Her hand moved slightly, and Malcolm clenched it.

First one, and then another, and then in groups of three, four, and five, the mini-folk stepped out from the disk and onto the floor of the dollhouse. They spread out in a crooked line. Some were armed with tiny bows and miniature arrows, fire-hardened spears, and small metal blades.

Sadie put the sounding device on the tabletop, next to the house, and whistled and squeaked into it. Malcolm admired her ability, her eagerness to contribute. She’d be a worthy person to share his interests.

The mini-folk huddled and conversed with one another. Soon, smaller people appeared in the dollhouse. They ran from one end of the room to the other. Female mini-folk seemed to admonish them with loud and insistent squawks. Malcolm realized these little ones were children.

Some of the mini-folk climbed the stairway to the second floor and looked out the windows. Others went to the front of the house and stepped out, and then returned with approving looks on their faces.

“I think Dr. Fitzmanner wanted us to take over as their benefactors,” Malcolm said.

“Us?”

“You and I, we, together. It’ll be a big job, but I know we can do it.”

Sadie visibly brightened. “We.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

Malcolm took in a deep breath. “Be my wife, Miss Sadie. Help me with the next step. In truth, I don’t believe I can do this on my own.”

“Do we need to wed for that?” she asked, her head cocked to one side.

“We need to wed because…” His voice trailed off. He had no real answer to her question.

Sadie smiled. “I believe so as well,” she whispered.

“May I kiss you, Miss Sadie?”

“Please. Yes. And just call me Sadie.”

“Once we’re married and it’s proper,” Malcolm said, and took Dr. Ftizhammer’s spinster niece into his arms, kissing her cheeks and then her lips. She’d be a spinster no more. Soon, they’d share this wonderful house. They’d share, as well, the adventure of helping the mini-folk find their place in the world.

In the dollhouse, the creatures brought crates and straw mats and other items from inside the disk where they’d been living. Later, Sadie retrieved some of her childhood toys and gave them to the mini-folk: wooden chairs and curvy loveseats carved from bone.

The mini-folk looked happy. Looking into his betrothed’s wide eyes, Malcolm saw happiness there as well. He imagined Dr. Fitzmanner, from whatever seat of importance he held in heaven, smiling down at them and very much content with how things turned out.

The End