Summerland by Michael Chabon Read Free Book Online

"Might as well have a seat, piglet. They know we're here. A moment will bring them along."
    Ethan sat down beside Cutbelly in the grassy meadow. The sun was high and the tall green grass was vibrant with bees. It might have been the loveliest summer day in the history of Ethan Feld. The birch forest was loud with birds. The smell of smoke from Cutbelly's pipe was pungent but not unpleasant. Ethan suddenly remembered a similar afternoon, bees and blue skies, long ago…somewhere…at the edge of a country road, beside a grassy bank that ran down to a stagnant pond. It must have been at his grandparents' house, in South Fallsburg, New York, which he had heard his mother speak of but, until now, never remembered. The country house had been sold when he was still a very little boy. His mother crouched down behind him, one slender hand on his shoulder. With the other she pointed to the murky black water of the pond. There, hovering just a few inches above the water, hung a tiny white woman, her hummingbird wings all awhir.
    "That was a pixie, actually," Cutbelly said, sounding more melancholy than ever. This time Ethan noticed that his thoughts had been read. "And you were lucky to see one. There aren't too many of them left. They got the gray crinkles worse than any of them."
    "The gray crinkles?"
    In the trees to their left there was a sudden flutter, like the rustle of a curtain or a flag. A huge crow took to the sky with a raucous laugh and what Ethan would have sworn was a backward glance at him and Cutbelly.
    "It's a great plague of the Summerlands," Cutbelly said, his bright black eyes watching the crow as it flew off. "More of Coyote's mischief. It's horrible to see."
    Cutbelly puffed dourly on his pipe. It was clear that he didn't care to say anything more on the sad subject of the vanishing pixies and the dreadful plague that had carried them off.
    As is so often the case when one is in the presence of a truly gifted teacher, Cutbelly's explanations had left Ethan with so many questions that he didn't know where to begin. What happened when you got the gray crinkles? What did coyotes have to do with it?
    "What's the difference?" Ethan began. "I mean, between a pixie and a fair—a ferisher?"
    Cutbelly clambered abruptly to his feet. The plug of charred weeds tumbled from the bowl of his shinbone pipe, and Ethan's nostrils were soon tinged by the smell of burning fur.
    "See for yourself," Cutbelly said. "Hear for yourself, too."
    They traveled, like the ball clubs of old, in buses—only these buses could fly. They came tearing out of the birch forest in ragged formation, seven of them, trying to keep abreast of one another but continually dashing ahead of or dropping behind. They were shaped more or less like the Greyhound coaches you saw in old movies, at once bulbous and sleek. But they were much smaller than an ordinary bus—no bigger than an old station wagon. They were made not of steel or aluminum, but of gold wire, striped fabric, some strange, pearly silver glass, and all kinds of other substances and objects—clamshells and feathers, marbles and pennies and pencils. They were wild buses, somehow, the small, savage cousins of their domesticated kin. They dipped and rolled and swooped along the grass, bearing down on Ethan and Cutbelly. As they drew nearer, Ethan could hear the sound of laughter and curses and shouts. They were having a race, flying across the great sunny meadow in their ramshackle golden buses.
    "Everything is a race or a contest, with the Neighbors," Cutbelly said, sounding fairly fed up with them. "Somebody always has to lose, or they aren't happy."
    At last one of the buses broke free of the pack for good. It shot across the diminishing space between it and Ethan's head and then came, with a terrific screech of tires against thin air, to a stop. There was a loud cheer from within, and then the other buses came squealing up. Immediately six or seven dozen very small people piled out of the