Eleanor Henderson
Jane and the Pesky
In the terror and wonder of the Great Beforetimes, all beings saw and spoke with each other, held commerce with each other, and together considered the world as it was and how it might be. Over time, humans became preoccupied with their own most urgent concerns and pulled apart into their own circles of being. Eventually, only the very youngest human children could see the world as it had been, speak with other beings, and interact with them. Once in a great while, a human retained the original abilities past their earliest years. This is the story of such a one. Her name was Jane.
The person in question was named Jane. When she was young, at precisely that age when young humans learn what they should and should not see among, say, humans, fairies, and animals, and to whom they may properly speak, Jane experienced an accident. One evening during a storm, a clap of thunder startled the nursemaid, who tripped over the dog, who was chasing the cat, and dropped poor Jane on her head. Everything in Jane’s head turned upside down. Not everything turned right side up again. The change was apparently irreversible, so, she continued to see and speak equally with all creatures who presented themselves to her. As you may imagine, Jane’s family was quite distressed to see her speaking to animals (who showed alarming signs of speaking back), and, even worse, to thin air. Naturally they encouraged her to direct her attention and remarks to other humans. Jane was appalled at the rudeness of ignoring most of the intelligent conversation on the planet. So, in very short order, she decided to speak to her family as little as possible. It seemed a safe course of action, since her family members never listened to each other anyway.
This is not to say that she did not listen. She did, and found it as good a way of communicating as any. It seemed to her that, like her family, most creatures are so absorbed in their own doings that they vastly prefer speaking to listening. It turned out that creatures of all sorts, especially humans, found Jane’s preference for listening very refreshing. Jane’s open, orderly mind generally had a salutary effect. Those speaking to her sometimes leapt up in the middle of a sentence, realizing that they had at last hit upon a solution to some vexing, intractable problem. And most went away very pleased with their own good sense.
Unfortunately, Jane’s good points were quite lost on her family in the early years of her life. Her sisters tormented her constantly, which may have been due to Jane’s extreme politeness. It seemed terribly rude to ignore perfectly polite beings because her family could not see them. This evenness of attention did her great credit in the animal and fairy worlds, but wreaked utter disaster within her family. Thus, the world became a confusing place for Jane, since she never acquired the advantage most humans have of making most of it disappear.
By a stroke of very good fortune, though, on her ninth birthday Jane had a visit from a fairy that changed her fortunes. This story is recorded elsewhere, so only the gist will be repeated here. This fairy tumbled unexpected into Jane’s birthday party and was delighted to meet a human who spoke to her so courteously. She was equally dismayed by the family’s utter obliviousness: they could not see fairies themselves, and so were rude to her and ruder to Jane.
This young fairy’s generous reaction that proved so precise that its effects reverberated throughout the lives of many people for years to come. She cast a spell on Jane that caused her family to see what she was, not what she wasn’t. Jane was, in fact, a very able, agreeable girl.
One day years later Jane found herself in a deep conversation over a picket fence with a cat. The cat had newborn kittens and was anxious to find a good situation where she might raise them. Alas, Jane knew of no better place than the cat’s current situation. The house was dilapidated, but the old woman who lived there set out milk and table scraps each day. Jane agreed to keep an eye open for a splendid home in need of a cat. In addition, she was delighted to hear of the many engaging charms of the cat’s offspring.
It so happened that a young man was traveling in his carriage down that very road and happened to see Jane. This young man was endlessly perplexed, for he had a persistent problem that he could not resolve. It was this: he was handsome, rich, clever, charming, healthy, and well-connected, yet he was not happy. He knew many people with much less to be happy about who were nonetheless quite happy. He saw absolutely no sense in this state of affairs, and yet there it was. He could not resign himself to it, and spent rather more time thinking about it than he liked to admit.
As it happened, the sight of a young woman clearly delighted over nothing at all sent him into a paroxysm of self-righteous rage. (For either he did not see the cat, or considered it to be nothing.) He shook his fist at heaven and demanded satisfaction. When he got none, he considered tackling Jane instead. Surely she could be persuaded either to hand over the secret of her happiness, or to be brought round to seeing the affront to himself in her being so. He called for the coach to be stopped, and considered coming straight to the point of telling Jane that she must cease being happy over nothing. But this did not seem quite polite, so he took another tack.
“Good afternoon, charming demoiselle. I wonder if you could spare the time to explain why under heaven you seem so deucedly happy over absolutely nothing at all? Is it the latest fashion to take enjoyment from nothing at all, in no company whatever? I cannot in the least make it out.”
The young man descended from his coach in such a roil of indignation that Jane really could not see him, squint though she might. She considered his question gravely for awhile. It occurred to her that she had best not mention her conversation with the cat, so she said instead:
“Why, I am happy because you stopped to speak to me! How very thoughtful of you!”
At first the young man saw a great deal of sense in this, for surely any young woman must be happy to speak with him. Then he remembered that she had been laughing before he stopped. When he brought up this point, Jane was quite at a loss, for she still did not want to mention the cat. So she tried something she had heard her sisters say when her mother asked them what they were arguing about:
“Oh, nothing, really.”
It was not to be borne. He had already forbidden happiness over nothing, yet she persisted in it.
“It is a slap in the face of decency, duty, and common sense to persevere in the frivolity of laughing at NOTHING! It is an intolerable OUTRAGE!” He realized that he himself had no duties, and had perhaps overstepped. Yet he persisted.
“You seem a well-bred young person. I cannot but wonder why you persist in this offensive habit of Happiness Over Nothing.” He was certain that an emphatic delivery would carry his point.
Jane was quite at a loss. She felt that explaining happiness might be well beyond her slender powers of conversation. And of course she hoped that he might tire of waiting for a response that she could not give, depart, and be unhappy somewhere else. But since he showed no signs of leaving, she considered his demand, and at length thought she saw a way to solve his problem and be rid of him.
“Well, sir, I quite take your point that happiness over nothing is unreasonable. Yet it undeniably occurs.”
She allowed that, though she could not really explain how a person could be happy over nothing, she might be able to show him. The young man agreed immediately to a demonstration, since he thought he might rather feel happiness than understand it.
Jane’s powers of observation increased as the young man’s indignation subsided. A particularly noxious Pesky was perched in the corner of the young man’s eye. It was very much to the young man’s credit that he was at all sane, since the Pesky had clearly made itself at home in this particular eye some considerable time ago, and its powers had waxed.
Eyes can sometimes be easily occupied by mischief-makers when a person experiences a great loss or setback. The tiniest little image of a large dog was fitted neatly into the corner of the eye, and the Pesky was now firmly connected to it.
A tear formed in Jane’s right eye. Such a sweet dog it was, and such rollicking affection had existed between the sweet-tempered dog and the sweet-tempered boy that Jane felt for a moment that her heart would burst. Since a burst heart would do no one any good, she chided herself back to the question of how to dislodge the Pesky lodger.
The tear fell into Jane’s hand, where she could examine it more easily. The sweet dog had died and left the boy inconsolable. And such a pointless death! A Pesky had lodged in its heart and would not budge. When the dog died, the Pesky had flown into the boy’s eye, where it had lived ever since.
She could see no discreet way of managing the task ahead of her without alerting the young man to a dimension of his life that had long ago faded from his awareness. So she ignored the young man and spoke directly to the Pesky, gently, so as not to offend it. (The conversation was conducted in Peskish.)
“Good afternoon, O Magnificence. I wonder to see a Magnificence so far from home.”
“Arrrgh, an’ the Great Gargoyle take ya. Whadya know of Peskishyamar? Too smooth and saltless are ya by a batflap are ya ta set foot in Peskishyamar are ya. Ta perdition get ya.”
“In due time, O Magnificence. It’s just that I heard whisperings among the bat-things of a stretch of Peskishyamar away South that is untroubled by the smooth and saltless ones, and in great need of a Magnificence. Nay, I heard it said that a Magniloquent Ultimosity is sought.”
Lifted by swelling feelings of exaltation, the Pesky rose slowly in the afternoon sun. Himself a Magnificence! An Ultimosity! Such Grandeur as he had never heard of! He faced South, and flew to meet his destiny.
Jane wished the Pesky godspeed, though he never heard it, and turned her attention back to the young man, who was blinking in the sunlight and preoccupied with finding whatever had just fallen out of his eye. Next, she suggested to the sweet dog, in Dog, of course, that it go to its proper place in the young man’s memory, which it was quite happy to do.
The young man was sure that what he had heard was a sneeze, and wished her a speedy recovery. She curtsied, turned back toward the fence where the cat had been, but found that it had curled up with its younglings in a sunny spot in the garden and fallen into a deep sleep filled with miscreant mice.
For his part, the young man was a little confused. On his homeward journey, he remembered that earlier in the day he had been troubled by a deep disquiet about some intractable matter that he could no longer remember. But ah, what a lovely day in this most beautiful part of the world! Surely anything so very troubling would come round to his attention again, and could be neatly sorted out. And it now seemed the most natural thing in the world for a young lady to talk to a cat, who was purring back to her. He remembered fondly a boy who had once talked to a dog.
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