No Country for Old Gnomes

by Kevin Hearne

  Tommy directed them to sit around his table, which somehow had exactly the required number of chairs and in the correct proportions for his guests. The place settings were fine crystal, the silverware slender as twigs and glimmering with polish. It did not escape Kirsi that she and Agape were seated to either side of Tommy, their chairs snuggled up close to his, even though Kirsi had done her best to select the farthest chair from their host. As the table magically pulled up to her lap, a foamy mug appeared by her fist, placed there by a sad-looking tree girl with long, curling green hair and smooth brown skin. There were three of these girls, bringing trays of sweet breads, rashers of bacon, fluffy mounds of eggs, and veritable log houses of hot buttered toast. They were dryads, if Kirsi remembered their species correctly from her Monsters of the Not-Gnome-Eating Variety textbook—each willowy and beautiful yet slumped and defeated. When Kirsi saw Tommy slap one girl’s bum as she hurried past, it was clear that the girls were not here by choice or happy about their tenure.

  Agape must’ve been thinking the same thing. Neither she nor Kirsi had touched the food, although Båggi and Onni were shoveling cinnamon rolls into their mouths and Faucon had somehow managed to devour half the toast and was daintily patting at his lips with a napkin. Gerd wasn’t eating at all, and considering the gryphon’s appetite, Kirsi knew what a big deal that was. Smelling the bacon, Kirsi picked up a piece…but then she saw the sad eyes of the dryad girl hovering nearby with another platter and put it back down.

  “Tommy, we’d love to meet your friends,” Kirsi said, smiling hopefully at the nearest dryad.

  Tommy just waved that away before saying,

  “Forget the help. It’s plain to see

  I’m Tommy Bombastic, so it’s all about me.”

  The dryad gave Kirsi a thankful if apologetic look and hurried away.

  Båggi, who had already finished one mug of ale, grinned at the girl pouring a new helping from a pitcher, his cheeks rosy and the tip of his nose going flat-out red.

  “My goodness, friend! What a fine host you are! This ale is magnificent!” he boomed.

  Their host tipped his hat and leaned back in his chair, sipping his own ale.

  “When you’re Tommy B., only the best will do.

  Both for me and my bros. But let’s talk about you.

  You’re a strange little group going on a quest.

  What is it you seek? Get it off your chest.”

  Agape looked to Kirsi, and Kirsi looked to Onni, but Onni opened his mouth and said nothing. Faucon remained tight-lipped, arms crossed over his round belly and ale untouched, and Gerd sat at attention, eyes ablaze.

  Båggi lapped up his ale from a spill on the table and said, “Oh, and what a quest! Our metal man knows where—”

  “To find the nicest cardigans,” Kirsi interrupted.

  “We gnomes are really into cardigans,” Onni offered weakly.

  Tommy’s grin briefly slipped into frustration.

  “I’d like a cardigaaan too,” Agape said, trying to bolster the lie as she fiddled with a crystal saltshaker. “Wool on top to match the bottom, you know?”

  “No, no. The hale has gone to your eds,” Båggi said, a little too loud. “For what we sheek is far grander, a very legend, the famed Li—”

  “Lice repellent,” Agape smoothly interjected. “It’s a really big problem.” She gave her head an exaggerated scratch. “Not the sort of thing one generally discusses at the table, though. Right, Kirsi?”

  Kirsi’s eyes flew wide before she, too, began vigorously scratching at her fine russet beard. “Oh, yes. Many a time have I been befouled by pestilence, but this is by far the worst case of lice I’ve ever had. Why, even my lice have lice!”

  “Lice?” Onni asked, terror written plainly on his face and one hand to his scraggly beard. Kirsi elbowed him in the side.

  “You don’t have to pretend,” she said through gritted teeth. “We’re among friends. And what are a few vermin among friends?”

  Very slowly, Faucon brought his large, freshly cleaned foot onto the table and scratched like the dickens at the hair there. “Terrible things, toe lice,” he said, his mouth turned down almost comically. “They exacerbate my foot fungus. And when they interbreed with the bedbugs, well. You know.”

  Tommy put his ale down, his smile turned upside down. He stood, gesturing to the door.

  “Well, it’s been nice meeting you and hearing of your quest

  But it’s getting pretty late and Tommy B. requires rest.

  I’d invite you all to stay but I’m afraid that space is dear

  So I’ll wish you all the best and send you far away from here.”

  Tommy stood and snapped his fingers, and the table jumped away from the guests, their chairs scooting back. Kirsi’s choices were to get dumped on the floor or stand, so she caught herself and hopped down from her seat. Tommy bowed them out the door and down the stairs, where Piini waited.

  “I’d just thike to lank you for your foine hospitality—” Båggi began, but Tommy Bombastic had disappeared. “Where’d he go?”

  Just then the three dryad girls hurried out from the kitchen and down the stairs, each carrying a basket filled with what appeared to be the remaining food, which had all been whisked off the table, somehow, while Kirsi wasn’t looking.

  “For your journey,” one of the girls said, head bowed as she handed Agape a basket.

  Kirsi heard Agape whisper, “Do you need help?”

  “Our father is Willowmuck, that willowmaw you met, and…it’s complicated,” the girl said, drawing back. “But thank you for asking.”

  “Is this a legal issue?” Faucon asked, and for all that he was always very formal, Kirsi saw real concern in his eyes.

  “It is. There was a transaction, and favors are owed, and…well, like I said, it’s very complicated.”

  “Is there a contract of any kind? Something I might be able to review?”

  “Oh, yes,” another dryad said. “We all have a copy. It’s…binding.” She withdrew a scroll from her apron pocket and held it out, unfurling it in front of him but not letting it go. “You can read it, but it can’t leave my hand.”

  “I understand.” Faucon took the edges in his fingers with great dignity and read it so swiftly that Agape wondered how he could be processing it all. The scroll continued to spool in front of him, forming ribbons on the ground, surrounding Faucon like paper snow, and finally the halfling smiled, waggling a finger at the scroll. “Ah. Here. Clause Seventy-nine, Paragraph Six. This is an illegal provision. Your indentured servitude cannot be coerced or compelled in debt of another or else you are chattel; it violates your basic right of body autonomy, guaranteed throughout Pell.” He went on to spout jargon that was indeed very complicated and ended with “and therefore the entire contract is null and void.”

  The dryads grinned and hugged one another.

  “So he can’t legally keep us here?” one asked.

  “No. As your attorney, I hereby contest this contract.”

  “Our attorney? Wait—how much will that cost?”

  “You served me food earlier and I will consider that payment enough. That and the distinct pleasure of showing this trumped-up scofflaw that he cannot simply make up his own rules outside the law.” Faucon withdrew a tooled-leather pen case from his portmanteau. With the quill and ink within, he scratched on the scroll. Within seconds of his final flourish, the scroll took on a golden glow, floated in midair, and exploded in flame, leaving a pile of ashes at the dryads’ feet and demonstrating the true power of attorney. He repeated the process with the contracts of the other two dryads.

  “We’re…free?” one of them asked. She took a few careful steps away from Tommy’s house, then began skipping around. Her sisters joined her. “It’s been centuries since we could leave Tommywood!”

  “What will y
ou do?” Kirsi asked. “Do you need anything?”

  The dryad smiled. “Freedom was all we wanted. Thank you so much.” She held out a smooth brown hand to Faucon, a tiny acorn cupped in her palm. “It’s a small gift, freely given, but perhaps it will help you on your quest.”

  “Your quest to get rid of lice,” one of her sisters added with a smirk.

  The door to Tommy’s house burst open, and he stood there in a bathrobe, clutching a flaming scroll, so furious that smoke was coming out of his ears.

  “Tommy B. is no one to mess with!” he howled, his eyes lighting on the dryads. “You owe me!”

  “Willowmuck may owe you something, sir,” Faucon said, “but these dryads do not. You cannot compel their service.”

  The first dryad whispered, “Good luck!” and she and her sisters fled into the night.

  Kirsi wanted to follow them, to get far away from whatever Tommy Bombastic might actually be, but Faucon’s peculiar behavior was too interesting. The halfling didn’t move, didn’t run, didn’t panic. He merely replaced his quill in his pen case and put his pen case in his portmanteau before calmly standing, back straight, to face Tommy.

  “I’ll be reporting you to the Fae Council,” he said stiffly. “For all that your bacon is deliciously peppery, your legal arguments are unmitigated garbage. And don’t even think of harming us. Amendment Three-twelve, Paragraph Seventeen, Clause Eight. Good evening, sir.”

  With his nose in the air, Faucon turned and walked away with great dignity. Gerd knelt by Kirsi’s side, and Agape boosted the gnomes up onto the gryphon’s back before following Faucon down a path that had appeared as if out of nowhere. Piini trailed behind and Båggi staggered after them in confusion, perhaps trusting that what had happened would be explained later. Gerd soon caught up to Faucon, but Kirsi couldn’t resist looking back over her shoulder to watch Tommy argue with one of the drunk pixies, who was wearing a poorly tied tie and carrying a booger-spackled briefcase.

  For some time, they paced along in silence, and Onni fell asleep behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist in a way that made Kirsi too excited and smooshy to sleep. She buried her face in Gerd’s neck to hide her rosy cheeks.

  “What’s Amendment Three-twelve?” she heard Agape ask the halfling a while later.

  He didn’t turn around as he answered.

  “To put it in layman’s terms, demigods are forbidden from being jerks,” he said. “No matter how delicious their bacon is. Tommy B. has gone by many names throughout history, and much of his braggadocio is actually based in fact. He was originally one of the good guys, but if history teaches us anything, it’s that power and privilege corrupt. These old gods get to a point where they think no one can tell them no, but that’s only because they haven’t met the right lawyer.” Leaning in, he whispered so that Kirsi barely heard, “And speaking of which, just a word to the wise: I saw what you did. Stealing from demigods—or anyone, really—is not a good idea.”

  It was Agape’s turn to put her nose in the air. “I don’t know whaaat you mean,” she said.

  But Kirsi could tell that was a lie.

  When the halfling wasn’t looking, Agape slipped a crystal saltshaker out of her tunic and into her pack, where it landed with a clunk and rattle. The ovitaur looked terribly guilty, and when her eyes landed on Kirsi, Kirsi was very glad she was accomplished at feigning sleep.

  “It’s not stealing if you leave payment,” Agape said to herself, almost as if reciting her own gnomeism. “No laaaws have been broken.”

  Kirsi didn’t believe it, and she didn’t think Agape did either. This secret, Kirsi thought, would eventually bite someone on the rump.

  “Sometimes it takes horrific atrocities to turn a peaceful soul to anger, and sometimes blood will be shed over something as simple as the loud enjoyment of dairy products. Kolon and Teabring went to war for three years because a man from Liaoxing slurped his yogurt and moaned indiscreetly. Granted, the moan was wanton and delivered in a wildly inappropriate moment, but still.”

  —ZHENG JIN, in Why Can’t We Just All Slurp Along? A History of the Yogurt War

  It washed over Båggi slowly, but once the flood of revelation engulfed him it was all he could do to keep his head above metaphorical water. Tommy Bombastic wasn’t actually that swell a guy, and the increasingly sober dwarf had not seen any of the signals since he’d been so giddy with his escape from the Willowmuck followed by the offering of free food and drink. Only after Faucon had released the dryads from their servitude did Båggi’s liquor-fogged brain see that he’d missed something crucial. There had been people in need of help in plain view, and he hadn’t seen them. He had missed an opportunity to serve others, and there was no one to blame but himself. He had been complicit. He glanced at his cudgel, but even it looked embarrassed.

  He thought he understood now why so many dwarves went to pick a fight with the centaurs or the elves to end their Meadschpringå as soon as possible. A quick kill and a lifetime of guilt sure seemed easier than this festival of embarrassment and shame he was feeling. So far all he’d accomplished in the lowlands was escorting a queen bee to a new home. He had, he supposed, learned quite a bit, and that shouldn’t be discounted, but mostly what he had learned was how staggeringly much he did not know. He wondered if he would ever be able to catch up. Regardless, he knew it was his duty to try.

  The party did not bother returning to their campsite, since that would be backtracking, and also since it appeared to be the hunting ground of a predatory tree covered in seemingly innocuous pussy willows. Instead, they plodded north toward Pavaasik to put some distance between themselves and Tommywood. Once they found a small meadow and Gerd had scouted it to make sure it was safe, they built a new fire, and Faucon gave the gnomes some time with his Amazing Basin, as their tiny feet looked like shredded meat. They were worn out, poor things, and Båggi pillaged his stores to whip up a homemade version of Buff Billi Bruce’s Spruce Goose Vamoose Juice and set it to chill and ferment overnight. That would get them going in the morning. In the meantime, he offered them a dab of Fifi Fipper’s Foot Fixer Elixir and a heartfelt apology.

  “My friends—I hope I may still call you that—I am so sorry for my verbal incontinence earlier and for plunging us into danger in the first place. I will try to make amends and be more circumspect in the future.”

  They all reassured him that no harm had been done, and he left them to relax and selected a sleeping place just a little ways away but nowhere near sentient foliage. He rather needed some time to rest as well; it had been an exhausting day, both physically and emotionally. Curled up with his back to the fire, he hugged his bunny-shaped hot-water bottle and longed for the days when his biggest problem had been a tangle in his beard.

  * * *

  Båggi woke up in the rain that Gerd had promised was coming. The fire was beginning to hiss at the droplets pattering down, but it was mostly coals at this point; no fresh log had been placed on it for some while. He quaffed a vial of the Vamoose Juice he’d prepared last night to test its vamoositude and set about packing up with a newfound energy. Others were rising too, and he offered them their own vials of Vamoose Juice, which they accepted with thanks. As the old dwarvelish saying went, it was better to tramp through the rain with a smile than to lie down in the mud for a while and get piles.

  They kept the Honeymelon Hills on their right as they walked, and Faucon suggested that they pass the time by hearing the Tome of Togethering, since Piini had the whole thing in his memory and none of them had ever read it.

  Båggi wondered why. “Are you not taught its contents in your schooling, if it is the foundation of your country’s origin?”

  “It’s summarized,” Kirsi said. “Or more referenced than anything else. The office of the kanssa-jaarli came from the tome, basically, and the King of Pell has always accepted that. I was never taught much else.”

  �
��Nor I,” Faucon said. “My law professors told us that few if any copies remained, and that we were supposedly following the spirit of the tome if not the actual letter of it.”

  The automaton obliged their request and began speaking in a tinny monotone, and it was extraordinarily dull language to Båggi’s ears. The text of the tome often surprised the gnomes and the halfling, for the system of government it described had little to do with their current method of rule, beyond the dual earldom of the kanssa-jaarli. There were many grunts of surprise and mild oaths from the Skyrlings, followed by little comments: “That’s different,” or “Why don’t we still have that?” or “Wow, so that’s what the Second Amendment actually means?” or some variation on those themes. And when it was over, past lunchtime and into the afternoon, they decided to make camp a bit early by a winsome stream winding through cottonwoods in a meadow.

  Faucon plopped down in the grass, stunned, and began chucking ingredients into his Amazing Basin. “I am dumbfounded,” he said. “Most of all because it would appear that we have deviated so far from the laws outlined in the Tome of Togethering, and yet…no one cares.”

  “Our people care,” Onni said darkly. “But we tend to get blown up before we can do anything about it. Wasn’t Bootsy Blütendoomp going to go petition the kanssa-jaarli before her hatch exploded?”

  “I do believe she was,” Kirsi said, her nose wrinkled pugnaciously. “In fact, now that I think about it, no one from our town has successfully contacted the kanssa-jaarli in months. We don’t even get the biweekly letter and crossword from the Toot Towers anymore.”

  “When laws are forgotten, someone dishonest is benefiting,” Faucon said gravely.

  “What do you think we should do?” Kirsi asked. “You seem very law-ish.”

  “That…I do not know. It is one thing to know the law and another thing entirely to have to prove the law exists. To find a way to make oneself heard, and to make it matter, is rarely an easy thing, even when the courts are on one’s side and one’s toe hair is perfectly combed.”