No Country for Old Gnomes

by Kevin Hearne

  Once they were out of the fen and mostly free of swamp glop, the kobold bard sang a song to get them skipping lightly across the terrain, eating up plenty of distance with every step. Although it took them all day to cross the many leagues between the fen and the river, they still didn’t quite make it before dark.

  It was getting toward twilight, and the kobold suggested they should stop and make camp. Exhausted and starving, they happily complied. Båggi brought out his food stores, and Gerd went hunting for stoats and shrews with her library bird screeching Hurp Blep’s Tales of the Wizard of Blizzard. Whenever Kirsi politely asked the kobold for a name, the bard brushed off the question, often with a song that made her forget she had ever asked and suggested that good deeds were more important than monikers. Kirsi was left with a round belly full of dwarvelish charcuterie over local arugula doused in a piquant vinaigrette and strange thoughts about the nature of magic.

  Why could the bard create such feelings and urges with only music, while Kirsi had to sacrifice her beauty, hair by hair? Why was she limited to only curses when the bard could make up a song about anything, from killing the Dread Necromancer Steve to making tasty muffins, and expect an excellent outcome? She asked the kobold something like that, at some point, and the bard merely pattered on the bongos and sang, “I am rubber, you are glue. What bounces for me, sticks for you. It’s what’s in your heart, not who wears shoes.”

  “Enough with the riddles,” she mumbled, growing sleepy as the kobold played a tune called the “Nighty Night Song,” which they claimed to have learned from a bard in King Gustave’s castle.

  “Riddles are as riddles do. Figure out what works for you,” the kobold sang.

  When Kirsi woke up, she was almost angry at feeling so fantastic. She half-expected the kobold to be gone, as magical and mysterious people who randomly showed up to do good deeds didn’t seem to stick around, but there the bard sat, swallowing a chipmunk whole while making gross gargling noises that reminded Kirsi of all the stories her parents had told her about how dangerous and nasty kobolds were. After a last, icky glurk sound, the kobold smiled at her. Two pats of the drums, and Kirsi forgot why she kind of wanted to throw up.

  After a hearty helping of something Båggi called Ol’ Boy Roy’s Rough ’n’ Grainy Honey Oaty Groatmeal, which the dwarf suggested was good for the lower intestine, they were back on the road, following their new bard in a dancing sort of way down the path. Everything was going quite well until they came to the point where the Old Fygge Road joined the road that came from Nokanen. Sitting there on an overturned bucket was a black-robed lumpy person, crying, their face hidden from view. The kobold stopped, some distance off, and hissed, but Kirsi strode bravely forward, her heart torn by the insistent sobbing.

  “Maybe it’s a traaap,” Agape said.

  “And maybe you should give people a chance,” Kirsi responded.

  Agape rolled her eyes toward the kobold, and Kirsi felt a wash of shame. She’d been wrong about the bard, but she felt sure that this plaintive sufferer needed help. She was almost within touching distance of the figure when it gave a great wail, and she had to speak.

  “Hello there? My friend? Are you well? Have you been the victim of highwaymen, or perhaps a ravenous army of halflings, or this terrible guy named Tommy?”

  The shape unfolded and flapped around a bit on the bucket but remained seated, rearranging its large and ragged cloak so that a familiar face shone down on Kirsi’s.

  “It’s you!” Kirsi said, rushing forward for a gnomeric hug, which was a bit awkward with someone nearly three times her height and at least five times her age, but she made it work.

  “Indeed, my pretty,” the old witch said.

  “But why are you here, so far from your cottage near Bruding?” Kirsi asked. “And why are you crying? Are you hurt?”

  “No, my dear. I’m not hurt. I was merely on my way to a jousting tournament, because I follow the Bruding Boars, and—”

  The witch stopped mid-sentence to gasp. Her rosy but withered cheeks and twinkling if rheumy eyes instantly went sharp and dark. As she stood, drawing her bent body up tall and straight, she focused on Båggi, pointing a clawed finger at the dwarf, who responded by gaping and looking like he wished he were the size of a bee and able to hide up his own nose.

  “You!” the witch shouted, lightning arcing down around her and slamming into the ground. It was a remarkable event, since there was only a single white cloud floating directly above the witch.

  “M-m-me?” Båggi stammered. “I do hope, my fine lady, that you are upset at someone else, for I’m quite sure we’ve never met, and unless you are related to a madman in a cabbage field or have a profound distaste for gentle herbal remedies, you shouldn’t have any reason to be upset with the likes of little old harmless me, ha ha!”

  “Dwaaaaa­aaaaa­rf!” the witch screamed, and the sky went dark as the single white cloud bloomed into thunderheads churned by swirling winds and peppered with capybara hairs and the tang of fen. Sensing a situation swiftly devolving, Kirsi plucked a hair from her nape and began to craft her curse.

  Båggi crashed to his knees and tried to hide behind his Telling Cudgel. “Yes? What? I’m sorry!”

  “Which one are you? Freddi? Freaki? Sneaki? Siggi? Saggi? Biggi? Or Smöls?”

  “I am none of those dwarves, my lady, although I’ll admit that my britches are feeling saggy at the moment and that my name is very close to Biggi but not, I swear, exactly that, because there’s a crucially different vowel!”

  “Listen well. Seven dwarves helped my stinking stepdaughter steal my youth and beauty—I mean, my favorite cauldron and a nice old mirror. And I am sworn to hunt for those dwarves. And I think perhaps that you are one of them.” The witch strode to Båggi, imperious and cold, and kicked him with a wizened foot. “Stand up, fool! Let me see if you carry her stink. Always smelled of roses and rabbit urine, that one.”

  As Båggi struggled to stand, Kirsi moved in front of him. “This is not the dwarf you’re looking for,” she said, firm and confident, as the knotted hair danced over her tongue.

  “Any dead dwarf is a good dwarf. I couldn’t claim her heart, so I’ll claim his!” The witch withdrew a lumpy crystal wand from her cloak and described a circle around the quivering dwarf, causing a golden ribbon to descend and truss him up like a holiday hen. As soon as the knots had tightened, she pulled a small notebook out of another pocket and flipped through it, licking a bony fingertip. “Let’s see. I have a good recipe for a babka that requires a dwarf heart.” She tipped his head up with a claw. “You do still have your heart, right?”

  “No!” Kirsi shouted, quickly amending that. “I mean, he does have a heart, but you can’t have it. It’s going to stay inside of him, thank you very much. Båggi is not one of the dwarves who helped your stepdaughter. He’s my friend. And as your friend, I’m telling you to back the fig off!”

  The witch regarded Kirsi, her gaze so cold that Kirsi felt her own heart sputter with a sudden chill.

  “We are not friends. You were merely a visitor who cleaned my oven and was reimbursed with food. Witches don’t have friends.”

  Now it was Kirsi’s turn to draw herself up proud and cold. “Well, this one does.”

  “You, a witch?” The old woman cackled and rocked, slapping a withered thigh. “Oh, I don’t think so. Where’s your wand? Where’s your power?”

  Kirsi drew a deep breath, narrowed her eyes, and muttered, “By the bumbling butt of Bartholomew Muckitt, may you always trip over your own dang bucket!”

  “Huh?” the witch said as Kirsi swallowed the knotted hair.

  But then the witch took a step toward Båggi and did indeed manage to trip over her bucket, which splattered something uncomfortably similar to coagulated blood all over the old woman’s mangy black cloak.

  “How dare you?” the witch cried, strugglin
g to stand.

  “Easily! But you can’t have Båggi’s heart! Or anybody’s!”

  “Nobody tells me what I can’t have,” the witch growled.

  Kirsi backed up, step by step, as the witch fumbled for her wand, which had tangled up in her cloak.

  “Get up,” Kirsi said to Båggi, meeting the eyes of each of her compatriots to make sure they were ready to fight. “Look to your cudgel!”

  For Båggi’s cudgel did indeed look ready to whack some witch butt, as it had grown knobs and gnarls and had a poisoned apple engraved on the end.

  “Oh! Oh, my! Yes, the violence! The unquenchable rage!” Båggi said, sounding more confused than angry. “Er, if someone will only release me from this magical ribbon? For it is cutting off a bit of the old circulation, you know, and it’s hard to be angry when I’m this embarrassed. Ha ha!”

  But the witch struck first, sending a gust of magic right at Kirsi, who barely managed to dive out of the way as it burned a hole in the dirt. At least Faucon was able to use that brief attack to slice the golden ribbon with his sword, releasing Båggi from his festive restraints. Again and again, the witch took aim at Kirsi or the dwarf, and they kept rolling and popping up here and there, barely managing to dodge the fireballs. When the witch again tripped on her bucket, Kirsi looked directly at the kobold.

  “Some of that magic of yours wouldn’t go amiss!” she said with a grin that spoke more of terror than happiness, but it did the trick. The bard recovered their moxie and began hammering at the bongos, playing a fierce staccato that sent everyone into a fighting stance. It was as if, before, they’d been frozen or perhaps watching a duel, but now the group coalesced as a battle party, taking up their weapons and preparing for a rumble. Kirsi plucked an eyelash, bidding it a fond farewell, and placed it gently on her tongue, glaring at the witch’s wand and wondering how best to curse it to backfire somehow.

  “Oh, so that’s how it is?” the witch said, cracking her neck and doing some stretches. “All of you against an old lady?”

  “The thing is, none of us particularly want to eat you, and yet you seem determined to eat one of us,” Kirsi said, hands on her hips and eyelash caught between grinding teeth.

  The witch looked at her as if she were dim. “Well, yes. The heart, at least. That’s where all the power lies. The rest is just meat. Honestly, what did they teach you in gnomeschool?”

  Kirsi opened her mouth to rebut and explain that her gnomeschooling had given her the gift of intense focus and personal confidence, but the witch started shooting off magical fireballs, aiming at one person and then the next, dancing back with unexpected agility when one of them managed to counterattack. Faucon’s sword slashes missed every time, and Gerd kept getting caught in personal tornadoes, and the rocks Agape threw seemed to bounce off some kind of strange force field. The faster the bard drummed, the more agile everyone seemed to be, so at least nobody took a direct hit. Kirsi was too busy dodging fireballs to come up with a proper curse, so she prepared to skitter up the witch’s cloak and grab the wand, which appeared to be the seat of her power, or at least its focusing device.

  And then the drums suddenly stopped, and Kirsi could no longer cling to the witch’s swishing hem. Exhaustion suffused her, and pain radiated from dozens of scorch marks. She managed to disengage and tumbled to the ground, and that’s when she saw that the kobold bard had a watermelon-sized hole directly through their chest. Through it, Kirsi saw a few scraggly trees on the other side and a cavity containing one very surprised, half-digested chipmunk.

  As Kirsi watched, horrified, the kobold fell over, dead.

  “Fools! This is how you lose! The bard was so busy protecting you it forgot about its own safety!”

  Rage built in Kirsi’s chest, and she felt her hair lift and fly off her shoulders as if she’d touched a metal doorknob on a particularly cold, dry night.

  “They forgot about their own safety,” she ground out between clenched teeth.

  The witch stared at her, perplexed. “You’re correcting my pronoun usage in the middle of a fight?”

  “Yes, when it needs correcting. The bard wasn’t an it. They were a they, and they were a better friend than you ever were, you sorry old hag, and I hope you die!”

  She swallowed the eyelash, and with all her might, Kirsi shoved the witch, and it was as if her hands were filled with the power of a plucky donkey, for the witch flew backward, knocking the bucket aside, and hit her head on a gnarled tree root.

  After a long moment, the witch still hadn’t moved, and Kirsi’s hands fell to her sides.

  “Well, that’s one way to kick the bucket,” she said.

  “Ha ha!” Båggi whimpered. “That is terrifying!”

  Everyone was staring at Kirsi as if she’d gone mad, so she hurried to the kobold’s side and knelt, wishing she knew something, anything, about healing.

  “Båggi?” She looked to the dwarf, but he was nervously tugging at his beard below the halfling half ring.

  “I can’t heal a hole in someone’s person,” he said. “No matter how much I might want to. Not even with Holy Hal’s Whole 30 Finicky Hole-Filler Pills. Which are mainly just for mosquito bites, if I’m honest.” After drawing a deep breath, he shivered and added sadly, “Ha ha.”

  They were the finest kobold I ever met, Gerd said solemnly. And even if I have never met a kobold before, that is still a compliment, because I say so.

  “Ding Dang. The witch is dead,” Faucon said, holding up her scrawny wrist. “No pulse, no breath.”

  Kirsi looked from one corpse to the other and felt like she’d aged fifty years. In the space of a moment, two people were gone. One good, one bad. One who made music, and one who made holes in people. An ebony glimmer caught her eye, and she took the witch’s wand in both hands, hefting it as if it were a club, which to her, sizewise, it was.

  “There’s only one thing to do now,” Kirsi said.

  “Bury them,” Agape agreed.

  Kirsi looked up, shaking her head. “Oh, no. I have to eat the witch’s heart and absorb her powers.”

  “Wait, whaaat?”

  “Then I’ll be able to use her wand to protect us. We’d grown so certain of our strength that we forgot how magic changes everything. If not for that kobold bard—may they be chugging chipmunks in kobold heaven—I’m pretty sure Båggi would be a small, unsightly cinder, and he’s basically the nicest person I’ve ever met. And there would’ve been nothing I could do to protect him or any of you. My whole life, my parents tried to hide my ability to curse, and I always felt lesser because I couldn’t bless. Gnomeric magic can only take me so far. But it seems, in the wider world, there are other ways to gain powers. So I’m going to be the best witch I can be.”

  “By eating aaan old woman’s heart?” Agape cried, horror written across her face.

  Kirsi gave her brightest smile. “Exactly. So let’s get started. You gotta get off your seat if you want to eat!”

  Agape shuddered. “I hate gnomeric aaaphorisms.”

  “I know!”

  It was messy, and it took a while, but everyone found something else to do while the knee-high gnome carefully removed her cardigan, politely borrowed Agape’s knife, cut the heart out of the old human woman, and ate it, bite by bite, dabbing at her mouth between gulps with one of Faucon’s least favorite handkerchiefs. She understood that her friends did not approve of this action, but for once she didn’t care—even if it deeply sorrowed her that Onni had to turn his back. This time, she was taking care of Kirsi. Even Gerd, who was known to use squirrels like nunchucks as she juggled them into her gullet, looked disgusted.

  When Kirsi was done, she burped the tiniest and most polite of gnomeric burps, barely a friendly bubble. The witch’s heart tasted of darkness and forbidden fruit and burnt gingerbread, along with a whiff of Grandma’s blood pudding. An odd feeling radiated from
Kirsi’s belly, spreading through her limbs and even out of her hair follicles. She ran a hand through her beard, pleased to feel that its fullness had returned, as if the magic had regurgitated the pain of all her old curses back to the well of her power in the form of luxurious keratin.

  She stood and dusted her hands off. “Now. Let’s see if it worked or if I just did something horrible and gross for no good reason.”

  Her first act as a witch sized the crystal wand to her hand—and painted it with cheerful bluebirds, tulips, and hearts. Her second spell created a new, wand-shaped pocket in her cardigan. Her third spell covered the dead kobold with a gentle mound of dirt and a tidy cairn of rocks. She tried a fourth spell, but nothing happened; clearly, as a beginner in the realm of real magic, or possibly as a smöl person, she was limited to three spells a day.

  “Thank you, nameless friend,” Kirsi said, standing over the kobold’s grave. “You taught me more in one night than I learned in ten years elsewhere. I promise you: Your sacrifice will not be in vain.”

  Much to her surprise, a hazy blue cloud floated up out of the dirt, coalescing into a ghostly version of the bard, doublet and all.

  “It wasn’t a sacrifice. It was dumb luck,” the kobold said.

  “Do you mind terribly?” Kirsi asked.

  The kobold reached a ghostly hand into the dirt mound and withdrew a ghostly set of bongos, draping the string around their ghostly neck. “I’m all about moving forward,” the kobold said. “Not much I can do about it now. I did hear about a fantastic ghostel somewhere in the Pruneshute Forest, though. Maybe I’ll go there and see if I can start a band.”

  “You’ve got to follow your heart,” Kirsi said.

  The ghost bard shrugged. “Hey, at least you didn’t eat it, right?”

  Whistling, the ectoplasmic kobold walked into the forest, a ghostly pattering echoing in their wake.