by Pete Prown
* * *
The troupe moved northeast in brisk morning air. Dorro hired out two ponies to pull the cart carrying Cheeryup, Crumble, and Aramina. Before departure, the bookmaster had checked his pockets and bags several times to make absolutely sure he hadn’t forgotten anything; they also stopped briefly at the burrow of Mr. Bedminster Shoe for a quick errand, but soon they were back on the road.
Within the first hour they had passed through the village of Upper-Down and observed the hillocks of West Upper-Down in the distance to their left; neither of them were of the grand size of Thimble Down, but to Dorro, they were civilized communities and had the basic necessities of life (though he himself would never deign to live there).
A few Halflings were out puttering about in the morning air, raking leaves or drinking tea on their stoops. They waved, but cautiously— they didn’t know Dorro or Cheeryup, and wondered what the two strange creatures in the back of his cart were. (“Them’s be elves, Madge! I seen ’em with wit me own eyes,” hooted Farmer Taggett, as he ran inside to tell his wife. “They don’t look like elves,” she retorted, scrunching up her face while looking out the dirty window of their burrow. “Silly Madge! Them be short, fat elves—a mighty rare breed!” said Taggett with absolute certitude.)
Soon, the Halfling settlements became far and few, a cluster of burrows here, a small hamlet there. The folk were never prolific breeders, and there were no big Halfling cities. Thimble Down was among the more densely packed towns; elsewhere, their kind was spread across a swath of forest and farmland, mostly in smaller clusters, which is the way they liked it. Just enough to support a pub and a few fellows and gals working in the blacksmith and woodworking trades, and the rest left to farming.
Of course, the troupe’s destination—St. Borgo—was the biggest of all Halfling settlements, a university town that made Thimble Down seem like a dingy pony stop. Dorro had never been there, yet as a learned fellow, had dreamed of it his entire life.
During the ride, the bookmaster delighted in calling out the names of trees he identified (hornbeam! yellowwood! elm!) and the birds he saw (thrush! woodpecker! finch!), ostensibly to educate Cheeryup, but mostly just to amuse himself.
The Dwarves sat in the back of the cart, saying little and bored by the long hours. Aramina sharpened her axe and blades on a soft rock while Crumble smoked his pipe quietly, lost in thought. Cheeryup periodically complained that her backside was sore, but otherwise made a good show of it.
“I say, young lady, do you even know who St. Borgo is named after?”
“Of course, King Borgo, you silly goose,” she sneered.
“Yes, but he wasn’t born a king. Who was Borgo?” triumphed Dorro.
“I don’t really know.” Cheeryup didn’t like it when she didn’t know things and frowned at the bookmaster. “You might as well tell me, since you’re going to anyway.”
“That’s correct, my dear! Borgo was a Halfling peasant boy, oh, seventeen-hundred years ago, but he was the one that rose up against the cruel overseers and freed our folk. You always know Borgo’s birthday by our current year—it’s 1721 A.B., which means ‘after Borgo.’ His birth, that is.”
“Hmmmm—I get it. Who were the cruel overseers, Mr. Dorro?”
“Best we can tell, they were a tribe of foul, violent Men who discovered the Halflings living very primitively up this way. Back then, our folk were very simple farmers, gatherers, and hunters, living off the land and not organized into much beyond muddy hamlets. Thus the Men rode herd over us and made our breed into veritable slaves, growing crops for them and serving their masters.”
“How horrible? What did Borgo do?” asked Cheeryup, growing more interested.
“Why, he was tired of being beaten and threatened every day and decided to rally other Halflings to his cause. Of course, poor Borgo was beaten and imprisoned more than once, but he always escaped, and in a pivotal moment, defeated one of the Men in combat. This was crucial, as it proved that the overseers weren’t indestructible and mere Halflings could stand up to them. When the Men counterattacked a few weeks later, they couldn’t find our kin. No, Borgo had taught them to use our natural strengths to fight back—stealth, intellect, intuition!”
“What did they do?” The girl was bouncing off her seat by now.
“Why they hid in secret burrows during the day, where the Men couldn’t find them. Then Borgo and his Halfling army—probably not more than a hundred farmers—would attack them at night or early morning, when the masters were groggy with drink. Borgo also invented new weapons; these were insidious projectiles that pierced or blinded the Men and drove them crazy. The Halflings also fouled their drinking water and dispersed their cattle and livestock. And yet, when they returned to crush the little folk, they found that we had all gone underground as if we’d never been there. Hungry, injured, and driven mad, the overseers finally abandoned our land and returned to the South never to return.”
“Hooray!” screamed Cheeryup.
“There’s more to it than that, of course—there was one terrible battle in which many Halflings died—but more or less, that’s the story,” crowed Dorro, who by now was terribly animated himself. “Thereafter, Borgo commanded all the Halflings come together and swear themselves to be one people. And that decree began the ancient settlement that became the burg of St. Borgo today.”
“The boy was made its first King and, since then, we Halflings have lived in this part of the world, more or less in peace and tranquility. It reminds us, young lady, that we may be small, but we are ever mighty! Since then, no foe has ever dared challenge Halflings on their own land.”
In the back of the cart, Crumble and Aramina clapped their hands in appreciation, though exchanging glances as if they knew more to the story. Yet for the moment, they let Dorro revel in the glory of Halfling history and Cheeryup in tales of heroism and danger.
Caverns of Wonder
“Everyone, this is my friend Wyll Underfoot.”
Using a single crutch, Wyll hobbled into what appeared to be a series of rooms that were beautifully hewn from rock and softly illuminated by an unknown source. The Dwarves had mastered the art of finding and deflecting light underground, as Orli had told him, much of it coming from blazing crystals deep in the earth.
The rooms were warm, too— another Dwarf innovation—this time from subterranean heat vents and water flumes. Despite being perhaps a mile under the mountain, Wyll found the surroundings very comfortable and livable—no wonder Orli missed it so much.
The Dwarves rose to greet Wyll, and many of them bowed deeply. They had never seen a Halfling before and weren’t sure if they spoke the Common Tongue or had any intellect at all.
“Good morning and thank you for welcoming me into your home,” said Wyll as graciously as possible.
“And we welcome you, Wyll of the Halflings,” replied a female whom Orli identified as his Aunt Rosamunda, Magpie’s wife. “We know you have journeyed far and been injured, so please sit and share our food.”
As they sat and fed him some savory meats, breads, and sauces, the Dwarves also peppered Wyll with questions about his folk and the village of Thimble Down. They were most interested in the concept of burrows and asked him what it’s like to live in a mud hill.
“Actually, they’re quite comfortable—there are proper floors, walls, and ceilings, as well as windows and fixtures,” noted Wyll. “My Uncle Dorro’s burrow is the nicest in the entire village and has running water.”
Aunt Rosamunda laughed haughtily.
“We’ve had running water for centuries, as well as light and heat. Your kind is younger than ours, so we must accommodate the quaint advances of your people.”
“Actually, Auntie, all us guest workers live in a burrow and it’s grown upon us,” added Orli. “Granted, it’s not as magnificent as our caverns, but we like it.”
Rosamunda was not impressed and hid it poorly, so the Dwarf boy took advantage of the moment to extricate Wyll from his relatives and c
ontinue their tour.
He showed his Thimble Down friend the grand assembly halls, with stairways cut right out of rock face. There were structures within the caverns—some of them quite impressive—for either use by families, workers, or ceremonies. Families seemed to have all dug out their own spaces, usually just tunneling into a sheer rock face and burrowing out the requisite number of rooms.
As for labor, there were endless tasks for the Dwarf folk, from digging and excavating (their specialty) to cooking and sewing, and protecting and serving the wider community.
“Of course, I’m savin’ the best for last—the great caverns where gems, metals, and precious rocks are harvested.”
Carefully, Orli brought Wyll to a ledge overlooking a vast column of space, maybe a quarter mile wide and a full mile up and down. It was the biggest space the Halfling boy had ever seen, and as Orli explained, it had been hewn from solid rock over several centuries by powerful hands and tools.
“This, Wyll, is the secret of the Dwarves’ vast wealth. Every one of our colonies is built around a mine of some sort, whether gold and silver, diamonds, rubies, or various metals and ores. Even the black stones that fuel ol’ Bindlestiff’s forges are a kind of wealth to us—a burnable rock used in trade and commerce.”
“Where do you grow your food, then, or keep your livestock?” Wyll couldn’t see how this lifestyle sustained itself.
“We have a vast network o’ traders who fan out across the many lands and bring us food and goods we can’t produce here,. There are some Dwarf farmers, but ain’t many. We have more herders that keep goats and sheep on mountainsides, and give us fresh meat, milk, and wool.”
“How many Dwarves live here?”
“In Gildenhall? Oh, I dunno—ten thousand or more. The city is vast and stretches for many miles in any direction. You could live here and never see sunlight, which is fine by us. See down here? Down there, deep in the shaft, is where the miners toil, bringing up our wealth day after day. Sometimes they’re asked to slow down, so as not deplete our resources. If you look just over there …”
Wyll leaned over to see where Orli was pointing, but overcorrected on his crutch and, in a heartbeat, fell. One second he was talking to his friend, and then next he was clinging to the edge of a precipice for his life.
“Wyll! Hold on!”
The Thimble Downer had fallen about ten feet and was holding onto a rock face and scrabbling to find a foothold. Orli reached as far as he could, but was still some distance away. If Wyll let go, he would drop for several minutes and there would be no saving him. The Dwarf boy looked around frantically and saw his salvation—the crutch!
“Grab this, Wyll!” He lowered the crutch slowly and upside down so Wyll could grab the broad end. “Reach for it!” The boy reached out his hand and got a quick grip, but then lost a few more inches with his other hand and instinctively grabbed the rock face again.
“I can’t hold on, Orli! I’m going to fall!”
“Try again—this time concentrate. You must, Wyll!”
Orli was trying to give his friend confidence, but time was trickling away.
Wyll reached again and missed. On the third try, he grabbed the crutch and held fast.
“Now the other hand, Wyll!”
Orli girded himself for the weight of his friend .
“No!” Wyll missed with his other hand, but forced himself to try again. Finally he grabbed the crutch with both hands, hanging in free space. It was all on Orli now.
Fortunately, Dwarves are built differently than Halflings and have a tremendous amount of upper-body strength. Lying flat on the ledge, Orli was able to start lifting the crutch hand over hand, inch by inch, while pining himself down with his legs.
A few others had seen the commotion and finally rushed over to help. One sat on Orli’s legs, while the other reached over the edge and grabbed the scruff of Wyll’s collar. In a second, the boy was hauled up, and everyone lay breathless on the ground.
Laying in a tangled clump with his friend, Orli looked up and grinned.
“Did you enjoy the tour, mate?”