Venom and Song

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  “But we mean you no harm,” said Tommy.

  “Should I roast them now?” whispered Johnny.

  “No,” Tommy muttered, holding out an arm to restrain Johnny.

  “Is harm already,” said Migmar gravely. “Traveled you on sacred Gnome land.”

  Tommy felt his temper slipping, not just because of the sudden, unexpected threat, but because his friends had trusted him, and he’d led them into a trap. “Look, Migmar,” he said. Another gasp from the ferns. “If we did tread on your land, it was only to save your skin.”

  “Leave that, we must, to the court,” Migmar replied.

  “Court?” Tommy blurted out incredulously.

  “Stand trial is the only way permitted by our laws.”

  “Trial? That’s just crazy,” said Tommy, his hand straying to the hilt of his sword. “You’ve seen us in action. I give the word, and Johnny will light up everything within fifty yards of us.”

  “Afraid, I was, it would come to this,” Migmar said. He put one finger in the corner of his mouth and produced a strange, warbling whistle.

  “Owww!” said Kat.

  “Hey!” said Johnny.

  Then Tommy felt it, too, a pinprick on his neck, followed by an unnerving, spreading cold. In seconds, he saw a field of stars and then a great blue wave.

  25

  Peculiar Justice

  “WAKE YOU up!” came a high but terse voice.

  Tommy felt the tip of something sharp prick the bottom of his feet. He awoke, seated in a little gray torch-lit room with a trio of armed Gnomes staring at him and brandishing some long, twin-sided axe-spear weapons. The forward Gnome poked Tommy again.

  “Owww! ” exclaimed Tommy. “Cut that out!” He tried to reach for his foot, but found his arms restrained at the shoulders and elbows.

  “Tell us not what to do, trespasser,” said the Gnome. He poked Tommy’s foot again.

  “That hurts!” said Tommy. He suddenly realized his boots were gone. “What . . . what have you done with my boots?”

  “Trod upon sacred land, you did,” said the Gnome. “Destroyed boots, we did.”

  “Look,” said Tommy. “This is all a huge misunderstanding. We’re on an important journey, but we diverted to save Migmar.” The three Gnomes gasped at the mention of the name, but Tommy went on. “We had no intention of stepping on sacred land.” Tommy used his legs to stand, pushing his back up against the wall behind him. As he rose, he found that his arm restraints were elastic . . . or at least they stretched somewhat.

  “Escape not,” said the Gnome with a laugh.

  Tommy stretched forward and heard a chorus of groans from either side of him.

  “AH! Stop!”

  “Please!” said Kat. “You’re breaking my arms!”

  Tommy realized with a shock that his restraints were tied into a complex system of wheels, switches, and pulleys. If he pulled away from the wall, it tightened the restraints and bonds of the others who were also captive. Tommy quickly let himself slide back down against the wall.

  “Wha-what’s going on?” Jett asked, just waking on the other side of the square room. “Why am I . . . oh, those little boogers drugged me. I’m gonna—” He started to stand.

  “Jett, WAIT!” Tommy yelled. “Don’t pull away from the wall. We’re all wired in. If you use your strength to get free, you’ll kill us.”

  “Told you,” said the Gnome.

  Johnny had awakened shortly after Tommy and had seen about all he could stand. “I’ll take care of this,” he said, lifting his hands to loose a stream of flames. He stopped the process and stared. His hands were encased in grapefruit-sized orbs made of a smooth metallic blue material. Like this is going to stop me? he thought, resuming the process of bringing his fire. He was going to hit the Gnome soldiers with a few bursts at their feet, just to scare them, but when he released fire within the orbs, he screamed.

  “Ahh!” Johnny banged the orbs on the floor. “Ah, take them off! It’s squeezing, breaking my hands. Ahh, make it stop!”

  “Make stop, you can only,” said the Gnome, scratching at a reddish sideburn. “Constricts, sinter-stone does, when heated. Turn off, you must, your fire.”

  Johnny stopped the fire immediately. As the stone orbs cooled, they expanded back to their original size.

  “Are you through?” asked the lead Gnome soldier. “Try to escape, you must not. Awaits your trial does.”

  Tommy’s face reddened. “Yes, we’re done,” he said. “For now, guys, let’s just do what they say.”

  The Gnomes went immediately to work in each corner of the room, detaching small t-shaped keys from their belts and pockets. Several clangs and clicks later, the entire shackle-pulley apparatus detached from the wall, yet still held tight to its prisoners. Great, Tommy thought. It’s portable.

  “Am Thorkber,” said the lead Gnome. He nodded to the Gnomes at his side. “Is Gilbang,” he said, motioning to the Gnome with bushy black eyebrows and a metal helmet that sat cockeyed on his head. “Is Sarabell,” he said, pointing to the female Gnome with silver-blond hair in pigtails.

  “Lingered, we have, too long,” said Sarabell. “Waiting is the Barrister.”

  “Are correct, my wife,” said Thorkber. He turned back to the Seven. “Try not anything on the way.”

  The Gnomes led the young lords up a narrow spiraling ramp with a low ceiling and out through an arched doorway. Silvery moonlight shone down upon a village bouncing with night activity. Gnomes ran hither and thither, some wearing purple ribbons around their waists chasing others wearing green. Others vaulted across the busy marketplace on flexible poles. And still others appeared to be swimming through the air.

  “They climb the air like I do,” said Kiri Lee, incredulous but smiling.

  “Have hand chutes, do you?” asked Gilbang.

  Kiri Lee looked closer at the seemingly flying Gnomes and saw that, indeed, they used devices to climb into the air. She watched a Gnome, already seven feet off the ground, toss a rumpled ball into the air with each hand. Each of these unraveled into a surprisingly large wind-catching chute. The Gnome was light enough to pull himself higher. Some climbed ten, fifteen, even twenty feet into the air.

  Kiri Lee wished she could free herself from her bonds, but she had little hope. The network of cables around her wrists and ankles would tighten and potentially hurt her friends.

  Kat found herself gasping at strings of multicolored lights strewn among the lower boughs of the massive trees that grew in the area. Colors sparkled in the eyes and on the faces of Gnomes too numerous to count.

  The scene reminded Tommy of the boardwalk of Ocean City at night . . . only with little people. Gnomes sang and danced, ate and drank, bought and sold. The marketplace was abuzz with Gnomes haggling cheerfully over prices or trades.

  “Oh!” said Autumn. “Look at that!”

  The group stopped, even their Gnome captors. Autumn pointed high. One of the trees had been fitted with an ingenious metal collar around its trunk like a man might wear a belt. But this collar was rotating slowly up and down the trunk as if on grooves. Ornately crafted spokes protruded from all different sides of the collar. Suspended beneath each spoke were two or three swings. Gnome children swung freely, back and forth, ’round and ’round, and up and down as the collar spun, rose, and fell.

  “Cool,” said Jett, in spite of their situation.

  “Do yu suppose they’ll let us ride it?” asked Jimmy. But he stopped laughing and frowned in concentration. “No, no, no,” he said, looking up at the kids on the high swings.

  “Oh no!” exclaimed Kiri Lee. “Let me go, right now!”

  While Thorkber and the other Gnomes showed no sign of loosening their bonds, they all looked up at the swing. There a Gnome child, a little girl with red pigtails, was losing her grip on the swing. She slid from her seat and held on to the outer chain with just one tiny hand.

  “Let me go!” Kiri Lee yelled again. “I can save her!”

  “Save he
r from what?” asked Sarabell.

  Suddenly the little Gnome lost her grip completely and came free of the swing. She plummeted and hit the ground near the tree’s roots with a horrible thud.

  “No!” Kiri Lee fell to her knees and wept.

  “Wait, Kiri Lee,” said Jimmy. “She . . . she’s all right.”

  They all looked on. The little Gnome redhead popped up from the grass near the tree’s roots. She wobbled a bit, giggled, and bounced back toward the tree swing.

  “How did she survive that fall?” asked Kiri Lee.

  “What that?” asked Thorkber, grinning. “Made of tougher stuff than that, we Gnomes. Dive off a cliff, maybe would hurt. Done it, I have, and survived. Come, Sarabell, demonstrate.”

  Sarabell handed her restraint cords to Gilbang. She waddled over to the edge of the woods, found a suitable dead branch, and then returned. So thick was the branch it looked more like a small fallen tree. Jett was amazed the Gnome maiden could carry it with such ease. She walked up and presented the branch to her husband. Thorkber looked at it approvingly.

  “Whale away, my flower,” Thorkber said.

  Sarabell swept back the branch, swung it high in the air, and brought it crashing down on Thorkber’s head. The branch cracked in half, but the only impact the blow had on Thorkber was to slide his helmet a little off-center.

  “That would’ve knocked me out cold,” said Johnny.

  Tommy whistled.

  “Struck me well, she did,” said Thorkber.

  “Never well enough,” said Sarabell, affectionately picking twigs out of her husband’s hair. “Won the Thrashing, last year, he did.”

  “Thrashing?” asked Tommy.

  “Test of Gnome toughness and valor, it is,” said Gilbang. “Beat Strubthak the Old, he did.”

  Thorkber laughed deeply, which sounded strange given his high Gnomish voice. “Talk of this no more,” said Thorkber. He took back his restraint cords and motioned for all to follow.

  The Gnome village was long and narrow, but with all the merry Gnomes running about and all the warm lights, it felt cheery rather than confined. Their dwelling places, shops, and taverns had all been carved into the massive flaring trunks of the living trees . . . without doing any noticeable harm to the trees themselves. Tommy noticed that the trees were all practically bursting with foliage and bloom.

  “It’s beautiful here,” said Kat. Tommy nodded.

  “Thorkber,” said Kiri Lee. “Why are all the young Gnomes up so late at night?”

  Sarabell giggled. Thorkber said, “Know you not the ways of Gnomes? Moonchildren, we are. Sleep, we do, by day.”

  “Oh, nocturnal,” said Kiri Lee. “That explains a lot.”

  As they passed out of the village proper, the road narrowed more, and the trees even seemed to lean in. But still, Tommy thought it was more of a cozy feeling. Up ahead, the road appeared to end at an impossibly thick, barrel-shaped tree trunk.

  “The Justice Tree,” explained Thorkber. “Hope, I do, that things go well for you.”

  Tommy hoped so, too . . . though, honestly, he couldn’t imagine that the Gnomes would do anything serious to him or the other Elves. We’re the Seven Elven Lords of Berinfell, he thought. If the Gnomes so much as delay our mission, it could make our two races enemies for a long time.

  Kat read his thoughts and projected back her own. “They might not even know.”

  Know what? he asked in reply. That we’re Elves? What else would we be?

  “I don’t know, but our ears aren’t right. Maybe they’ve seen humans.”

  But they’ve seen our powers, some of them, Tommy persisted. They must know we’re Elves.

  “Maybe . . . but that brings up a different possibility. What if Gnomes don’t like Elves?”

  You’re not making me feel any better about this, thought Tommy. Get out of my head.

  “Leave you, we must, in the hands of the Leaf Guard,” said Thorkber as they came to the wide entrance at the base of the tree. Gnome soldiers stood on either side of the spade-shaped opening. More guards stood beside them, side-by-side, seemingly around the tree’s perimeter. The Gnomes of the Leaf Guard were heavily armored with breastplates for chest protection and thick iron pauldrons to cover their shoulders. Each piece had been forged of some strange metal that was black here and blue there, gray in other places, and had been cunningly engraved to look like tree branches with wide leaves. The Leaf Guard obviously believed in being battle ready at all times—including weapons. Some held the long poleaxes like Thorkber’s. Others had crossbows. Many had thwack hammers thicker than a man’s arm.

  Whoa, thought Tommy. I’d hate to get smacked in the head with one of those.

  The Gnome soldiers bowed once and stomped one foot, apparently a more formal military greeting, and then received the restraint lines from Thorkber, Sarabell, and Gilbang. Then, waving to the Elves, Thorkber muttered, “Hope we see you again, I say.” The three Gnomes strode away, giggling sinisterly.

  “That’s not funny,” said Jett. “If we ever get out of this gadget, I’m gonna—”

  He stopped in midsentence as Kat’s unspoken but urgent plea entered his mind.

  Four of the Leaf Guard escorted the Elves into the Justice Tree. Their path forked, curling around the wide section of the inner tree. The torches ended, and they plunged into darkness.

  “What’s going on?” asked Jimmy.

  “Silence, trespassers!” came a peculiar voice from somewhere up ahead.

  Without another word, they walked slowly for about thirty paces. Certainly, the Justice Tree seemed colossal from the outside, but Tommy wondered just how deep the tree could go inside. Up ahead there appeared a shimmering green glow as if a small pool of emerald green water was lit from within and shone upon a dark wall.

  “A few more steps,” came a gruff voice at their side, one of the guards. “Stop you here.”

  They obeyed the bodiless command, felt a slight tug on their restraints, and heard a series of clicks and snaps. Suddenly, in the middle of the green glow, there appeared a small dark figure. “Arise, Moonchildren!” cried the figure, raising his arms high.

  There was a massive shuffling of feet. Lights, dozens of small lights, appeared on either side of the Elves. One after the other, blood-red candles were revealed. In their flickering light, Gnome faces materialized. Stern faces . . . even frightening, and so very many. Three, four rows deep . . . a small army of Gnomes.

  The green light intensified at the feet of the Gnome up ahead. He stood on a raised platform and stared down at the Elves ominously. Like a Victorian Englishman, this Gnome wore a gray wig and a greatcoat with a loose chain dangling from each of four pockets. The sum of his appearance reminded Tommy of Marley’s ghost from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Not a very comforting image.

  The Gnome lowered his hands and pointed at the Elves. “Come, you have, to the Justice Tree!” he said. “Stand accused, you do, of a most heinous deed: trespassing upon sacred Gnome land.”

  A wave of hissing crashed down on them from the Gnomes all around them. Each of the young lords jumped. Startling and disconcerting, the hissing went on until the leader motioned with his hands. “Lord Barrister Gnome am I,” proclaimed the Gnome. “Hear, I will, your testimony and defense. Decide, we will, your judgment, your fate.”

  “Fate?” Johnny echoed. “Hold on a minute here.” He struggled against his restraints, even kindling flame within the orbs. But stopped as the orbs constricted.

  “Barrister,” muttered Jimmy. “So this wee fellow is a barrister, then?”

  “What’s that?” asked Autumn.

  “In the UK,” Jimmy explained, “a barrister’s like what yu’d call a lawyer.”

  “Seems more like a judge to me,” said Autumn.

  “Judge he is,” said one of the Gnome soldiers who overheard. “The highest judge in our land, but more as well. Chief Accuser, he is also, and . . . should your testimony merit it . . . Chief Protector.”

  “Do y
ou smell something?” asked Kat. “Jett, did you—?”

  “Not me,” said Jett. “Why are you askin’ me anyway?”

  “Answer, you must, the charges!” declared the Barrister.

  “Not guilty!” Tommy blurted out. “At least not on purpose. We had no idea the land was sacred to the Gnomes.” More hisses cascaded down from the spectators.

  “Suffer not, we Gnomes, trespassing on our land. Is ignorance your only excuse?”

  “Be careful, Tommy,” Jett urged. “He’s trying to catch you in something.”

  “Tommy!” Kat’s thoughts entered his mind. “Does the Barrister seem familiar to you?”

  Not now, Kat, Tommy fired his thought back. I’m kind of on the spot here.

  “Lord Barrister,” Tommy addressed the Gnome. “We wouldn’t have come onto your land at all, but we heard Migmar screaming for help. I mean, he was screaming his head off. What were we supposed to do?”

  More hisses—louder and mixed with angry muttering.

  “Silence!” cried the Barrister. He lowered his brow and glared at Tommy. “Behold! Am Migmar, Lord Barrister Migmar!”

  “I knew it,” said Kat.

  “Screaming,” Migmar went on, “not hardly.”

  “Awww, come on, man,” Jett interrupted. “You were screaming bloody murder. Hadn’t been for us, you’d a’ been a midnight snack for that forest dragon.”

  “Jett!” Tommy muttered over the new chorus of hissing. “That kind of talk is not helping.”

  “What is that smell?” demanded Autumn. “Johnny?”

  “Wasn’t me!”

  “Dare you insult the Ruler of all Gnomedom?” asked Barrister Migmar.

  Oh, great, thought Tommy. He’s a king, too.

  “Well?”

  The hissing intensified. Tommy sensed movement on either side. The Gnomes were descending from their seats, coming down onto the floor . . . coming closer.

  “We were on an important mission,” Tommy said at last, “near this area of the Thousand-League Forest.”

  “Mission?” asked Barrister Migmar. Then he paused, and an odd look came over his face. There was a sound like a sudden, quick buzz. “Speak you more of this mission.”