Thimble laughed. Thimble danced a quick jig, which wasn’t easy in a skirt. Thimble picked up the paper and read the address. He had a wish, a house, a home!
The address wasn’t hard to find. Even though it had been three hundred years since Thimble lived in the places of magic, he still knew his way around. Sure the trees had grown, fallen, and grown again, and mountains had studded their feet with new human towns. He had grown up here, and would know his way as well today as in another three hundred years.
Still when he reached the house, he was confused. The place was right—set deep within a forest and tucked up against an imposing rock wall, with a small, spring-fed creek burbling by. But the house did not resemble any of the human houses he had ever seen. This place was made of trees torn out by their roots, packed with mud and clumps of moss and weeds.
Thimble looked at the address written in indelible magic on the note, then looked above the door. It was the right place. Someone inside that house had wished for help keeping the house. Thimble could do that.
He strode up to the door. There were no inviting acorns on the windowsill, which was no surprise since there were no windows. But he couldn’t sense a bowl of water by the door either. He brushed away his worry with a short laugh. He’ d pinch the owner black and blue until he or she remembered to put the bowl of water out for him every night. He’d clean and tease and make mischief like no human had ever seen. His heart pounded beetle-quick with excitement, his palms sweated magic. His thighs itched, but that was from the dress. Yes, this was going to work out just fine.
Thimble straightened the straps of his dress. He gave his leg a good scratch, then knocked on the door.
The heavy footsteps of something big, much bigger than a human, so big the ground shook and shale trickled like dry bones down the cliffside, answered his knock. Maybe this was a bad idea.
The door groaned on rusted hinges and swung inward.
A brute of a creature filled the doorway, glowering out over the forest while scratching at his hairy armpit.
This thing was not human. This thing was something Thimble had lived his life avoiding, a dangerous, stupid, pixie-smashing creature. This thing was an ogre.
It was still night, and ogres were creatures of the day. This one yawned, showing rows of pixie-grinding teeth and a curved set of yellowed tusks. Thimble had just woken a sleeping ogre. He held very still. The ogre would never notice him unless he looked down.
The ogre looked down and grunted. “Here for the job?” The ogre’s voice rumbled like low thunder and sent more loose rocks tumbling off the cliff.
“I am a pixie,” Thimble said. “I will keep the house for you, so long as you leave a bowl of water out for me every night.”
The ogre scratched his other arm pit. “Aren’t you a little pink for a pixie?”
“Aren’t you a little talkative for an ogre?”
The ogre sneered, his thick lip curling back over lumpy teeth.
This was it, Thimble thought. He was going to be smashed into pixie paste and buried in a horrible pink frock.
But instead of smashing and bashing, the ogre grunted a couple times and stepped back into the house.
Thimble swallowed until his heart stopped kicking at his chest. He lifted his chin high and entered the ogre’s abode.
He had never seen such a mess in all his years! There was only one room to the house, but it looked like a garbage pit. Broken chairs, cracked dishes, and unrecognizable mounds of things he could only guess at cluttered the misshapen room. The sink in the corner dripped, sending out a trail of mud that smelled like old cabbage across the floor. No living creature in its right mind would want to live here.
The only thing standing was a tattered curtain separating the main room from a cave-like sleeping hollow.
“What do you expect me to do with this?” Thimble asked.
The ogre waved a meaty hand toward the room. “You’re the pixie. Take care of it.” Then he lumbered into his cave and tugged the curtain into place.
Thimble was left alone with nothing but the broken tuba snores from the ogre. What was he going to do? There wasn’t any way he could clean this mess by morning. But the thought of going back to the empty pixie stick, or worse, to a meticulously kept home gave him chills. Better to have something impossible to do than nothing at all. He cracked his knuckles, hiked up his skirt, and got to work.
The morning sun rose over the forest and sent bursts of light and bird song into the mud hut. Thimble yawned and wiped the filthy rag over the last stubborn spot on the wall. He couldn’t believe how much he’d gotten done. He’d repaired the table and chairs, mopped the floor, which turned out to be stone, and fixed the sink. He’d washed the dishes, mended the ogre’s big smelly socks, and even dusted the two mammoth boots he had found under a pile of dry leaves and sticks.
Not bad for a night’s work. No, better than that—it was amazing for a night’s work. There wasn’t a pixie alive who could have done as much as well. The ogre was sure to be pleased. Thimble would get his water, and maybe after a nice day’s sleep, he would feel up to pinching the big beast for making such a mess in the first place.
Thimble’s smile turned into a yawn. Later. All he wanted now was sleep. He padded over to the cleanest, driest corner by the door, ready to bed down.
The ogre stirred, snorted, and pulled the ratty curtain aside. The ogre took one look at the room and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He took a second look at the room and roared.
“What have you done?” The ogre stomped across the clean room until he towered over Thimble.
Thimble was tired. Bone tired. His day had started with a three-year-old girl pushing him around and now this big brute thought he could bully him. Well, Thimble Jack was not a pixie to be intimidated.
“I cleaned your house,” Thimble shouted over the ogre’s heavy breathing.
“I didn’t want you to clean it,” the ogre growled. “I wanted it to be worse!”
“Then why did you let a pixie in your house?”
“So you would mess things up.”
Thimble pulled at his ears. “We make mischief, not messes, you ignorant clod.” And even as the words were out of Thimble’s mouth, he knew he had gone too far.
The ogre snarled and spit and raised his fists. But instead of crushing Thimble, the big oaf looked Thimble in the eye and picked up a chair. He smashed it against the tabletop.
“Wait—” Thimble said.
The ogre picked up the other chair and smashed it.
“Don’t—”
The ogre clomped over to the wall, and chunks of dirt bigger than Thimble fell to the floor.
“Stop—”
But Thimble’s protests seemed only to fuel the ogre’s tantrum. He stomped over to the sink and picked up a plate. He threw the plate in the sink and bits of clay shattered onto the floor.
“That’s it!” Thimble gathered his magic in both hands and threw it at the ogre.
The ogre reeled like someone had just whacked him across the head, but that wasn’t enough to stop the raging brute. He glared at Thimble and picked up a cup.
Thimble flew at the ogre. “If you smash that cup, I will patch it so fast, you won’t know what hit you.”
The ogre bared his teeth and threw the cup in the sink. Thimble dashed down after it. Just before the mug hit the sink, he threw a handful of magic at it. The cup bounced safely, and landed whole.
The ogre grunted and picked up the bucket in the sink. He heaved it against one wall. Water spilled across the floor.
Thimble flew over the spill. With a flick of his wrist, the water was gone, and so was the dirt beneath it.
The ogre grunted again and kicked the leaf pile around. Thimble sent a breeze to push the leaves back into a pile in the corner.
The ogre grunted several times, a sound strangely like laughter, and picked up the table.
“Oh, for the love of wands, you wouldn’t.” Thimble braced himself. The table was too big for him
to catch when it fell, and it would probably explode into a million messy splinters.
Still holding the table over his head, the ogre stopped, tipped his head to the side and shrugged one shoulder. “Too hard to fix?”
And that’s when Thimble noticed it. The ogre wasn’t scowling, he was smiling.
“Uh, yes. That’s a bit much.”
The ogre nodded and put the table back down. He stomped over to the trunk that held his clean folded clothes and looked over his shoulder at Thimble. When Thimble didn’t say anything, the ogre cleared his throat.
“Right,” Thimble said, more confused than angry. “Don’t you dare.”
The ogre grunted and busied himself wadding up shirts and breeches and throwing them around the house.
Thimble tried to stay out of the way and do some thinking. The ogre liked making messes, and he liked cleaning. And from the wicked glint in the ogre’s eyes, he knew the old boy had other tricks up his sleeve. Staying here would be madness.
But it certainly wouldn’t be boring.
Thimble grinned and scratched at the itchy dress. Maybe this wasn’t so bad.
“Fine,” Thimble said, trying to sound angry. “You mess everything up, but I will clean it. Every night while you sleep, I will wake and make your house fresh as a spring day.”
The ogre grunted. “You’ll never be able to clean everything before I start wreaking havoc.”
“And you’ll never be able to ruin everything before I start wreaking order.”
They glared at each other, then Thimble nodded. The deal was set.
“Good then, I’m off to sleep. See that you don’t keep me awake with your smashing and bashing, or I’ll pinch you so hard, you’ll be black and blue until your birthday.”
The ogre grunted several times. “You don’t scare me, Pinkie.”
“You don’t know me very well, Ugly.”
The ogre chuckled again.
Thimble scratched at his thigh and trundled over to the corner by the door.
“See you in the evening,” Thimble yawned.
But the ogre followed Thimble to the corner and held his hand out.
“What?” Thimble asked, hoping the big behemoth didn’t want him to shake on the deal.
“Give me that ridiculous dress.”
“Make me,” Thimble said. Bad move. The ogre plucked him up by the wings and stripped the pink frock off him quicker than skinning a grape.
Thimble kicked and bit and pounded on the ogre’s hand to no avail.
The ogre put Thimble back down on his feet and patted his head. “When you want it back, you let me know.” The ogre pulled a key on a string out from beneath his coarse tunic and unlocked the only cabinet in the house. Thimble saw a flash of gold, a wink of jewels, then the ogre tossed his dress in there and locked the door.
“Monster,” Thimble grumbled without much heat.
The ogre shrugged and went about crushing sticks into sawdust.
The truth was, now that he was out of that dress he felt much better. More like his old self. Free to make his own choices and to come or go as he pleased. And even though the ogre was as tempermental as the three-year-old girl, Thimble could handle that so long as there weren’t any plastic doll shoes hidden away in the cabinet. Better yet, now he could go back to dreaming about a proper set of clothes, maybe even a jaunty hat. He felt better than he had in years. Thimble curled up, with nothing but dry leaves for a bed, and chuckled, “crazy as an ogre.”
The ogre just grunted in reply.
THE ROSE, THE FARMBOY, AND THE GNOME
Phaedra M. Weldon
Phaedra M. Weldon lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia. Forty hours a week she works as a graphic artist amid a strange but lovable group of people and the rest of her time is spilt among her daughter, husband, cat, puppy, and writing. She began her publishing career in the first Start Trek anthology, Strange New Worlds. Her work has been in subsequent Star Trek forums, including a Starfleet Core of Engineers (S.C.E.) novella, “Blackout.” Her first original short story, “By the Rules,” appeared in Gateways. She has since sold “The Light of Ra” to the anthology Hags, Witches, and Other Bad Girls, and three Classic BattleTech universe stories, “En Pas sant,” “Personal Best,” and “Be Not Afraid of Greatness,” all published on the BattleCorps Web site. She also created and is writing the cannon-character-based BattleCorps serial, The Moral Law. Currently she is working on a two-book fantasy-noir mystery for Penguin/Ace.
THE YARD GNOME CACKLED loudly between Jed’s ears. Stupid git. Make a wish—come on—I can turn them all into stone.—
The headline splashed across the evening edition of the Goblin Globe read, “Local Pauper to Wed Princess Penelope.” The onionskin newspaper lay in a sprawled, upside-down fan across the worn and termite-ridden wooden floor of Farmboy Jed’s one-room shack. Jed could see this clearly from his present position—suspended upside down from his ceiling. His shirt no longer hung over his head and arms, as it had been just recently removed by one of the evening’s guests.
He preferred to look at the fortunes of other poor men because if he looked straight ahead, he’d see the floating feet of the Gotti trio, the city’s most notorious “debt retriever” gang of fairies.
“Whu-whu-whu-wait!” Jed cried out as the two gorgeous blondes with bobbing breasts (which looked a mite gravity-defying from Jed’s new point of view) spread his legs wide, exposing his most valuable assets.
Uncle Gotti’s tiny wings were nothing but a gray blur to Jed as the roundish, toothbrush-mustached fairy moved to a better position so Jed could see him. “I’m afraid the time for mercy is over, dear Jed.” The fairy’s voice was soft, sweet, in a singsong, cavity-forming way. “With interest, and six false promises, I’m afraid your total owed has reached one thousand gold pieces.”
One—thousand—gold—
The roar of blood whooshing past Jed’s ears deafened him for an instant. He took several deep breaths as he held up (or down, according to perspective) the index finger of his right hand. The Gottis had already taken the left one several months ago. “Uh—excuse me. But did you just say one thousand?”
Uncle Gotti nodded. Jed could hear the tinkle of tiny annoying fairy bells.
“But my debt was only fifty.”
“Don’t forget our interest. Oh—” Uncle Gotti glanced away from Jed, and he could only imagine that the brutish fairy had looked at his nieces. “You should never have professed your ability to find the shard of some great deity with promises that it would redeem your debt. Oh, really, Jed—and that ridiculous claim that the Elves over in Glenwood Glade held a secret talisman capable of granting magic.” He chuckled and held on to the straining belt about his middle. “’Twas the Prince who found the treasures, and you—Farmboy Jed—brought back the ridiculous statue of a gnome.”
There were several snorts and a bullhorn laugh. If there was one thing Jed had learned during his brief (very brief) dalliance with a Gotti daughter, it was that beauty truly did run skin deep. Matilda and Mattie—the two buxom blondes who now traced their razor-sharp nails up and down his exposed chest and moving ever closer to his jewels—had voices like grinding metal, and sharp Tren ton, New Jersey, accents to boot. And their laughter—
Well, he was sure he could somehow find a nice and willing Wizard who could conjure him in another set of back teeth. That is, if he didn’t lose his skin, which was the standard price for debts these days.
“You couldn’t even steal a babe from its cradle for the Elves, Jed.”
Well, it wasn’t like stealing children was a common occurrence nowadays, right? Changelings did not come cheap, and more humans were affording better security systems. Stealing children from cribs had become an all-out specialty skill and not something any upstanding citizen did in today’s politically correct climate. Though the pay if one was successful was astronomical.
“But-but the gnome,” he tried to protest, though his tongue swelled with the flood of blood to his head. “
It has great powers. The Elves said so!”
“And you trust Elven magic? How do you know that gnome out there isn’t what’s left of the last schmuck who tried to steal from them?” Another round of raucous, porcelain-shattering laughter from the girls, and Jed bit down on his remaining teeth. He did not want to lose those as well. He struggled against the magic curse imprisoning his feet, but there was no escaping. Jed was only a man, a simple human, and subject to the laws and whims of magic.
Which just royally stunk.
He was also getting dizzy from the blood pooling at the top of his skull. With a grunt he looked up (or down, whichever way you look at it) and saw the headlines again.
Lucky pauper. Why couldn’t he have rescued a Princess? Then he’d be marrying rich. He’d be a Prince. And he’d be powerful.
Wait.
Why not?
Princesses get kidnapped all the time, right? It was as daily an occurrence as muggings in the city square. Certainly there’s bound to be another one any day now—and then Jed could go and rescue her. They’d marry—and he’d be rich! As a prince, he might even be able to have these criminals (not him of course—he never actually stole the baby, now did he?) thrown in the dungeon and not pay them one gold coin.
He dreamed of stringing them up by their pointy little shoes and plucking their wings off one by one.
Yes!
But wait—would the Gottis give him another chance? No, not with any normal promise of repayment with interest. And they’d never go for another treasure-seeking quest. And as for enlightenment? Too overrated.
It’d have to be something special—something they couldn’t take by force. He couldn’t think of anything he had that valuable.
Jed wasn’t sure if it was delirium brought on by the blood filling his brain or by the thought of being disem boweled by buxom blondes, but he gasped inwardly as his mouth spat out “Wait! Give me a week and if I don’t deliver the gold, you can have my—”
He managed to slap his hands over his mouth before he spat out something he’d regret—he couldn’t believe he’d been about to offer them that!
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