by Sam Cheever
That was the moment I realized I would need to get into better shape to do my job. Maybe eat fewer tacos. It was ridiculous to be so out of shape at twenty-two.
“Any idea which office?” Sebille asked Alice.
Alice lifted her hands, palms pointed toward the ceiling, and her eyes glowed silver again. A beat later, she seemed to shake herself out of her daze. “The door at the end of the hall.”
We hurried toward the door she’d indicated, finding it locked. With a sigh, Sebille popped small again and shoved her way through a mail slot in the door. A beat later the lock turned, and she let us into what looked like the offices of an executive.
The small front room had appealing hardwood flooring in a weathered gray. A round, burgundy rug dominated the center of the space, and black leather bucket chairs were arranged along the walls.
The portrait hanging on the wall above a shiny gray receptionist’s desk was of a distinguished-looking gnome, whose long, pointed beard and bushy eyebrows were pure white. The nose above a pair of flowing mustaches was round and red, and the cheeks were a healthy pink color.
The small blue eyes sparkled, making the gnome look harmless and friendly. But the cruel slash of lips told me that was a ruse. I moved close to the painting and examined the brass plate centered on the bottom section of the heavy wood frame. It read, Gerrard Gnomish Senior.
I glanced at Sebille, who’d come up beside me. “This is the owner of the company?”
She shrugged. “Who knows. Those guys all look the same to me.”
She wasn’t wrong. Though I had a feeling the man in the painting wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment. He looked very proud of himself.
“It’s down here,” Alice said, pointing down a short hallway. We passed a door with a bubbled glass window, noting the darkness behind the glass. I read the nameplate on the door and realized it belonged to Mr. Gnomish himself. Or maybe it was Junior Gnomish. If there was a Junior.
Squelching the desire to open the door and peek inside, I hurried after Alice. Sebille stayed behind, her gaze sliding suspiciously toward the door. “Hurry up,” she told us. “I have a bad feeling about this place.”
Alice stopped in front of a second door, one without any glass, and grabbed the handle. She yanked it open without hesitation. For a single heartbeat, nothing happened. Silence throbbed down the hall and Alice stood staring into the space she’d exposed, her eyes alight with silvery energy.
Then everything happened at once.
The lights in the office snapped on, filling every nook with eye-stinging light.
As if she hadn’t noticed the light, Alice reached through the door.
That red light we’d seen downstairs flared again, brief and uneventful.
“Found it,” Alice chirped happily.
Then the lights snapped off, leaving us light-blind as the walls around us seemed to boil with energy.
I started backing away from the door where Alice stood, holding the familiar suitcase. “We need to go,” I told her, fear throbbing in my voice.
She turned to look at me, her face an amorphous blur to my light-blind eyes. I was pretty sure she nodded.
And then something shot out of the place where she’d found the suitcase. There was a roar and Alice sailed backward, smacking hard against the wall across from the door. A soft click sounded above my head and I glanced up. Mistake. Big mistake. A thunderous stream of water roared down on me, hitting me with the force of a baseball bat and sending me to the floor. The water pounded against my skin, bashing my head against the hard floor every time I tried to lift it. I struggled to breathe beneath its onslaught.
Oddly, there was no puddle beneath me. Instead, a sweet, flowery scent rose up to fill my senses.
I heard Sebille cry out behind me, but the water held me on the ground, relentless and painful against my skin.
Finally, the gusher shut off and I forced myself to move, though my body was battered and sore, as if I’d been pounded from head-to-toe by an angry gorilla. I pushed to my knees and looked down in surprise at the thick covering of flower petals across the floor.
Flowers? What in the name of the goddess’s favorite spatula was going on?
Alice groaned, the sound prolonged and filled with pain.
My gaze jerked to the spot where she huddled against the floor. The suitcase lay on its side nearby, covered in flowers.
I shoved to my feet and ran to her.
There were sounds of fighting behind us, and I knew Sebille was in trouble.
“Come on, Alice. Sebille needs help.”
She let me pull her to her feet, shoving a thick mop of hair off her face and scrubbing a hand over her dripping face. I watched in amazement as the droplets of water she shed turned to petals as they hit the floor.
She must have seen the wonder on my face and shook her head. “Garden magic. The water only attacks flesh and blood creatures. When it comes into contact with non-biologics, it turns to flora.”
A slash of green energy sliced down the hallway, exploding in a flash of light a few feet away. Alice grabbed the suitcase and we ran toward the receptionist’s lobby.
I had no idea what I was going to be seeing once we got there. The dark ahead was fractured by bursts of green and orange light. The stench of sulfur filled the air, along with the strong scent of flowers and herbs.
As we ran into the lobby, Sebille screamed, “Watch out!”
We dove to the ground as energy slashed through the air where we’d been. I scurried behind one of the chairs lining the wall, and Alice scrambled the opposite direction, diving underneath the desk as another bolt of magic tried to dissect her.
I watched in amazement as Sebille exchanged bolts of energy with something in the corner. Peering around the chair, I looked around for her nemesis, finding only a haze of smog and a potted plant with oversized, dark green leaves.
Whoever it was must be hiding behind the plant, I decided.
Then the leaves twisted and a large yellow flower emerged from their midst. Sebille, in her dragonfly-sized sprite form, buzzed behind the desk as a jolt of black energy shot from the flower and seared across the wall behind where she’d been.
She was fighting the flower? I blinked in surprise and, I’ll admit it, a little fascination. The world I’d entered was truly amazing.
And deadly.
I couldn’t forget that part.
I looked at Sebille, who was keeping the desk between her and the angry blossom. “What do you want us to do?”
The flower sent several bolts of its deadly energy into the desk, propelling pieces of it into the air in jagged strips.
In a moment of pure clarity, I realized it was trying to get to Alice.
Sebille dodged low to the ground and buzzed over to me, landing on my shoulder. She smelled of flowers and green growing things. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“What’s going on is that we’re not getting out of here with that suitcase,” she responded angrily.
I frowned. I couldn’t imagine why Gnomish, Inc. would be so determined to hold onto an old suitcase artifact that it would use deadly force to keep it.
I suddenly wished I knew exactly what that suitcase could do.
Alice’s face appeared at the end of the desk. The plant fired several more times, shearing off another chunk of her barrier. “It’s all gone to pot, ladies,” she said. “We need to scamper.”
Sebille rolled her eyes. “Now, why didn’t I think of that.”
13
Well, This Is A Bit Of A Damp Squib I’nt?
Sebille and I ducked as another round of energy blasted into the chair we were hiding behind. It blew the chair backward, turning me into a greasy splat on the wall.
Sebille cannonballed skyward before the plant had a chance to refocus and plunged downward, hitting the dirt in the planter and sending it into the air in a tiny brown geyser.
Almost immediately, the dirt lit up in a green haze that sent the plant into paroxysms of
vibrating and wobbling. The frantic flailing had the plant’s wooden “arms” banging against the wall in an unsuccessful effort to rid itself of the “bug” infestation.
Energy seeped downward from the surface of the soil, even as dirt continued to geyser upward, painting the floor around the plant in a dusting of dirt.
With a final, violent wobble that nearly topped it to the ground, the plant finally went still, its stalk doubling over and shriveling up as if it had been dead for weeks.
Gasping and coughing up dust, the sprite burst from the soil and flew my way with dirt sifting off her wings.
In a blast of light and flower-scented energy, Sebille popped back into her human size. Wiping mud from her eyes, she headed for the door. “Come on, the alert has gone out. There will be a lot more trouble between us and the door.”
Alice emerged from behind the desk, the suitcase bouncing against her leg as she ran toward the door. I scraped myself off the wall and followed, wondering what in the world I’d gotten myself into.
It didn’t take long for me to find out.
Sebille cracked the door open and glanced around. Then she turned back to us and nodded, holding her finger to her lips for quiet.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. After being nearly drowned by flower petals and obliterated by a potted plant, I’d slither down the hall on my belly if I thought it would get us safely out of that horrible place.
We followed Sebille down the hall toward the stairs. She jolted to a stop on the top step, her body going rigid.
I peeked over her shoulder and gave a quiver of alarm.
The area at the bottom of the stairs was filled with waiting forms, their postures rigid and their gazes sparking with hostility.
The sinister cast to their lips had changed, becoming more menacing as they waited in silence. There were dozens of them, and every wooden face was focused on us.
It was the gnomes that had lined the wall in the lobby. Each one holding a spade, or a shovel, or a deadly-looking three-pronged cultivator in their knobby wooden grips.
Alice peered over Sebille’s other shoulder and grimaced. “Well, this is a bit of a damp squib I’nt?” she murmured softly.
Sebille snorted out a laugh. “A bit. Any suggestions?”
We shared a look. I was at a loss. Alice shrugged. Sebille sighed. “Alice, is that suitcase worth dying over?” she finally asked.
To my shock, Alice seemed to be giving that some thought. Finally, she said simply, “Yes.”
Sebille sighed again. “Okay, this is what we’ve got. Those things are wooden soldiers.”
My mind went blank on her words, picturing harmless toys that were safe for toddlers to play with.
She looked into my blank expression and rolled her eyes.
I was really getting tired of the rolling eyes thing. It was giving me a complex. I clamped down on the desire to remind her I was only two days into the job. But I was all too painfully aware of my inadequate knowledge of magic and magic users. I realized I should have been more curious growing up. As soon as I noticed the anomalies…the odd items following me around…the way electronic devices went snowy and jumped around when I passed by…I should have looked into the magic background I knew was my hereditary legacy.
I’d been a coward. And now I needed the Wizard to give me courage. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“They’re similar to a golem, but they’re made of wood.” Alice narrowed her gaze on me. “You do know what a golem is, right?”
Only about half, but I nodded. “Are they dangerous?”
“Very,” Sebille said. “They have only one purpose, and they don’t stop until they achieve it. They’re nearly impermeable. They’re formed of wood from a magical forest. They can’t be cut, burned, drowned or shot.”
“And don’t forget they have very sharp garden implements in their hands,” Alice said, grimacing.
“So, what you’re telling me is that we’re as corked as the goddess’s favorite wine?” I asked.
“Basically,” Alice agreed, almost cheerfully.
“We have to have options,” I whined unprofessionally. My mind raced over the possibilities as silence descended once again.
Sebille finally said. “They’re not sentient in the way we think of it. They don’t rationalize or adjust. They just lock on and go.”
A thought occurred to me. “What if we didn’t look like their intended victims?”
Both Alice and Sebille frowned in confusion.
I didn’t know much, but I did know some things. For example, I knew that sprites were good for gardens. Which meant she probably had some skill in growing things. I eyed the enormous tree, whose branches reached toward the stairway with knobby fingers.
Knobby, strong fingers.
“What if we were covered in leaves or…flowers?” I asked, warming to my idea. “Would they still recognize us?”
Sebille thought about this for a beat and then nodded. “It might work.” She followed my line of sight to the tree, her gaze going speculative.
Unfortunately, our time for discussing and considering was over.
With a long, wailing roar that made my skin crawl and ice coat my brain, the wooden army below us broke its waiting stance and barreled up the stairway toward us.
“The tree!” Sebille yelled unnecessarily.
I was shocked and appalled by how quickly the blocky little soldiers conquered the stairs. In the blink of an eye, they’d cut the distance between us nearly in half, and the stairway shook beneath their combined movement and weight.
Sebille leaped easily across the four-foot space between the stairs and the tree. Hands clasping a sturdy branch, she swung her body lithely to sit astride it, her gaze locked on the quickly ascending army of short, widely-made wooden soldiers. “Hurry up!” she yelled at Alice and me.
We climbed over the railing, teetering on the few inches of exposed stair beyond the railing. The first gnome hit the landing only five steps below us, and Alice leaped, her panicked scream turning shrill enough to hurt my ears.
My head whiplashing back and forth between the approaching gnomes and Alice, I watched in horror as the Keeper fell past the branch she’d been aiming for, her fingertips barely grazing it and then slipping away as she dropped like a rock toward the ground.
I screamed her name, my own voice matching hers for screechiness.
The branch below the one she missed suddenly swerved sideways, breaking her fall and wrapping its smaller branches around her waist as she threatened to bounce off again.
I looked at Sebille and realized that had been her handiwork.
Shimmering green energy swirled around her outstretched hands, and the scent of Spring flowers wafted over me.
Her horrified green gaze sliced past me and widened.
That and the soft scuff of several pairs of shoes on the stair were the only warning I got that I was out of time.
“Jump!” Sebille screamed.
I didn’t turn to see how close they were. Before I could think about the danger of leaping four feet to a branch that might or might not hold my weight, I jumped.
But I didn’t go anywhere.
Several small, hard hands caught my arms before I was away, yanking me roughly backward. I slammed into a wall of painted wood and it gave way, tumbling back down the stairs with me riding them like a boat bouncing inelegantly over river rapids.
We clanged en masse into the railing at the landing that was several steps down, and the wooden “rapids” rolled out from underneath me as I fought to regain my feet.
Something hit me on the back of my neck, just below my skull, and pain scissored through me, creeping outward in a dull throb that made my knees and arms go limp for just a beat.
Another blow landed on my forehead. And another on my right shoulder. Several more hit me in quick succession, until all I could think to do was curl up into a ball and try to keep my most vulnerable parts protected.
The gnomes were eerily
silent. The only noise for a long moment was the meaty sound of their little fists smacking against my flesh.
My cries were muffled by the fact that I was curled into a ball, my face buried in my chest and my arms forming a protective barrier around my head.
Metal clanged loudly above me, causing me to jerk and lift my head.
There was a shovel caught in the uprights of the railing. It was twisting and banging against the metal supports in an effort to get loose.
That was the moment when I knew staying in the fetal position wouldn’t work. They were going to start attacking me with sharp metal implements any second.
I had to move.
Somehow.
The pile of wooden bodies had deepened on top of me. Their weight was more than I could simply shove away. The upside of that pileup was that it was harder for the gnomes with weapons to get to me.
Despite that, I couldn’t risk staying there.
It was only a matter of time before one of those sharp blades found its way to me.
Alice screamed her shrill scream again, and the pile on top of me shifted, lightened, as some of the soldiers headed toward the sound.
I buried my worry for the Keeper behind my need to escape my current predicament. I wouldn’t be any good to her if they hacked me into a million little pieces. I gathered myself, tightening my muscles in preparation for making my move, and then, as another scream sounded in the lobby below, I took a deep breath and shoved upward, sending gnomes flying away from me like cordwood. Some of them tumbled over the railing and thudded against the ground below.
But not enough.
They were on me again in the time it took for me to run across the landing. Hands grabbed at my calves, jerking me to a stop, and my arms flew up as my momentum threw my upper body forward even as my legs were yanked back.
“Naida!” Sebille screamed.
My head jerked up as something wrapped itself around my arms. My protective instincts, already in hyperdrive, slammed into high gear as I tried to jerk away. But the vines that entwined me were like steel. There was no breaking through them without a blade.
