by Kevin Hearne
Using his hands, which he still considered quite a parlor trick, Gustave picked up and held out all the papers in question. Grinda took them and sorted through them one by one, her eyebrows drawing dangerously down as she read the letters. When she tossed down the pea-za flyer, Gustave muttered, “Hey!”
Grinda sighed the sigh she used when Gustave did something horribly and unavoidably goatish. He pre-winced, just to be ready when he learned what he’d done wrong.
“This is a problem,” she finally said.
“Pea-za is a problem?”
“Not that.”
“My hands? I used them wrong?”
“No, Gustave, it’s—”
“I swear I’m not ‘watering’ the indoor plants anymore.”
Grinda sighed even more loudly, which was Gustave’s signal to shut up.
“The problem is not you, your highness. It’s as you’ve said. Whatever is occurring between the halflings and gnomes isn’t good, and it would seem our Lord Ergot is rather anxious to cover up how bad it is or at least ignore it, so long as it raises his tax base.”
“What’s he got against gnomes? Aren’t all people welcome everywhere in Pell?”
“Legally, yes, that’s supposed to be the case. In practice, we have groups of people who like to isolate themselves from others. They welcome people who look like them and make anyone who’s different feel unwelcome. The elves in the Morningwood, for example, don’t allow anyone to stay; all must pass through.”
“Right, I knew about them. Well do I remember our sudden and explosive expulsion from the Morningwood. But why won’t Lord Ergot help these gnomes?”
Grinda shrugged. “It may simply be a strain on his resources. He’s not really supposed to be in charge of those people.”
“Who is, then? Who’s in charge in the Skyr? Didn’t we have an earl come here for my crowning ceremony?”
“The Skyr sent the halfling portion of the kanssa-jaarli.”
“The halfling portion of, uh, what was that, a dessert?”
“The kanssa-jaarli is an Alphagnomeric term for the leadership of the Skyr. Two earls—one gnome and one halfling—ruling in tandem.”
“And Alphagnomeric is…?”
“The language of the gnomes. Very difficult to learn. They do speak Pellican as well, of course.”
Gustave’s head was spinning, and not just with hunger for pea-za. “Okay, great. I know that I’ve seen at least one gnome and one halfling before, but I just thought of them as tiny humans who would still eat me if given a chance. There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
“Indeed, there is.”
Sashaying across the room, Grinda selected a book from a shelf and brought it back to the divan. She sat beside Gustave, who no longer considered this a predator’s attempt to cunningly lure him into complacency before sticking a fork in his rump. Opening the book and flipping to the page she wanted, Grinda pointed to a cheerful and round-looking person in bright woolen clothes, standing beside a watering can, which was about the same size.
“This is a gnome. Gnomes are about knee-high, before they put a hat on, and they are known for being tidy, industrious, hardworking, and deeply concerned with getting along and gadgetry.”
“He looks spiffy.”
“That’s a woman. Female gnomes have beards, you see.”
“Just like goats! I like them already.”
Grinda turned the page and pointed at a lankier person with a mop of curly hair echoed on fuzzy fingers and excessively large bare feet. “This is a halfling. Halflings are supposed to be a friendly and creative people interested in fine foods, bespoke tobacco, and copious amounts of ale. Harmless hedonists who write excellent poetry. But we’ve since heard stories that the halflings of the Skyr have developed a—”
“Festering boil?” Gustave added helpfully, as he’d been very surprised when it had happened to him.
“A problem with organized crime,” Grinda finished. “You see, after the Giant Wars of 882, the gnomes and halflings worked together to build a crevasse to keep the giants out. The gnomes are excellent architects, and the halflings are excellent labor, provided they’re fed nineteen times a day, so they were able to complete a marvel of the world with their combined talents. Without the threat of being turned into appetizers for giants, however, they’ve gradually turned into uneasy neighbors in the Skyr rather than staunch allies. This is not the first whisper of unrest to rustle through the castle.”
“I wouldn’t call it a whisper. I mean, the halflings blew up Floopi Nooperkins’s kin Hoopi.”
“Allegedly,” Grinda murmured, her fist on her chin, the book forgotten.
They sat there in companionable but frustrated silence for a moment, and Gustave greatly missed the practice of chewing his cud, which had once been very relaxing. Grinda had since informed him that the word ruminating applied both to regurgitating food and to thinking about something with a sort of grindy feeling in the brain, and he vastly preferred the chewing option.
“Somebody needs to do something,” Gustave finally said.
Grinda turned to look at him, unblinking. “That would be you, sire.”
Gustave stared at her and her eyes widened as she realized she’d made a mistake.
“I mean sir! Sorry, I forgot.” Gustave didn’t like the idea of being anyone’s sire, even in a metaphorical sense. He put up with your highness and your majesty and other such nonsense, but he’d made it clear that he preferred to be addressed as sir, just like any common person worthy of respect. He just happened to be the one sir who had to make big decisions, and Grinda never hesitated to remind him of that. “You’re the king, and it’s your kingdom.”
“I know. But what do I do? I mean, this greasy letter says it’s from ‘the halflings,’ but even with our carefully selected, well-trained, and nicely paid postale service, I don’t think they’d know how to deliver a letter addressed to all of them. And this Nooperkins guy seems Quite Foine, but how do I find him if he’s fled to Bruding, and what do I give him to make up for the fact that his uncle got exploded?”
Grinda held out her beringed fingers. “Here is your first test, your majesty. Two people in one place. Each wants something different. Violence is involved. How do you propose to solve this problem?”
Gustave reached for a cherry, trying not to think about the Nooperkinses. Chewing helped him think, even if it wasn’t a delicious boot or a patch of luscious grass.
“What I need to do,” he said slowly, his eyes rolling in opposite directions and his ears drooping a bit with muscle memory from his caprine days, “is to go over to the Skyr and sort this out personally.”
Much to his surprise, Grinda beamed.
“Excellent, King Gustave. I’ll set it up.”
“Set up what?”
“The meeting.”
“With who?”
“Whom?”
“What?”
“The meeting.”
Gustave let his head fall into his hands.
“Cud was so much easier than grammar,” he groaned.
“I’ll set up a meeting with the kanssa-jaarli and make it clear that the halfling and the gnome must both attend. We should invite Lord Ergot too, since he has an interest in resolving this. We’ll have to research the historical documents governing the, er, governance of the Skyr. Beyond the title of kanssa-jaarli, which was created after the Giant Wars, I’m unfamiliar with how they run things, I admit. But we must know where the law stands, discover where each side stands, and consider where you, the king, wish to stand.”
“Maybe I should stand behind a large number of armored soldiers if there’s going to be violent bits.”
Grinda put a hand on his shoulder, which was no longer bony and furry. He leaned in to her a little bit, and she gave his shoulder a scratch. When he’d m
agically transformed from goat to human, Gustave had changed a great deal in body but not in mind and heart. Some of his old comforts still remained, although very few people knew about them. The castle staff was paid very well never to mention the midnight bleating.
“Standing around doing nothing would be nice, I’m sure, but that’s not how it works anymore,” Grinda said gently. “We may not know what’s going on yet, but I suspect there is much good you can do in the Skyr. It won’t be easy, but most things worth doing aren’t.”
Gustave sighed and stood. Gently toppling the tower of mail, he couldn’t help noticing how very many smallish, square, tidy letters he saw neatly addressed from the sorts of places that just flat out sounded gnomeric. Lots of Ks and Ps. He plucked up several and fanned them out toward Grinda like a deck of cards.
“I bet these are chock-full of Woe,” he said darkly.
“Woeful indeed, I’m sure, your majesty. Let me get started on the details of your trip.”
Grinda swept out of the mail roome, and Gustave took up his letter opener and selected a small, square envelope with a return address in Nokanen. He had research to do. He was the king now, and his Nooperkinses needed him.
“Ping-Pong balls spend more time on Pell as metaphors than they do as necessary components of a sport.”
—ZHOU SANCHEN, in The Secret Lives of Balls
Offi all but fell through the human-sized door, his pack tumbling from his callused hands onto a nicely swept floor. Finally, the Numminen family had reached the refugee center, and for one brief moment he did not feel dismal. He only felt relief.
The road to Bruding had been dusty and lonely at first, and then Seppo’s pony whickered at some familiar smell. The Numminens had found a long line of gently smoldering gnomes toting their remaining unexploded possessions toward the human town of Bruding, where, rumor had it, they could live in peace, far from halfling malice, naked or otherwise. The road, at least, was kept clean by the nightly camps of gnomes settling around well-built fire pits. Wherever the soil by the cobblestone road was rich, vegetables and flowers grew in neat rows, which told Offi how many refugees had passed this way, planting a seed and leaving their trash in tidy compost heaps, as was the gnomeric fashion. It felt almost like a pleasant trip, until he thought of something he needed—a favorite mechanical pencil or delicate screwdriver or his pile of hoarded black yarn made from only the most nihilistic alpacas—and remembered that he’d left all his belongings at his halfling-bombed home, save this one small pack.
The bored human guarding the gate to the city of Bruding was the first one Offi had ever seen, outside of his schoolbooks, which had pictured humans with altogether more arms and sharper teeth. The guard had ordered the caravan to divide itself into groups of twenty, with each group sent to a different refugee center to ensure that supplies were distributed fairly. The card he handed Seppo gave roughly scrawled directions to a large building of the sort humans seemed to favor: boxy, shapeless, boring, yet without a single straight line. Offi considered the sign hanging outside particularly worrisome; it read, THE LORD ERGOT LIVING MEMORIAL PING-PONG PALACE AND REFUGEE CENTER, putting much more emphasis on the Ping-Pong than on the refugees, since the last bit was scrawled in an uneven hand while the first bit was nicely printed. The door was human-sized and had no handle within a gnome’s reach, but when Seppo knocked, it swung open to reveal yet another armed and towering human. The fine hairs on the back of Offi’s neck prickled. If this place was so safe and welcoming to gnomes, why were there so many armed human guards?
Seppo gave his card to the human within, and the human sighed and grumbled, “Come on, then. Almost at capacity as it is. The ponies will have to go.”
“To where?” Onni asked.
“The hostler or the knacker, depending on how much money you have or need,” the man said, looking crafty.
Onni dutifully led the family ponies to find a hostler, and Offi did the almost-falling-in-relief thing and took the extra bags to save his exhausted mother the burden. Seppo seemed distracted and unusually quiet.
The building inside was beyond disappointing. The crooked stone walls were dirty and scrawled with Pellican graffiti, the words so high, large, and grammatically horrific that they could only be the work of humans. The man led their group down a long hallway. They passed several closed doors and a befuddled but harmless-looking dwarf—but no halflings, at least.
Finally, the human stopped outside a closed door. Pulling a heavy ring of clanking keys from his belt, the man unlocked the door and pushed it open to reveal a room lined with uncomfortable-looking human-sized wooden bunks along two walls. A window let in just enough light to make it dreary beyond all hope.
As the man turned to leave, Offi looked to his father, but Seppo seemed a sad shade of his former self. No one else stepped forward with questions or thanks. Offi wished Onni was there, with his charisma and can-do attitude, but someone had to speak up. So Offi did, for all that he felt very awkward.
“Wait, if you please, sir. Can you tell us about this place? We’ve heard many rumors, but our people are frightened and could use some encouragement.”
The guard spat on the ground, causing all the gnomes to shudder.
“It’s a refugee center. You’re refugees. So you stay until it’s safe to go back home. Provisions arrive once a week. Each room handles its own problems.”
Still, Seppo didn’t speak, didn’t lead. So Offi kept going.
“But who is in charge? How will we know when it’s safe to leave?”
“The government is in charge, and they’ll tell you when it’s safe. That’s the whole point of government, innit?” Shaking his head in disgust, the guard disappeared out the door, and Offi joined his fellow gnomes in a brief Incredible Sulk, their shoulders falling and the crowns of their knit hats tipping toward the ground.
Gnomes felt safest underground or, barring that, under a nice bush. They liked the company of their own kind but definitely required a reasonable amount of privacy for beard oiling and occasional hat removal. Sleeping here, in a large stone room surrounded by other gnomes, without walls or tents or hatches between them, felt as foreign as the thought of shaving one’s beard off.
“We’re doomed,” Seppo said, right as Onni walked in. Offi was already nodding along with his father, his brief attempt at leadership having drained him completely. He felt out of sorts in so many ways, especially since his dated bug-out bag contained only cheerful cardigans a size too small, none of the comfortable black ones he’d knitted recently. Even worse, Onni’s bag held…identical cardigans, down to the embroidered unicorns.
But Onni did that thing he always did, the one where he put his hands on his hips and looked around as if the sun was always rising on a fine and frolicsome day, and it seemed to Offi that a golden light always shone on his brother, what with his good eyes and strong chin and the way his hair tended to make one perfect little blond curl on his forehead. Onni, he thought, would look quite good wearing a cape.
It wasn’t that Offi didn’t like his brother; it was just that he was realizing that Onni was like a lantern, while Offi was more like a cold, inky cave, an endless tunnel of darkness and echoes. He’d even written some poetry recently that, he felt, expanded on this metaphor in a way that a kuffeehouse full of other people in black might appreciate, if he could ever find such a magical place. He grimaced as his twin began to speak.
“We’re not doomed,” Onni said with great confidence. “We must stay positive. I looked in the other refugee rooms on my way in—the doors were open, after all—and it would appear we can modify whatever we want, chop up the furniture to build things of the proper size. The humans don’t seem to notice much. A little building, a little trading, a little painting tulips and polka dots, and we’ll have this place gnomeworthy in no time.”
Venla raised her head and tugged her beard with pride, but Old Seppo’s
head still hung. The fiery determination he’d shown earlier to return to their gnomehome and take vengeance on the halflings had somehow been extinguished.
“Uh, sure,” Offi said, trying to be supportive for the sake of his parents. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing them gloomier than he felt, and it was rattling.
And then, as usual, Onni decided what was needed was a good old-fashioned quote from the Book of Gnowledge.
“If your life’s not feeling that zing, an impossible project is just the thing!”
When Seppo didn’t respond and none of the other, older gnomes took charge, Onni pointed at one of the bunks and asked, “Well, who has a saw? Let’s get busy making some walls. Mother, perhaps you’d like to set up your cookpot by the window and get a pudding going? And, Offi…” He looked at his brother, and Offi hunched his shoulders and glared, fairly certain that Onni was about to turn him into an errand boy. “Why don’t you investigate the building and see if there are any additional resources? Provisions, or wood we can build with, perhaps?”
“Fine,” Offi grumbled, because arguing with Onni just now would leave him up to his ears in gnomeric aphorisms and clever rhymes about zep and pep. Around him, the Sulk became a Coalescing. The gnomes looked up, one by one, smiling, reaching for their saws and mallets and pudding spoons. Although Offi’s instinct was to trade a lemon-yellow cardigan for some black yarn and find a quiet corner in which to start knitting until he felt like himself again, Onni clapped him on the back and shoved him toward the open door, so out the door Offi went, adjusting his large glasses so that he wouldn’t stumble. He wanted to get away from his brother—from everybody, for privacy had been impossible on the trail and all the gnomes were too fond of square dancing—so he stepped into the hall and set about exploring the rest of the facility, although he silently committed to not enjoying it.
