by Abby Smith
“And take a sweatshirt, Allie,” Mom added. “There’s supposed to be a cold front moving through tonight. We may actually see normal fall weather tomorrow.”
I pulled a blue hoodie off the pegs next to the back door and tied it around my waist. I shouldered my backpack and picked up one of the sleeping bags.
Andie was already waiting for me. “Ready, Freddy?”
“Ready!” I replied. “C’mon Socks!”
The sun was just starting to set as we set off down the lane toward the cottage. Socrates trotted ahead of us carrying an enormous branch in his mouth, turning his head over his shoulder periodically to make sure we were still following. I wondered where he thought we were going. The breeze was cooler and dark gray clouds gathered on the horizon, moving in our direction.
We walked in silence until the lane forked, the right path leading into our woods and the left to Aunt May’s property. We veered left, while Socrates took off into the woods on some unexplained dog mission.
Two ancient silver beech trees just past the woods towered over the eastern edge of Aunt May’s property. The cottage was about three hundred feet away, a tiny wood shingled house, painted a rather boring off-white at the moment, with a gray shingled roof, red brick chimney, and dark red shutters with pineapples cut out of the center hanging on either side of the windows.
The old red barn where the alpacas lived lay behind the cottage, next to the large paddock enclosed by the black post and beam fence my father built. The barn was dark and the paddock was empty. Apparently, the strangers hadn’t returned with the alpacas yet. That was odd. What could they be doing with them?
We walked up a short path of uneven, mossy paving stones to the front door of the cottage. A welcome mat with a picture of a gnome in a blue hat standing under a mushroom greeted us with the phrase Gnome Sweet Home. OK, that was a little tacky. Like the barn, the cottage was dark, and eerily silent in the fading evening light. For the first time, it hit me that Aunt May wouldn’t be coming back. I shivered.
My parents had left the front door unlocked, and I eased it open.
I stepped over the threshold, listening intently. An old cuckoo clock tick-tocked in the living room directly across from the entryway.
“Hello?” I called out, immediately feeling stupid. Who did I think would be here? Andie stepped up behind me and we both peered around in the dim light.
“Creepy!” I announced in a cheerful, singsong tone.
“Oh get over it,” Andie put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me forward.
A small wooden staircase to the right of the entrance led upstairs to Aunt May’s sleeping loft. I walked past it toward the kitchen, Andie following closely behind me. When I reached the kitchen door I stopped, and she bonked into me.
“Ow! Stop it!” We both started giggling. I fumbled along the wall with my hand until I found the light switch.
The kitchen seemed smaller to me than it had when I was a kid. The wood-topped counter I stood at so many times roughly divided the room in half, with the cooking area in front of us and the kitchen table on the other side of it, in the corner of the room. The food was still spread out on the table where we placed it earlier, and the windows were still open, blue checkered curtains puffing in the breeze. Not much had been eaten. A few dishes and cups were stacked in the sink, a few left sitting out on the counters.
“We might as well leave the food out for now,” Andie said. “Maybe we won’t need to order pizza after all.”
“Yeah. C’mon, let’s go see what Aunt May left me.”
The kitchen dining area opened into the living room. A large picture window faced the back yard with a view of the barn and paddock. Two bright blue squishy sofas sat on either side of a coffee table piled with books. Across the room, the cuckoo clock ticked on the mantle above a fireplace, and in the corner to the right, books splayed across Aunt May’s writing desk. Books were stacked two rows deep on the bookshelves that lined the walls. If the shelves were full, books were stacked on top of the bookcases, or on the floor next to them. Andie dropped her sleeping bag and backpack to the floor and flicked on a lamp.
“So... your Aunt May liked to read?”
“Yeah, I mean, I remember lots of books in here, but I didn’t remember it being this bad.” I dumped my backpack and sleeping bag in the corner and rummaged through one of the piles on the coffee table.
“Hey, Andie, listen to this.” I picked up the first book on the pile. “The Book of Useful People.” I continued flipping through them. “The Importance of Color, Famous Gatekeepers, The Book of Useful Phrases….”
“Hey, let me see that.” Andie took the last book from my hand and opened it.
“Chapter One: Please go away,” she read.
We both laughed.
“What else is there?” I asked, grabbing a new book.
A loud crash from the kitchen interrupted us. We froze and stared at each other.
“Are those windows still open?” Andie asked.
“Oh, man. I wonder if a raccoon or squirrel smelled the food and crawled in.” I rushed back to the kitchen, with Andie following.
I stopped abruptly at the entrance, causing Andie to run into me again.
And then I screamed.
At first I thought it was a squirrel or raccoon that had snuck in through the open windows, lured by the assortment of treats. But even before I finished screaming I realized that the little creature standing in the middle of Aunt May’s kitchen table was definitely not a rodent or four-legged mammal of any sort.
He was about twelve inches tall, wearing a green tweed coat, brown trousers, and a pair of wooden clogs on his stocking-clad feet. A red Santa hat flopped down over his snowy-white hair and beard. He had frosting on his face, a fistful of cake in each hand, and enormous blue eyes, wide with terror. When I screamed, he opened his mouth and started shrieking, a high pitched wail that quickly rose to a hysterical, siren-like noise. Big globs of cake dropped out of his mouth, and crumbs sprayed around the table.
Andie started screaming too, making three of us. The tiny Santa creature turned red and looked increasingly hysterical, waving his cake-filled hands and running in circles around a pie on the table. He looked so ridiculous that my scream turned to a laugh.
“It’s OK, it’s OK! Shh! You win! Please stop!” I begged.
Andie put a hand to her chest and leaned into the wall.
I crept toward the kitchen table with my hands outstretched, hoping this was a universal symbol for I’m not dangerous.
“It’s OK! I’m not going to hurt you.”
He stopped screaming, panting a little from his effort.
“My name’s Allie,” I said, feeling ridiculous. “I’m Aunt May’s—May, she’s the woman who used to live here—I’m her great niece, which is, like, a type of relative, I mean she’s my mom’s aunt, but we all call her Aunt May.”
I cringed. That probably would have left even a real person confused.
He breathed heavily, regarding me warily.
“Do you have a name? Did you know Aunt May?”
Could he even understand a word I was saying?
He pressed his lips together and swallowed hard. He wiped the remaining cake from his hands onto his stockings, grabbed his jacket lapels, and stood up very straight.
“My name is Pettikin—Pettikin Periwinkle, but you can call me Pettikin. I’m a gnome,” he said in a small, clear voice.
I heard a thud behind me. Andie had fainted and was slumped on the kitchen floor.
3
“Andie, can you speak?”
I crouched over her, my mind racing through the CPR steps we had learned in Health class the previous spring.
“Is she dead?” Pettikin, on hands and knees, peered over the edge of the table.
My brain went into overload trying to process both CPR and a curious gnome at the same time.
“What? No, I don’t think…”
Andie moaned, and I shook my head to clea
r my thoughts. Best friend. Fix best friend first.
“Andie, are you OK?”
She put one hand to her head.
“What happened?”
“You fainted, I think,” I said, helping her sit up. She still seemed a little queasy. “Maybe you should put your head between your knees for a minute.”
I had no idea if that would actually work, but it sounded good. She folded her arms across her knees and put her head, face-down, on top of them.
We were all quiet for a moment.
“Hey, Al?” Andie’s voice was muffled under her arms.
“Yeah?”
“There’s a gnome on the kitchen table, isn’t there?”
“Yes. Yes, there is.”
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Pettikin said, sounding quite sincere.
Andie raised her head and caught my eye. If my expression matched what I was feeling, she probably didn’t find it reassuring.
“Uh, thanks. OK, I think I can get up now.”
Pettikin retreated to the far edge of the kitchen table and glanced to either side as if searching for possible escape routes. I wished they taught how to deal with a stray gnome in Health class, instead of CPR.
“Um…is it OK if we sit down?” I slid a chair back from the table and sat down. Andie took the chair to my right.
Andie and Pettikin watched me as if waiting for me to say something. Why was I in charge?
Pettikin’s earlier eating spree had left cake crumbs, half-eaten cookies, and brownie carcasses splayed across the table. Carrots, cauliflower, and celery, on the other hand, were strewn across the kitchen floor next to a silver platter, presumably accounting for the earlier crash. I wondered if it was OK that he bypassed anything with nutritional value.
“Did you get enough to eat? I mean, we kind of interrupted you—are you still hungry?”
He hesitated. Thinking maybe he was shy, I took three peanut butter cookies from a nearby plate, passed one to Andie and held another out to Pettikin.
For a moment he didn’t move, as if making some internal decision. Finally he stepped forward and took the cookie from me. He plopped down on the table, his legs spread out in a V, holding the cookie in front of him like a shield.
In slow motion, we all took bites of our cookies and chewed.
I swallowed.
“So, Pettikin—I don’t know where to start. I mean, we’ve never seen a gnome before, not a real one.”
“That’s because there aren’t any gnomes on Earth. Not anymore.”
On Earth? Was this a joke? Were we being filmed or something?
“What are you doing here, then? Did you live with Aunt May?”
“No, I don’t live here. I should never have come here….” His voice trailed off.
I absentmindedly broke my cookie into ever smaller pieces as I watched him.
“I’m lost,” he whispered, so quietly I could barely hear him. His eyes filled with tears. “I’m lost on a Forbidden World.”
“What’s a Forbidden World?” Andie asked.
“One of the worlds we’re not supposed to travel to—at least not alone.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Pettikin bowed his head so I had to lean forward to make sure I could hear his answer.
“Because on the Forbidden Worlds, the Gateways have been closed.”
“What Gateways?” I asked.
“The Gateways to the other worlds, the other dimensions.”
My cookie was a pulverized mound of dust in front of me.
“So you came here from another world?” I asked.
“Yes, Arcorn. I come from a dimension called Arcorn.”
“So how did you get here?”
“Through the Gateways, of course.” Pettikin looked at the confused expressions on our faces. “You really don’t know anything about the Gateways?”
Andie and I both shook our heads.
“Then I guess it’s true that, on the Forbidden Worlds, you’re not even aware of them anymore.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“They’re the doorways that connect all of the worlds in all of the universes to one another. If you can see the Gateways it’s very easy to travel through them, from one world to the next. On my world we can all see them and learn how to travel through them when we’re very young.”
“Are they like physical doorways?”
Pettikin glowed in the yellow kitchen light. “I don’t think they’re physical the way you mean. They aren’t like the doors in this house, for example.”
“What are they like?”
“They’re made of light, of energy. They’re part of the universe you feel around you but don’t necessarily see.”
I was trying to keep up with him. “So when you travel through them, is it like...are you traveling through outer space or something?”
Pettikin giggled. “That would be a really inefficient way to travel between the worlds. It would take forever!”
“Yeah, our astrophysicists have struggled with that,” I said.
Pettikin nodded. “It’s because they don’t know about the Gateways. If they knew about the Gateways, they would know it’s not necessary to travel through physical space to get from one world to the next. I guess you could say that instead of traveling through outer space, the Gateways allow you to travel through inner space to different worlds.”
“So not following,” Andie said. She reached for another cookie. “Hope you’re getting this, Al.”
I wasn’t exactly getting it, but I could sort of follow Pettikin’s explanation. Still, I didn’t know why he was so upset.
“OK, so what happened? I mean, it sounds like traveling through these Gateways is natural for you, like you know what you’re doing. So why did you come here, if you’re not supposed to?”
Pettikin swallowed and blinked his eyes. “Your Aunt May was my friend. She always brought us cookies whenever she visited us—”
I cut him off. “She came to visit you?”
“Yes, Arcorn was one of the worlds she stopped at frequently during her travels. Most of the gnomes were too shy to talk to her, but I’m brave, for a gnome.” He sounded very proud as he said this.
“You’re saying Aunt May, my Aunt May, could travel through these Gateways you’re talking about?”
“Your Aunt May was a Gatekeeper.”
“What’s a Gatekeeper?”
“Someone who guards the Gateways on the Forbidden Worlds. They know how to find and open them there, and how to travel through them.”
A sudden breeze blew through the still open window, stirring the cotton puff tip of Pettikin’s hat. I shivered and got up to close it.
“Your Aunt May came to visit us the other day, on an important mission for the Guardians. She seemed worried about something and left before I had a chance to talk to her. I wanted to make sure she was OK, and when I thought about being with her, I found myself here.”
I sat back down, rubbing my arms for warmth. Pettikin’s eyes brimmed with tears. “But I shouldn’t have done it. I should never have come here.”
“But Pettikin, I don’t understand what’s wrong.” I hated seeing him so upset. “Why don’t you just go back home? You don’t have to stay here. I mean, if Aunt May could travel from here to Arcorn, obviously there’s a way….”
“No, you don’t understand.” Pettikin’s voice was strained. “Only a Gatekeeper can open the Gateways on a Forbidden World. I’m not a Gatekeeper. I can’t even see the Gateways here.”
“Oh no. You came here by yourself, but you need Aunt May in order to get home.”
Pettikin nodded.
“Pettikin, she… she’s dead.” My voice cracked.
Large tears spilled from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He wiped them away with a tweed sleeve.
“I know,” he said.
I put my elbows on the table and pressed my fingers on either side of my forehead, as if that would help keep my head together. Andie leaned back
in her chair, stunned.
Ideas? I asked her silently.
She shook her head.
From the living room, the cuckoo clock chirped once, marking a quarter hour and causing us all to jump. Pettikin inhaled deeply and, for a second, I feared he might start screaming again. But he just exhaled slowly. He finished eating his cookie, sniffling in between bites, tears sliding down his face.
“OK, don’t worry,” I said finally, trying to make my voice sound reassuring. “We’ll think of something. I mean, if Aunt May really was able to travel to your world, then there just has to be a way. We’ll find a way to get you home.”
Pettikin stopped eating. “You’ll help me?” He wiped his face with his sleeve again.
“Well of course we’ll help you! You were Aunt May’s friend! We’re not just going to leave you here alone.”
Pettikin got to his feet and ran over to me faster than I thought possible. He threw his arms around my arm and hugged it tightly. “Oh thank you, Allie, thank you!”
“Aw, it’s OK, Pettikin. Don’t worry.” I patted the top of his head.
“Um, Al?” Andie said. “That’s great and all, but how are we going to do this?”
Pettikin let go of my arm and waited for my answer. His expression was so trusting that I felt a little guilty, since I had no idea what to do.
“Well, um. I’m not sure. Aunt May has a lot of books. Should we try browsing through some of those for ideas?”
“Yes! We must start searching for Gateways!” Pettikin ran to the corner of the table and slid down the leg like a fireman. As soon as he reached the floor he took off for the living room.
“Hang on, wait for us!” I said. How could he move so fast with such little legs?
Pettikin stood on the coffee table when we got there, pouring over book titles. He dragged the ones he didn’t care about to the side by using all his weight and pulling with both hands.
“Here, let us help you,” I said.
It was getting dark outside, so I found another lamp and flicked it on. Andie and I sat down on either side of the coffee table and rummaged through the books while Pettikin peered at the titles. 101 Cookie Recipes, The Guardians, Introductory Gatekeeping….
