A long time passed. The chomping went on. Was there no limit to the capacity of this beast? The daggertooth had been eating for long enough to consume three Thunderers by now, thought Will. The shytes would soon be spiraling down from the sky to clear up the leavings.
Will was a resilient gnome and gradually his sorrow was replaced by boredom. Certainly he’d done a despicable thing, but apart from himself only Thunderer knew about it, and Thunderer was dead and eaten. And although Thunderer had been a fine rabbit, there were other rabbits in the forest. Young Jack o’ the Warren was reputed to have good riding stock.
Will often ran into Jack in a local gathering place referred to by the female gnomes as “Tom Grog’s Disgusting Drinking Hole.” This rather cumbersome name for a fine establishment had been condensed by the male gnomes into the Disgusting.
Will resolved to visit the Disgusting this very afternoon and talk to Jack. A gnome without a rabbit was only half a gnome. He wondered how long he’d been trapped in his home; maybe it was already afternoon and a perfectly reasonable hour for a beer at the Disgusting. His spirits rising, he reapplied his ear to the door.
The chomping continued, but it seemed to have taken on a regular rhythm quite unlike the snarling, tearing and slobbering he would have expected from a blood-crazed dagger-tooth. This chomping was almost restful in its steady beat, like a slow dance. It was, he now realized, quite unlike the frantic chomp of a predator who ate quickly and occasionally. It was more like the measured chomp of a beast whose life consisted of eating and little else.
It was very much like the chomp of a rabbit.
Cautiously, Will cracked open the door.
A glazed eye stared back at him.
But it was not the friendly glazed eye of Thunderer. It was the evil glazed eye of the daggertooth. And immediately beside the dead beast lay a huge, jagged mass of the rock.
Will remembered the crash he’d heard, and the way the very ground had trembled. He’d assumed it was the dagger-tooth hurling itself against his door in impotent fury. But it seemed the impact of slamming his door had dislodged the rock, which had fallen on the daggertooth’s head. He was a lucky gnome.
And Thunderer, calmly eating dandelions at the mouth of the cavern, was a lucky rabbit.
For a while Will surveyed the scene, enjoying a buoyant sense of relief. Then two thoughts occurred to him. Firstly, flies were beginning to buzz around the corpse and shytes were gathering at the mouth of the cave, peering in with greedy little eyes, shuffling their untidy black wings. Will remembered only too well the episode of the badger. The daggertooth must be got out of there. Thunderer must be harnessed.
But secondly, there were the Kikihuahua Examples, the gnomes’ code of behavior, to be considered. One thing a gnome never did was to Kill another living creature. An observer, seeing Will and Thunderer dragging a body through the forest, might jump to the conclusion that he’d killed something.
So Will went back into his home and spent the rest of the day in contemplation. He emerged at twilight, fought off the shytes, harnessed Thunderer to the corpse, and urged him forward.
As he emerged through the fringe of undergrowth that partially concealed the cave’s entrance there was a roar of acclamation and a crowd of gnomes rushed forward to congratulate him. He was dragged from his rabbit and pounded on the back, and mugs of beer were thrust at him. King Bison pumped his hand and it seemed that the Princess of the Willow Tree gazed at him with approval.
Unaccustomed to such popularity, he smiled and allowed it to go on. Before long they would discover their mistake, but for the time being he would savor this fine evening. He drank deeply from his mug.
“You slew the daggertooth!” the gnomes chorused.
Was that a smile on the Princess’s face? Clearly this was not the time to worry about the Kikihuahua Examples. Neither was it a time for modesty. He raised his mug.
“I slew the daggertooth!” he shouted.
“I heard the cry!” yelled Fat Trish.
“Give us the cry!” they chorused.
The cry? He looked around in some bewilderment until Trish murmured to him the words she’d overheard as Will and the daggertooth had passed into the cave. These words had been repeated to gnome after gnome until they had become legendary in the space of a few hours.
Will drew himself up to his full height. “Away, Thunderer!” he roared into the night sky. “Away!”
The forest rang with cheering. “Away, Thunderer!” they yelled. The words had a glorious ring to them, and they were proud to be gnomes.
Thunderer himself, puzzled by these repeated directions, bounded around the crowd in heavy-footed circles, dragging the body behind.
“This night will live forever in the memory of gnomedom!” King Bison remarked to the Gooligog.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Will’s father skeptically. As gnomedom’s Memorizer, he was solely responsible for historical facts passed on to future generations. “Young Willie has surprised me—and when I’m surprised, I smell a rat. There’s more to this day’s happenings than meets the eye, you mark my words, Bison.”
Annoyed, King Bison swung away from him. The Gooligog needed a good kick in the pants. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Gooligog was in control of history, he’d do it himself. But he didn’t want generations of gnomes to remember him as a brutal leader.
“Will!” he cried.
Will was astride Thunderer again, doing a victory lap. He leaped nimbly to the ground and stood before King Bison, flushed and excited.
“I have an announcement to make!” shouted Bison, and the crowd fell silent. Bison hesitated, looking around. He needed something with which to make a grand gesture—something long and shiny, like the swords the giants carried. But gnomes didn’t use swords. “Kneel before me, Will,” he commanded.
“Kneel?” It seemed an odd thing to do.
“On your knees,” explained Bison.
Will knelt, wondering what would happen next.
Bison made a mental note to invent some badge of office, something symbolic that could be used on grand occasions such as this. Something like a sacred staff, or an ancient gourd. Lacking these amenities, he poured the contents of his mug over Will and roared:
“Henceforth your name shall be Fang! And may the forest ring to the glory of your name!”
The gnomes cheered mightily. Fang wiped beer from his eyes. “Did you have to do that?” he asked, but his ungracious question was drowned in the yells of acclamation. He stood, and found the Princess next to him, actually smiling at him.
“Congratulations … Fang,” she said shyly.
“Oh, thanks.” His lips moved as he practiced his new name. Fang … Fang … This was hardly the time to object, but it wasn’t a name he’d have chosen himself. It had a bloodthirsty ring, unsuitable for a peace-loving gnome.
Then the Miggot caught him by the arm and he started, alarmed as the small eyes bored into his. The Miggot, thought Fang, always had a crazed and cunning look. “The daggertooth may be fit,” intoned the Miggot, who believed in natural selection, “but tonight, I think we can say you’ve proved gnomes are fitter!”
This was praise indeed, and there was more to come. Spector the Thinking Gnome held forth on the psychological benefits of the event. “Fang has done more than rid the forest of a frightful predator,” he concluded, and although the gnomes were not quite sure what else Fang had done, they cheered lustily. A party developed in Fang’s outer cavern, and a ballad was sung in his honor:
A glorious thing to be a gnome,
Away Thunderer! Away Thunderer!
And fight against odds to save your home,
Away Thunderer, away!
The beer flowed and the discussions deepened, and a consensus was reached that would form the basis of the legend of Fang, the Gnome. Long ago, the gnomes had learned the futility of trusting recent events to individual memories. Far better to discuss the matter at an evening get-together, and allow t
he beer to flow and the boasting to take place, and listen to the arguments and the accusations and the denials, and then sleep on the whole thing.
By the time the pale light of morning outlined the tree-tops, and the tired gnomes were awakening, stretching their arms and stumbling off toward their dwellings, it seemed that this was a reasonable summary of the previous day’s events, set in an acceptable form for the Gooligog to Memorize:
Once upon a time a fearsome creature called the daggertooth terrorized the forest of Mara Zion. Many a gnome fell victim to his deadly teeth, until the survivors cowered behind locked doors, facing starvation, their skins pallid from lack of sunlight.
Then up sprang an admirable young gnome and cried “I’ve had enough of this!”
And he laid a trap for the daggertooth. First he tethered hi rabbit Thunderer in a large cave, at the end of which was hi dwelling. Set in the roof of this cave was a vast rock, known ever since as the Rock of Retribution. The young gnome, a great risk to himself, set a ladder against the Rock, loosened the earth around it, and tied a heavy rope to a projection on it. Then he tied the other end of the rope around Thunderer’s neck and went in search of the daggertooth.
He found the monstrous creature feasting on carrion, am attracted its attention with a bold shout. “Follow me daggertooth, and you will meet your match!”
Snarling, the brute bounded after him. He led it down forest byways and across streams, and eventually to the entrance of the cavern. The daggertooth sniffed, scenting rabbit Salivating, it followed the young gnome into the darkness The gnome ran to the center of the cavern and waited, luring the daggertooth forward until the beast’s fetid breath warmed his very face. Then, as the daggertooth lunged at him, he gave a yell.
“Away, Thunderer!”
And the rabbit gave one bound, dislodging the Rock of, Retribution from the cavern roof. It fell straight and true, smashing the daggertooth to the ground, a projection penetrating its skull. The creature gave a jerk and lay still, and its last breath sighed out of the mouth of the cavern in a dark mist, nauseating to the nose.
The young gnome tethered Thunderer to the daggertooth and drew the body in triumph through the forest, where he was greeted with joy by the gnomes. They bestowed a new name on him in recognition of his valor, and ever afterwards he was known as Fang, and his original name was forgotten by all.
Forgotten by all except Fang himself, that is, who had no difficulty in remembering that his original name was Will; and except his father the Gooligog, who never believed the legend anyway, and with his customary contempt continued to call Fang “Willie.”
It is difficult to understand why the Gooligog thought so little of his son. The relationship between the two had always been distant, but following the daggertooth incident the Memorizer began to treat his son with open hostility, and refused point-blank to memorize the glorious occasion.
“It’s too emotional an issue at present,” he said, the next time he held court as Memorizer. “We need time to digest it. Time to contemplate. Time to work out the answers to certain questions the story poses. Memory must be exact. This is gnomish history we’re talking about.”
“We know that,” said King Bison impatiently. “But the slaying of the daggertooth is a most significant event in the history of gnomedom. And you know what our memories are like normally. You must memorize the glorious day before it passes from the minds of gnomes. By the sword of Agni,” he swore in frustration, “I’ve almost forgotten what the hell happened already!”
The Gooligog smiled to himself in grim satisfaction. “You may be our leader, Bison,” he said, “but I’m the Memorizer. It’s a sacred trust and I refuse to betray it by filling history with rumor and conjecture. I will memorize the incident in my own good time. The subject is closed.”
“The subject is wide open, you pompous old fool!” shouted Clubfoot Trimble, but he was wasting his time. Nobody ever listened to Clubfoot, and the gnomes were already discussing a bizarre petition by six female gnomes to close down Tom Grog’s Disgusting Drinking Hole. The issue was so controversial that the daggertooth was forgotten in the shouting.
Fang had mixed emotions about the whole affair. It was fun to be a hero, true; but it had its drawbacks. Suddenly people respected him, which seemed to mean they were a little bit frightened of him. He was a gentle young gnome, and he wanted to be liked. So it hurt him when he found himself winning an argument because his opponent had suddenly remembered the daggertooth and backed off, fearful of arousing this unpredictable young gnome.
And then of course there was his despicable father. By now Fang had heard “The Legend of the Daggertooth” so many times that he half believed it himself, and couldn’t help but be aggrieved at the Gooligog’s attitude. After all the Legend was no more inaccurate that half the garbage ii the old fool’s brain, and it seemed to Fang that the Gooligog’s denial of its truth represented a specific prejudice against his own son.
“I’ll show the old idiot,” muttered Fang to himself. “One fine day I’ll make him eat his words.” He lay in bed staring at the rough ceiling as the morning sun filtered through the cracks in his door.
But opportunities for heroism didn’t often come a gnome’s way in those far-off, peaceful years.
The Miggot of One
Here he comes with flashing knife,
He’ll slice your sister and he’ll carve your wife.
He doesn’t care a bugger for your mother or your life,
Beware the Miggot of One!
—Gnomish children’s song
In accordance with the mysterious Kikihuahua Examples—so far as they were aware—the gnomes worked in harmony with their surroundings and with the seasons. They dozed the winter away in their neat dwellings, awakening with the coming of spring. Then they cleaned house and aroused their domestic animals: the mice and the moles. Spring was a time for enthusiasm, for reaffirming their inbred purpose and for approaching the Miggot of One with suggestions for new life-forms.
“Spring is a season I could do without,” the Miggot said.
Summer was a time for play and adventure, for journeys and parties; a time when gnomes from distant regions trod the paths to Mara Zion and were welcomed, when local gnomes disappeared to return in the fall, wide-eyed with the wonders of the world. Fall was a time for harvesting and storing, and for telling stories while the leaves fell, and for asking where the year had gone.
The gnomes worked in harmony with the animals, too. They planted trees and raised crops, and the animals helped them; voles drew their tiny plows while rabbits kept guard ready to warn them of the hovering hawk with thump and bobbing scut. The rabbits were not aware they were being used as sentries. The gnomes had a talent for putting every living thing to its best use, but without coercion.
The Miggot of One was small for a gnome, and slightly built. His eyes crowded the top of his nose so that they seemed to be peering down its length in conspiracy against the visible world. The Miggot’s nose, long and thin, lent direction to his gaze, and the effect was heightened by a wart that sat on the tip like a gunsight.
Gnomes, coming to the Miggot with suggestions for new life-forms, found themselves reduced to a guilty stammering by his stare, and would creep away vowing to do their homework better next time. The Miggot was an accomplished bureaucrat, and it is to his credit that the northwest of Old Europe is not, even now, crawling with peculiar beasts of no value to themselves or their creators.
The Miggot guarded the Sharan with a jealous fervor, and could be seen on most days seated at the entrance to her cave, directing a gaze of deepest suspicion into the forest as though expecting a frivolous Suggestion to emerge. Even his piercing gaze could not cover two directions at once, however, and the Sharan would occasionally emerge from the cave at a rocketing gallop and disappear into the forest, followed by peals of laughter from Pan.
“Why don’t you get rid of that ghastly Pan thing?” Lady Duck asked the Miggot one day, as the gnomes searched t
he forest for the missing unicorn.
“Pan is essential for new life-forms,” snapped the Miggot, hot and furious. “He alone can tell the Sharan what to give birth to.”
“I ask you, Miggot,” said Elmera, his long-suffering wife, “is it worth it? All this worry, all this watching, just for the occasional new animal? Wouldn’t it be better to relax and enjoy a normal life free of responsibilities, like other gnomes?”
“That little swine Pan knows where the Sharan is,” said the Miggot, ignoring her, “but he’s not telling!”
“It’s the power, isn’t it?” His wife shrilled. “You love the power! The power over life and death!”
“Life, not death,” said Lady Duck. “The Miggot has no power over death.”
“Well, life, then. You’re just like the Gooligog. You think you have a sacred trust. And King Bison. He loves power.”
“I’ll thank you not to speak about my husband like that, Elmera,” said Lady Duck frigidly. “If you must know, Bison hates power.”
Unfortunately, the commanding roar of King Bison boomed through the trees at that moment. “Fang! Grab her round the legs. Trish! The neck. Hold onto that tail, Clubfoot!”
“They’ve found her,” said the Miggot in relief, hurrying forward.
“Bison’s in his element,” observed Elmera.
“Well done, Bison!” shouted Lady Duck, as they emerged into a clearing where a group of gnomes held the Sharan pinned to the ground.
This beast of surpassing beauty was much prized by the gnomes. She seemed to glide through the forest like a white bird, holding her proud head erect, her single golden horn brushing aside branches in her path. Now she lay panting on the grass, her blue eyes sad, her flanks heaving.
Fang, the Gnome (Song of Earth) Page 5
