No Country for Old Gnomes Read online

  Whereas Offi had recently slid into the darkest acceptable colors: navy blue, forest green, and a particularly virulent shade of plum just this side of a bruise. He was appropriately round and clean, but not even a curmudgeonly badger would consider him affable. He was grim. He was dour and even verging on sour. He was, in essence, Not Jolly.

  Onni’s twin increasingly turned away from people and sought his quiet corner of their father’s workshop, where Offi put on his unacceptably greasy work cardigan and tinkered with Old Seppo’s broken or forgotten machines. Why, Offi hadn’t even gone to the Everybody Goes to This Dance dance! He was destroying Onni’s social capital, and that was one thing Onni couldn’t abide. So he tried another tactic.

  “If you wear that to the Midsummer Shindig, you’ll break Mama’s heart.”

  Offi glared. “Mama loves Papa, and he’s not the most gnomeric of gnomes.”

  Onni snorted. “That’s different, by dinkus! He’s a war hero. They’re allowed to get peculiar. And he still wears appropriately bright cardigans. Besides, he’s starting to get a reputation in town—you know that. Paranoid, they call him. Just last week at the beard salon, I heard Una Uvulaa call him Crazy Old Seppo.”

  That finally brought fire to Offi’s eyes, a rare third look that appeared to be Characteristically Ungnomeric Rage. “Did she mention he installed one of his Halflings Hate This Heat-Resistant Hatch hatches for her? Because they may talk about him behind his back, but the foine folk of Pavaasik still rely on him to keep their homes safe from halfling firebombs.” A flash of worry lit Offi’s eyes, and Onni frowned at the shadows around them. By hokum, had his batty twin lined them with soot? They were all…soulful.

  “It’s getting worse, you know,” Offi continued. “Pooti Pinkelsen’s whole family exploded last week. The halflings’ firebombs are getting worse. I heard Papa telling Mama about it. If they’d had one of Papa’s hatch covers, they wouldn’t have had their giblets blown up. So our love of gadgetry trumps your love of…getting along. You can’t get along if you’re dead.”

  Onni’s hands clenched into fists, and he regretted starting the row. Gnomes were proud of their round stomachs but had little stomach for fighting.

  “Look, Offi, gadgetry has its place, but the heart of our strength will always be people. As Mama always says, Stick together, tough as leather!”

  Offi rolled his eyes, shocking Onni. For all that they were twins, identical down to their blue eyes and golden curls, distinguishable only by Offi’s black-rimmed spectacles—which were honestly mostly for show—Onni was quite sure he had never rolled his eyes in such a deliberately rebellious manner. His brother was on dangerous ground.

  “Onni, how do you not get it? The halflings are dropping firebombs into our homes—seemingly just for fun, I might add—and that’s not going to stop because everyone wears a nice cardigan and holds hands while singing ‘The Get-Along Song.’ They tried that once, and everyone blew up! Everyone we know is blowing up! My cardigan is not the problem. Father is right. We need weaponry. And not the sort that hurls waistcoats at squirrels to hide their shame. Real machinery, like he built during the Giant Wars.”

  “Not this again!” Onni moaned.

  “Just because you got a B in Trebuchets 101 in gnomeschool, you always look down on machinery!”

  “And just because you got a D in Charisma and Charm—”

  “The teacher had a natural prejudice against glasses!”

  “You had oil on your cardigan!”

  “You had…er, charm on yours!” Offi tried, pushing up his glasses and glaring at Onni.

  “Not this again,” Onni moaned.

  And that’s when they heard the BOOM!

  Their eyes met.

  “Firebomb!” they said in unison.

  “Listen, darlings, onions are wonderful in stews and when grilled really complement a nice steak, but if you walk around smelling like them it’s your own fault. Wash your hands after handling them with a bit of salt to get out the stink, then again with soap, and I promise everyone will be happier for it.”

  —JOOLIA CHYLDE, The Clever Craft of Corraden Cooking

  All strife disintegrated as the brothers ran for the main hatch. Onni’s heart was thumpity-thumping like mad, his brain going to terribly ungnomeric places that involved his beloved mother exploding to bits.

  “Do you think—” he began.

  “Don’t think. Just run,” Offi muttered.

  They bolted through the tunnels toward the kitchen, but a shadowy shape stepped in front of them, causing Onni to skid to a halt, already drawing his belt knife.

  “Die, halfling!” he shouted, lunging forward.

  “Good sentiment, bad eyesight,” Old Seppo said, neatly blocking the strike. “C’mon, boys. I’ve got the main hatch sealed, and Mama will meet us outside the lute room.”

  Without another word, the old gnome took off, running faster than Onni had ever seen him move. As they ran through each section of tunnel, Seppo pulled a hidden lever, and a steel-reinforced door slammed down.

  “They got the kitchen?” Offi asked.

  “Aye, the dinkuses. That’s why Mama and I were eating our pudding in the sewing room. I pity the fool who still thinks a kitchen is a safe place to dine.”

  They reached the lute room, where Venla Numminen was carefully placing her two most prized lutes into a special carrying case.

  “Those halflings won’t be looting my lutes,” she said with a frown. “Not today.”

  Onni had never seen his gentle mother so serious. Venla had once been a traveling chanteuse in a popular band called the Magic Morels, and all the album covers of her naked-but-for-the-artistic-placement-of-her-knee-length-hair-and-beard made it easy to forget that she had acted as a nurse during the Giant Wars. Now, faced with firebombs and evacuation of the home she’d lovingly built with Seppo, she embodied calm strength, her orange cardigan perfectly straight and her beard ribbon still neatly tied in a bow.

  With the entire family reunited, Seppo opened up a new hatch, one Onni had never seen—not that he tended to notice gadgetry. The tunnel beyond was barely lit by jars of glowing green algae placed at intervals, and four suitcases waited just inside. Seppo pushed one into Onni’s chest, and then they were running again, bags in hand. As they passed hidden air vents, he could hear the foul cackle of halfling laughter, far overhead, and smell hints of smoke and sausage. His step faltered, but then he reminded himself: He was a Foine Boy. He was strong, and he would continue to be strong for his family. When he tried to glance back at his twin, he saw that Offi’s general woe-is-me-for-I-am-a-tortured-soul-and-I-walk-the-world-alone face had been replaced by a brand-new by-dinkus-this-is-worrisome face. Poor Offi—he just wasn’t made for heroics.

  The tunnel ended in an empty room, and Onni began to feel the hints of a Grand Panic. But then Offi stepped forward and gave Old Seppo a solemn nod, and together they took hold of some sort of hokum gadgetry affixed to the floor that ran up into the ceiling. It was a mess of gears and cranks and shafts and lube—all that stuff Offi and his father were always talking about; you’d think shafts and lube were the only things in the world sometimes the way they carried on—and now they rammed it up and down, grunting as bits of icky dirt fell down onto their cardigans. It was, Onni realized, some sort of saw, and they were creating their own escape hatch by cutting out a circle of earth. Soon, Seppo pulled yet another lever, and a thick flap of soil and sod levered open to reveal the night sky.

  “Where are we?” Onni asked, partially impressed by what his father and brother had achieved and partially terrified of halflings with bombs and also murderous stoats, for gnomes were a smöl people, and the nighttime was considered Quite Dangerous.

  “Out beyond the goat pasture,” Seppo answered, heaving a ladder into place. “You boys leave your bags with us and head to the barn for the ponies. There’l
l be sentries, so have your wits about you. Meet us back here when the brouhaha is over. These old bones ain’t as bouncy as they used to be.”

  Onni gazed upon his parents, noting for perhaps the first time that they were indeed becoming whitebeards, and that their eyes were bracketed by a lifetime of smile creases. With the heaviness of the night sky overhead and their home lost forever, they looked wee and old and helpless, and he knew he had to rise to the occasion. He climbed to the top of the ladder and stood on the grass above.

  “Mother, Father. Take care,” Onni said, injecting nobility into every word as he squinted to the horizon. “We will return.”

  “By gumballs, what do you think Mama and Papa are going to do?” Offi scoffed, pulling himself to stand beside his twin. “Beat a pudding pan with a stick and say, Hey, halflings, how’s about you lob a foine firebomb me-wards, or something? Of course they’re going to be careful! And what’s with all the squinting? Do you need my glasses?”

  “No,” Onni whispered indignantly as he started for the barn. “I was being heroic.”

  “Are heroes generally nearsighted?”

  Onni’s teeth ground together—as if Offi knew anything about heroes! “Come along and shut your pudding hole before the halflings hear us.”

  The brothers crept toward the barn, and Onni had to admit that his brother’s woefully black cardigan was wonderful for sneaking. Up ahead, the goats were bleating and butting heads and ejecting terror pellets as smoke billowed through the barnyard, and this was quite useful, as it covered up the sound of creeping gnomes. The only light came from the moon and the pierced-tin lanterns hanging from the eaves of the barn. Onni saw two halflings standing by the fence, one telling a racist joke as the other picked his nose. Both were turned away from the goats, toward the fire and smoke beyond. Onni wouldn’t let himself look at what was left of his home; the sound of cackling and bawdy songs about gnomesplosions and the scent of brauts suggested the halflings were having a by dinkum party and barbecue around the flaming kitchen hatch.

  “I see two halflings, but there’ll be at least one more,” Onni whispered. “In the barn, probably.”

  “I know that! We took the same How to Be Respectfully Sneaky class. And before you ask, yes, I remember everything they taught us in the Polite but Necessary Stabbing and Smacking About the Face seminar, which we both found so invigorating.”

  “So this dumb gnome walks into a bar, right?” the racist halfling was saying, in that loud voice people tended to use when telling terrible jokes. “And there’s a halfling and a dwarf and a giant, just minding their business, and the bartender says—urghk!”

  Which Onni found strange, as he’d never heard anyone say “urghk” before.

  Then he saw what had happened: Bulgy Bertram the billy goat had wisely chosen to ram the racist halfling in the crotch, driving him to the ground. While he was there, Bertram finished him off with a concussive head butt.

  “Louis, what the—”

  The other halfling didn’t get to finish his sentence, as a crossbow bolt bloomed from his chest, suggesting that the third, hidden halfling wasn’t very good at his job or was perhaps unheroically nearsighted. Now there were two halflings on the ground and being proudly plopped upon by a very self-satisfied goat.

  Offi nodded his approval. “I always liked that goat.”

  “He gave us a couple of shields, didn’t he? Let’s make use of them,” Onni suggested, and Offi nodded in that way the twins had of not needing to talk when picking up racist halflings whose hairy butts would serve as cover.

  They squeezed through the fence and darted among the goats to heave the heavy halflings over their shoulders. Onni hated everything about the halfling: He was greasy, reeked of onions and butt musk, and was covered with coarse curly hair that made Onni’s neck itch. When he felt something metal bouncing on his back, he realized that the halfling was also wearing the gold medallion of a drub: a Dastardly Rogue Under Bigly-Wicke. The halfling criminal organization had publicly denied being behind the firebombings around Pavaasik.

  Onni and Offi ran for the barn door, and they’d almost made it when Onni heard the next thwack of a crossbow. Luckily, the bolt lodged in the rump of the racist halfling, and Onni wouldn’t let himself consider how close it had come to his own face. For all that the smöl gnomes, burdened by odiferous halfling flesh, could only run at roughly the speed of an excited tortoise, they were almost to the barn door, and the remaining halfling was in sight.

  But then Offi tripped and his dead-halfling shield flopped into the dirt.

  Curled into a ball, the unprotected Offi rolled pell-mell toward the halfling assassin, who was hurriedly reloading his crossbow. Onni knew what he had to do. With every ounce of strength in his pudgy body, he threw the racist halfling at the enemy, and then everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

  The halfling stepped aside, avoiding Onni’s salvo of tossed rogue flesh.

  The halfling raised his reloaded crossbow, his hairy finger on the trigger, the bolt aimed for Onni’s heart.

  But the halfling had forgotten about Offi.

  Onni watched, proud and terrified, as his unathletic brother rolled up and swept the halfling’s leg, just like they’d learned in their Great Ways to Run Away class.

  The halfling went down hard, the crossbow flying from his fingers.

  Onni saw an opportunity to employ one of the 37 Methods to Finish Him from that invigorating seminar. He picked up a milking bucket and beaned the third halfling in the noggin, hard enough to knock him unconscious and raise a goose egg on his forehead. With all three enemies dispatched, Onni put out a hand to help up his twin.

  “Uh-oh, my foine lad! There’s hay on your cardigan,” Offi said, voice dripping with irony.

  “Make hay while the sun shines, bake hay pudding when it rains!” Onni dutifully recited.

  Offi rolled his eyes again, like he was getting used to the forbidden gesture. “Who are you underneath all those memorized sayings, brother? I like you better when you’re not spouting gnomeisms.”

  “And I like you best when you’re taking down halfling assassins before they can shoot me,” Onni admitted with a smile and open arms, hoping his brother would take the olive branch and stop being so stonking difficult.

  It almost worked. Offi accepted the hug, but he didn’t relax into the embrace and wiggle, as happy gnomes did. He just gave a dreary sigh.

  Then it was back to business. Onni kept watch at the barn door with the crossbow as Offi saddled their four fat little sway-bellied ponies and wrangled the donkey into his harness. Onni had never been more glad to see Puggyrump and Buttertum and Jellybells and Mrs. Wicklebum and their dear little miniature donkey, Happy Mumbletoes. They were so cheerful and pudgy it was impossible for even Offi to grump around them. Soon they were leading the beasts toward the secret hatch where Venla and Seppo waited. Their father claimed the fourth pony as his own. Seppo always said she had once been a fierce war steed, and as his father tied on his bags and mounted the shaggy little beast, Onni almost believed him, for a moment.

  They paused outside the barnyard to take one last look at their gnomehome. It was now nothing more than an open hatch filled with flame and billowing black smoke, a ruin surrounded by capering halflings waving sausages on sticks. Their overwhelming arsenal of incendiaries had defeated their father’s booby traps. Old Seppo shook his head and held out his hand to Venla for reassurance. She grabbed it and squeezed.

  “Listen to them laugh, Venla. That’s our pride and sweat they’re burning down. Our peace and love and joy.”

  “No, Seppo. I won’t believe that. They can never burn down our peace and love and joy. We carry that with us in the pockets of our cardigans. Home is where the gnome is. Let the rogues laugh now. We’ve already outsmarted them and they haven’t a clue. We’ll come back when we’re ready, and then they won’t be laughing.
”

  “No, they won’t,” he agreed, and he released her hand and turned his mount to the west. The old gnome glowered at the horizon, squinting, his face a web of wrinkles. “When we come back, they’ll be dying.”

  “But where will we go?” Onni asked.

  “We’ll head to Bruding. Scuttlebutt says there are refugee centers there among the humans and that Lord Ergot won’t allow the halflings to cause trouble in his demesne. We’ll find our people, regroup, and plan our revenge.”

  Onni’s eyes slid over to his brother’s face and saw such sadness there that he felt himself welling up. They were a long way from the Grand Row they’d had earlier, when they’d had nothing more pressing than a silly black cardigan to worry about. Onni looked at his brother’s chest, and his mouth fell open as he spotted something by the firelight.

  “Offi, your cardigan,” he said, pointing to the once-neat sweater with its embroidered bats. “It’s ruined. There’s…”

  “Blood on it,” Offi finished for him. “Halfling blood.”

  Looking off to the horizon, properly and heroically squinting, Onni added, “Get your washtub ready, brother. It will be a bloody business when the gnome empire strikes back.”

  “Whoa,” Offi said, with feeling. “You totally just gave me chills.”

  “Red sky before night, no need for a fight. Red sky at dawn, don’t yawn. Halflings probably set your barn afire, so gather your war ponies, tie back their manes, and attack—then, my good gnomes, you burn them back.”

  —GNUTE YAKKIN, in The Compendium of Gnomeric Resistance Rhymes,

  Kirsi Noogensen’s parents thought she was out mushroom hunting, but she was actually hunting Onni Numminen.