No Country for Old Gnomes Read online

Well, perhaps hunting was too harsh a term, for words were deeply important to her. Nothing invasive or sneaky or violent was occurring; she was merely in a public space near Onni’s house, nurturing a smöl hope of seeing him.

  She sat on a quiet bench in a lamplit square, admired fireflies glowing in the dark, and from time to time stole a glance at the Numminen family’s main hatch, a complicated affair with more than the usual number of safety measures.

  Old Seppo had installed a hatch like that on her own home. Her parents had become so controlling and fearful, especially since the halflings had gotten so…well, openly murderous. Their favorite saying of late was Stay inside, no one’s died! But Kirsi wasn’t going to be frightened into limiting her life. The day her parents installed an alarm on the main hatch, she began digging a tunnel out of her bedroom with a spoon and kept it covered with a poster of famous stage actor Brt Frk, renowned for his glossy beard and disdain of vowels.

  Kirsi had been smooshing on Onni since they were wee gnomelets in kindergnomen, and even if he’d never paid attention to her before, she was certain that he would one day—possibly today. She cultivated an elaborate fantasy in which she was sitting on this very bench, writing in her green journal beside a basket of red mushrooms, and Onni would climb out of his hatch to go for a walk because something important and red-haired was missing from his life. And then his soft blue eyes would alight on the slight, freckled gnomegirl who just so happened to be sitting outside, her luxurious beard curled around her finger, and he would fall instantly in love, and—

  BOOM!

  Kirsi looked up to see two halflings dancing around the Numminen hatch, giggling as smoke billowed from the gnomehome. She’d been staring off into space, twirling her beard and daydreaming, and had completely missed the very thing her parents had tried so hard to get her to fear. Her jaw dropped, her beard forgotten, and she scrambled behind the bench, out of the lamplight. Some old gnomeric instinct made her freeze in the dark. It was said that halflings sensed money, food, and drink, in that order, and that most other things could escape their notice if only one held very still and tried not to smell like flapjacks.

  “Did you see that, Pascal?” one halfling said, doing the cancan with a stick of dynamite in one hairy fist and a torch in the other, illuminating them with a ruddy glow.

  “Yes indeed, Aristide! Dumb little pepperheads didn’t even know what hit ’em. Marquant Dique will be ever so pleased. Old Seppo’s been on his list forever.”

  A tooled-leather portmanteau sat near the hole, proudly displaying the seal of the Dastardly Rogues Under Bigly-Wicke. Of course it was them. The rest of the halflings, Kirsi had heard, mostly just wanted to eat and smoke and drink and sit around idly, but the drubs were bad news. Their leader, Marquant Dique, was on WANTED posters all over the gnomeric sections of the Skyr.

  Her fingers found her beard again and she plucked a single hair from the center of her chin. She knew what she had to do.

  She closed her eyes and recalled Onni’s shiny golden hair, his patchy but promising beard, his peaked woolen hat with the earflaps and the embroidered snowflakes. Now they were all so much ashes.

  Also, probably, bone chunks and other gross things that gnomes, in general, did not think about.

  With this vision came great focus, and with great focus came rage.

  “By the mad menses of Maija the Motherlost, may your execrable chest hairs catch fire as your plans come to ruins,” she whispered, narrowing her eyes at the capering halflings and holding up the single beard hair. Elaborately twirling it between her fine fingers, she crafted it into a starburst pattern and swallowed it in one tickly gulp. The power began deep down in her belly, warm and sweet, and rippled up and out of her fingers toward the gibbering monsters. “You thick-toed troglodytes!”

  It wasn’t long before the halflings ceased their capering and began screaming. The curly chest hair of which they were so proud had caught fire, and no matter how they beat themselves and each other—which was quite a lot, actually, and humorous to watch—the fire would not go out. Such was the nature of magic: It had its own timetable, especially when you were on the losing end of it.

  Kirsi burped and stroked her waist-long beard. She often rued that she’d been born with the power to curse instead of the power to bless, but now the curse felt like a blessing. One hair, one curse: That was how it worked. She was cautious with her magic, but she still had to be careful where she plucked from. Her grandmother, a great and powerful bristle witch, had nothing left but stubble after a lifetime of meting out blessings—for good harvests, for sturdy, prosperous gnomehomes, for fat babies and fatter wives. Though she wasn’t beautiful, Granny was known for her generosity and kindness. Kirsi loved magic, but she maybe loved her beard more, so she tried to keep the cursing to a minimum. Still, this time it was worth it. And after all, why did it matter if she had a patchy beard if Onni wasn’t there to admire it?

  Out by Onni’s barn, several other screams suggested that her curse had brought pain to more halflings than she’d anticipated. Kirsi grinned. Good. Let them suffer. The halflings seemed determined to destroy gnomeric life of late. Firebombs, kidnappings, alpaca rustling, and aggravated snack theft incidents were all up across the Skyr. Kirsi couldn’t even go to the Perfekt Pudding Parlor without worrying about some halfling beating her up for a spoonful of tapioca. Most tragically, her uncle Ulric had been directing traffic around a vulnerable line of ducklings when he died in a halfling attack.

  As much as her emotional life centered on Onni, Kirsi had begged her parents in the past months to move somewhere, anywhere, safe. Even if it meant living in Bruding, among the silly, stupid, uselessly tall humans. The Skyr was no longer safe for gnomes, and Kirsi felt more comfortable outside than she did underground, which was considered deeply ungnomeric. But her parents were determined to die in their gnomehome.

  And now, for the first time, Kirsi suspected they would. And she knew with complete certainty that she would not. She would follow Onni Numminen anywhere, but not into a sudden and explosive death.

  She didn’t have much on her. Just her clothes, her coat, her hat, her most capacious mushroom basket, a very nice pencil, and a green journal full of drawings of her and Onni riding a unicorn and surrounded by a heart. She had no canvas pack of provender, no waterskin. But if she went home now, she might not have a body left to carry such supplies. Since watching Onni’s kitchen explode, she’d seen columns of smoke curling up from the direction of the city. This was no random band of murderers; a coordinated attack was unfolding.

  Home was no longer safe.

  Reaching into her cardigan’s emergency pocket, she withdrew a shiny, unused automaatti bird. Her parents had pressed it upon her even before the halflings had begun their wave of terror. Invented during the Giant Wars, this bird, delicately crafted of brass, was capable of delivering just one message at a time, unlike more-advanced models that could recite poetry or argue over the proper recipe for butternut pudding. Kirsi clicked the small button on the metal bird’s back, and when its eyes blinked red, she spoke slowly and carefully.

  Dearest Mama, Papa, and Granny,

  I love you very much, and I’m sorry to leave you, but Pavaasik is overrun with drubs. Please join me in Bruding when you can. I want to live a life without fear. Or at least without fear of blowing up in my own house.

  Nose rubs, Kirsi.

  She released the button. The bird’s eyes blinked green, and it flapped off into the trees, high above the reach of even the tallest troll, much less the hairiest halfling. It would go straight to her gnomehome, putter down a narrow tube, and come out in the kitchen, startling the everloving hokum out of her parents. Maybe it would startle them out of their complacency.

  Kirsi turned away from the flames and smoke billowing from Onni’s main hatch and hoped he and his family were elsewhere and not burned to death. She wiped ineffectively a
t the tears watering her beard, picked up her basket of mushrooms, and began walking toward Bruding. Or at least thataway-ish. She wasn’t used to navigating by the stars, or at all, but she figured she could adjust her course as needed in daylight. Right now she simply needed to get out of town.

  As gnomes were mostly homebodies, Kirsi had no idea what lay outside their neighborhood except for a general idea that the Big Road led to a terrible, dirty place called Bruding, where tall, stupid, dangerous people lived amidst miles of sewage and beer. Gnomes thrived on order and beauty, and humans apparently liked to destroy both things. They had a lord there, and an earl for Borix, and a king for all of Pell, but Kirsi suspected they weren’t very good leaders if they allowed their people to live in filth. (But she should be fair: The gnomeric leaders also deserved some censure for allowing the halflings their violent sprees.) All she remembered from Mostly Useless Geography class was that at the juncture between the Skyr and Borix, the road went from small, tidy, and nicely landscaped to sprawling, dirty, and despoiled by highwaymen and large monsters that hated knit woolen hats.

  She was soon lost in the underbrush, her cardigan torn by thorns and her hat unacceptably mussed. When she stumbled over a scrubby little trail marked with a donkey’s hooves and droppings, she gladly followed the path, assuming that anything terrible would still be too full from eating the donkey to eat a smöl gnome like herself.

  The donkey’s path crossed a creek, and Kirsi bravely sloshed into the ice-cold water. The horrid feeling of wet boots and skirt made her grimace. By the time she reached the center of the creek, she was surprised to find the water up to her gnomish waist.

  And then the current rudely swept her away.

  The first thing she did was shriek in indignation. The second thing she did was almost lose hold of her beloved mushroom basket, which her mother had woven with love. Thanks to a gnomeric attention to detail, the basket floated far better than a gnomelet weighed down by wet woolen clothes, so Kirsi managed to climb into the basket before the river could drag her down deeper.

  The world slid by in a gurgle of water, both pretty and frightening. Banks of evening primrose loomed over the creek, their yellow heads bobbing in the nighttime wind. A curious rabbit stared at Kirsi, eyes huge and, she thought, crafty. Her grandfather had gotten into a fight with a rabbit once, and he’d loved to pull back his blue wool eyepatch to show the twist of scar where his eye had been. Kirsi had somehow forgotten that the outside world beyond tight gnomeric fences was filled with terrifying rabbits, furious hedgehogs, and towering fawns with razor-sharp hooves. She shivered and nestled lower in her basket, hoping the rabbit hadn’t noticed her.

  When she peeked over the basket’s edge again some while later, the creek had slowed. It had carried her to a marshy area populated by cattails, but at least the current was still moving. She dozed fitfully until the basket bobbed and bucked in the waters again, gaining speed as the creek flowed out of the marsh and into an unfamiliar stand of timber. She was lost, and her basket smelled of wet wool and squashed mushrooms, but at least she knew that on this side of the Honeymelon Hills she wasn’t headed toward anything with the dirty flavor of halfling society. Their cities were rickety, unbalanced things, wood and brick haphazardly slapped together by supposed architects who’d never seen a plumb line. Instead, she was in some strange new wilderness, which she hoped was a bit closer to Bruding than to Jusipert. She’d seen nothing of the Big Road, but then again, wilderness and roads kept little company. And then, wonder of wonders, her basket twirled into some calm shallows with water striders darting along the surface, and it fetched up on a sandy shore.

  Before the basket could change its mind, Kirsi scrambled out and dragged it away from the creek. Her mushrooms were all broken and wet, her skirt stained, and her leather boots gummy. At least there were no gnomes nearby to see her in such a state. Once into the grasses and ferns, she stomped to shake the mud and sand from her hem. But she was at least grateful to be on the opposite shore instead of the same side where she’d started. Even better, she saw a path that ended at the sandbar, its old pavers overgrown with velvety green mosses and lit by dancing fireflies. Grinning at her luck, Kirsi stepped onto the stone path, leaving tidy little gnomeric footprints in her wake.

  “The kill is never quite so sweet as the anticipation of the kill. There’s an awful lot of blood involved in killing, for one thing, not to mention ropes of intestine and jiggly organs and the very real danger of wolves hunting you in turn. Consider that one can sensibly enjoy a pipe and a pint while savoring the anticipation, or maybe fondle something that’s feeling ticklish instead, and one can quite happily dwell in that sweet anticipation for a lifetime.”

  —BERGERON WILDEFEET OF THE CHEAPMEAT WILDEFEETS, in The Hunting Halfling’s Preference for Cake and Fortified Bunkers

  The hunter crouched on the hillside above the gnomeric city of Koloka in the early morning, dawn lighting up his toe hairs with golden rays of promise. But to the hunter—a dignified halfling named Faucon Pooternoob of the Toodleoo Pooternoobs—the weather and the pleasant vista were irrelevant and, actually, a bit incommodious. All he cared about was the promise of victory—finally—after a hunt that had stretched out for close to a year. He prided himself on keeping careful records, so he knew that this hunt had been the longest and most embarrassing of his life, each day of his bullet journal marked with a frowny face. Bagging his prize would be especially fulfilling, the more so since all others who had hunted this particular quarry had failed.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply of the melon-kissed air, savoring this sweet moment before he embraced a long-sought victory. He savored it so much that he toyed with the idea of another momentous inhalation, before he was inevitably interrupted by a phlegmy cough and a wash of foul breath. He looked up, nearly blinded as the sun glinted off a drub medallion.

  “Mr. Pooternoob, sir, are you having trouble breathing? Perhaps a touch of indigestion?”

  Faucon the hunter regarded the troublesome drub with the sort of look he usually gave to overcooked eggs at second breakfast.

  “Excuse me?” he asked.

  Bernaud Cobbleshod of the Gobbleneck Cobbleshods took a groaning knee next to him in the wet grass and cursed softly as the ample dew soaked right through his mustard-stained pants.

  “Narsty,” he hissed. “It’s like somebody whizzed all over the mountain.”

  “Or like someone disrupted my concentration,” the hunter said quietly.

  “Sor-ree,” Bernaud replied, not unlike a teenager who thinks adults get upset about the silliest things. “Just thought you had forgotten how to breathe right and wondered what the plan was, is all.”

  Faucon focused his inward eye on beautiful things—a stack of writs, a tightly phrased contract, the pleasure of a flawlessly kept ledger—to calm himself. But, alas, the sweetness of the moment had flown, pierced by the horror of the other halfling’s gingivitis and bad laundry habits. He would not be able to return to that peaceful headspace now, even if he banished the drub from his presence. He would have no choice but to feel the impatient lout breathing behind him, smelling like sour milk and slowly trying to make the world smell the same. He’d be haunted by the sight of the drub’s horrific feet, callused and cracked and topped with yellowed fungal toenails. That was the problem with drubs: Thinking themselves rebels, they thumbed their noses at the Handy Handsome Halfling Handbook for Hair and Skin Care. Faucon despised rebels, almost as much as he despised cheaply made exfoliant scrubs. But he would use them both to pursue his goals, if he had to. He might as well proceed with the hunt. For Faucon was cut in the cloth of the more traditional halfling gentleman, and, unlike the messy newfangled drubs and their foul ilk, he would finish what he’d started.

  With a hum of determination, Faucon considered the thatched roof perched on the hillside below him yet still far above Koloka and its frustratingly gnomeric avenues of e
scape. For although the gnomeric city looked pleasant and tidy enough topside, well did Faucon know that the ground underneath was actually riddled with unplotted tunnels, supposedly built to code but never mapped, intentionally designed to befuddle pursuers. Faucon shook his head. Gnomes were, without doubt, the most deceptive peoples on Pell. They presented an orderly society to the world, but a deadly chaos lurked beneath their well-groomed façades, a rebellion and sometimes a carelessness that could lead—that had led—to the untimely death of one he loved well. Plus, they called him rude names.

  Squashing down his past like a particularly well-stuffed club sandwich, Faucon pointed to the east, where the morning sun filtered through the canopy of the Pruneshute Forest.

  “I need approximately half of your men to spread out along the tree line to prevent escape into the woods. They need to be quiet getting there, but I want them to be seen once they are in position. In fact, I want them chucking firebombs at the house from that direction. The other half of your men need to circle around below the house and prevent any chance of escape to the city. That will leave my prey two choices: Run uphill here to me, where I will have the high ground, or flee to the west and into the plains, where there will be no protection.”

  Cobbleshod squinted at the house and then at the hunter. “I don’t understand. You’re going to let them run?”

  The hunter held on to his patience, but just barely. “The last year has demonstrated that we cannot prevent them from running. They are extraordinarily good at it. This, right now, is the closest we have ever been. So our priority must be to control where they run. Having them in the open will allow us a particular advantage.”

  “It will? Pretty sure they can run faster than us.”

  Faucon pinched the bridge of his nose. “They can, yes. They have proven that time and time again. But we have a friend now, if you recall, who can cover great distances rather quickly and who will have little trouble capturing what needs to be captured.”