“Splendid! Fetch our guest a seat.”
A large ornamental boulder sprouted spider-like legs and half walked, half scrambled its way over to where the Dwarf stood. The bush released him and he sat down on the rock as the legs disappeared beneath it.
He made himself comfortable, adjusted his weight, and slipped his hand under the cloak, gripped the handle of the hatchet, and waited.
“So…” said the bush. It was as far as he got. The Dwarf hurled himself toward the bush, swinging the hatchet directly at its roots.
“Eekk!” screamed the bush.
“Ee’s got a blade ee has! Kill him! Kill him!” screamed the fern, helplessly swaying from side to side.
“Cardoosh!” shouted the tulips.
The garden seemed to lean in toward the action as the Dwarf hacked mercilessly at the bush, which was lashing out with every strand of grass at its disposal. A long length of climbing ivy with a crazed look in its chlorophyll joined the fight, wrapping itself firmly around Rumpelstiltskin’s head, blinding him. Anything that could move, or at the very least lean, closed in on the struggling Dwarf and began to attack him by any means possible until he was completely lost from view. All that could be seen was a violently shaking group of psychotically coloured plants and shrubs accompanied by the rustling of foliage.
A few moments later, the garden was quiet once more.
Robert left Gnick by the scene of the fight and went to look for Lily and the General. Gnick was happily sharpening his knives with a small piece of stone. The other two had been gone for only a few minutes but something about the way the conversation abruptly ended and that the pair felt the need to move away out of earshot wasn’t sitting comfortably with Robert. He didn’t like to intrude but he had to assume they weren’t talking about Gnick, which left only one subject of conversation.
The brush became denser away from the path, and Robert crouched low and moved as quietly as possible until he could make out Lily and General Gnarly’s voices not far away. He stopped and listened intently. The voices had a distinct sense of urgency about them.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” accused Gnarly.
“As a member of the Agency―”
“Ahh, don’t feed me the Agency line. I’m too old to care. You told me he came from Othaside but there’s something very strange about him and I think you know more than you’re telling. First the fire at the halfway house and then the cat he may or may not have seen and just now―”
“All right, all right!”
“He was talking to himself, wasn’t he?”
“Well, not exactly.”
It sounded like General Gnarly was pacing. “I know you think I don’t know much of the goings-on of the world outside of my mountains.”
“That’s not true, General.”
“But we receive reports from everywhere.”
“Well, I’m sure―”
“Reports about you, for example,” stated the Gnome with the obvious maximum effect, as there followed an uncomfortable pause. “If what I’ve heard is correct, and what I saw today leads me to believe that I am, then you may as well come clean and tell all of us the truth before it’s too late.”
“It’s not easy to talk about,” growled Lily.
“Aye, but I’ll wager that the Historian has a loose tongue.”
“As far as Robert is concerned,” said Lily changing the subject, “he was born here in Thiside but his mother was an Othasider.”
General Gnarly sighed. “The man I assume is his father was well-known, wasn’t he?”
Robert guessed that Lily must have nodded as Gnarly continued, “I encountered him around forty years ago. We were hunting food through the Southern edge of the Dark Forest and all of a sudden, he was there. Standing as if he was expecting us. He’s a strange character and I can only assume by his long life that he’s not human?”
“It’s hard to explain, and even I don’t fully understand it. He’s a sort of human but something to do with the way his mind works causes a discontinuity in his life cycle.”
“You’re right, that doesn’t make much sense.”
“It does to him, and that’s all that matters, I suppose.”
“So Robert is his son. And very much his father’s boy, from what I saw today.”
“We’ve watched him for some time. He’s survived in Othaside for all this time even through all the strange events that come naturally to him.”
“Why watch him? He’s not the first kid to be born here and grow up in Othaside.”
“You know where his father currently resides. There was always the concern that he would go the same way, but his personality turned out to be quite boring. All the weirdness surrounded him and affected people and the environment around him but never actually touched him.”
“Until he came here,” said General Gnarly.
“Wow, this is interesting stuff, isn’t it!” shouted the voice in Robert’s head.
Robert made a sound of surprise, something of a bwehar kind of sound, jumped to his feet, tripped over a tree root, and fell backward.
“Robert!” said Lily and stared sternly.
Robert struggled to his feet. “What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t get hysterical, Darkly,” said General Gnarly.
“Hysterical? Why would I be hysterical? Because you know something about me that I don’t know? That there’s something weird about you too? And you, well, you’re a Gnome, aren’t you? ‘Nuff said about that. And don’t mention your short stature, although it’s plainly obvious.” Robert was breathing heavily.
“Robert,” said Lily, “you’re hyperventilating. Try and calm down.”
Robert sat himself down and tried to control his breathing.
General Gnarly shook his head and headed back to where they had left Gnick. “We should be going soon; don’t take too long.”
Lily crouched down next to Robert and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Why can’t you tell me about my father?” asked Robert.
“I’ve been ordered not to. And to be honest, it’s not important as far as our current mission is concerned.”
“And what about your secret?”
“Even less important. Come on, we need to get to the Archives and speak to the Historian, otherwise Rumpelstiltskin’s trail will be too cold to follow.”
And with that, she stood and walked away, leaving Robert sitting on the forest floor more confused than he felt he had any right to be.
A little-known fact about Dwarves is that they’re short. And not just short in the terms of stature but they are also short-tempered, short on patience, and constantly short of deodorant, thus coining the well-known phrase, “It smells like a Dwarf in here.” Dwarves didn’t believe in body odour and chose to ignore any such way of remedying that which they didn’t believe in and had no reason to acknowledge. Another little-known fact about Dwarves is that they have a tremendous lung capacity, which makes them amazing miners. They require very little oxygen to function as almost everything about them is anatomically smaller than that of a human.
They could survive in deep tunnels where the oxygen is thin for hours upon end where a human would simply pass out and die, wishing that he had been born a Dwarf and probably contemplating why he had even considered entering such a deep tunnel in the first place.
It was this increased lung capacity that had allowed Rumpelstiltskin to lay as if dead, unmoving beneath the ground, surrounded by angry plants, for the better part of an hour. The plants had begun to drift off to sleep and slowly moved apart, back to their original rooted spots. Rumpelstiltskin took the opportunity to thrust forth his hatchet and break the ground above him before scrambling out. He’d taken some good swipes at the over-articulated bush before he was overcome and dragged into the earth. His face was bleeding in several places where he’d been slashed with vines and he was almost certain that a particularly strong lavender bush had succeeded in dislocating his right shoulder.