Гарри Тертлдав - The Enchanter Completed

“Jà chci jìt domu!” Vaclav moaned.

“What’s he saying? Why doesn’t he speak French?” asked Becca.

Old Otto grunted. “He was born in Prague, that’s why. The rest of us are from Germany. Just look at him! Shoddy Czech workmanship.”

Gretchen put her arm around Vaclav. “Be nice, Otto. He can’t help being cracked. He says he wants to go home.” She murmured in Czech, and Vaclav nodded and sniffled. “I speak his tongue; my husband was a Czech gnome, and Vatsy lived next door. Jiri, who unfortunately got dropped on the paving last year, wasn’t as thick-headed as Vaclav. He learned French the way most of us do, spending years listening to the humans. Most of us are good at languages. Gottfried and Karl even learned English and Spanish in Miami. Anton’s our most recent immigrant, which explains his dreadful accent.” Anton, ever irrepressible, waggled his fingers in his ears and stuck out his tongue.

Alizon pondered the matter. “Do you consider yourselves German?”

“Only by birth,” said Professor Gottfried. “We are naturalized French gnomes.”

Old Otto shouted, “I’m no German! You see this?” He pointed to his chipped shoulder. “A damned Nazi did this.”

“Otto, they don’t want to hear about your old war wound,” said Handsome Hans. “I believe Mademoiselle Raquel still has food in her sack. Perhaps she will share with some hungry gnomes?”

Raquel hurriedly opened her backpack, and the gnomes, even Vaclav, devoured the remains of her snack. Anton lit his lantern with a match. While the gnomes ate, Raquel edged close to her friends. “What are we going to do with them?” she whispered.

“Beats me,” Becca hissed back. “Have them invade the office of theChronicle and demand a retraction of their editorial? Sic them on my ex-boyfriend?”

“Let’s ask them what they want,” Alizon said, direct as always. “O gnomes, now that you are alive and free, what do you want to do?”

“Jà chci jìt domu!”

“Well, we know what Vaclav wants,” said Raquel. She got down on her knees and handed him a tissue. “If you want to go back home, we’ll take you.” He trumpeted noisily and looked at her gratefully.

“He’s too dim to appreciate freedom,” Gretchen said. “Besides, his human, Madame d’Aulnoy, fusses over him. He gets mugs of ale, dishes of cream, and tasty tidbits, though he can only enjoy them once a month. She even sings to him.”

“She’s as great a cabbagehead as Vatsy,” Karl snickered.

Handsome Hans brushed crumbs from his immaculate pants. “There are owners and owners. My Georges is a fine chap. He paints me every winter and washes me every day. His garden is the finest in the village, and he talks to me while he tends it.”

Karl planted his pudgy form in front of Hans. Karl’s tacky appearance was improved after jettisoning his lavender watering can, but any gnome would have looked dingy next to the pristine Hans. “You want to go back?”

“Jà chci jìt domu!”

Hans blushed until his cheeks were nearly as rosy as Anton’s. “No disrespect meant, ladies. I value your effort; and I’ll enjoy being alive. But Georges is old. Every solstice, when he returns me to his beautiful garden, he says, ‘So, Hans, we live to see yet another spring.’ Then he sits there, on an oak bench, right by me, and drinks a glass of cognac. He spends the whole winter looking forward to that. I couldn’t disappoint him. Perhaps, after he dies, I’ll take advantage of my altered state and travel the great sites of gnomish history or make the pilgrimage to the Black Forest.”

“You vant to stay?” howled Anton. He rolled on the ground beside Karl, kicking his feet in the air. “Sind Sie verrückt?To spend your days stuck in a garten, mit die Vogel shitting on you und snails leaving tracks of slime on your boots? All for some human?”

“What if I do?”

Anton jerked a thumb at Vaclav. “You’re as bad as him!”

“Worse,” Karl sneered. “He’s like a slob of a brownie, endlessly slaving for humans.”

“Who you callin’ a brownie?” Hans raised his shovel as if to strike. Karl snatched Vaclav’s stick in defense. Anton put up his fists, daring Hans to come on.

Alizon hastily intervened before they came to blows. “Wait! We didn’t work this magic to have it end in violence. You’re all free and independent gnomes now. If Hans and Vaclav want to go back to their garden, that’s their right.”

“Jà chci jìt domu!”

“And the rest of you?” asked Becca. “Do you also want to return?”

“Himmel, no!” shouted Anton. “I’ve escaped it twice. I vant to get as far from that cold, muddy hellhole as possible.”

Professor Gottfried had been picking over crumbs while the others quarreled. Now he looked up. “Perhaps you would care to come to America with me and Karl. That’s our fondest dream: to return to Florida to help others sorely in need. Such a lovely, sunny spot.”

Anton asked, “Sunny?”

“The average annual temperature in Miami is twenty-four point four degrees,” the Professor mumbled through his whiskers. “Americans say seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit.”

“I’m your gnome! Let’s go!” Anton capered around his lantern, making weird shadows and startling the industriousfées from their laundry.

Becca broke into a fit of coughing as tanned gnomes in Ray-bans and Bermuda shorts came to mind.

Raquel said, a trifle nervously, “We’re poor students. Air fare to America is beyond our means, unless you have fairy gold somewhere.” She was only half-joking. If gnomes andfées were real, and fairy fruit somehow magically altered one’s perception, what about legends of lost treasures?

But she was disappointed. “How could we gather treasure, dearie?” said Gretchen. “Until now, we’ve been limited to roaming Saint-Clément one night a month. Hardly enough exercise to keep one’s figure, even dining on the best fruit.”

The Professor flicked through his book and began discoursing about his dwarvish cousins in the Alps, but Karl squelched his lecture. “We’ll find a way, ladies. Gottfried and I have big plans.”

“Perhaps we could make plans for more food?” asked Gretchen. “I hate to admit it after all the ladies’ kindness, but I’m still hungry.”

The other gnomes eagerly seconded this, and the G.G.F.F. couldn’t refuse. Who knew what could happen if the gnomes took offense? They trekked home, carrying the stubby-legged gnomes again, since their pace was half that of the humans.

Once back in the flat, the gnomes devoured a gigantic omelette and all the baked goods in the pantry, even stale crackers. They had appetites worthy of beings three times their size. They also insisted Raquel make some morecafé recoiffé , as there had only been a swallow left in the thermos. Nor did they want her to be stingy with the Calvados. Even Vaclav loosened up after a few cups and smiled crookedly.

Old Otto smacked his lips. “Ah! That banishes the chill from my aged bones.”

“So come to sunny Florida mit us,” Anton said. “Varm as toast!”

Alizon leaned forward. “Yes, what will you do, Otto? You’ve been here the longest. Will you stay, or find a new home?”

The elderly gnome’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “For you to understand my desires, I must tell you a little story.”

Some of his companions reacted with dismay. “Little?” Karl asked in disbelief, while Anton buried himself under the sofa cushions.

“If I had a franc for every time I’ve heard this …” Hans said.

Gretchen patted Hans’ knee. “Be kind. I’m sure our benefactresses will enjoy hearing Otto.” The humans nodded, and Otto, after another long swig, began.

“I was born in 1905, and have lived with many different families over the years. I saw my first home overrun during the Great War, and my owner and his son cut down before my eyes. I vowed if it ever were in my power, I wouldn’t let such a thing happen again.” Gottfried clucked at this, but subsided after Otto glared at him.