Гарри Тертлдав - The Enchanter Completed

“When the next war erupted, I lived some distance west of here. On the night of July 5, 1944, the moon was full, and every gnome alive knew there was trouble afoot. We could see the American patrols sneaking through our gardens and streets, just as you did tonight. We could see the Nazis, too. There was a sniper in my human’s potting shed. I knew he was waiting for the Americans to come around the garden wall, so just before they did, I leaped off the wall, drawing his fire. He winged me, but gave away his position. The Americans killed him.”

Professor Gottfried exploded. “This was a terrible breach of Faerie etiquette! There arerules governing our conduct with humans, and meddling such as Otto’s is strictly forbidden!”

“Do you think the Nazis played by the rules?” Otto retorted. “Besides, who says they were human? I’ve met demons I liked better. I could have done worse; I wanted to cut that bastard’s throat with my hatchet. Could have done it. They would have blamed it on the Resistance.” Gottfried looked appalled at that notion, his mouth a tiny redO in his chubby face.

“What happened then?” asked Alizon, wondering if any other Faerie folk assisted in the Normandy invasion.Talk about rewriting the history books …

“The patrol commander, a huge blond named Sgt. Sven Faelling, returned to our house after the Americans had taken the village. He said, in atrocious French, ‘Madame, your gnome saved our lives.’ He believed I had accidentally tumbled off the wall, startling the sniper into firing too soon. Madame tried giving me to the sergeant, but Faelling refused, saying he had more fighting ahead. But he scratched his name on my boot, so he could claim me again someday, if he lived. See?” He held up his foot and the women could see the name carved into the sole. “Now that I am able, I will go to America and find him.”

“It’s been fifty-two years, Otto,” said Raquel. “He’s probably dead.”

Otto shook his grizzled head. “I’d know it. You see, I forestalled Death’s taking him once before. If I can, I should be there when Death returns. It’s only fitting.”

“I bet we’ll find Sgt. Faelling on the Internet, if you know his regiment,” said Becca.

“I do. What is this Internet?” asked Otto.

Alizon chuckled. “A treasury of information, much of it useless, but some valuable.”

“Like Gottfried’s book,” Karl said with a sly look at his companion. The Professor harrumphed.

Raquel surveyed the seven gnomes sprawled about the room. “So that’s two gnomes staying, and four going to America. What about you, Gretchen?”

The female gnome demurely studied her white apron and spoke without looking up. “My fondest wish is not to be parted from the best, the handsomest gnome in all Saint-Clément.”

Hans visibly preened, only to deflate as Gretchen turned to Karl, who was rubbing at a chocolate stain on his breeches. “Karl, dear, may I aid your quest?”

Karl turned as pink as his untraditional hat. “I thought you’d never look at another gnome after Jiri’s tragic accident!”

“A girl gets lonely,” Gretchen said, sounding rather like a gnomish Mae West. They romantically stared into each other’s eyes as Anton made smacking noises and Vaclav muttered something Czech that definitely wasn’tJà chci jìt domu .

Raquel whispered to Becca, “There’s one girl gnome for every thirty boy gnomes in town. She could have her pick of them. She wants Ugly Togs?”

“No accounting for taste.You used to date Emil Dubois.”

“For two weeks!”

“It’s late,” Alizon hastily said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

The gnomes grimaced. “When you’re frozen in place for days on end, you do plenty of dozing,” said Otto. “We’ll stay up.”

“And Vaclav and I will go home,” said Hans, “so our humans won’t worry.”

Karl started to say something rude, but Gretchen murmured, “Mind your manners, love.” Alizon suspected boisterous Karl would soon be hearing a lot of that.

Hans and Vaclav made their farewells. The handsome gnome promised the humans he’d visit often, and Vaclav sniveled over everyone. After they’d left, the women staggered into bed. None of them believed they would sleep, but they did.

“Trink, trink, Brüderlein, trink!” Raquel rolled over and looked at the clock, which read ten past eight. Too damn early any day, much less one after a wild night like the last, dreaming about live gnomes singing German drinking songs … And how could she see the clock so clearly without her glasses? Something about Faerie-sight …

Her mental fog lifted as she heard Becca silencing the singers. “Quiet!” she hissed. “Do you want our landlady to hear this gnomish revelry?”

“Or Denis. God, what will Denis think?” Alizon asked, thinking of the hunky student who lived across the hall. “The whole building must have heard that yodeling.”

Raquel stumbled into the front room. It was full of gnomes and empty bottles—the quintet had discovered the liquor cabinet. “Everyone will think we’re having orgies,” Raquel said. “Drunken orgies. With a bunch ofreally short older men.”

“Sorry to disturb you,” Anton hiccuped. “Ve vanted to celebrate.”

“You must keep quiet,” Becca said. “We could get in trouble if anyone finds you. It wouldn’t be easy explaining five living, breathing,singing gnomes.”

Otto adopted his squatting pose with his hatchet on his shoulder. “We’re quite good at hiding, but if caught, we freeze, the way we do on the nights of the full moon. No one without Faerie-sight could know we were truly alive.”

“But if your owners found you, they’d arrest us for theft,” said Alizon.

The gnomes grudgingly accepted the need for silence while the women attended their classes and went shopping. The gnomes wanted more baked goods and beer, the darker the better.

The women had trouble paying attention to their lectures that day, each of them fretting about what the gnomes might do in their absence. Returning to the flat that afternoon, they were relieved not to see police cars or television news vans on their street. Nor had they heard anything in the market about stolen gnomes or Little People wandering through the town in the night. They’d peeked in Madame d’Aulnoy’s garden, where Vaclav winked at them, and spotted an old man weeding in Hans’ garden, not far from the splendid gnome.

They hardly recognized the flat when they opened the door. It probably hadn’t been that clean right after it was built. Gretchen, Karl, Gottfried, Anton, and Otto stood at attention as they entered, their sleeves rolled up and their hands reddened, as if they’d been scrubbing all day. The floor sparkled. Laundry had been picked up, washed, and put away. The myriad stacks of papers and books had been straightened. Even the ancient faucet fixtures gleamed—and no longer dripped.

“Wow!” Becca breathed. “It’s gorgeous! You could give it the white glove test.”

“We wanted to atone for our earlier inebriation,” Professor Gottfried said, “and decided this was the best way. Though not all of us agreed at first.”

“Brownie work,” Karl muttered. “I’m nobody’s slave, you know.”

Otto shook a finger at him. “Nothing in the rules says a gnome can’t show gratitude by doing a spot of cleaning or bringing a bit of good luck to a human. And speaking of luck, did you ladies find Sgt. Faelling for me?”

“He’s in a veteran’s hospital in California,” said Alizon. “We thought we could mail you straight to him, saying we learned the story about the ‘Gnome-andy Invasion.’”

“Brilliant notion,” Otto said. “Easier than me making my way there alone. Somehow, I have the feeling I’d better hurry if I want to see him in time.”