Гарри Тертлдав - The Enchanter Completed

The women agreed to send Otto by air express after his supper. The gnomes could go months without food, but now that they could eat more than once a month, it was the thing they most enjoyed. After consuming a magnificent dinner prepared by Becca and emptying many bottles of beer, everyone said adieu to Old Otto, who nestled himself cozily in a large box, with Raquel’s cover letter to Sgt. Faelling tucked by his side. Alizon carried him to the post office, sent him on his way to California, and returned home.

“And then there were four,” Raquel said, smiling at the remaining gnomes. “How do you intend to get to Florida?”

“We’ll hitch a mail truck to the Paris airport and find a plane for Miami,” said Karl. His air of supreme confidence left no room for doubt. “Trust us. Faerie folk are skilled at keeping hidden. How manyfées had you ever seen before last night? Well, the woods are full of the little buggers, to say nothing of woodland gnomes, elves, White Ladies, andlutins .”

“What are they?” asked Becca.

“Goblins. Be very polite if you meet one. Address him asBon Garçon ,” said Raquel.

“They’re all in my book,The Standard History of Gnomes and Their Relatives ,” mumbled the Professor. “I shall leave it with you ladies, as a token of my thanks. After all, I doubt I’ll have time to write in Florida, freeing an oppressed race!”

Alizon said, “You mentioned this last night. What oppressed race?”

“In the suburbs of Miami, living amid the humans even as we gnomes do, are poor unfortunates known as the phony copterids.”

Alizon wondered what made those copterids different from the real ones. Perhaps the relationship was something like that of the ceramic garden gnomes and their woodland cousins. The name bothered her. It sounded vaguely familiar, but Raquel was the expert on folk legends. She glanced at her friend, but Raquel clearly didn’t know what Gottfried was talking about.

The Professor continued: “Their plight is a twofold tragedy: even on nights of the full moon, they cannot move from their places of imprisonment. They are, I fear, stupider than Vatsy. And their feral cousins lurk in the nearby marshes, calling pitifully to their enchanted fellows. Ah, it rends the heart to hear them!”

Karl said, “So we shall find a place of ancient magics, perhaps one used by the Seminoles, and on the next eclipse, we’ll rescue them along with the gnomes in our old neighborhood.”

“How noble!” Gretchen gushed. “I can’t wait to start!”

Fearing that Miami would be overrun by gnomes and whatever the other Faerie folk were, Becca asked, “They won’t hurt people, will they?”

“Not at all,” said Karl. “They just want to escape the humans, same as us.”

“So let us go now!” said Anton. “Night has fallen, und no one vill spy us.Vielen Dank , lovely ladies. As long as Anton’s lamp burns, he shall not forget how you saved him twice.” The rosy-cheeked gnome bounced over and kissed all three women, as did Gretchen. Gottfried and Karl shook hands, then all four scrambled out the window. A moment later, they were over the garden wall and gone.

Alizon broke the long silence that followed their exit. “As president, I propose the immediate disbandment of the Garden Gnome Freedom Front. Nor should we go a step from this flat during the next lunar eclipse.”

“Second the motion!” Raquel and Becca chorused.

There were undoubtedly benefits from the gnomish rescue. Raquel no longer needed glasses, and the others found their sight improved in unusual ways. They did indeed encounter Faerie folk in the nearby woods, though Raquel lamented she couldn’t very well convince her professors they were real. The trio decided to make the best of it: if the world wouldn’t believe in the reality of what they knew about Faerie, they’d disguise the truth as fiction. They began work on a fantasy novel, using Gottfried’s book as a major reference.

A month after the eclipse, they received a letter from Sgt. Faelling’s son in California, thanking them for Otto. “My father was so pleased to see the gnome that saved his patrol,” he wrote. “The little fellow sat by Dad’s bedside for three weeks, watching over him until he peacefully slipped away. Now the gnome is in Mom’s garden, under a palm tree and a hibiscus bush. He looks silly there, but Mom loves him very much.”

“So Otto’s warming his old bones, too,” said Becca. “Wonder how the others are doing in Florida?”

“Keep watching for news of phony copterids after the next American eclipse,” laughed Raquel.

Alizon, sitting at the table, dropped her fork with a clatter and ran to her room.

She returned with a book, her hands shaking. “I knew that sounded familiar! The Professor’s beard muffled all his words.”

“You know what they’re doing?” asked Raquel.

Alizon flushed. “Phoenicopterus ruber. The greater flamingo. Heaven help the Americans. They’ve gone to liberate the lawn flamingos of Miami.”

Evening slowly became warm blue dusk. Trees on the south side of the Morokini, pine, river birch, alder, rose in delicate darkling tracery. They had been left standing along the bank, a jut from the woodlands to the west. It ended short of the house, giving an open view across the river itself. Beyond, New Tholis was already a mass of night, roofs, chimneys, watchtower silhouetted, windows aglow with candlelight. The water still sheened beneath the sky, tossing flashes of light where its cascades chuckled and gurgled across rocks, on its way east to the sea.

Lights appeared among the trees, soft, flickery, iridescent, like mother-of-pearl come alive and aflight. Some of their scores flew out from under the leaves. Two cavorted near enough to the house for a man to see what it was that shone. Less than six inches long, they were almost like humans in miniature, borne on wings almost like a moth’s but luminous and larger than themselves. Silver-pale hair flowed down over nude ivory-pale bodies, male and female. They darted and tumbled about one another and laughed for joy.

Suddenly the male streaked close to the veranda. “Hail, Arvel Tarabine! Welcome, stranger!” Though his cry was no louder than a fledgling’s peep, high-pitched to the edge of audibility, it sang.

“Which are you?” asked Arvel curtly.

The ellil flitted to and fro. “Fiulo,” he trilled. “That’s Fiulo the Quick, not Fiulo the Zephyr or Honeysuckle-Fiulo. And yonder, behold Yuna, my love for tonight. Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she delightful? Don’t you envy me? May you be half as glad.”

He sped back to her. She held out her arms to him. He clasped both her hands. They kissed, let go, and danced off through the air toward the woods.

Arvel shook his grizzled head. “No longer can I tell them apart,” he growled. “More and more every year.”

“An enchanting sight,” said Olavir Cyrac. “Never erenow have I spied so many.” He had lately come across Ocean, a younger son of a noble house in Croy, eager to experience the New Lands. From Port Roncitar he had fared up the Morokini, taking hospitality where he found it, repaying with news from the mother cities.

A few centuries-old lines murmured from his lips:

“Love is no lady, but a wench with wings, Fickle and fleet, the child of wind and sky, Cool as a fall where tumbling water rings, Brazen as sunlight and, like moonglow, shy—”

Cappen Varra had also been a romantic wanderer.

“I fear I can’t help you there,” said Arvel with a wry grin. “Lasses are in short supply throughout the colonies.”

“You offer me aplenty else, sir,” replied the visitor.

He had arrived today, leaving his bearers camped outside the town while he crossed the bridge to seek