Jim Butcher - Naked City - Tales of Urban Fantasy

“We know who he is,” Gwynn said testily. “And we know why he is here. Return to your post. We will see to it that he is safely returned.”

The Jili Ffrwtan curtsied deeply and revealingly. “Of course, sire.” Then she simply vanished into a sparkling cloud of lights.

“Guards,” King Gwynn called out. “You will leave us now.”

The guards looked unhappy about it, but they lined up and filed out, every movement in sync with the others. Gwynn waited until the last of them had left the hall and the doors boomed shut before he turned back to me.

“So,” he said. “Who do ye like for the Series this year?”

I blinked my eyes at him several times. It wasn’t one of those questions I’d been expecting. “Um. American League, I’m kind of rooting for Tampa Bay. I’d like to see them beat out the Yankees.”

“Aye,” Gwynn said, nodding energetically. “Who wouldn’t. Bloody Yankees.”

“And in the National League,” I said, “the Cubs are looking good at the moment, though I could see the Phillies pulling something out at the last minute.” I shrugged. “I mean, since the Cubbies are cursed and all.”

“Cursed?” Gwynn said. A fierce smile stretched his face. “Cursed, is it?”

“Or so it is widely believed,” I said.

Gwynn snorted then rose and descended from his throne. “Walk with me.”

The diminutive monarch walked farther back into the cavern, past his throne, and into what resembled some kind of bizarre museum. There were rows and rows of cabinets, each with shelves lined in black velvet, and walls of crystalline glass. Each cabinet had a dozen or so artifacts in it: ticket stubs were some of the most common items, though there were also baseballs here and there among them, as well as baseball cards, fan booklets, team pennants, bats, batting gloves, and fielders’ gloves.

As I walked beside him, careful to keep my pace slow enough to let him dictate how fast we were walking, it dawned on me that King Gwynn ap Nudd of the Tylwyth Teg was a baseball fan—as in fanatic —of the original vintage.

“It was you,” I said suddenly. “You were the one they threw out of the game.”

“Aye,” King Gwynn said. “There was business to attend, and by the time I got there the tickets were sold out. I had to find another way into the game.”

“As a goat?” I asked, bemused.

“It was a team-spirit thing,” Gwynn said proudly. “Sianis had made up a sign and all, proclaiming that Chicago had already gotten Detroit’s goat. Then he paraded me and the sign on the field before the game—it got plenty of cheers, let me tell you. And he did pay for an extra ticket for the goat, so it wasn’t as though old Wrigley’s successors were being cheated the price of admission. They just didn’t like it that someone argued with the ushers and won!”

Gwynn’s words had taken on the heat that you can only get from an argument that someone has rehearsed to himself about a million times. Given that he must have been practicing it since 1945, I knew better than to think that anything like reason was going to get in the way. So I just nodded and asked, “What happened?”

“Before the game was anywhere near over,” Gwynn continued, his voice seething with outrage, “they came to Sianis and evicted him from the park. Because, they said, his goat smelled too awful!”

Gwynn stopped in his tracks and turned to me, scowling furiously as he gestured at himself with his hands. “Hello! I was a goat ! Goats are supposed to smell awful when they are rained upon!”

“They are, Your Majesty, sir,” I agreed soberly.

“And I was a flawless goat!”

“I have no doubts on that account, King Gwynn,” I said.

“What kind of justice is it to be excluded from a Series game because one has flawlessly imitated a goat!?”

“No justice at all, Your Majesty, sir,” I said.

“And to say that I, Gwynn ap Nudd, I the King of Annwn, I who defeated Gwythr ap Greidawl, I the counselor and ally to gods and heroes alike, smelled !” His mouth twisted up in rage. “How dare some jumped-up mortal ape say such a thing! As though mortals smell any better than wet goats!”

For a moment, I considered pointing out the conflicting logic of Gwynn both being a perfect (and therefore smelly) goat and being upset that he had been cast out of the game for being smelly. But only for a second. Otherwise, I might have been looking at coming back to Chicago about a hundred years too late to grab a late-night meal at BK.

“I can certainly see why you were upset and offended, Your Majesty, sir.”

Some of the righteous indignation seemed to drain out of him, and he waved an irritated hand at me. “We’re talking about something important here, mortal,” he said. “We’re talking about baseball . Call me Gwynn.”

We had stopped at the last display cabinet, which was enormous by the standards of the furnishings of that hall, which is to say, about the size of a human wardrobe. On one of its shelves was a single outfit of clothing; blue jeans, a T-shirt, a leather jacket, with socks and shoes. On all the rest were the elongated rectangles of tickets—season tickets, in fact, and hundreds of them.

But the single stack of tickets on the top shelf sat next to the only team cap I’d seen.

Both tickets and cap bore the emblem of the Cubs.

“It was certainly a serious insult,” I said quietly. “And it’s obvious that a balancing response was in order. But, Gwynn, the insult was given you unwittingly, by mortals whose very stupidity prevented them from knowing what they were doing. Few enough there that day are even alive now. Is it just that their children be burdened with their mistake? Surely that fact also carries some weight within the heart of a wise and generous king.”

Gwynn let out a tired sigh and moved his right hand in a gesture that mimed pouring out water cupped in it. “Oh, aye, aye, Harry. The anger faded decades ago—mostly. It’s the principle of the thing, these days.”

“That’s something I can understand,” I said. “Sometimes you have to give weight to a principle to keep it from being taken away in a storm.”

He glanced up at me shrewdly. “Aye. I’ve heard as that’s something you would understand.”

I spread my hands and tried to sound diffident. “There must be some way of evening the scales between the Cubs and the Tylwyth Teg,” I said. “Some way to set this insult to rights and lay the matter to rest.”

“Oh, aye,” King Gwynn said. “It’s easy as dying. All we do is nothing. The spell would fade. Matters would resume their normal course.”

“But clearly you don’t wish to do such a thing,” I said. “It’s obviously an expenditure of resources for you to keep the curse alive.”

The small king suddenly smiled. “Truth be told, I stopped thinking of it as a curse years ago, lad.”

I arched my eyebrows.

“How do you regard it, then?” I asked him.

“As protection,” he said. “From the real curse of baseball.”

I looked from him to the tickets and thought about that for a moment. Then I said, “I understand.”

It was Gwynn’s turn to arch eyebrows at me. “Do ye now?” He studied me for a time and then smiled, nodding slowly. “Aye. Aye, ye do. Wise, for one so young.”

I shook my head ruefully. “Not wise enough.”

“Everyone with a lick of wisdom thinks that,” Gwynn replied. He regarded his tickets for a while, his hands clasped behind his back. “Now, ye’ve won the loyalty of some of the Wee Folk, and that is no quick or easy task. Ye’ve defied Sidhe queens. Ye’ve even stuck a thumb into the Erlking’s eye, and that tickles me to no end. And ye’ve been clever enough to find us, which few mortals have managed, and gone out of your way to be polite, which means more from you than it would from some others.”