[continued from The Nexus Christmas Special]
"Please," she calls, coming to an abrupt halt behind the other girl. "Please...I need a ride away from here. Do you have room for another?"
Barnabas arches a bushy eyebrow and scowls. (Well, more than usual.)
"Oh, now THERE'S a surprise for ye," he growls. "Someone *else* needs a ride. Someone should tell those damned faeries their bloody forest's infested with hitchhikers..."
Remaining unimpressed, Brat rolls her eyes and mutters, "Hm, yeah, and then tell 'em they've also gotta problem with the irate, loud, self-important dwarves who keep pickin' 'em up..."
As if just remembering her manners, she pulls back her hood and bows deeply to the dwarf who seems to be in charge. Surprisingly, she seems to be no more than a child of a dozen years or so. Tall for her age, yet still visibly young. "I am Olwen," she says, straightening up. "Please...you must help me...."
She [Brat] raises her eyebrows, silently sizing up the new arrival.
The dwarf sighs explosively. "Yes, yes, Barnabas, dwarves, Brat," he says impatiently, indicating each of them in turn. "Now get aboard afore the fire grows cold. And mind ye, keep yer hands to yerself! And *you*," he adds, turning to point a thick finger at Brat, "*you* just got yerself a new job: *babysitter*. Just you keep her out from underfoot, or ye'll be riding the _cowcatcher_ back to Stonebriar Mountain!"
"W-WHAT?!" Brat narrows her eyes and scowls, nearly nose-to-nose with Barnabas. "Now you just cut yerself off right there, Barney. I sure as hell am NOT about to chase after a rugrat! You wanna keep her, you go right ahead, an' you can worry 'bout lookin' after her, too!"
Rumbleburg's fists clench at his sides, the color of a not-so-slow burn rising in his cheeks...
She jerks a thumb back in Olwen's general direction. "'Sides, f'she's old 'nough t'be in enough trouble to be runnin', she's old 'nough to look after herself!"
The dwarf's mouth opens, ready to let fly with a scorching retort... when Rodney interrupts him with a gentle tug on Brat's sleeve.
"Beggin' yer pardon, Miss," the small dwarf says politely, "but you really *are* the best choice to look after the young one. We dwarves, we tend to get a bit focused on our work, to the exclusion of all else. Now, Barnabas is a fine dwarf, make no mistake -- I daresay the same of the rest of the crew, come to that -- but if you leave the child in our care, well... likely as not she'll find herself caught up in the gears, or worse."
Barnabas feels the coals in his internal boiler nicely doused. "Yes... And don't you forget it!" he adds with a halfhearted finger-wag.
For her part, Olwen remains silent. She watches Brat carefully, never taking her eyes off the older girl. The fluttering of Brat's red scarf only serves to draw her attention even closer.
Suddenly, Brat feels a presence at her side. The little chestnut-haired girl stands there quietly, quite happy with her new babysitter. The fact that her guardian is obviously unwilling does not dawn on her. Olwen simply looks up at her happily, her gaze occasionally straying to the dwarf.
She seems to not be worried about whoever is chasing her any more. //The dwarves and Brat will protect me,// she thinks delightedly, unaware that there is any other possibility.
Rodney ambles up to the little girl with that beard-enforced neutral expression of his. Patting her gently on the head, he hands her a clementine from one pocket of his coveralls. Then, with a nod to Brat, he turns and clambers up the ladder to the cabin of the steam sleigh.
Brat nods back absently, dumbfounded once again at the sheer politeness Rodney utilizes.
Olwen smiles at Rodney, and looks down at the little orange in her hands. The traders who used to visit her village brought items such as this. Her mother had gotten her one, once...but her cousin had taken it before she could get even a taste. This one was all hers! She puts it in a pocket carefully, overly aware of its fragility.
Whatever had been chasing her has long since vanished from her thoughts. No sounds of pursuit come from the forest, and there is no other sign of chase.
Barnabas clears his throat. "Yes... well, enough of that! All aboard the sleigh, laggards, unless ye're planning on footing it back to Stonebriar! And get the shelter set up on the flatcar! I daresay the air's too chill for the likes of humans to make the trip out in the open!"
In response, the dwarves grumble stoically into action. Soon the flatcar's tarp takes on the shape of a large, low-roofed tent, the cozy glow of a cast-iron stove flickering warmly inside.
Brat raises her eyebrows and grins slightly. Now _that's_ more like it. She takes an eager step forward, blowing on her hands a bit. The idea of getting out of the snow and chilling breeze is tempting, to say the least.
Olwen takes a corner of Brat's coat in her little hand, and waits patiently for her to make the first move.
She stops abruptly, feeling that little tug. Rolling her eyes, she half-turns, just long enough to jerk her coat back out of the girl's grasp.
"Well don't think I'm gonna wait for ya, Kid." She moves briskly away, trotting back to the flatcar, and to that inviting, cozy glow within the shelter. She doesn't bother looking back to see if the younger girl follows.
"It's okay," Olwen replies, smiling. She trots after Brat, but is careful not to grab onto the older girl's coat again. She is curious as to why Brat didn't like that...but doesn't question her authority.
They both board the flatcar, and slip into the confines of the tent. Empty boxes and cartons line the walls: remnants from the spectacular fireworks display shown earlier. A cast iron stove sits in the middle of the tent, its contents snapping and crackling happily in its metal gullet. A copper coffee-pot sits atop the stove, steam billowing from its lips in a translucent cloud.
Brat rubs her hands together, letting her gaze roam around the interior. The shelter wasn't fancy, nor was it particularly comfortable. But it was warm and safe. And it would take her away.
Olwen pulls up a small wooden box as near the stove as she can without getting burned. Before Brat can argue against it, she then goes to drag over another crate for her guardian to sit on.
The chestnut haired child settles herseelf on her box, making sure to face the warmth of the fire. She waits several moments, seeming quite at ease in the quiet confines of the tent. She pulls out the clementine from her pocket, and turns it around in her hands for a bit.
A glance shifts from the crate to the girl who moved it. Brat stubbornly plunks herself down on the floor, some distance from the stove. She rests her chin on one hand, and allows her thoughts to wander where they will...
Mountains. She's going to see-- She's going to _touch_ mountains. She's going to reach a horizon she's been able to see and imagine, and never been able to realize. It's as bizarre a concept as the sea, a place she's heard of through so many snippets of conversation.
"Do you work with the dwarves?" she [Olwen] asks finally, her voice barely above a shy whisper. "They seem like very nice people."
"What?" Brat snaps, her engrossing illusions drifting away hastily, unwilling to be recaptured. She frowns. "No, not really. Well, yeah, kinda... I do _now_, and thanks to you it's not the job I was expecting." She rolls her eyes. "And oh sure, they're just great folks, they'll prob'ly just love _you_..."
Olwen smiles happily. "Oh, I'm sure that they like you, too, Brat," she says encouragingly. Slipping off her box, she sits on the floor as well, but is sure not to stray any closer to Brat.
There are a few moments of uncomfortable silence. Olwen nervously rolls the clementine back and forth between her hands, and eventually starts peeling its thick orange coat away. It opens easily, unlike the large oranges the merchants would sometimes bring to her town, and its insides are bright with juice and seeds.
Olwen pulls it into two halves; one in each hand. She looks up at Brat, sitting in the opposite corner of the tent, and begins to speak again.
"Would you like some?" she asks, offering one of the halves. "My mother bought me one, once, but I never got to taste it. They're supposed to be very good."
Brat glances disinterestedly at Olwen. "Nah, s'alright, got my own." She points to the clementine-shaped bulge in one pocket. "And maybe f'you were eating, 'stead of talking, y'could find out if they _are_ any good, right? Right."
Olwen retracts the clementine half, and a shadow of hurt passes across her face for the split second before another dwarf approaches them, with his two trays of food.
As if thoughts of food are contagious, a couple of apron-wearing dwarves enter the tent bearing still more wooden crates. They remove the contents -- heavily wrapped foodstuffs of various kinds, apparently -- and push the crates together on the floor with a cloth over the top, turning them into an improvised preparation table. With typical dwarven efficiency, a hearty meal soon takes shape and begins sizzling on the stove in iron skillets. The aromas of garlic sausages and baked apples stuffed with cinnamon and raisins fill the tent and begin their savory siren song.
One of the dwarves produces several plates from another nearby crate and generously piles them with food. Surprisingly, he manages to carry both plates and two steaming mugs of coffee to the two girls without dropping so much as a raisin.
"If you're hungry, there's plenty to go 'round," he says in a rock-grinding voice as he offers them the plates and mugs. "Lugging those crates about is hungry work even for dwarves." Then, to Olwen: "And you're looking a bit puny, even for a human."
Olwen takes the plate, and smiles at the dwarf. "My Mam always said I was a big girl," she says, cocking her head slightly as she thinks. "But then again, dwarves are said to be much more strong and powerful than any human anyway. I am small compared to you, sir."
"Hate t'break it to ya, but you're small anyway." Grinning, Brat takes the plate offered to her.
The dwarf snorts in a dwarven approximation of a chuckle, then turns to fill a plate of his own.
She takes a moment to appreciate the spicy aromas, until her stomach clamours for attention, and she begins to eat. She doesn't race through the meal, taking time to savour every bite. In fact, her attention is certainly more focused on the food than her current company.
Not standing on ceremony, the other dwarf at the stove loads up a plate of his own and, seating himself on a crate, commences eating with stoic vigor.
Olwen takes a few bites of the spicy sausage, smiling delightedly as she finds it rather tasty. The stuffed apples, too, are a treat. She digs in as if she hasn't eaten in days: rivaling the dwarves in their ability to down their meals.
The coffee is another matter, however. After eyeing the mug for several moments, Olwen ventures near enough to take a sip. The liquid burns her lips and tongue, making her jerk away quickly from the mug's edge. The bitter tasting liquid isn't as bad as it seems, though, once she cools it down by blowing on its surface for a while.
Observing the process, Brat eyes her own mug with disgust. "Don't see how y'can stand the stuff, Kid." She wrinkles her nose and leaves the untouched mug on the floor beside her.
"Ye'd do well t'follow her lead," the dwarf by the stove observes over his own cup. "Air's thin in the mountains. Ye'll need all th'vim an' vigor that coffee'll give ye."
"Sir?" she queries, after taking another sip--carefully, this time--of the interesting drink. "Sir, if I may, where is this machine heading? I'm afraid I've never seen one before this. Do the trains go to a home once they've finished their delivery? Or do they ever get mad when too many people climb on its back?"
While she [Brat] lets the taste of cinnamon sparkle on her tongue, she restrains herself to only a faint smirk, awaiting the dwarf's reaction.
The dwarf by the stove chokes on his coffee, while his companion snorts again around a mouthful of sausage. "Sleigh's headed for the mountain's," he mutters around his food. "And it don't get mad. S'a machine, and does as it's told. S'why machines're better'n pack beasts and such.
Olwen ponders this for a few moments, her head cocked as she tries to comprehend the concept. She looks down at the floor--at the machine which pulls her along towards the mountains--and reaches down to pat its surface, as one would pet a dog. "I think it's a wonderful machine for being so kind, sir," she says, smiling up at him. "You're right: it's much better than a horse!"
The dwarf arches a bushy eyebrow, then shakes his head with a third rumbling snort and returns his attention to what remains of his meal.
The other dwarf sets his empty plate aside and nods toward Olwen's clementine. "Seems Rodney's taken a shine to ye."
The two clementine halves, placed carefully on the side of her plate, catch Olwen's attention once more. "I didn't thank him..." she says aloud, frowning delicately. "He was a very nice dwarf. Do you think I will see him when the machine gets to the mountain?"
"Oh, I daresay you'll see'm sooner'n that," the dwarf replies with a nod, "but I'm not sure ye'd properly call Rodney a _dwarf_..."
He glances at the other dwarf, then leans forward on his crate conspiratorially. "...y'see, th'way I hear it, his granddam on his mother's side was pure-blood _gnome_."
Olwen's brow furrows for a moment in thought. "I think..." she says slowly, as if formulating her thesis as she speaks, "I think that...if Rodney is a gnome, then I like gnomes."
She observes their faces, curiousity shining in her eyes. "But you don't like gnomes? What's wrong with them?"
"Now, don't misunderstand," says the dwarf with a wave of a calloused hand. "Rodney's dwarf, right enough... just not _all_ dwarf," he adds with a knowing nod.
Brat finds her attention - which, up until this point, had been content to focus entirely inwards - pulled back to the words of her company. She admits she's curious about the dwarf who had shown her some courtesy... Even if he now was "takin' a shine" to Olwen. Hmph.
"And gnomes are good enough folks, in their own way," he continues. "They've some duecedly fine jewelers among'em, and good miners, too... even if they _do_ waste most of their digging on the _hill_ country." He shakes his head distastefully.
Before going on, he draws a pipe out of one chest pocket and expertly fills it with a packet of tobacco from the other. The extended silence as he strikes a match and carefully puffs the coal to life leaves the continuance of the discussion in doubt.
"No, gnomes are good enough folks," he repeats at last, taking the fragrantly smoking pipe from his mouth and gesturing with its stem for emphasis. "They're just a bit... _frivolitive_, is all." He nods to himself, clearly pleased with his word choice. "Not nearly so much as yer typical faerie layabout, mind ye... but they're a bit overfond of singing, dancing, and feasting, nonetheless. Not enough good, hard work to keep'em busy in those sunny lands of theirs, sez I."
With a final conclusive nod, he silently returns his attention to his pipe. The series of nutmeg-scented smoke rings he idly puffs forth drift over the girls' heads, looping themselves about the stove's chimney like a ghostly ring toss.
Brat waves threads of smoke away from her nose, suddenly attentive.
"Hey, that music box, was that Rodney's idea? Since it was kinda... _frivolitive_ on its own..."
The dwarf coughs and sputters loudly, spewing forth an angry gray cloud that roils about his boots before dispersing.
"Frivolitive??" the dwarf sputters, "That?? Rondey had more than a hand at makin' it, I'll grant you, but there's nothing frivolitive about a work of beauty, child! That box took three dwarves eight of your human months to create, I'll have you know! Why, you might as well say that *fireworks* are a frivolity!" He obviously finds the very thought scandalous.
"Well, f'it was took so damn long to put together, why haven't any of you come back to get it yet? HM?" Brat frowns, quite soured over the dwarf's criticism. She resolves not to venture forth with any complicated vocabulary in the near future - obviously it would only get her into trouble.
He cocks his head and looks at her curiously. "Dwarves don't take back their gifts," he says simply.
He pauses in his rant to tamp down the coal of his pipe, which has been slightly dislodged by his thunderous coughing. The well-practiced action seems to calm him.
Olwen draws her knees up to her chest, after placing her mostly-empty plate on the ground beside her. The fact that adults are talking about real, adult things around a child fascinates her, and she attempts to rise to the challenge: cocking her head every so often as she ponders over one or more points made by either the dwarves or Brat.
"The finest act ye can perform in life, girl," he pontificates after a deep breath, "is t'leave a thing o' beauty behind ye. Something y'made with yer own hands that weren't there before ye. Don't ever fergit that. Most *faeries* have. Here they've got an eternity to work with, and what do they do with it? Prance about like fools, gossip with trees and ponds, play at nonsensical games, and swap human babes for changelings, *that's* what. All that time, _squandered_. Imagine what this world'd be like, if they spent *half* that time like proper dwarves, makin' things like that music box o' yours! The world'd be a better place, I tell ye..."
"Sir?" Olwen pipes up cautiously, wanting to be sure that he has finished his thought. "It's quite possible that I'm all wrong in this...but if the fairies pretended to be dwarves, wouldn't that make the real dwarves less important? Their jobs'd get all taken over by the fairies, and then nobody would be happy...." Her voice trails off uncertainly, and she anxiously looks over to Brat for support.
Brat shakes her head with a smirk. "Don't think they're too likely t'be happy anyway, Kid. 'Sides," she continues to the dwarf, "just 'cause somebody _made_ somethin' doesn't make it beautiful. There's some famous line 'bout that. Beauty bein' in the eye of the whatchamacallit. . ."
"Right enough," he agrees. Then, turning back to Olwen: "But if ye think we dwarves to the work we do t'be important, ye've got a good bit t'learn about us. We work because the work needs doing, not because it brings us any kind o' fame or glory. That's human thinking, not dwarven."
"Oh...I didn't mean...I mean..." Olwen fights back the blush which rises stubbornly to her cheeks. She should have known better than to speak in front of adults. Suddenly, her two clementine halves catch her attention, and she sets to work at their juicy centres with a vengeance. Her ears remain open, however...though she cannot participate in the conversation, she enjoys listening to the debate.
Brat shrugs, sparing only one look of disbelief at Olwen's ease in backing down.
"Well, f'you ask me, there's your first problem. What's the matter with fame and glory? Two stones for one bird. Er, wait, no, the other way around." She nods decisively, probably to hide the scarlet beginning to inflame her own expression. //First the 'frivolitive' thing, now _this_...//
"Nothin' *wrong* with fame and glory, exactly," chimes in the second dwarf, "'cept that ye can get *sotted* with'em, just as ye can with a good ale. Afore long, ye find yer in yer cups just t'*get* sotted, rather than to simply slake yer thirst as is right and prop-"
A sudden long blast of the steam sleigh's whistle followed by three shorter blasts interrupts his thought, as does a monstrous, gurgling laugh from outside.
"Boot up, laggards!!" comes Rumbleburg's snarl from the sleigh ahead. "Jumbrick wants t'play!"
The two dwarves grumble to their feet. "Thrice-damned giants," one mutters as he turns to open a nearby crate.
That's when the tarp is suddenly ripped away from above like a massive fleeing ghost, revealing an idiotic drooling face of lunar proportions leering down at them from 15' above. The misshapen snotty nose scents the air with a rattling snort, and that great moronic smile widens into a gaping rotten-toothed grin.
Olwen looks up in terror, her eyes wide as saucers. Terror clutches at her heart, and the urge to hide under something--ideally someone who can protect her--is almost overpowering. As it is, she simply sits on the floor, too stunned to do anything else.
Brat's jaw drops, her gaze frozen on the giant. Not in the habit of screeching in terror, she lets loose a string of swearing, curses and general damnation of everyone in the vicinity. It occurs to her briefly that the dwarves seemed to be expecting this... A thought which is hastily silenced by the giant himself.
"HOOOMANS!" the giant rumbles delightedly.
A scream tears from Olwen's throat: breaking her from her trance. She does the only thing she can, and launches the uneaten clementine half into the air like an orange missile, aimed unerringly for the giant's ugly head.
The giant roars in pain and confusion as the fruit smacks into his face, its acidic juice stinging his right eye. He frantically wipes his face on one shaggy arm.
Glancing at Olwen, rather disbelievingly, Brat allows: //Nice shot..//
The dwarves below, meanwhile, scramble about the flatcar in what appears to be a well-practiced drill. They quickly don a peculiar kind of steel-toed boot and pass around various hammers, wrenches, and other heavy tools.
His vision restored, the giant looks down at the two girls reproachfully. With surprising speed for one so oafish, he scoops up a girl in each cart-sized hand, lifting them level with his head.
"JUMBRICK HUNGRY," the giant helpfully explains, fetid breath from countless questionable meals stirring the girls' hair.
*****
The wintry sky casts an eerie light down on the small party of five men. They are all mounted, though their horses seem displeased at having to voyage such a distance in the deep snow of mid-winter. They seem pleased, then, when the thick foliage clears suddenly to reveal a type of curious pathway.
The strips of metal and wood which lay on the ground are from a machine. That much is obvious. Smoothed to a shiny texture, the tracks seem to be well used, at that. A merchant cart, perhaps? Made into a machine for quicker speed?
One dismounts from his steed, letting his reins fall to the ground. He adjusts his dark blue woolen cloak absently as he makes his way towards the strange pathway, acting as if he must look his very best even when there are only the birds and squirrels to see him.
"Is this how she got away so quickly, Cadog?" asks one of the other men, who had remained on his horse. Though they had passed through a clearing a while back where the snow was strangely warm, here, a romp through the snow might be hazardous tto ones extremities. "We wer right on 'er tail..."
Cadog grunts in reply, and kneels down to touch the metal tracks. They are of a strange metal...harder than gold, yet seemingly less valuable, if it is used in such a manner. //Odd...//
"We follow," he says, rising to make his way back to his horse. "You--" he points to one of the men at the rear "--go back and report to her father. The rest of you, with me."
//We'll find you yet, child...// Cadog thinks, as the horses make their way up onto the strange pathway. //If we don't...it'll be the end of us all....//
*****
Brat's stomach reels from the height, not particularly relieved by the stench that reaches down her throat to permeate her lungs. She swallows back the instant urge to retch, and pounds furiously on the hand holding her captive.
"HUNGRY?!" she hollers, eyes blazing with indignation. "You're DISGUSTING! Y'slobbering, lazy-eyed, train-walloping MORON! PUT ME DOWN! And STOP BREATHING ON ME! Y'deserve t'trip on a mountain and drown in the nearest ocean, only t'have your eyes gouged out by shipwrecks! If you don't put me down THIS MINUTE, I'm gonna crawl up there and pull your eyelids over yer ugly damned head! YOU HEAR ME?!"
Jumbrick's eyes widen in surprise and dismay at Brat's prodigious stream of invective. Panic-stricken, the foggy-brained giant can think of only one way to stymie this devastating verbal assault.
He hurriedly stuffs Brat into his mouth and swallows her.
Olwen watches as Brat's body disappears between the two sets of white daggers that are Jumbrick's teeth. She sets to crying aloud again, calling for the dwarves help. What were they _doing_?!
Finding that no one comes at her call, Olwen tries once more to stall the giant's digestion of her friend. She grasps the giant's thumb with both hands, and bites down into the filthy appendage with all her might.
Jumbrick howls in pain from this new attack, dropping Olwen to loudly suck his wounded thumb.
Fortunately, Rodney stands with the dwarves now gathered at the giant's rowboat feet and catches her in his short but solid arms. "You really must be more careful around giants, you know," he gently chides before setting her on her feet.
"B-but...Brat!" Olwen cries, while attemping to straighten her cloak and tunic. A horrible taste fills her mouth, and it's all she can do not to retch. "He ate her! You've got to help her!"
"No need to carry on so, Miss," he reassures her, giving her a friendly pat on the back. "Barnabas will set all t'rights soon enough, you'll see."
"Ho there, ye great lumbering oaf!" Barnabas growls up at the giant, ominously tapping his palm with an iron wrench almost as long the dwarf is tall. "Ye've no call t'be eating those in my rightful employ! Just you cough her up double quick!"
The giant blinks as he looks down first at the wrathful dwarf, then at his bulging paunch. A slow, foolish grin crosses his face as he pats the latter fondly. Then he looks back at the dwarf, the smile quickly falling to a stubborn scowl as he crosses his oak tree arms and shakes his head.
"NO! JUMBRICK HAS HAD HIS DINNER. JUMBRICK IS FULL NOW. JUMBRICK *LIKES* TO BE FULL. JUMBRI-"
He pauses in his soliloquy, scrunching his face up queerly and holding his stomach. Doubling over with a thunderous **KAFF!!**, he belches out Brat it a stinking, slimy spray. The hapless Barnabas catches the adolescent projectile with one arm while keeping his grip on his wrench with the other and is thoroughly enslimed for his trouble. His cursing that follows is like a whale gargling ninepins.
"DINNER DISAGREE WITH JUMBRICK," the bilious giant proclaims.
"Serves you right, you big oaf!" shouts Olwen, taking a surprisingly bold step forward to shake her fist at the giant. The sight of the disheveled Brat has angered her to the point of breaking. "You just can't go around eating people like that, you know! How would you like it if someone came by and ate YOU?"
"'At's th'spirit, Miss!" Rodney leans over to whisper to her.
Jumbrick simply blinks stupidly at the girl's tirade.
When Brat regains consciousness. . .
Propping herself up on her elbows, she blinks with heavy eyelids. She drags a spit-covered sleeve across her equally coated face, making little difference whatsoever. She feels the overwhelming urge to retch, but resists with every nerve left unshattered. Trying not to think about her actions, she clears revolting residue from her face and inside her mouth, expression twisted in total disgust.
Her throat protests audibly as she slurrs, "F'that's not th'most _disgusting_ thing th'ever happens t'me, I'll die now and avoid it, thanks..."
"All right, then!" Barnabas yells, striding right up to the giant's hairy malodorous left foot and brandishing his oversized wrench. "As ye've returned my employee in a timely fashion, I'm of a mind t'be generous and let y'off with a warning. Now, OFF with ye!" He makes a shooing motion with the wrench.
Jumbrick scratches his jowls, considering the order in his mentally plodding manner. Reaching what passes for a conclusion, he shakes his fleshy head.
"NO!" the giant pouts. "JUMBRICK IS EMPTY AGAIN! JUMBRICK WILL STAY AND EAT!"
"Eat *this*, ye lumbering cloudswept simpleton!" Barnabas yells, winding up and kicking the giant's foot soundly with his steely boot.
"OOOOOOOOOW!!" moans the giant, grabbing his bruised foot with both hands. The earth shudders as he hops about in pain.
"Good shot!" the girl [Brat] calls enthusiastically, only mildly bitter that she didn't get to thwack the colossus herself.
"DWARVES HURT JUMBRICK'S FOOT!" Jumbrick observes as he completes his impromptu ballet. "NOW JUMBRICK *SMASH*!!" He uproots a nearby tree as easily as farm boy pulling a weed, raising it high overhead.
Heaving to her feet, Brat glowers at all nearby company. "Now I hafta move, _too_?! Oh sure, y'got a wrench, but y'couldn't have any leftover _fireworks_ or somethin' useful!" She adds, with more annoyance, "And Barney, would ya get the hell outta the way 'fore y'get squashed?!"
But Brat's warning proves unnecessary. Before Jumbrick can even complete his back swing with his improvised club, Barnabas runs forward and cracks him on the shin with his wrench.
The startled giant howls and releases the tree, which clocks him on the head with a hollow *thud*.
As one, the other dwarves rush forward and set to work on Jumbrick's feet, ankles, and shins with their wrenches, hammers, and mallets. Jumbrick bends down to swat at them, successfully knocking several sprawling but exposing his shaggy arms to a rain of hammer blows in the process.
The combined assault of the dwarves -- and his unexpectedly traitorous tree -- proves too much for the giant. With a petulant cry of "JUMBRICK LEAVE NOW!!", he turns to flee.
And promptly trips over his dropped tree club, falling face first into the ground with a thunderous crash and an explosive snowy cloud.
Silence falls as the echoes chase themselves away through the forest and the snow settles to the ground once more. The giant doesn't move, and the dwarves watch his fallen form cautiously.
Suddenly, an alarming series of shuddering snorts and heaving breaths rock the giant's body. It takes a moment for all present to realize just what is occurring.
The giant is crying.
Surprised to find that she is in no longer in immediate danger, Olwen rises slowly. After finding too many hard, pointy objects being flung about in the air by the dwarves, she had curled into a protective ball to wait out the ensuing battle.
She looks about...at the fallen dwarves, at the remains of the tent...and at the sobbing giant. The girl frowns unhappily at the sight, and her heart aches for the poor man. //He was only hungry...// she thinks, absently taking a step towards Jumbrick. //He didn't mean to hurt anybody....//
The dwarves knocked about by Jumbrick begin clambering to their feet, dusting off the snow from their coveralls and seeming none the worse for wear.
Suddenly, Olwen begins to walk towards Jumbrick the giant. No words will help him now...indeed, his pain seems to stem in part from the injuries on his hands and arms. Any words of warning from the dwarves or Brat are quickly dismissed as she kneels beside one of his log-sized appendages. She eyes it carefully.
"Here now, you! Come away from there!" calls Barnabas. "D'ye fancy seein' the inside of that simpleton's innards like yer friend did?"
Rooted to where she stands, Brat glowers at Olwen, growling, "Who said _she_ was my friend?"
"If he doesn't get clean, these will get infected," Olwen thinks aloud, careful to keep her voice quiet enough so that the giant is not startled. She pulls a small canister of water from one of her many pockets, and dampens a corner of her cloak so that she can dab carefully at one of his many cuts.
The giant sniffles and flinches at her touch, raising his head to look at her fearfully over the top of his arm. "YOU HURT JUMBRICK, TOO?" he asks temorously.
"It's okay, Mr. Jumbrick, sir," she says soothingly, careful not to cause him any more pain. "You just scared us...it's not nice to eat people that way, you understand."
"J-JUMBRICK WAS... *SNIFFLE*... _HUNGRY_," he protests weakly, wiping his nose on his arm. "OTHER GIANTS TELL JUMBRICK HUMANS GOOD TO EAT... AND... *SNIFF*... OTHER HUMAN _YELLS_ AT JUMBRICK... S-SO JUMBRICK EATS IT...
"HUMAN *DOES* TASTE GOOD," he adds wistfully, "BUT THEN HUMAN HITS AND KICKS INSIDE JUMBRICK, AND HURTS HIS TUMMY -- *SNIFF!* -- SO JUMBRICK GIVES HER _B-BACK_... AND BAD DWARVES _HIT_ J-J-JUUUUMBRIIIIICK...!" His voice trails off into shuddering sobs.
Aghast at Olwen's lack of sense and sympathy for her, and furious at the blubbering oaf, Brat clenches her fists at her sides. Her fingernails dig into her palms, drawing the first pink hints of blood.
"Oh, cry me a river!"
The irony of her words is lost on her entirely.
Ignoring Brat, Olwen rushes up to attempt to dry the giant's tears with her cloak. Instead, she ends up soaking it through within seconds; leaving her only able to pat the giant's cheek consolingly.
"I'm sure there is some nice game around here, Jumbrick," she says, smiling hopefully at him. "Or maybe you could try to eat some tubers and fruits? They're very good, if you'd just give them a try!"
Jumbrick raises his head hopefully. "TOOBERS AND FROOTS TASTE AS GOOD AS YELLING HOOMAN?"
Olwen can't help but giggle, and she pats Jumbrick's cheek again. "They taste much better than Brat, Jumbrick. Better than a dwarf, too."
Jumbrick furrows his brow as he ponders this revelation... then nods decisively. "IF TOOBERS AND FROOTS TASTE BETTER THAN YELLING HUMAN, AND WILL NOT KICK JUMBRICK'S TUMMY, JUMBRICK WILL EAT TOOBERS AND FROOTS."
Olwen blinks, and in her mind's eye she envisions carrots and apples trying to beat their way out of the poor man's stomach. She giggles. "Good idea, Jumbrick," she says with a smile.
"C'mon now, let's be off!" Barnabas urges gruffly. "No doubt his Ma'll be along presently, and we'd best not be here when she does!"
Brat, still well-coated with rapidly drying spittle, summons up any dignity she can muster. She turns on her heel and stalks back towards the vehicle from which she was plucked. Olwen looks rather troubled for a moment, pauses in her patting of Jumbrick's arm with the dampened cloth. "It'll be okay," she whispers in the giant's oversized ear. "Barnabas is really nice...you just have to know him a bit, okay?" That done, the girl stands up and trots over to Barnabas before the dwarf can make his way back to the sleigh.
Jumbrick cuts his eyes fearfully to the dwarf standing impatiently with his hands on his hips, and nods dubiously...
"Mr. Barnabas, sir?" Olwen asks, reaching over to tug his sleeve gently. "Could Jumbrick come with us? Please? I know that he wasn't very nice earlier, sir, but I think that he'll be just fine if I can look after him. He could go ahead and clear the path of any trees or big rocks: I'm sure he'd like doing that! And I know you said his Mam would come back...but if he was that hungry in the first place, she can't be taking very good care of him, sir...can he please come? Please?"
Barnabas stands dumbstruck for a moment as his mind tries desperately to lower his already abysmal estimation of the mental capacity of humans. His cheeks put the pause to good use, taking the opportunity to explore heretofore unguessed shades of red.
"'Come with us'?" Barnabas sputters. "'COME WITH US'??"
Jumbrick winces.
"That oaf's breath shrivel whatever passes for your brain?? D'ye think he's a great two-legged PUP??" the dwarf rages. "He's a GIANT. He's ALWAYS hungry. And what he don't *eat* he'll trample underfoot with his blundering about, likely as not!"
He pauses as a thought occurs to him. He rubs his chin, eyeing the giant speculatively. "Still... ye *do* have a point: he may be a lummox, but he's a muscle-bound one. Might prove himself useful, at that...
"All right, then!" he says at last, "Ye've got yerself a job. Ye'll be Rumbleburg & Co.'s official Giant Handler.
"Here're my terms," he continues officiously, ticking them off on his fingers. "First, ye'll see t'the oaf's care and feeding.
"Second, ye'll see to it that he does as he's told.
"Third, if he decides you'll make a nice snack, that's yer own lookout; see clause #1.
"Fourth, should he eat any OTHER employee of Rumbleburg & Co., all necessary actions'll be taken to retrieve'em, regardless of detrimental effects on th'giant in question.
"And FIFTH," he adds with significant look, "should said oaf's MAM show her warty face, any recompense she may seek'll be paid for by YOU."
He returns his fists to his hips and regards her sternly. "D'ye find the terms acceptable?"
Olwen looks slightly nervous...after all, it sounded as if she didn't accomplish even one of those conditions, she'd be eaten. Still, her heart goes out to the giant, and she gathers up the courage to stick out her hand.
"Yes sir," she says with an assurance she doesn't feel. "He'll be good and helpful, just you wait! We'll make good time."
Barnabas snorts, pulling out his pocket watch and brandishing its face like an attorney's damning evidence. "We'll have t'make bloody good time t'make up fer all this nonsense! Now, get that oaf on his feet and *leg it*!"
Satisfied with the way that went, Olwen returns to Jumbrick's side. The dwarves would be wanting to move along as quickly as possible: that was obvious. She crawls up to his shoulder without so much as a by-your-leave, and leans down to whisper in his ear.
"You gotta get up now, Jumbrick," she says, motioning towards the dwarves. "They like to move fast, so we gotta get to work. I'll ride with you so you don't get lonely, okay?"
Jumbrick looks fearfully at the dwarves and nods enthusiastically. "JUMBRICK WILL GET UP NOW."
Creating a miniature snowfall as he heaves himself to his feet, the giant bends over to pick up Olwen in his meaty fist and plops her onto his shoulder. The steam sleigh chugs to life, and he hurries over to join it.
Olwen quickly discovers that riding a giant is a bit like riding an elephant. An elephant that never bathes. And has never had to compensate for a rider.
The girl grasps the fur toga which is draped haphazardly about Jumbrick's body. With every step, she finds herself either wildly flung away from her perch, or pushed terribly close to the stench of the fur. As she clings to his shoulder, the thought that perhaps this mightn't have been a good idea crosses her mind once more.
After several minutes of travel, Olwen begins to get the hang of riding the giant. The spaces where furs were sewn together make it possible for her to hold on, and yet safely look about at their surroundings. The smell remains awful.
"You've gotta pick up the logs and rocks and move them out of the way," she explains, yelling to be heard amidst the "crunch-crunch" of the giant's boots in the snow, and the incessant whistle of the steam sleigh close behind them. "What's small to you is big to them! Get that one!" She points to a medium-sized boulder which the giant seems just ready to walk over. "Just keep their path clear and we'll make good time!"
Jumbrick nods ponderously, casually kicking the offending boulder to one side. "JUMBRICK WILL MOVE LOGS AND ROCKS FOR DWARVES," he agrees.
Olwen smiles delightedly and pats his shoulder. "Good Jumbrick!" she says encouragingly. "That's very good!"
He furrows his brow, a sure sign that a rare insight is forthcoming from the giant. "WHAT WILL JUMBRICK DO FOR DWARVES WHEN TRIP IS DONE?" he asks. "WILL DWARVES STILL FEED JUMBRICK?"
Then, with an even more troubled expression: "AND WILL JUMBRICK'S MAM BE MAD AT JUMBRICK FOR GOING WITH DWARVES?"
Olwen pauses. Indeed, the last person who she would have expected to cause her doubt was the giant...yet both points were good. She scrambles for something to reassure him: Barnabas would be angry if the giant suddenly turned on the sleigh in a moment of doubt. The dwarf wouldn't be so understanding this time around!
"I'm gonna help you find your own food soon," she says, sounding more sure of herself than she feels. "So you don't even have to worry about the dwarves. And you'll get to pick all the foods that you wanna eat! Won't that be nice?
"As for your Mam..." she searches for just the right words. Obviously his Mam wasn't taking very good care of him if he was hungry enough to attack the dwarves...but it wouldn't do to tell him that. It would only upset him.
"Your Mam will think it's good that you're helping people," she says, suddenly stumbling upon the idea. She smiles happily. "And she'll be even happier when you learn how to find your own food! Yes...it'll be okay, Jumbrick. You don't need to worry, okay?"
Jumbrick scratches his head as he ponders this, sending various unpleasant bits of detritus falling from his scalp to the forest floor._Something_ about the thought of his Mam being happy about him helping people doesn't seem right... _but_, the human girl seems so sure...
He shrugs -- barely avoiding dislodging Olwen in the process – and gives her a jagged-toothed smile and nod.
*****
Brat sits cross-legged on the floor beside the fire. She clutches her shirt in her hands, picking off shards of dried giant spittle, flinging each revolting particle into the flames. She wishes she could throw the whole giant in there.
Flick flick. //I would've been better off hangin' around that other crowd.
// Flick flick. //Hell, I never shoulda left Mistress. Betcha she's laughin'. Oh yeah, she's prob'ly having a great time, probably hopes I'm frozen t'death in some snowbank. Well...//
Flick flick. //Wish I _was_ frozen in some damned snowbank! S'better than bein' swallowed!//
Flick flick. //Not t'mention I'm pretty much unemployed, now. S'posed t'babysit that runt, but nooo, she's got herself a giant to latch onto. . .//
She glowers at her lack of company - not that she'd make vast efforts of conversation if she had any. She remains self-absorbed, for the moment. All she wanted was to get to somewhere else, where she could search. . .
Brat feels a sudden pang of loneliness. She shivers, a faint breeze chilling her bare back, and scuttles closer to the fire.
Flick flick.
The girl feels a small, weathered hand on her shoulder. "Miss?" Rodney says, "if ye'd like, I could set up the steam shower for ye. It's a bit hot for humans, no doubt, but perhaps I might fix something up to cool it off a notch..."
Brat blinks... And blinks again. Her mind begins to formulate an answer.
Before she can reply, the steam sleigh shudders to a halt. "Now what might *this* about?" Rodney wonders out loud, not having lost his balance in the slightest.
Brat, on the other hand, tumbles onto her side with an 'oof'. She scrabbles to her feet and thwacks her shirt against the floor a few times. Any remaining hardened coating is shaken free under the assault. Moving to leave her impromptu living quarters, she fidgets with the shirt, trying to identify the right way up . . .
He gets his answer soon thereafter, in the form of:
a truly wicked cackle...a kind of dry noise that hints at something very wet and nasty underneath.
Rodney shakes his head and sighs -- a sound like a cold wind rushing down a gulley. "Well, THAT's done it, then..."
The girl smirks over her shoulder as she takes her leave. "Oh, nah, m'sure it's only something incredibly dangerous an' humiliating. Better not keep it waitin', huh?"
*****
If it was a stormy night, lightning would have cracked, and revealed the figure that slips from the side of the path to insinuate herself into the sight of Olwen and the giant. But the hunched old woman makes do with a truly wicked cackle...a kind of dry noise that hints at something very wet and nasty underneath.
She's a walking streotype. Black eyes dart over the girl, and the much larger figure of Jumbrick, peering from a well worn face. Long, beaky nose, thin lips, wild iron-grey hair. No warts though. Her whipcord thin body is covered in what look like black rags, but apparently is some sort of dress. And yes, the requisite hob-nailed boots are present as well. All this covered by an old black cloak.
The old witch, for it is clear that's what she is, steps in the path of Olwen, and looks up at the giant. "Jumbrick!" she calls up to him, her mouth twising nastily. "Where d'ye think yer going?"
Jumbrick freezes in mid-stride, throwing Olwen forward on his shoulder. Panic flashes in his eyes as they reflect full-torsoed images of his mother.
"M-MAM??" he stutters, sweat suddenly beading his forehead despite the cold. Then, remembering what he was so lately told, he snaps to attention and recites in earnest schoolboy fashion: "J-JUMBRICK IS HELPING PEOPLE!! J-J-JUMBRICK WILL LEARN TO EAT TOOBERS AND FROOTS!!"
The witch narrows her eyes, and her hair almost seems to stand up on end. "JUMBRICK!" she screeches, and the grass around her wilts in self defense. "HELPING PEOPLE??? WHAT HAS YOUR MAM TAUGHT YOU ABOUT HELPING PEOPLE?!?!? GIANTS _EAT_ PEOPLE, YOU FOOLISH BOY!!!" The sheer amount of punctuation is almost enough to blow the giant over. Several trees shake in their bark, and try to hide behind their branches.
The giant blanches at her tirade, a trickle of drool running down one corner of his lip. Olwen can feel him shudder with fear beneath her.
The witch strides forward, momentarily forgetting to hunch, and stands at Jumbrick's feet. "What did I ever do to deserve such a disobedient boy!" she wails, wiping at nonexistent tears, then turns her beady eyes to Olwen. She frowns, then looks back up at her enormous son.
"JUMBRICK! Who TOLD you to help people?"
No doubt Jumbrick would take an unacceptable amount of time formulating an answer of his own. Thankfully, someone else answers for him, much to his surprise:
Olwen clutches at Jumbrick's shoulder, terrified. The coarse fur of his tunic is not dense enough to hide her small figure, but she attempts to bury herself in it anyhow.
The sight of her giant friend simpering before this woman is enough to make her pause, however. Who was she to yell at him? Even if she were his Mam, she hadn't taken very good care of him. He had been hungry and dirty and not very nice at all! He was her giant. Olwen's giant. And nobody was going to take that away from her!
"I-I did!" Olwen shouts, raising her hand slightly to make herself known. She jams it back down into her pocket when she finds that her fingers are trembling. "And it was a good t-thing, too! He was half-starved when we found him! What kind of mother are you to leave him alone like that?
"Come on, Jumbrick," she mumbles out the side of her mouth, hoping his huge ears will pick up her encouragement. "Stick up for yourself...."
Hear her he does, although the panicked glance he gives her suggests that she might as well have asked him to fetch her some cheese from the moon.
The witch stares at the young woman...and then a very braod, VERY nasty grin pulls her features, displaying snaggly, sharpened teeth. If it were summertime, the local trees would find themselves suddenly bare...
"What a TASTY little girl you look! So young, so tender...." her voice trickles syrup. "I really have to THANK you my girl, for taking care of my poor little boy, my only dearest BABY!....He gets lost so easily, you see...I've been looking for him for simply DAYS!" She sidles closer. "Come here, my child, that I may thank you more properly...."
Olwen twists up her little mouth worriedly and grabs Jumbrick's shoulder more firmly. The giantess seems rather happy that she found Jumbrick, to be sure, but still...she looked so untrustworthy! Her Mam had always told her not to trust strangers.
"He's mine now," she states, suddenly nervous at the proximity of Jumbrick's mother. The girl scrambles up to stand beside the giant's head: one hand on the bottom of his ear for support. "You don't need to thank me. I think you'll eat me if you do!"
The witch's mouth gapes open, and all of a sudden great big tears, looking suspiciously like those of a large, swamp dwelling reptile, spring from her eyes.
"Oh DEAR! So mistrustful, at such a young, tender age!" She peers up at Olwen, her long nose dripping copiously. "What terrible experiences you must have had, to not trust a poor old woman, so alone in the world, looking for her only child!" she pats the giant's rather larger hand in a motherly way.
Jumbrick sniffles loudly at his mam's touch, his fear momentarily forgotten. "J-JUMBRICK IS SORRY, MOMMA..."
The old witch smiles hideously up at her son. "Don't worry, my beautiful boy....we can discuss this WHEN WE GET HOME."
Jumbrick stiffens at the implied threat. He forces a nervous, lip-quivering smile.
Her tears dry up suddenly, and her eyes narrow dangerously. Mercury has nothing on a witch. "Besides, CHILD, who says Jumbrick is YOURS? I did not know such young, spoiled brats existed in ther world, that think they can OWN people!"
The giant's brow furrows at this. That *does* seem a bit strange -- he doesn't recall being *anyone's* giant. Of course, he also is unsure as to why this should trouble him at all, which only troubles him all the more...
Brat approaches the seemingly random collection of individuals. She stops several steps from the hag, only now pausing to tug her shirt over her head. Her speech is muffled by the cloth.
"Hey, 've we met? Sounds like y'know me pretty damn well, either way..."
The witch looks in astonishment at the second girl, then smiles with disgusting delight, deisplaying those filed teeth again. "ANOTHER one! These woods seem to abound with you girls!" Her eyes gleam with averice, literally...they throw sparks off the snow, and she licks her thin lips.
"Perhaps you girls should come home with Jumbrick and I...." she glances at Brat again, and adds, carefully, "And perhaps I can feed you. And teach you how to dress yourselves...you obviously NEED a Mother's touch! Yes, you two should DEFINITELY come home for dinner...."
Olwen bites her lip anxiously, her gaze flickering down to Brat to watch her reaction. It would be wonderful to have a mother...but this woman seemed so...odd!
"We've got jobs..." she mumbles, waving a hand back at the rest of the sleigh. "So...I don't think we can go. They'll be mad if we keep them up any longer, too. Won't they, Brat?" The girl smiles hopefully at Brat, her eyes begging for support.
The witch manages to suck up the long streaner of drool that attempts to escape her thin lips. "Oh, jobs! Child, you are TOO young to be working! You should be at HOME, maybe going to school, learning!"
"ALL right," comes the gruff voice of Barnabas from behind Brat, his heavy boots crunching the snow, "what's all THIS, then? That laggard of a giant's supposed to be clearin' the path, not _blocking_ it!"
The dwarf steps up to the giant, flanked by Rodney and four other dwarves. He rolls his eyes as he notes the presence of the crone. "Oh," he groans tiredly. "It's *you*."
The witch looks over at the dwarf, suprise clear. Then, her face narrows in a flash, her nose seeming to grow longer, as she takes on a foxy aspect. Her eyes skitter back towards Olwen.
"Oh, Mr. Barnabas, sir!" Olwen gasps, flushing in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, sir! This is Jumbrick's Mam...she wants him back...." she comes to an abrupt halt as he continues.
He looks up and wags an angry finger at Olwen on the giant's shoulder. "Well, a fat lot of good yer giant's done us! We've gone barely a mile, and here's his Mam, come to reclaim him! This'll cost us all the time he's gained us and more, no doubt! And it's on yer head, every second of it!"
That said, he turns to regard the witch, arms crossed stubbornly. "Well, let's have done with it, then. I've no time for yer cacklings and 'Come-closer-dearies' -- just take your elephantine lout of a son, and be off with ye!"
The witch licks her lips, and smiles. "Oh, I don't think that'll be necessary Barnabas," she croons sweetly. "You see, you have something I want...and I have something you want...or I will..."
"Now, see here, you..." Barnabas begins, pointing his finger at her warningly...
She focuses her black eyes on Olwen, and they flash suddenly, lighting the snow...a few mystic words, and snakes and lizards drop from the weoman's lips...and instead of a young girl clinging to Jumbrick, a deligate young swan stretches it's wings. Around it's slender, lovely neck, a silver collar, and from the collar a shining silver chain. The other end is held by...the witch, of course.
Brat watches the display with a scowl. At this rate, they'd never get anywhere! She stoops to observe the snakes and lizards scurry away. One pale green lizard seems stunned by the many feet in its path, and Brat busies herself in trying to gain its approach. "Here, little guy... Come on..."
Jumbrick looks from the swan on his shoulder to his mother and back, eyes wide. "M-MOMMA...?"
The swan rears back in surprise, spreading its delicate wings defiantly. She warbles pitifully, waving her head back and forth. When she turns to flee, the chain tugs gently at her snow white throat, effectively forestalling her attempt.
A tear slips slowly down the dark mask which shields her eyes, leaving a damp trail of sorrow in its wake. The swan lowers her head in defeat, and pulls her pinions back to her feathery body. A long, sorrowful croon escapes her beak.
She looks to the dwarf again. "I do so LOVE the classics!" she exclaims, and laughs...that wet and phlegmy cackling.
A grin escapes Brat as the lizard scuttles into her open palm. She straightens up, holding the small creature carefully.
The giant's dim mind struggles to comprehend why his Mam has done this thing. Tears well up in his eyes as he reaches a typically Jumbrick conclusion. "MOMMA! PLEASE DO NOT MAKE JUMBRICK EAT PRETTY DUCK!!"
Brat hmphs. "Oh sure, eat your problems again. F'you eat that birdbrain, you'd better have the old hag for dessert!" She distractedly rubs a finger on the top of the lizard's head.
The witch scowls up at the giant. "Be quiet, you big waste of space! If your father was here, he'd each you some proper manners!"
Jumbrick sniffs back his tears and nods. "POPPA..." he mutters mournfully.
She pats her son's hand absentmindedly. "I don't want you to eat the pretty duck, dear. In fact, your mam would be very ANGRY if you ate the pretty duck." She looks up at Olwen with a thoughtful experession, and rubs her hands together with a quiet jingle of chain. "She did turn out rather nice, didn't she? Much more likely to catch herself a prince this way, instead of in that dowdy little serving girl body..."
The swan pauses, and brings her head down to honk angrily at the crone. Her wings flutter against her soft feathered back, causing the chain and collar at her throat to jangle merrily. She tips her head to the side, and snaps frustratedly at the silver leash.
"JUMBRICK! It is your job to watch out for the swan...the pretty duck!" she ammends as her son opens his mouth wide to question. "Don't let her get away...er, hurt herself...keep her close, and safe. Can you do that, me boy?"
Jumbrick nods eagerly, happy to have such a lovely new pet. "JUMBRICK WILL PROTECT PRETTY DUCK, MOMMA!" To illustrate, he pats the swan's slender head gently. As gently as someone with 4' hands and little coordination can, anyway...
For his part, Barnabas quickly regains his Dwarfish composure. "Well, that's just lovely. Ye've got yerself a fine swan there."
His brow furrows angrily as he continues. "But ye'd best get any notions of bargaining for her return to girlhood right out o' that wrinkled head o' yours, Nettie Carbunkle! I've outsmarted ye this time! The girl was under _contract_! Her getting hexed by you was part of the hazards o' the job! So we've NO obligation to-"
He glances over at Rodney, who simply looks back impassively -- by human standards, anyway. "Now, don't ye give me that look, Rodney," Barnabas warns. "Ye *know* I can't abide that look..."
Rodney continues to silently give him "that look", whatever it may be.
Barnabas sighs and rolls his eyes back to the witch known as Nettie. "So, just to satisfy my curiosity -- for the sake o' argument, as it were -- just what in the name of Gimli DO ye want?"
"Hmph. I could tell ya what she wants..." Brat finishes her solution with a mutter, involving a delivery of beating with heavy, blunt objects. The lizard remains unimpressed.
The wtich smiles, crinkling up her whole face like an old, dired up apple with rot hidden on the inside. "Well, dearie...I've been thinking it might be time to trade up from my old broom...become a modern woman, as it were...I do, after all, have a grown son, now."
She runs her tongue over her filed teeth, the callouses protecting it neatly. "I hear you have a model X38107....the Dirt Devil Hurricane Supreme...."
Barnabas squints at her in confusion. "Ye want a _what_??"
"A steam powered flying vacuum cleaner."
His eyes widen in outrage. "A STEAM POWERED-!"
A startled squeak emanates from Olwen's ivory throat. A vacuum cleaner? Another of this horrid witch's tricks, no doubt. But still...whatever it was, it sounded expensive. Barnabas would be terribly upset if he had to give it up, especially after being put behind schedule because of her and her stupid ideas!
With a final honk of rage, the swan launches herself at the crone, wings spread to catch the little air that lies between her and her target.
The witch doesn't even turn her head...but fast as a snake, she whips the silver chain in arc, looping it again over the swan's neck and pulling her up short, and holding her at arm's length, cracked fingernails tickling the soft, downy feathers. She fixes Olwen with a dark glance.
"I could have turned you into a frog, missy. Or a worm, or a little lizard. I chose to make you a swan, so you might have something of beauty, and you can feed yourself. DON'T make me regret that decision." She pulls the swan close to her face, but not close enough to bite.
Her breath is horrible, reeking of rotten meat and mold. "My dead husband was an OGRE, little girl. Remember that, and play nice, or things can get MUCH worse for you...I haven't had my dinner yet, and hunger may overcome avarice..."
"Now, we'll have none of *that*!" Barnabas interjects sharply. "Swan or no, that addlebrained waif's still an employee of Barnabas Rumbleburg & Co., and as such I'll not have her coming to further harm."
The witch smiles sweetly...much in the same vein as cotton candy coated rotted teeth are sweet, anyway. "I do so LOVE to see such humantiarianism from you, Barnabas!"
Barnabas merely *harumphs* at _that_ suggestion.
Jumbrick reaches out tentatively to take the swan from his mother's grasp. "J-JUMBRICK WILL PROTECT PRETTY DUCK..." he repeats weakly.
Nettie hands up the swan to her son. "That's a GOOD boy," she agrees. "And you'll carry me, too. I'm far too old to be stumbling around in the snow anymore than I've had to." She glares fiercely at Jumbrick.
Jumbrick nods as he carefully lifts the swan back to his shoulder, gently petting its head with one finger as he does so. "JUMBRICK WILL CARRY YOU, MOMMA," he assures her.
Barnabas shakes his head wearily. "Frederick's Wondrous Steam Ceiling-Sweeper Device, is it? Though from the name ye give it, sounds as though Fred's hired that fool of a human t'rename his inventions again. Well, what the blazes makes ye think *I'd* have one? We make *fireworks*, not clean houses!"
He scratches his bearded chin as he eyes the witch. "I suppose there's nothing for it, then: if it's Fred's sweeper ye want, ye'll just have t'come along with us back to Stonebriar and see if Fred's of a mind t'bargain.
Nettie smiles slyly. "Of course, footstool. I'd be glad to get inside such a treasu...I mean, such a cold, useless place."
The witch merely looks down her nose at the dwarf. "As if a three foot old man like yourself could keep up with Netie Carbunkle!"
The Dwarf's hands ball into fists at his side, his face turning a lovely witch-burning red.
"THREE??" he fumes. "I am precisely FOUR and a HALF feet tall, and nearly as broad, I'll have ye know -- ALL of it muscle! Now get aboard that blasted sleigh -- or your oafish son, it makes me no difference -- and let's be off, afore I come to my senses!"
"But mind ye," he adds sharply, wagging a finger at her, "ye'll make yourself useful! I'll not have laggards aboard my sleigh, feathery hostage or no!"
Nettie doesn't bother to cackle...a smug smile is all it take for her to convey her believed superiority. She gestures for Jumbrick to pick her up, and commands him forward, as if very used to this method of transportation.
Brat's gentle hold on the lizard tightens reflexively. The reptile manages a protesting "MEEP!", to which the girl almost apologetically responds. Though her fist unclenches, her jaw does not. She's had enough of this.
"You're not _serious_. . .!" she hisses between her teeth. "F'you think for one damned minute that this disgusting, idiot-spawning HAG is gonna keep her word to ya, Barney, you're dumber than ya look!" Her tone suggests that would be very dumb, indeed.
The swan honks her agreement, swinging her head up and down in a strange nodding motion. While fearful of the witch--now moreso than ever, after the crone's threats--she is daring enough to eye Barnabas warily. What if worse things happened because of the witch's influence? Was it worth the danger?
A slight breeze sends cold air between her feathers, and she shivers slightly. Mind you, it would be nice to get back to her old self, she thinks. Webbed feet were the most awful things out of water...!
Olwen waits, if somewhat impatiently, to see what Barnabas will do. Hopefully Brat, with her ability to speak, will be able to convince the dwarf not o take on this foolish venture.
Barnabas glances up at the swan out of the corner of his eye as he replies to Brat's question. "Quiet, child," he says, with sudden, almost frightening stoicism. "I've dealt with the likes o' her and her kind before."
The dwarf's tone startles Brat into silence - something few have deemed possible. She nods, wordlessly wondering if Barnabas' words are the calm before the storm, and if he intends to strike her.
Then he looks back at Brat. "Now get back aboard that sleigh!" he orders, his customary gruffness returned. "I'll remind ye that that swan's STILL your charge, and the sooner we're off, the sooner we'll see to her!"
He trudges past her, climbing the ladder to the engine's cab.
Brat releases a breath she wasn't aware was being held. She rubs a finger along the lizard's smoothly grooved back. "Uh, hey! Y'know, I'm keepin' this little guy!" She lifts the hand holding the lizard briefly, as punctuation.
With a quick glare up at the giant and his company, Brat jogs back to the sleigh.
Rodney helps her up onto the flatcar. "Don't worry, Miss," he assures her. "Witches have a way of underestimating Dwarves. They tend t'think we don't measure up, so t'speak.
"Now, shall I set up that shower for you? No doubt your lizard would appreciate it; this weather's not for him, and that's a fact."
*****
The sleigh presses onward, and gradually upward. When at last snow-capped crags peer above the tallest pines in the distance, the Dwarves with one voice begin a low, solemn, droning song in their own tongue. It resonates in the bones of all present like the groans of faults deep within the earth.
They approach a wide stone bridge over a frozen stream. Upon seeing the giant, the three local trolls seem little inclined to demand toll payment for the Dwarves' return trip. Two ineffectually attempt to hide their bulk behind nearby trees, while a third, bolder one actually bows -- doffing, of all things, a red beret -- and waves them on.
As the sun sinks behind the approaching crags, the sleigh crests a rise and begins a descent into a broad valley. The group is quickly plunged into premature night, though true night quickly follows.
The early evening passes quietly in the flatcar tent. The off-duty Dwarves seem little inclined to chat as they sip their coffee – the presence of the witch seems to have poisoned whatever Dwarvish good humor the sight of their mountain home might have engendered.
And then, the sleigh's whistle blows three long, low blasts. Quickly thereafter, Rodney pokes his head into the tent. "Jack-o'-lanterns," he says simply. The two off-duty Dwarves rise grumbling to their feet and follow Rodney outside.
That is, indeed, the case, for the woods around the sleigh glow dully with the flickering candle flames of leering, grinning jack-o'-lanterns. They perch precariously in the branches of trees and lean against their trunks by the dozens off into the distance, deepening the murk beyond their orange haloes.
"MOMMA?" Jumbrick says nervously, eyeing a particularly wicked looking pumpkin at his eye level as he passes, "JUMBRICK SMELLS GOBLINS." He pets the swan protectively.
Nettie nods to her son. "I know...I smell them too." Oddly enough, when not concentrating on portraying sheer nastiness, she has a rather pleasant middle range voice. She stands on Jumbrick's shoulder, peering through the forest, eye narrowed. Also oddly, she also appears to have a perfectly straight back. She leans down to whisper in her son's ear.
"If the goblins try to hurt us, you let me take care of the swan...you will be a better protector if you have your hands free. And remember to put Momma down if you have to fight...can you remember that?"
Jumbrick nods his ponderous head doubtfully, not looking at his mother but glancing from one frightful gourd to the next. "JUMBRICK WILL PUT DOWN HIS MAM AND PRETTY DUCK IF GOBLINS ARE MEAN."
And suddenly, the silence of the woods is shattered into darkly gleaming fragments by the echoes of manic, gibbering laughter.
"Neeehhhh-teeeeeee...." whispers a jack-o'-lantern in a sing-song voice as they pass, rotating in its woody perch to follow their progress with wide, flickering eyes. "Neeehhh-teeeeeee...."
The witch watches the forest.
"Nettie has a new, pretty pet," observes the grinning gourd that follows. "Perhaps she shares it with usss...?"
"Yessss," agrees a third eagerly, "and perhaps she shares with us her Dwarves as well... hungry, we are...."
"Ah, Jack me boy!" Nettie is truly in fine witch form tonight, her voice dripping with nasty old-ladiness. "You should know better than to think old Nettie would be sharing anything...the swan and the dwarves are MINE! And you know what's waitin' for you, if you try and take them from her...."
She whispers the words of the spell, snakes slithering swiftly from her lips, a frog leaping free. She holds her hand high, and suddenly a burning ball, terribly bright dances there, behind Jumbrick's head. It lights up the forest like daylight.
Jumbrick stifles a yelp at the sudden illumination, holding himself still so as not to dislodge his Mam from her perch.
At once the jack-o'-lanterns vanish, each one replaced by a dismayed crouching goblin squawking and covering his eyes in surprise. Their heads are nearly as round and wide-eyed as jack-o'-lanterns themselves, with shaggy unkempt hair and beards that seem almost mane-like. All sport small, vestigial goat horns. Their mouths, too, are jack-o'-lantern wide, and with equally pointed teeth. Their bodies seem small and wirey by comparison, with simple leather vests and breeches covering coarse dark-haired skin.
Shrieking curses at the witch and her unwelcome light, they clamber down from their trees and scamper off into the night.
Nettie smiles with smug satisfaction....she sends the light chasing after straggling goblins, before setting it high above the group to light the path.
Jumbrick's feathery companion cocks her head in awe. Magic, it seemed. But why didn't the witch just turn them all into toads, and save them all the trouble of having to deal with them later? She looks down at her own beautiful, if not natural, body with distaste.
"That was nicely done," Barnabas concedes, standing on the steam sleigh's running board and tapping his overlarge hammer in the palm of his hand thoughtfully, "but they'll be back, no doubt.”
Nettie shrugs. "Goblins have never given me any trouble." She pats Jumbrick. "Nor my son."
The swan makes an odd noise in her throat, almost as if she is muttering to herself in reply. //Probably thought you were one of them, y'ugly old hag,// she thinks, in a very un-Olwen-like fashion.
"And in the _meantime_," he adds, brandishing his hammer at her accusingly, "just you rethink _whose_ Dwarves're _whose_."
Nettie grins, a fool, sharpened tooth one. "I will indeed...and next time those particular nbasties show up, I will be sure to inform them you're not under MY protection."
Muttering darkly about just what he thinks of witches and their "protection", Barnabas returns to the sleigh's cab.
--
Brat slips back into her slightly damp white shirt, blissfully unaware of Olwen's dark thoughts, as well as the conflict of interest between Barnabas and Nettie. She takes a deep breath and releases it with a sigh of contentment that draws only from long-awaited cleanliness. Having thoroughly enjoyed the longest shower she's ever had the pleasure of partaking in, she resigns herself to the cool, refreshing air, away from the steam of the hot water.
The small green lizard scurries after her. He, too, had revelled in the steam emitting from the shower, and was greeting the sudden temperature change with less enthusiasm. He becomes a streak of scales as he clambers up Brat's pant-leg and shirt, pausing upon her shoulder. His eyes flick from side to side consideringly, before he disappears beneath her collar.
Brat scowls as the lizard's tiny claws make themselves comfortable in the skin of her shoulder. She lightly pokes at the curling tail poking out from beneath the cloth. "Well, hmph. Just don't get too comfortable in there, y'got that?" The tail flattens at the tone of her voice, and aligns itself along the curve of her neck. "Y'ingrate, you're not even listenin'..."
A crooked grin begins to spread across the girl's features as the sleigh continues to lurch forth. She had thought she heard shouting and laughter from outside. . . and she'd wisely remained in the shower. Whatever it had been, all seemed in good progress at the moment. Brat nods with decision as she sets to hanging about, hoping to be useful in some manner.
"Goblins!" says a red-capped Dwarf to his fellow as they step into the tent. "And this close to Stonebriar, too! This is trouble, and no mista-"
He stops short as he sees Brat. Self-conciously glancing away and clearing his throat, he quickly ambles over to the welcoming woody aroma of the coffee pot on the stove. His companion spares one last glance outside before following suit.
Brat narrows her eyes suspiciously as the dwarves turn their attention to the coffee. "What was that y'were sayin'? 'Bout goblins? How many more stupid, creepy, anno--"
She pauses, reconsidering the dwarf's words, cut short though they may have been. "How close, 'xactly, are we to this Stonebriar place?" she asks slowly, barely able to repress the eager spark in her eyes.
The Dwarf looks up from his coffee in annoyance, shaking his head ruefully at his companion. "Humans!" he growfs. "Always so impatient... and human *girls* the worst of the lot!"
He looks back at Brat as his fellow nods sagely at his observation. "Fer yer information, girlie, we'll be arriving at Stonebriar right about..."
...He reaches into the waist pocket of his coveralls and consults the gold pocket watch he finds there...
"...now!"
The night is suddenly filled with an echoing metallic groan, as if an iron giant were awakening from a millennial slumber.
Outside, Jumbrick lets out an awestruck "OOOOOOOOH" at the sight before them.
Obscured by trees and darkness for some time now, the mountains suddenly loom large overhead as they round a bend in the forest path. And as they watch, the base of the closest mountain swings wide to receive them on concealed doors 100' tall. The light beyond dazzles their eyes as it burns away the night -- the light of wondrous fireless torches lining the walls, furnaces of ruddy molten lava, and, of course, gold. Lots and LOTS of gold.
The flatcar shudders as the runners retract, replaced by wheels for travel over the smooth polished stone floor. The air resounds with the ring of hammers on metal and the clacks, creaks, and rumbles of countless knobby and outlandish machines stretching off into the distance.
Nettie is not suprised, but is as if her dark eyes are suddenly turned to molten gold, they reflect the light so fiercely. Her teeth, too, seem gold, bared in a smile of pure avarice and cunning.
"HAG, GIANT, SWAN, AND WENCH," comes Barnabas's strangely amplified voice from the engine, "WELCOME TO STONEBRIAR MOUNTAIN. NOW, KEEP YER FILTHY PAWS TO YERSELVES!"
Nettie cackles softly to herself. "Oh, I'll keep plenty of things to myself, you uppity foot stool. Yes, indeedy...."
The steam sleigh -- now not truly a sleigh at all -- turns a corner around a particularly massive and incomprehensible device, shuddering and coughing to a halt in an open flat expanse where row upon row of its fellow Dwarven conveyances stretch before it. Some crouch silently; others grumble like metallic bears disturbed from their winter rest, wisps of smoke curling idly from their long vertical nostrils.
Warder Philpott glances up from the sheaf of vellum sheets he'd been examining. "For the love of-- Wot's to do??"
"Park the sleigh," Barnabas orders Rodney, swinging a thick leg over the ladder on the engine's riveted side. "Henk, Gary, see to unloading the flat car. The rest of ye, _out_!"
"Now, now..." mumbles Philpott, taking stock of the situation. "Harumph."
"Ho there, Barney!" comes a wry Dwarven voice from behind him. "Have fun entertaining the humans with yer pretty sparklies, did ye?"
The speaker is the apparent leader of a group of eight Dwarves rising a game of dice beside a steam craft parked nearby. This particular vehicle seems somehow more belligerent in bearing -- perhaps it's the row of cannons protruding from gunports along its side.
The Dwarves themselves wear a strange mishmash of arms and armor that somehow blends together into a coherent, patently military uniform. Their helms are reminiscent of those of WWI-era Britain, while their breastplates seem vaguely Roman. Wheel lock pistols cross at the Dwarves' belts, while they lean roguishly on the hafts of great double-bladed axes.
"Off with ye, Brodrick," Barnabas mutters, not meeting the other Dwarf's gaze. "I've no time for yer nonsense."
"OH, is THAT how it is?" demands Brodrick, stepping forward and prodding Barnabas in the chest with the butt of his ax. "Too busy with yer play-pretties and yer fairy friends t'chat with us common _Dwarves_, is that it?"
Philpott gets up from the smooth slab of living rock that has served as his desk for lo, these many years, and stuffs the reports into a hole made for this purpose carved into the face of the rock. He comes around the rock and, with hands clasped behind his back, approaches the new arrivals.
Brodrick's mates chuckle and elbow each other at their leader's antics. Barnabas's crew climbs down to join him but keep a respectful distance from their boss's confrontation.
"And while where about it," Brodrick continues before Barnabas can protest further, "what's the idea of bringin' THAT in t'Stonebriar?" He gestures with his ax at Jumbrick, who blinks in stupid surprise at suddenly being the topic of conversation. "D'ye know what we DO with Giants here? And with the hags that spawned'em, too, fer that matter?" he adds, casting a dark glance Nettie's way.
Nettie looks down imperiously at the dwarves, but sniffs, and turns her nose, body language speaking clearly enough. 'You are less than worth my time and effort.'
"'ello, 'ello, 'ello," he intones, coming forward with a peculiar slow, almost halting step, as though he personally had control of all time and didn't mind how much of it he used because nothing was going to move forward again until he gave the go-ahead. "Wot's all this, then?"
As one, both groups of Dwarves look up at Philpott, and all suddenly look like children caught roughhousing by a fearful matron.
He looks the rather disheveled group over with an eye that knows trouble when it sees it. And it sees it right now.
"Brodrick, you and your mates move along, now. There's nothing for you t'see here. I'll see to it. There's a good lad."
"Ah... just havin' a bit of fun with the Cracker-Dwarves and their Outlander friends, Warder," Brodrick mumbles. "No harm done... C'mon, lads..."
With muttered apologies to the Warder -- and, surprisingly, to Barnabas and his crew -- the heavily-armed Dwarves pick up their dice and shuffle off behind their armored steam craft, presumably to resume their game in peace.
Then he rounds on the others, as if merely by making the suggestion, it will be followed, to the letter. There appears to be no doubt in his mind. He has settled the issue of Brodrick and his crew. Now, on to Barnabas.
"Rumbleburg, wot's the meaning of bringin' this lot in 'ere without my prior approval? You know the rules! 'All Visitors must be Screened and Vetted before Entering the Facility.'" He peers at the others. "I see no *passes*, Rumbleburg. I see no *vetting*, Rumbleburg. I have no *record* of your request to bring them 'ere." Warder Philpott rocks back and forth on his heels, his bushy eyebrows arched in anticipation of Barnabas' certainly inadequate reply. "Well? Well?"
Nettie snickers quite audibly, less than impressed with Dwarven policy and routine.
Barnabas rolls his eyes, then inhales a breath so prodigious as to make him look like a muscular bearded medicine ball. "The-human-wench-works-fer-us-so-does-the-swan-she-was-another-human-wench-in-charge-of-the-giant-the-hag's-the-giant's-mam-she-hexed-the-girl-and-wants-one-o'-Fred's-contraptions-in-exchange-for-un-hexing-her-they'll-all-be-gone-soon-as-the-trade's-made-may-we-please-be-about-said-business-Warder-PHILPOTT?"
Olwen, rousing from her perch atop Jumbrick's shoulder, suddenly realizes the trouble that the sleigh might possibly be in. She frowns, or at least tries to make a disapproving expression with her hard orange beak. While Barnabas wasn't the kindest sort, she is grateful to him for letting her board his sleigh.
The swan, who had been silent for some time, gives an apologetic croon: barely audible above the clanging of the working Dwarves around her. She fluffs her wings in agitation, wishing that she could speak and defend her dwarven friend.
The witch sighs at the delay, but eyes the newly made swan with something in her eyes...either cold calculation, or an unmelted snowflake. She rubs one ragged nailed finger over her chin thoughtfully, and mutters to herself, "A prince. I need to find a prince..."
Warder Philpott cants his head to one side for just a moment. He looks Jumbrick up and down, then his mother, then takes in the swan. He idley hooks his thumbs into the wide leather belt about his all-too-present belly, patting his stomach with his fingers. "Zat so?" he murmers. It is not so much a question as a comment. He licks his lips for no apparent reason, still eyeing the swan. "Was a human, you say?" he repeats thoughtfully.
Then he seems to shake himself from his reverie. "Well, that's all right, then. As long as it is an hofficial business proposition, I suppose we can waive prior notification, just this once." He leans forward toward Barnabas. "But don't let it become a habit, Rumbleburg!" He takes one last look at the assemblage. Then back at Barnabus. "Be off you, then! The lot of ya!"
So saying, he turns and starts back to his Official Station.
"Blasted warders," Barnabas grumbles. "Always ready with a rulebook to wag under yer nose when yer in a hurry... But are they about when yer sleigh's set upon by freeloaders and hitchhikers, not to mention _Goblins_? No! Not a whisker! Well, there's nothing for it -- let's be off, afore we're cited for loitering..."
Nettie smacks Jumbrick on the back of his head. Her hand is small enough that is can't be terribly painful to the giant, but enough to get him moving. "You heard the lawn ornament. Let's go!"
"YES, MOMMA," says Jumbrick, shuffling to follow Barnabas as he leads the group between the parked vehicles.
Brat appears, wide-eyed, from where she had been lurking around the sleigh. She turns in slow circles, narrowly avoiding collisions with others hurrying past, taking in every last detail.
She shakes her head in disbelief. The metal container housing her ornate music box is clutched in both rough, chilled hands. On the lid rides the yet-nameless, vibrant green lizard. He wears an expression similar to Brat's own.
The girl's haphazard steps stop abruptly, just short of stumbling into the small crowd. She turns her astonished gaze to the nearest dwarf.
"So. . . THIS is Stonebriar?"
"Aye, Stonebriar," the Dwarf agrees gruffly. "A shame ye had t'see the low end o' it right off, so t'speak," he says, casting a dark look after Brodrick's boys.
Barnabas leads them up a ramp and into a tall tunnel that slopes steadily upwards, supported by columns carved with scenes depicting the glory of Stonebriar and lighted by more of the queer, flameless torches.
(Well, the tunnel is certainly tall by Dwarven, or even Human, standards... but Jumbrick finds himself barely able to pass. And said "glory" seems to deal largely with the building all manner of exotic, smoky devices and putting paid to Goblins trying to make off with them.)
Nettie hops nimbly down, and proceeds in front of her enormous son.
They pass few other travelers on their way -- mostly coveralled Dwarf artisans who don't even pause to exchange their brusque "pleasantries", although Jumbrick _is_ forced into an alarming totter to dodge a horde of whispy-bearded Dwarf children pursued by a plump, scolding matron. All eye the giant and the witch with suspicion; although, truth to tell, they offer nothing less to Brat. Outsiders, 'twould seem, are outsiders.
Then, too, they seem none too friendly with Barnabas and his crew, even by Dwarven standards...
After a small eternity of trudging, Barnabas calls a halt at a low side tunnel containing a staircase that extends up into darkness. "Fred's workshop's this way," he tells Nettie, jerking a thumb toward the stairs.
Nettie sweeps a mocking bow. "A great use you've been, I must thank you, my dear young man." She cackles unecessarily.
Barnabas *hmphs*, unimpressed.
"Ye'll have to dismount the oaf if ye want yer sweeper."
Jumbrick, not wanting to come between his Mam and her new toy, carefully sits down cross-legged against the far wall to let her down. "JUMBRICK WILL WAIT HERE, MOMMA?"
The witch nods decisively. "Yes, and I have no use for this swan here, either. You keep ahold of her, understand! Don't let any of these ridiculopus dwarves touch her! Your mam will be VERY DISSAPPOINTED if I come back and she's gone." The ominous tone in her voice sounds well used, and she leans over to hiss at the swan.
Jumbrick winces, nervously pulling the swan close and petting her slender head with his meaty hand. "JUMBRICK WILL KEEP PRETTY DUCK SAFE, MOMMA!"
Brat pauses in her admiration of the surroundings - so unlike anything she'd ever seen before! - to scowl up at Jumbrick. "Yeah, and how're y'gonna do that, ya big idiot? By squashing her?" She trails off into mutterings of clumsy lumbering fools, who happen to be massively oversized.
"Hear that? If you try and escape, you'll get your big friend hurt. I would suggest you mind yourself, stay put, and I'll release you when I get what I want, and get out of here."
Olwen squawks first at Brat, then at Jumbrick, and then at the hag. Her feathers are fluffed up, making her seem twice as large as normal, even when Jumbrick tries to smooth them to her body. Unspoken lies her distinct dislike of helping the witch get the flying machine, as well as her confusion at why Barnabas would decide to help her at all.
Bits and pieces of machinery litter the short, steep stairway, all the way to the thick oaken door at its top. There, Barnabas raps soundly on the wood with his thick knuckles. "Frederick Charbeard!" he calls, "Open up, blast ye! We've business to discuss!"
Brat snickers at what she deems to be a ridiculous name. She's reminded of her adopted lizard, and the name he still lacks...
Barnabas is, indeed, rewarded with a "blast". The dull thud of an explosion rattles the door, soon followed by a staccato barrage of accomplished Dwarven cursing. Black, sulfurous smoke seeps under the door, billowing into the stairway as the door swings open.
A blackened Dwarvish face pokes out of the swirling gloom, wide-eyed and angry. "What's the idea, Rumbleburg?? Disturbing my experiments like that! DON'T call me 'Charbeard'! I should send you packing! Who's the hag??"
Nettie steps forward, rather rudely, past Barnabas. She smiles her best wicked-witch-who-boils-babies-for-their-fat grin, and sweeps a bow (witches never curtsey).
"Nettie Carbunkle....and I believe we have some business to discuss."
The frazzled Dwarf turns his bulging gaze her way. "'Business'?? 'BUSINESS'??" he shrieks indignantly. "THIS is 'business'!!"
A snort of agreement comes from the general direction of the swan.
His hand bursts out of the smoke, brandishing... something. It looks a bit like a short metal rod with a gauntlet on one end and a shattered glass bulb sparking weakly on the other.
Barnabas sighs loudly. "Oh, hear us out, blast ye! The hag wants one of yer flying sweepers in exchange for removing a hex on a human wench in my employ!"
Fred looks disbelievingly from Dwarf to hag. "My miraculous aerial sweeper?? Impossible!! OutRAGEOUS!! I'll not have it!! What's in it for ME, that's what I'D like to know!!" He thumps his chest with the rod for emphasis, yelping as the sparking end gives him a shock. He spins about and casts it angrily back into the smoky room with another four-letter Dwarven diatribe.
Nettie rubs her hands together, sparks flying from her cracked fingernails.
A violent cough interrupts the raging dwarf, as Brat tries unsuccessfully to dispel the odious fumes. "Now look," she manages with a hoarse tone. "What y'get out of it is we'll stop bothering you, the old lady and her. . . _giant_. . . will take themselves off somewhere and. . ."
She frowns, and looks at Barnabas. "Well, c'mon, there's gotta be _somethin'_ else in it for the guy - *cough* - Nothin' ever comes free these days. What've we got?"
Nettie tosses out, off-handedly. "What's in it for you is that I don't turn your nose into a weasle and let it eat your eyes, you misbegotten son of a worm!"
Fred sputters indignantly, giving Barnabas time to get in a response of his own. "Yer witch enough t'know the way of things better than THAT, Nettie Carbunkle!" he upbraids her. "Dwarf bodies won't bend t'yer magical meddling like a feeble-boned human's, so don't waste our time with idle threats! Yer in _Dwarf_ country now, so just you mind whatever passes for yer manners afore I come t'my senses and call for the neckcleavers!"
Newttie hisses back, teeth bared, as if waiting for this comment. "Ah, but your goods are not so protected, dwarf! How long DOES it take to make one of these lovely trinkets?"
"TRINKETS?!?" Fred begins to fume, but Barnabas cuts him off neatly.
"NOW," he continues, "Fred, you let us in so we can hash this out, else I may be of a mind to let slip about our _business arrangement_ next time I visit the tavern!"
The sooty Dwarf blanches beneath his layers of grime. "You wouldn't _dare_!"
Barnabas simply crosses his arm and glares meaningfully in response.
"All right! All right!" cries Fred in exasperation. "Come in! Come in!"
He waves them through the billowing wall of smoke and into his cluttered workshop, urging them toward a battered work table surrounded by several rickety stools. Piles of incomprehensible clockwork bric-a-brac surround them on all sides clear to the low ceiling, none of it remotely resembling a completed device.
"Just a moment!" he tells them, trotting over to a cabinet in one dark corner. He returns wearing a pair of goggles that magnify his already prominent eyes to wheels of white bloodshot cheese. "Never take chances where a witch is concerned!" he opines. "Now, let's get down to business!"
Nettie sets back, like a sovereign queen, and gestures to Barnabas, as though he were a servant, while speaking to Fred. "I am here to purchase you model X38107. This dwarf here knows my price...and will be doing the haggling, unless he turns out to be as miserable at that as he is keeping care of his contract workers!"
"Him? HIM??" Fred sputters. "What's a _cracker-dwarf_ got to bargain with?? Nothing worth the _least_ of my marvelous devices, I'll tell you THAT! Why, he'd not even be able to _ply_ his foolish trade among the outlanders if it weren't for...!"
He cuts himself short, his eyes -- and Barnabas's -- widened in horror at whatever secret he'd been about to divulge.
Fred clears his throat with a phlegmy rattle and hurriedly presses on. "At ANY rate," he continues, "there'll be NO trading for the likes of..."
"Honeyed puff-cakes?"
"Eh??" Fred's head snaps up at the new voice, his goggled eyes squinting to see through the smoky murk beyond the table.
"Honeyed puff-cakes," Rodney repeats evenly, stepping forward out of the shadows. "Do ye fancy'em?"
Barnabas turns toward the small Dwarf in surprise. His mouth opens as if to comment, then thinks better of it.
"Well of COURSE I do!" Fred snorts derisively... but an avaricious gleam flares to life in his eyes. "What Dwarf _doesn't_? What of it, then? Ha! 'Honeyed puff-cakes', he says! You've no honeyed puff-cakes to trade!"
"Right enough," Rodney conceded. "But I can get them for ye. All ye want."
"'All I want'?? 'All I WANT'?? RIDICULOUS! I can eat your weight in honeyed puff-cakes, and your steam sleigh's besides! For all the good that'll do you! The Gnomes have come and gone! Made their yearly shipment! There'll be no more 'till their Grand Whirli-whatzis next fall, and don't pretend otherwise!"
"The 'Grand Whirligig'," Rodney gently corrects him. "And again, ye've the right of it: the Gnomes of the Dancing Hills won't be trading their puff-cakes again this season. But, as it happens, I've a bit of a dispensation on that point, so t'speak... seeing as how my dear granddam is the Great Baker of the Dancing Hills..."
Fred leaps to his feet, his stool falling to the stone floor with a loud *CRACK!* "Your granddam! A Gnomess?? The Great Baker?? The GREAT BAKER!! A different matter entirely!!"
He runs around to the far side of a nearby pile of clutter, cursing loudly as his digging therein results in a minor avalanche of bric-a-brac. When he reappears, he bears a great brassy device consisting mainly of a large base shaped like an inverted half-saucer with a long handle easily half again his height and a maze of thick tubes, levers, and knobs along its length. It looks terribly heavy, yet he carries it as easily as a bouquet of flowers as he rushes forward to press it into the waiting witch's arms. (It is, in fact, every bit as heavy as it looks.)
"There you go! There you go!" says Fred, shooing the group away from the table and towards the door. "Fly off, and enjoy! I'll have another built in no time, never fear! But I've much to do!! Busy, busy!! Experiments! Inventions! I'll be expecting those puff-cakes!! Good day!!"
Netti erun wrinkjled, agile fingers over the device, her eyes dark and greedy.
As the door slams shut behind them with a final sulfurous *poof*, Barnabas turns to Nettie, fists on his hips. "Now, then!" he proclaims. "We've met our end of the bargain! Let's see you meet yours!"
Olwen honks irately at Nettie, even daring to reach out a wing and point at her accusingly. How dare she had taken advantage of the dwarves in such a manner! And now Rodney, whom she had decided long ago was her favourite of the dwarves, had been forced into taking favours from his Grandam!
Just wait until I get my hands back, you, you...you _witch_! Olwen thinks angrily, her young mind unable to come up with a worse insult than that. She rattles her silver chain meaningfully, and impatiently waits for Nettie to make good on her promise.
The witch turns up her nose. "Not so fast! How am I to know you haven't bought me off with a cheap imitation? First we will go out into the open, and I will test my...purchase. THEN I'll turn your little servant girl back into her former self."
"Oh, THAT's how it is, is it?" growls Barnabas. "Well, I can't say as I blame ye. If I were a conniving old hag with all the Great Wood as an enemy, I'd be suspicious as well, no doubt. Come on, then, and let's have done with this foolishness!"
Nettie laughs to herself, asking sweetly, "And what use d'ye think I have for a showy bird like a swan? I just don't want to make sure you cheat me, and call it striking a blow against the forces of darkness, BARNEY."
Barnabas snorts at that. "Forces of _ugliness_, maybe..."
He leads the group still higher in the mountain's tunnels, coming at last to an opening high on a snowswept ledge. "HERE," he says, handing Nettie a single lump of coal. "That's plenty of fuel for yer bloody test flight around the mountain, but not a crumb more! Now get about it!"
Nettie nods, and claims Olwen back from Jumbrick. "Mama will look after her for now," she explains soothingly, then glances venemously at the dwarf. "I wouldn't want our little FRIENDS getting any idead while I was on my test run." She wraps Olwen's chain firmly around her wrist, then leans down to examine her new aquistion...gleaming chrome and black, with Fred's dwarven sigil stamped proudly into the handle. The witch positively coos as as she strokes her hands down the side, finding the on switch, and starting it up with a choking cough, then a quiet purr. She laughs again, delighted.
"Ah, as smooth as advertised!"
She takes off with the vacuum at a dead run, fliging it and herself over the ledge, then nimbling leaping aboard, as the vacuum takes off. She does a few loops and dives, before circling Jumbrick's head.
"JUMBRICK!" She howls over the wind. "Follow your mam! NOW!" And with that, she dive bombs down one side of the ledge, covered with generous snow, following the curve of the slope with easy skill, her toes kicking up powder white trails.
"JUMBRICK IS COMING, MOMMA!" the giant calls after a thickheaded pause. He follows with considerably less grace than his mother, stumbling off the edge of the cliff and quickly becoming a thunderous, malodorous avalanche.
"BLAST that treacherous snake of a crone!" curses Barnabas, angrily throwing his stocking cap to the ground in frustration. "Rodney! Get Warder Philpot, and tell that pompous blowhard we've need of the barrage balloon!"
Brat smirks at Barnabas. "Not that we saw that comin', ohhhhh no..."
She pets the nameless lizard, distracted by the thoughts that the little beast would need to be fed soon. . .
Nettie, for her part, whoops like young girl, though still canny, she conserves fuel by skimming the broom along the avalanche, using it's force to take her farther. The fuel may have only been enough for a trip around the top of the mountain, but straight down, riding a crest of snow, she'll stretch it much farther.
She coos to the swan happily, "Ah, my dear, your friends are so naive! You're my ticket to one last great story....and I'll be boiled in oil before I'll give you up, my pretty!" She throws back her head and lets out an unrestrained cackle, zigging the vacuum cleaner back and forth happily.
Olwen blinks, and gives a startled "squawck!" as she finds not only that the witch is heading down instead of across the mountain, but that the old hag has no intention of releasing her, nor keeping her promise of transforming her back!
Words feebly attempt to form on her orange lips, but the swan's tongue simply refuses to allow her the liberty of speech. Perhaps it was for the best: such dark thoughts as the ones that were spinning in her mind would not be very ladylike to voice aloud.
Olwen's blackened eyes alight on something. A tiny grin touches her beak as best it can, when she realizes that Nettie, in her delight at finally achieving her beloved vacuum cleaner, has mostly forgotten that she is not holding a stuffed swan, incapable of defending itself, but a live one. A very irate live swan, no less.
Before she can convince herself that this is a bad idea, the Olwen's sharp beak is locked painfully around one of Nettie's wrists, and the swan is struggling to release her great wings from the witch's firm grasp.
With a shrug, Brat turns away from the sight of the retreating witch. Why should she involve herself? So the little girl's a swan, and being kidnapped by a hag who reminds her painfully well of Mistress. She feels not a singular pang of remorse or attachment to the situation.
Strike that. She feels no attachment until her eyes fall upon the sealed music box. The absent-minded glance reminds her of the gold within...
Thoughts snap into place like vertebrae during an early-morning stretch.
. . . Her _job_! That wretched, rancid old woman is walkin—flying off with her sole source of employment!
Brat turns on her heel and marches back to the dwarves. "So, what're we doin'?" she demands.
Nettie, who hasn't felt threatened by so much as an ogre in many decades, is startled by the swan's bite...indeed, she has badly underestimated the transformed girl. To Olwen's beak, the witch's wrist is like a stout limb of iron wood, but that doesn't stop her from cursing a literal blue streak as Olwen chomps down, leaving a foul smoky trail to mark her path. She swerves sharply to the left, and the vacuum cleaner spins upside down, dunking the witch's head the spray of snow. She rights herself with an expression that would be terrifying were in not masked by two inches of fresh powder.
Mumbled incantations take care of the snow, and leaving several stunned looking toads and a chameleon floundering behind the racing trio. A quick course correction narrowly avoids the rock that Nettie, in her blindness, was about to run into. Of course, the course correction is up, and for a few moments they sail free and clear through the air, wasting some precious fuel.
Nettie snaps bear trap fingers around Olwen's lovely long neck, and snarls, "I'm doing you a FAVOR, you stupid goose! But one more stunt like that and I'll snap your neck in two, and find another likely child...I've got a few years left in me yet!"
Olwen snorts disbelievingly, making sure that the witch hears her opinion of _that_ notion. The painful grip of Nettie's fingers around her ivory throat is no less desirable than the thought of forever being trapped in this feathered body.
Barnabas turns from his fuming at the sight of the quickly receding witch, cocking a bushy eyebrow at the girl. "Well! Nice of ye t'take an interest in the matter, seeing as how it's yer _job_ on the chopping block! If ye want t'make yerself useful, run along after Rodney and help see to securing usage of the barrage balloon from Warder Philpot! I daresay there'll be forms aplenty to be filled out in quadruplicate, and Rodney'll be glad of the extra pair of hands. And if ye can't write Dwarvish -- which you can't, no doubt -- well, at least ye won't be standing here reminding me of the fine care ye've taken of yer charge!"
*****
For a Dwarf short even by Dwarven standards, Rodney moves at a surprising clip back down the labyrinthine corridors -- an echo of the spry Gnomish blood in his veins, perhaps. He's still Dwarf enough not to have broken a sweat as he thumps smoothly to a halt before Philpot's stony desk, however.
"Begging your pardon, Warder Philpot, sir," he says calmly, humbly holding his green-and-white stocking cap in his hands, "but we're in a bit of a fix, I'm afraid. Seems that witch has reneged on her end of the bargain and has made off with our young friend, the swan. Mightn't we borrow the barrage balloon for the purposes of retrieving her? You'll agree, no doubt, that it's the only craft we've got up to catching Fred's flying suck-broom..."
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat????" thunders Philpot, the remains of a possibly-illicit meal tumbling onto a scrap of vellum on the top of his stone desk. It splats with an unhealthy sound, and spatters several other sheets with oily goo. Philpot scrambles to clean the mess while he launches into a tirade. "You want one of my *whaaaaaaaaaaaaat???*"
He reaches to wipe away some of the mess, unhappily un-ending a tall glass of something that has a decidedly hopsy odor, and then lunges after the resultant golden-brown river flowing toward the front edge of the desk, where it creates a lovely fall of foamy amber. His lunge causes the papers on his desk to launch themselves off the front of the desk, fluttering hap-hazardly in several directions, none of which are very useful.
Rodney deftly whips out a hanky from the breast pocket of his coveralls and makes a marginally effective attempt at stanching the flow of ale.
"BY THE GREAT FOREMAN!!!" he roars. He charges around the desk.
Or would have, had he not barked his shins on the open stone drawer whence he had lately retrieved his meal and fallen ass over teakettle. The spate of Dwarven profanity that follows turns the air in the general viscinity a lovely shade of cyan. He rolls about on ground, at each turn chafing first one shin and then the other. All the while moaning and cursing and threatening.
Rodney abandons his now-soaked handkerchief and hurries to Philpot's aid. "Yes, the barrage balloon seems t'be our only option," he says apologetically as he hefts the larger Dwarf to his feet, "and then only if we're quickly about it. The witch'll be beyond catching shortly, doubtless making a laughingstock of Stonebriar... and her defenders," he adds knowingly.
Philpot, still moaning and cursing to no particular effect, stumbles to his over-turned chair and sits. Well, to be precise, he misses the seat the first time and sits on the arm, with the added pain this move affords him. But eventually makes it into a sitting position in an appropriate venue. Still rubbing his shins, he retrieves and thrusts forth a sheaf of papers in Rodney's general direction. "Here!" he roars. "Tell your Barnabas to fill these out--in quintuplicate! He knows where the balloons are."
A quiet snicker escapes Brat, though she's tried her best to keep her amusement to herself up to this point. She would never feel quite so alone in her clumsiness again, after this spectacular show...
Rodney accepts the forms from the Warden with a respectful bow, then turns to trot off into still another winding tunnel. This one spirals upward at a rather punishing angle toward the mountain's peak – Brat remembers passing it with the rest of Barnabas's motley entourage when they first arrived.
Philpot looks about for his ale, forgetting it is no longer potable, and utters profanities again. "Cursed gnome-kind!" he mutters. Then he looks up. "And you tell yon Barnabas that if he doesn't return the balloon in the same condition in which he found it, I'll patch the holes with his *hide*!!!"
Brat frowns in Philpot's direction. "Who is that, anyway? And why's he such an old windbag?" she murmurs to Rodney.
*****
When she can breathe easily again, the swan wriggles slightly and casts her head vaguely back at the top of the mountain. //They're coming for you, you old witch!// she tries to convey. //And you'll never have enough fuel to make it past the bottom of the mountain now...avalanche or not!//
Nettie herself is well aware of the fuel problem...//I need just enough to get over the woods...an inflight refeuling will have to do. No knowing when those pesty dwarves will get their stubby legs moving...//
The process is tricky...but Nettie is an expert witch. She edges the Hurricane up just a touch, so it no longer skims the snow. Then, gripping the bag with vise-like thighs, she spins, so that she hangs upside down, wild grey hair picking up a fine dusting of snow. With her free hand, she nimbly snatches a chunk of snow that is more ice than powder, and mumbles obscure phrases over it. Her spell leaves several large, startled toads scrambling for purchase atop the moving avalanche. The snow piece turns a deep black, into a good sized chunk of coal.
Nimbly, she opens the fuel tank with her teeth, pulling the zipper down quickly. She shoves the coal inside, and rights herself, cackling with pride.
"That should do it!"
*****
Rodney glances over at her as he runs. "You mustn't think badly of the Warder," he gently chides. "Every Dwarf has a function, especially in Stonebriar. The Warder's no different. SOMEdwarf has to make certain all the i's are dotted and t's crossed. It's a thankless job, and that's a fact, but he's done it well since your great granddam was a lass."
He leads her at last into a towering domed chamber lit by innumerable crystals imbedded in the ceiling that shine like untwinkling stars. Their light reveals a huge brassy craft that looks to be the bastard offspring of an unnatural union between sailing ship, zeppelin, and rocket. The echoes of their footsteps chase each other back and forth across the room, fracturing the stony silence of the craft's soundless sleep.
"Ahoy there!" Rodney calls to the craft through cupped hands. "Anyone home? Emergency! We've need of your services!"
The shout is rewarded with the sounds of running feet. From the sound of it, it appears that at least 20 dwarves have promptly responded to Barnabas' call for help.
Unfortunately, the dwarven contingent expected actually consists of one sleepy dwarven child, nearly a teenager, who does his best to appear professional while stifiling a yawn. It appears that the high-ceilinged chamber amplifies echoes.
"Yes, sir, ma'am? Ya need the balloon?"
"That we do!" Rodney agrees.
He blinks, and this clears the sleep from his eyes enough for him to realize that Brat is not, as he had first thought, another dwarf. He looks curiously at her.
"Step this way," he says, guesturing toward a rickety-looking wooden ramp that disappears into the interior of the balloon. He takes his own advice, and begins to lead the way up.
*****
Far below, tucked away beneath the snow-laden branches of the great pines which surround Stonebriar, sits a similar looking bird to the one held high above by Nettie.
Though difficult to see against his stark white plumage, snow is scattered over his lithe form. His slender neck stretches upwards at the sudden noise. Onyx eyes glitter brightly as he watches the amusing scene above for several moments.
It looked as if a witch--it could be no less, atop that strange looking flying contraption--was restraining a beautiful swan. The latter seemed to wish fervently to escape...she was wriggling and snapping ceaselessly at her captor.
It hadn't happened that way for him, Basil thinks sadly, lowering his head for a moment to sigh. He had been sixteen when the town's witch had cursed him to the form of a swan, after his father, the King, had told her to leave the country for practicing the black arts.
The last thing the witch had said, before vanishing in a puff of lizards and frogs (they were the popular thing amongst witches these days) was that his only chance of being turned back was to be kissed by a princess who was not a princess, before his eighteenth birthday.
Ashamed and confused, Basil had escaped to the forest, where none would know his true nature, and he would never be bothered again.
And yet, this was a most curious circumstance, he thinks, looking above. Nothing had happened in some time, and he was still an adventurous young man. Interest peaked, the swan spreads his wings and leaps into the crisp winter air.
***
A flicker of white-on-white below catches Olwen's attention. Though surprised, she looks down passively, so as not to alert Nettie to anything extraordinary.
A pair of familiar-looking black eyes peer back at her. The other swan flits easily beneath her, surprisingly able to keep pace with the vacuum-cleaner...at least for now. He smiles.
"Good afternoon, lady swan. Are you in peril?" He speaks in the language of nature. Another side effect of being turned into a swan, he had found.
"H-hello..." she stammers with some difficulty in the same language. "My name is Olwen. I don't suppose you would help me escape this witch? She seems intent on keeping me away from my friends, and I would much rather return to them."
Basil smiles brightly and nods as best he can. Olwen. What an odd name for a swan! The other birds he had talked to had had much less "human" sounding names than that. But it was no matter. This was his chance--no matter how small--to prove to himself that he was still as chivalrous and brave as any noble youth his age!
"My name is Basil," he says fervently, his voice expressing a youthful pride that only a boy his age can contain. "Do not be deceived by my form, for I am the Prince of Maloun! I shall save you from the evil witch, Lady Olwen!"
With that, Basil zips upwards to look balefully at Nettie. At first, it is difficult to tell that he is upset at all, but she quickly discovers his ploy. In a flurry of feathers, Basil throws himself at Nettie, grabbing ahold of her head with both wings and clawed feet...effectively obscuring her view of whatever lies ahead.
There are as many types of witches in the world as there are women. Nettie, for example, was the standard ogre's wife, baby-eating type, of the more Anglic persuasion. She did, however, have a daughter, who had embarrassed her greatly by becoming an evil sorcerress. Originally named Agnes by her mother, Nettie's daughter changed her name as frequently as her clothes and her men....the current flavor of the month was laden with lots of 'y's where 'i's and 'e's should be...as well as several references to 'night', or 'moon'....and she was taken with darkly handsome black men. Nettie, who made candles out of the fat of naughty children, was often outraged at the immodest clothes her chameleon child would wear on her infrequent visits homes.
Nettie herself had gone through a change of identity at a young age. She had been as beautiful as the day was long, and her name had been Aliosha Vassilievna Zmeevich. She was a class four Baba Yaga, and while she never earned the chicken-legged house, even after she married her husband, and adopted a more suitable name, she kept up some of her old habits. For one, her eastern tendency to keep her heart outside her body, safely hidden away, gave her certain physical advantages.
What this all meant to two hapless enchanted swans was that it was impossible to kill Nettie without finding her heart first....however, suprising and inconveniencing her proved to be all to easy to the ensorcelled prince. She swiped at her beswanned head with one hand...the one holding Olwen so tightly, which brings the two into rather close proximity, with a feathered 'thump!'. At the same time, she began to lose to control of her cleaner, sending it into a spiralling tail spin.
"JUMBRICK!" Nettie screeches, still slapping painfully at Basil, long, broken nails scratching across his hide.
*****
Rodney eagerly follows, nearly dragging Brat by the hand along with him.
As they step inside the dimly lit interior, a bleary-eyed Dwarf in a ridiculously ornamented (and obviously slept-in) naval uniform steps out of the shadows in his red-and-white stocking feet. (Truth to tell, bleary-_eye_ Dwarf is a more apt description, considering his eye patch. And one of the stockings actually hangs loosely on a peg leg, not a foot.)
Rumples stops at this sight, and the look of one who has just eaten a particulary rancid sourmelon flits over his face. He sighs, then manages to look properly respectful.
He adjusts his three-cornered hat and clears his throat officiously, eyeing the trio as imperiously as his groggy condition will allow. "Here now, Rumples," he begins, misting them all with a waft of rum scented breath, "What's the idea of disrupting shore leave?"
"My fault, I'm afraid," offers Rodney, an unfamiliar touch of urgency creeping into his voice. He holds out the Warder's untouched forms like an apology. "We're in quite a fix, and need the balloon t'get out of it. Y'see, we've had a bit of trouble with-"
Rumples backs up a few steps at this, and covers his ears.
"GOBLINS!!" the officer exclaims, a sudden fire in his good eye burning away both sleep and grog. "The Gobbos are attacking at last!! Is that it, lad??"
"Well, sir, truth be known-"
"Just nod," Rumples whispers to Rodney, and grins. "He's not going to pay attention to whatever you say, even if he can hear it over -"
Not waiting for Rodney to finish, the captain excitedly flips a lever on the wall, filling the craft with a reverberating **da-OOOOOOOO-ga!! da-OOOOOOOO-ga!!**.
Before the first echo has died, he grabs a large brass cone attached to a short hose from its wall hangar. "NOW HEAR THIS! NOW HEAR THIS!" he announces into the device, which carries his voice throughout the balloon, "THIS IS CAP'N BAHA! THE GOBLINS ARE ATTACKING! I REPEAT, THE GOBLINS ARE ATTACKING! OPEN THE HANGAR! LIGHT THE ROCKETS! PREPARE TO LAUNCH!!"
Slamming the cone back down with a ringing clang, Captain Baha turns to offer Rodney a grateful grin and clap on the shoulder. "We're off to bomb the Gobbos at last! Huzzah!!"
" - all this."
"But-"
"No time for that, lad!"
"But-!"
"Or that neither! I'm needed at the helm!"
He turns and heads off down the passage with a merry trot, whistling and singing to himself about "bombing the Gobbos" all the while.
Rodney watches him go, then turns back to Rumple and Brat. "Our situation's yet to improve," he says sadly, then hurries after the Cap'n.
Rumples begins to laugh. "Understatement, if I ever heard one," he comments to Brat.
Outside, the wall before the barrage balloon divides and slides open with a grating rattle to reveal the open sky. Behind the craft, two Dwarves in shirts striped like their captain's stockings set matches to thick fuses trailing from the rockets bolted to the balloon's hull. That done, they scamper back up the ramp, pulling it in after them and slamming the hatch shut.
"Hang on," Rumples shouts to Brat, and points to one of the leather straps attached to the inside of the balloon. "Takeoff is usually bumpy when he's drunk. Which is all the time."
Tense seconds later, the rockets ignite with a roaring column of flame that fills the chamber like the granddad of all fireworks, whisking the unlikely craft clear of the mountain's belly in a gut-juggling rush.
****
Below and behind her, Jumbrick's head lifts from the tumbled snow like particularly ugly whale breaching a frozen sea, dazedly shaking away the frost.
Rumples lets go of his own strap once the balloon is safely in the air and looks out of a flap-window cut in the side. "What's *that?*" he exclaims, looking at Jumbrick, now lying facedown in the snow after the gas attack.
"MOMMA?" he bellows worriedly as he espies her peril and struggles to his feet to assist her. "JUMBRICK IS COM-"
He cuts short the thought -- such as it is -- as a shadow swims over him. He looks up in search of its source just in time for a large bronze-plated sphere to go clanging off of his forehead and drop to his feet, trailing a sweet-smelling smoke of brightest blue.
The thought that inhaling such vapors might be unwise never occurs to him, of course. Jumbrick's vision remains focused just long for him to look back at his mam as she continues her tailspin. "_TWO_ PRETTY DUCKS...?" he asks sleepily, just before falling face down into the snow.
Nettie still can't see what's going on, but she can hear perfectly well. "JUMBRICK!" she screeches, and with the strength of an old out, she wrenches Basil off her face, planting him neatly into the snow, as she spins her vacuum around.
"HUZZAH!" Cap'n Baha calls merrily from the helm of the barrage balloon. "That's _one_ down!"
His enthusiasm had flagged substantially after Rodney had patiently explained that the Goblins weren't, in fact, attacking Stonebriar. His zeal had quickly returned, however, when he'd learned that a giant and a witch were today's targets. "Goblins, giants, hags -- all the same, aside from sizes and stinks!" he'd observed.
"And he's one to know about stinks," Rumples mutters under his breath.
"Just see that ye don't go droppin' anything on that crone 'till our swan's clear of her!" Barnabas warns. His patience with the good Captain's fervor has been short from the moment he boarded the balloon. Considering that Rodney's urgent request that they stop to pick up Barnabas and Co. had been answered with an unceremonious fly-by netting of the whole bunch right off the ledge, this is hardly surprising.
Rumples quickly rushes over to the net, which was left sitting on the deck of the balloon. Its contents are intact and cursing. He produces a pair of wickedly sharp-looking scissors from a pouch dangling from his belt and begins to cut away at the netting, trying to calm down its occupants. "This happens all the time," he says with a shrug of his shoulders that brings the scissors dangerously close to snipping more than netting. "He likes the heroic rescues, but then 'e gets caught up in the 'thrill of the chase.' Left some overnight, once - by the time they remembered 'em, they had lost their gratitude for being 'saved' considerably."
"MY SON!" The old witch sounds enormously indignant, and turns her fury quickly away from the disposessed swan to the barrage balloon overhead. Dwarves are notoriously immune to magic...but with a setence or two reeled off, and the plop-ploplop-plop of a squadron of vipers, toads, and geckos, she sets the rigging around the ballon to burning, coming dangerously close to the ballon itself. Then, with a practiced flip, she carooms back towards her son. With a kick, and a push, she gets him going down the slope again....face first and unconscious, but sliding through the snow just the same.
"Avast, Rumple!" hollars Cap'n Baha, "See to that fire in the rigging!"
He shoves a bulky brass fire extinguisher into the smaller Dwarf's arms, then turns his attention back to the drama below as if the problem of the fire has already been solved. "READY THE NETS," he orders into a nearby intercom trumpet.
Brat quakes. She quavers. She shuts her eyes tightly, peeks, wishes she hadn’t, and does her best to rememdy that.
Frozen in place, Brat’s fingers turn white as they seize the nearest semblance of stability with an iron grip. She doesn't know what it is and the thought to question never once crosses her mind.
She peeks again and reels. The ground is... so far away... Farther away than her impromptu "adventure" in Jumbrick's grip... Farther away than she's ever wanted to be from all things familiar and solid.
By all rights, she should scream. She'd like to. She's about to.
Rumples lugs the heavy metal fire extinguisher over to a flap-window. By some miracle, he manages to drop the extuinguisher - which is almost as big as he is - on his toe only once.
He unwinds a length of long metal tubing decorated like a snake from around the base of the extinguisher and attaches it to a nozzle comming out of the top. Then, he threads the tube through the window and points the cobra-hood-shaped nozzle tip upwards towards the burning rigging. "Hey, Girl!" he yells to Brat. "I need your help!"
Brat stares at him, her eyes as frozen wide as her wind-whipped ears. A terrified shriek tumbles from her mouth. She shakes her head furiously.
She is cold. She is very frightened.
- She - wants - DOWN! –
"If," Rumples says, and walks over to her, "you do not help, that is exactly where we will be going."
He drags her over to the flap-window, puts her hand around the grab-bar nearby, and points to a sort of foot-pump resting on the floor. "Step there."
Perhaps the only thing Brat fears more than the unsteadiness of this new height, is the notion of falling from it.
White fingers shake as her hand is pressed to the bar. The rest of her shakes as she bites her lip to the bleeding point, scrunches her eyes shut, and steps there.
"Basil!" Olwen cries, unhappily discovering that she has lost sight of her would-be rescuer. Her body is still pressed tightly against Nettie's, giving her scarce room to breathe, let alone attempt an escape.
Basil, however, is not so easily dissuaded. While unseen by Olwen, his little black head does poke up from between the folds of Jumbrick's tunic. He frowns to himself while shaking stray pieces of smelly fur off his feathery coat.
//That certainly wasn't the way things should have happened,// he thinks, thoroughly confused. //Perhaps this witch has not read the same stories I have.... Otherwise she would have known better than to stay atop that flying contraption when a Prince did battle with her. I shall have to inform her of her mistake later....//
With a leap and jump, Basil launches himself from his giant-sized toboggan, and, as through sheer force of will, clings to the undercarriage of the vacuum cleaner above.
"Excuse me!!" he shouts over the irrepressible roar of the steam engine. "I'll have you free in a moment, Lady Olwen! This witch seems not to understand the way of the world, yet!"
"Just, please, DO something!" Olwen shouts back, frustration rather than despair welling up inside her breast. Was she EVER to be released from this wild circus?
Wholly sure of himself this time around, Basil does just that: flinging himself with full force back into the face of Nettie Carbunkle.
**
"Thank you," Rumples says tersely, and holds on to the hose-attachment as he aims it up through the window, and onto the flaming rigging. A greenish fluid soon spurts out of the nozzle and onto the fire, which sizzles and pops loudly and alarmingly. Rumples smiles. "It's working, don't worry," he says to Brat. "The fire's going down."At that moment, the fluid from the extingisher sputters and stops.
**
Nettie shrieks, this time leaving a briliiant orange streak in the air behind her, like a miniature contrail. "I've about had enough of you!" Determined to get rid of this pesky male once and for all, she chants a quick spell, two iguanas dropping distastefully from her lips. What the spell SHOULD do is blow Basil back in a blast of force hard enough to bury him in the mountain. What happens instead is...nothing. Nettie, who had been bracing herself for the impact against the swan, finds herself overcompensating, with a very angry bird smacking her repeatedly in the face with wings strong enough to break a man's arm. She tips backwards, scrabbling madly at her face, and in the process loosing Olwen.
"AVAST AND AHOY!!" Cap'n Baha calls into his corded brass trumpet, excitement driving him overly nautical. "THE BIRD IS CLEAR! THE BIRD IS CLEAR! FIRE THE NET! I REPEAT, FIRE THE NET!"
His announcement, like every other utterance into the trumpet, rattles every bolt and seam of the barrage balloon. Despite this fact – or perhaps precisely _because_ of such repeated ear-blastings -- the crew proceeds to relay the message down to the bomb bay.
"Fire the net!!"
"Fire the net!!"
"Fire the net!!"
"Sire the pet??"
"No, the _net_!! Fire the net!!"
"Aye! The net!"
A Dwarf scampers into the lowest hold with a match half as tall as himself, setting flame to a thick fuse snaking into the musty darkness. Clambering back up a spiral staircase, he works furiously at a massive crank. In response, the bomb bay below opens with a metallic groan.
And not a moment too soon. Just as the doors swing fully open, four rockets blast downward in square formation, pulling a fine mesh net behind them.
A net of cold iron, custom forged for witch-nabbing.
All of Nettie's shrieks and complaints seems as nothing as the iron wraps around her weathered skin and bones. The noise she makes is positively inhuman...and spawns an irritated looking gila monster, and two crocodiles, blinking lazily in the snow. Nettie thrashes like a polecat on fire, and begins firing random bolts of lightning over the mountain, several coming pretty close to the balloon.
"I'll get you mt pretty!" she howls, "And your little dwarf, too!"
"AVAST!" roars Baha, jerking the wheel to the left just in time to avoid a bolt. Unfortunately, the sudden maneuver, combined with the rattling peal of thunder, proves too much for the smoldering rigging. It snaps, sending the balloon rocketing upward while the cabin plummets in a much less promising direction.
Rumples grabs onto a hold-bar and watches in dismay as the extinguisher falls out of the window and to the ground - ground that is rapidly becoming too close for comfort.
"WIND AND DEPLOY THE FLAPPERS!!" Baha calls into his trumpet, now doubling as an anchor holding him to the floor.
"Wind and deploy the flappers!!"
"Wind and deploy the flappers!!"
"Wind and deploy the flappers!!"
"Find and destroy the crappers??"
"No, the _flappers!! Wind and deploy the flappers!!"
"Aye, the flappers!!"
With a great deal of winding, grinding, and Dwarven cursing, a pair of massive articulated bronze wings unfold from the sides of the falling cabin and set to flapping vigorously, arresting the craft's descent mere seconds before impact. For the passengers, this alternate mode of locomotion feels a bit like being jostled up and down in a barrel held by a giant. As Rodney is quick to point out, however, it's quite preferable to the alternative.
Rumples sighs in relief. He does not let go of the bar, however. He turns and grins shakily to Brat.
The girl in question, having long since lost her voice in wind and terror, rewards Rumples with a frozen stare.
She blinks, only once.
She makes quite the "thud!" as she falls into a stupefied faint.
Unfortunately for Nettie, it's also not particularly conducive to maneuverability. Hence the sound clout on the head she receives from one madly flapping wing.
*****
When she comes to, the sky is darkening to frosty twilight. She finds herself still beneath the net, mouth gagged, wrists and ankles bound. The barrage balloon -- sans balloon, of course -- lies nearby, as does the still-unconcious body of her giant son. Beside her sits an official looking document protruding from a metal tube, a small lap desk, and a quill and ink. Around her stand a group of rather surly lamp-bearing Dwarves, Barnabas Rumbleburg at the fore, swans beside him. The flying steam vacuum cleaner, however, is nowhere to be seen.
"NOW then," Barnabas growls, arms akimbo, "down to business. In that tube ye'll find a Witch's Binding. It says ye agree t'turn the wench Olwen back t'her proper form. That ye agree t'th'return of the Wondrous Steam Ceiling-Sweeper Device, t'its proper owner, Frederick Charbeard, due to violation of contract. AND that ye agree t'leave Stonebriar, neither you nor yer shaggy oaf of a son causing harm t'any involved parties now nor ever again.
"Ye'll sign it -- and never mind yer bound wrists, we won't be judging yer penhagship -- or we'll leave ye were you sit. It's a full moon t'night, mind you -- the Goblins will be lookin' for fresh meat for their werewolf friends, no doubt. (And for themselves, come to that.)
"And don't expect any help from th'oaf: he whiffed up enough sleepsmoke t'keep him out for days, and we won't be apt t'provide the wake-maker until yer name's on that Binding. Like as not, he'll keep the Goblin kennels in beef for months.
"SO," he finishes, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes, "what's it to be?"
Rumples, part of the 'dwarven delegation,' watches the proceedings with interest. //I hope the ol' hag doesn't sign,// he thinks. //I've always wanted to see the Goblin kennels.//
Nettie is a quick thinker...one can see schemes flash through her eyes, quickly discarded one by one. She licks her lips with a forked tongue, as she decides what she must do. "Why dearie, you didn't need to go to so much trouble," she croons in her best harmless voice. "Of course I'll sign your little paper. But what would you have me do then? My only means of transportation," her eyes flick to the hard-ridden vacumm, and then to her comatose son,"...have been taken from me. Are you going to put me up for the night?" Her voice wheedles and drips with her I'm-a-pathetic-old-lady routine. "And you will have to let me go, if you want me to fix your little bird there..."
"Yes, yes," Barnabas grumbles impatiently. "You sign the Binding, we pull the net off yer wrinkled carcass, you change back the wench, we wake up the oaf, you ride his stinking shoulder out of our sight without so much as a card trick! It's all there in the Binding, in plain black-and-parchment!"
Stalling, Nettie reaches out bone-like fingers, and plucks the parchment neatly from it's holder. She reads it over, done long before she puts it down, but can see no way out of this one. It's not the threats that bother her, but the sheer indiginity of being trussed up in a net like a fish... that is NOT to be tolerated. She grabs the quill with a sudden grimace, and signs the binding swiftly, not looking at the paper. The quill is then thrust into the ground before her angrily, and she looks about ready to bite the fingers off the dwarves who come forward to examine the parchment. Nettie Carbunkle, writ in a sprawling, old fashioned script. They release her carefully.
She brushes herself off with as much dignity as possible, and peers around. "Where's the damn...oh, there." Her iron eyes narrow, as she spots the swan. Spitefully, she rolls some syllables off her tongue, producing a measly tadpole and two garter snakes. Without so much as a puff of smoke, Olwen is returned to her girlish form...without clothes, of course. The witch smirks.
Quick as a flitting fairy, Rodney trots up to the girl and wraps a tarp from the barrage balloon around her shoulders. "We'd best get ye inside, Miss," he says. "Ye'll catch a nasty bout of boggle fever, standing about in the cold like that."
Barnabas glares at Nettie. "Very amusing, hag. Ye can expect a bill for my employee's clothes."
Nettie merely smiles back, her eyes darting around until she finds the other swan, and giving him a broad wink.
Olwen is so stunned at being suddenly transformed back into her human form, that she does not notice her nakedness until Rodney bundles her up in the rough materiel of the barrage balloon's tarp. Even as she trembles from the chill of the snow at her feet, the girl manages to glare furiously at Nettie.
Rumples' face turns red: it is hard to tell whether it is from embarassment, or from laughter.
If a few stray wisps of grey smoke rise from her ears, it is not noticed by most.
"I've done my bit...now wake up my son! This dwarven stench is making me ill!"
"Oh, very well... Baha! Nap time's over for the oaf."
"Aye," growfs Baha, "but I _still_ say we should keel-haul the great lout..."
At a dismissive gesture from Baha, two members of his crew carry over a second large bronze sphere to the giant, twin to the one dropped on him earlier. They set it down heavily in the snow before his head, undo a small seal at the top, and scamper out of the way just as a red mist begins hissing out.
Jumbrick whiffs the mist up his prodigious hairy nostrils with a quick series of rattling snorts. Three coughs and two sneezes later, he is sitting up in the snow and glancing about dumbly. (Which is, of course, really the only manner of glancing about he knows.)
"MOMMA?" he asks, his eyelids still drooping heavily, "DID JUMBRICK SAVE THE PRETTY DUCKS?"
Her mirth quickly expiated, she scowls fiercely at her son. "No, the pretty ducks are gone! Now, we are going home, and when we get there, it's to the woodshed for you! And maybe you can be a good boy for once in your life, and stay home!" Switching like quicksilver, into old woman mode, she adds with a goran, "To think I went through 86 hours of labor for you! Raised you by my own hands...and this is the treatment I get...from my own son!"
With a great many snuffles and a "JUMBRICK IS SORRY, MOMMA," the giant stands and lifts his Mam to his shoulder.
He turns about to take in the scene one last time: the mountain, the Dwarves, the yelling girl, and the nice girl who would teach him to eat "toobers and froots". Then he sighs, and slumps -- forcing Nettie to quickly adjust her seating to avoid falling off -- and shuffles off into the woods.
Jumbrick's rather loud mutterings bring Olwen back to reality. Her head snaps around so that she may look at Rodney. "Oh, no..." she whispers, putting a hand to her mouth...an action she immediately recognizes as a mistake, as she is forced to scramble for the tarp corner that she had dropped.
"Rodney...Mister Barnabas...he'll be furious with me! Y-you came after me!" Tears begin to well up in her sea blue eyes as she realizes that things have, oddly enough, _not_ gotten any better with her transformation back into a girl. "He will never hire me properly now! And then Brat will lose her job, and...and..."
She pauses, and looks around.
"Where IS Brat, anyhow?"
Brat gracefully seperates her face from the floor, ignoring any number of nearby levers, pumps and other assorted _things_, the collective purpose of which is totally beyond her.
She grunts. She groans. She sits up and *glares*.
"Sorry," Rumples manages. "I tried to wake ya up, but that faint 'a yours - a good idea, might I say, as I was about to take one myself - " he grins halfheartedly " - was probl'y the deepest 'un I've ever seen. And flying with him," the dwarf-boy says, jerking his finger towards Baha, "will give ya some good firsthand experience."
She notes the distinct lack of scaly feet clinging to her neck. Her dirty hands press along her shirt in a brief, fruitless search. Dark mutterings fall from her sulking face in ugly tumbles.
"Figures... stupid... no good... unloyal... nobody liked ya anyway... damned head hurts..."
Something jabs sharply into Brat's ribs as she adjusts her position, preparing to stand. She scrabbles for it and pulls the thing free, holding it with distaste. The object, an innocent reed pipe, refuses to indicate anything resembling an apology.
Brat scowls. She'd pocketed the dumb thing when Olwen had grown feathers. She attempts to remember _why_ she'd bothered to pick it up, and fails. She flings it aside disdainfully, not watching it roll away.
Rumples catches the pipe in midair and looks at it carefully, before secreting it away in his many-pocketed yellow tunic. "You don't want it, I do," he says, grinning.
Luckily, it is just at this moment when Olwen comes upon the barrage balloon. Her heart catches in her throat as Brat so carelessly tosses her precious fife into the air, but begins to breathe again once Rumples rescues it from its downward plunge.
This does not last for long, however.
"What do you think you're doing with my pipe?!" Olwen asks, outraged, as she watches the young dwarf pocket her instrument.
"What?" Rumples turns to Olwen, surprised.
"I'll have you know that that was a present from my mother! Give it back this instant, before... before..."
After some rearranging, the girl manages to point an indignant finger at Rodney, without losing her makeshift clothing. "Before he beats you up!"
Rumples laughs at that, but hands back the pipe. "Sorry," he says, looking at Olwen sheepishly. "I just thought it was 'ers, and she just up and chucked it away..."
"Well, I wouldn't've chucked it if it was mine!" Brat retorts with annoyance. "_Think_ why doncha..."
Rumple's eyebrows nearly fly off of his face with suprise. "I don't know what'cha would and wouldn'ta 'chucked!' he says, angrily.
"Now, now," placates Rodney, patting the girl on the back, "I'm sure there's no need for that. Here, Rumbles, give the lass back her fife, won't ye? I'm sure Fred would be glad t'whip ye up another... and one for you as well, if you like," he adds with a nod to Brat.
"I don't think," Rumples says, nodding to Brat, "that she wants one." He grins.
"That's right. I don't. I don't need a stupid little flute." She snobbishly turns her head with a quiet "hmph!", already adding to the bitter thoughts which tug at every corner of her mind.
Olwen's eyes narrow to slits as she glares at Brat. "Well!" she says stoutly, wrapping her tarpaulin more firmly around her. "At least we know that you've been aptly named!"
Rumples grins at Olwen. //Got more spirit than a spitfire salamander,// he thinks.
The girl turns away, her expression dangerously close to something akin to a pout. She clutches her precious fife close to her, looking down quickly to assure its condition. Finding it unharmed, she turns her attention to Rodney.
"Excuse me, Rodney, sir...without meaning to seem ungrateful...might you have a tunic or dress of some sort that I could borrow?"
Rodney scratches his beard, looking Olwen up and down. Nodding to himself, he turns and disappears into a nearby store room. A few minutes of rummaging later, he returns, holding up a barrage balloon crewdwarf's uniform -- a red-and-white striped shirt with dark blue trousers.
"Hope these'll do," he says apologetically. "The balloon's not stocked with lassies in mind."
Olwen takes the clothing gratefully, mumbling some form of reply only when the bright shirt is halfway over her head. Luckily, the outfit fits relatively well, though the slacks do have a tendency of dangling several inches above her ankles.
Rumples coughs. Or at least he tries to make the laugh sound like a cough.
"Nor's the steam sleigh," interjects Barnabas as he tromps into the room, "so any employees of mine had best learn to tough it up! Which brings us nicely to a point: What's to be done with the two of ye _now_? We've no Giant t'wrangle, nor deliveries t'make for a month at least! And mind ye, I won't abide layabouts!"
Rumples looks at Barnabas, then at Olwen and Brat. //The two of them?// he thinks, dismayed. //That Brat lady - no, girl - as well?// He sighs and considers. "Barnabas, sir," he pipes up, "Gertie could always use more help in the kitchens."
"K-kitchens?" Olwen pauses in trying to stretch out the sleeves of her striped shirt. Kitchens? To leave this adventure and be stuck like a common drudge in the bowels of the Dwarven household? She does her best to hold back her sorrow at the thought.
Brat finds herself physically backing away from the company. At every angry comment aimed at her, her expression hardens and a flush rises in her cheeks. To be chastised by a dwarf and a child! Her hands clench into fists until her nails leave crescent-moon marks in her palms.
She recalls herself, much younger, holding the same position, the same face, the same glower. She remembers the feeling of swallowing her rage as Mistress demeaned her. "You'll never amount for anything more than a kitchen-maid -- if you ever get THAT far! You're a beetle, a stray dog with more mange than sense!"
The younger Brat protests, but to no avail.
"But what? You think you'll run away, don't you! That your parents will cross their graves to save you!"
Mistress' laughter hisses and crackles in Brat's ears, even now. ... even now, as she watches others decide her fate for her, while she finds the scene too strangely familiar to act against it...
... even now, as her eyes sting with restrained tears and she remains stonily silent on the whole matter...
"What do you think?" Rumples turns to Brat with a smile.
"I don't care," Brat replies hotly. "Do whatever ya want, I don't hafta stay here an' take it, f'I don't like it." She crosses her arms, bringing her burning gaze to rest on the floor.
"Mmm." Rumples makes a confused noise. "Just thought you'd want some say in it," he mutters. "How about *you*?" He looks at Olwen and raises his eyebrows questioningly.
"M-maybe we could...we could..." finding herself without an adequate response, Olwen looks frantically to Rodney for help.
"Or," Rumples suggests, "perhaps they would like a tour of the mines, or the workshops, or of the workings of the balloon."
"Well, Gertie could use the help, right enough," Rodney concedes, scratching his beard, "And Fred might like a couple more humans to help with the naming of his contraptions for sale to their kind. There'll be all manner of chances for them to help out until we've another delivery to make, no doubt..."
Barnabas opens his mouth to say something unpleasant, but Rodney continues before he can speak.
"...and, if they're of a mind to stick it out 'till next autumn, perhaps they might wish to help with my annual trip to pick up a load of honeyed puffcakes from my Granddam at the Gnome's Grand Whirligig...?"
A little gasp of air escapes Olwen's lips as she brings her hands together at her chest. Her blue eyes glitter with sudden excitement.
"Oh!" she gasps, looking hopefully at first Rodney, and then Barnabas. "Oh, could we? I would work really hard, if you'd just let us stay for a little while, sirs. Please?"
She turns to Brat, suddenly. "Would...would you stay, too, Brat? It'd be nice to have you here, too, so we can all go on the trip to the Gnome's Grand Whirli...thing. Would you please?"
Brat sets a steely gaze beyond Olwen, ignoring the girl completely. She gives an acknowledging nod to Rodney.
"F'this trip'll pass by a town, or some people, or somethin', you can count me in. If not, find yerself another girl."
"Aye, there's a town or two along the way, right enough," Rodney assures her. "Well, hamlets, really," he amends, "but with nice enough folks. So it's settled, then?"
"It'd BEST be settled," Barnabas interjects, "or the Gobbos'll find us still standing about jawing when they start nosing about come nightfall. So let's get these wenches back to the mountain and about some work other than wastin' our time!"
[to be continued in The Grand Whirligig.]
Do not copy or quote the above material without the express consent of the owner of this page.