Snotty Saves the Day

Outside on the Plains, a full moon shone. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. You could see every stunted tree, every bare boulder, every bit of nasty scrub grass as clear as if it were day. And besides, no one would dare to assault such an impenetrable fortress. So the Guard Gnomes, watching from their towers jutting up from the Wall, found their job an easy one.

It was true what the General Gnome said about Gnome Technology. Not the smallest infraction against Gnome Greatness escaped it. Nothing outside of that Greatness had a chance.

It was troubling that there was still an Enemy, but there wasn’t a Gnome among them who didn’t believe it was a matter of time before that Enemy too was history. The Gnomes didn’t worry much about the Rebels: a ragtag muddle of dreamers and toys and animals and gardeners, not a trained fighter in the whole pathetic bunch. Rank amateurs who fought only when they had to—“if you can imagine anything so unprofessional!” as the General Gnome said to Snotty with the after dinner port.

No, the Gnomes had nothing but contempt for the Rebels, who never crept out of their mountain home. “Country bumpkins!” snorted the General Gnome. “They’d rather grow flowers and drink chocolate than fight like men!” There had been much laughter at this. Snotty joined in.

Snotty did wonder how, if what the General said was true, the Rebels could be an actual threat. But he didn’t like to ask.

“Why don’t we just head up the mountains and get ’em?” he said instead, and the General looked at him with that approval that warms the heart of the Sun God wherever he may reign.

“Well, we would, you know,” the General confided, and poured Snotty another bumper of port. “Only we can’t figure out the paths that go around the Pretty Pass. We can’t figure them out at all. Look....” Here he spilled some salt onto the gray table top and traced out a rough map with his knife. “There’s some kind of path like a goat track, back and forth, back and forth through the scrub. We’ve never found it. And spies have told us there is a wider road, made of white stone”—Snotty frowned as a vague memory tugged at him—“but the thing must be hiding in plain sight, because we can’t find that one either, no matter how hard we try! Not on our own, anyway.” Here he gave Snotty a penetrating look. “We look to you, Snotty! You have been foretold. It’s you who will show us the way up the Path of Care. It’s you who will brave the Path of Solitude!”

Snotty had a gratifying vision of himself dressed in shining armor, leading a charge up the mountains toward the Peak of Transcendence, trampling what was left of the Rebels—or spearing, or shooting, or bombing them (“whatever,” he thought in his enthusiasm)—in his eagerness to get to the top.

He gave a happy little burp, and all around him the manly Gnomes beamed.

Meanwhile, above the Plains, over the Mountains, a Star shone in the East.³⁹ Not one of the Guard Gnomes bothered to look up—their job was to guard the Plains, not the sky—so not one of them saw the Star (if that, indeed, was what it was) move across the sky, in a way very strange for a Star. Stranger still, this one made a rustling noise as it went, as if from the flapping of wings. Stars don’t have wings, of course. But this one certainly did. And no matter what it was, it shone with the brightest light of anything in the sky, brighter, even, than the Moon Itself. As it approached the Gnome Fortress, its light streamed down onto the gray towers.

Falling under this light, the Gnomes on the battlements below stretched out their arms and smiled. Each Gnome yawned, and nodded, and then, still smiling, fell asleep. Every so often one would give a forlorn yelp, as if dreaming of somewhere far away, where Gnomes sat in a circle on a Great Lawn telling stories and smoking cigars.

While the Guard Gnomes slept, a black bank of clouds swept over the sky, covering the moon.

Reversals like this, fast and unexpected, happen in the desert.

Everywhere was black. The sky was an impenetrable velvet cloth. The Guard Gnomes snored on. There was not a movement to be seen on the Plains. Except... what was that at the very edge of the foothills of the Mountains, right where they meet the Plains, on the banks of the Stream where it runs into the River there? Was that a prick of light? Did it flash and then go out?

Or was it nothing after all?

Probably nothing.

The Guard Gnomes slept on.

The wind blew the clouds fast across the moon and tore the velvet curtain in one long jagged tear. In that half light, a Gnome might have spotted a single line of moving figures, muffled and hooded and masked, heading across the open Plains toward the Fortress. But when the wind mended the tear in the clouds and the Plains turned black again, he wouldn’t have been able to say if that single file of movement had been real or just a trick of the desert light.

The dangers of approaching the Fortress of the Gnomes were legendary. No one would take the risk of crossing the open desert out of cover of the Mountains. No one would be fool enough to try. No one ever had tried. Every Gnome knew that.

But these were desperate days for the enemies of the Gnomes. And there were strange stirrings in the Mountains of Resistance.