He did not feel particularly alarmed unless perhaps a blizzard blew up, but as his walking tour was taking place during August even Yorkshire would have to bat hard to provide that.
The left strap of his rucksack had parted three miles back and now he was making uncomfortable progress with the Bergen slung over his right shoulder, the metal frame gouging his pelvis unmercifully. The damp gorse seemed to have been unrolling beneath his feet for centuries, yet there still was no sign of welcome cottage smoke rising over the next beckoning rise.
A full sweep of translucent sky, rain washed in streaks of cloud, with the fresh earthy smell of damp green things combined to give zest to the air. Gordon took a deep breath and prodded the resilient earth with his cherry-wood thumb stick.
The Bergen slipped off his shoulder and thumped into his leg, where his shorts offered no protection. 'Damn!' he said cheerfully, and with a jerk of his arm thrust the offender back. The movement brought his head round in line with an ancient moss-covered, weather beaten milestone, tilted tipsily on the verge of the track.
Gordon bent to decipher the archaic markings scratched on its grey sombreness and found that he would have to kneel to discover the secret contained therein. After he had brushed away a lichenous beard from its dark face and the legend 'THORNSIDE, 5 mls' had made itself apparent, he became aware of something lightly touching his bent head.
Startled, he looked up, but before his eyes had travelled halfway up the milestone he stiffened. Into his vision had swung a pair of extremely small, extremely curled brown shoes. The tips turned over to the ankle and were twice as long as the foot. Above these grew a pair of brown tights: then a frilled green jerkin; then a twisted, puckish face, ruddy and seamed, set in lines of utmost woe: crowning the midget was set a tall pointed cap of scarlet, a once jaunty feather drooping disconsolately over one eye.
All told the apparition could not have topped four foot: and, sitting as he was, hunched up with chin in fist on top of the milestone, he looked just like a gargoylish continuation of the stone.
Gordon shut his eyes.
When he opened them the gnome was still there.
'All right! All right!' snapped the little fellow, crossly. 'You needn't stare like a rude little pixie. I'm real.'
'Yes . . . . er . . .' gulped Gordon.
'That's all you silly humans seem able to do, make pop eyes and meaningless noises,' stated the gnome with conviction.
Gordon's eyes ceased from popping and his mind worked overtime. This chap obviously was playing a joke. For all his clever talk of pixies he was probably just a dwarf from a gypsy encampment nearby.
'What's you name, man?'
'Er . . . Munroe: Gordon Munroe.'
''There you are! You humans. Who'd want a name like that. Munroe Gordon Munroe? Ridiculous.'
The sky was still there. The earth was firm beneath his feet. A flutter of wings lifted faintly against the bright horizon and dipped away again.
'What's yours?' asked Gordon, a crease evident between his brows.
'Fizz-fizz-splutter-snort,' said the gnome. 'But my friends call me Wemble.'
'Oh!' said Gordon brightly. He touched his lips with the tip of his tongue and glanced tentatively at the little figure perched on the milestone.
'Are you really . . . . er, where' you from?' quickly, as the gnome shot him a look from beneath bushy brows.
A further series of crackling hiccoughs was evidently Wemble's home.
Gordon became aware that his knees were aching. He pushed back onto his haunches and then stood up. His knees were red, damp and cold, with criss-cross lines indented in the skin and grass still adhering in patches. Gordon bent down to brush it off and the rucksack beat him to it, sending a wave of pain from the tender skin shooting up his legs.
'Curse that strap!' said Gordon Munroe, not so cheerfully.
The gnome looked sympathetic. 'Here, I'll mend that for you. I wish that your, what d'ye call it, rucksack was brand new.'
Gordon, tenderly nursing his knees said: 'So do I'.
'Have a look at it,' suggested Wemble.
'It's no good, she parted clean.'
'Do as I bid ye,' snapped the gnome testily.
Gordon shrugged his shoulders and looked at his rucksack.
'Well I'll be . . .' The Bergen was exactly as it had been when he had bought it, even to the price tag. 'How on earth did you do that?
'That! That's nothing to what I can do when I really get going,' smirked the gnome offhandedly: but he had swelled visibly as Gordons apparent awe.
'But HOW is it done? persisted Gordon.
'Oh well, I suppose I shall have to wash my own dirty linnen in public. I have been wrongfully outcast from my own land (at any rate how was I to know she would squawk?) with but one asset. I could have any wish I made granted.
'Well, why not wish that you hadn't done . . . . er, that is, why not wish you were all square with the folks back home?'
'That one's no use. I've tried. She'd have her old man stop that one. Anyway, I'd probably do it again.' Wemble grinned reminiscently.
Gordon was by this time feeling more at ease. Of course, the whole episode was impossible; but with some inward challenge he was thoroughly enjoying himself. At the last puckish admission of Wemble he grinned with a comradely feeling. It seemed that once the gnome was started he liked the sound of his own voice.
'I was feeling pretty lonely, here on this God forsaken moor. Glad to have a chat, even if only with a stupid human. I suppose humans are all right if you live long enough with them: take some getting used to, I reckon.'
'I say!' said Gordon, eyes suddenly shining. 'How about wishing for a big house, car, money, er . . . er something.' He finished lamely as he saw the patent derision of Wemble's wrinkled face.
'Of what use would such baubles be to me?'
'Yes, I see your point. Anyway, thanks for mending my Bergen.'
'Bergen? Bergen. Oh yes, I have relations there. Haven't heard from them for about nine years now though.'
Wemble looked keenly at Gordon, then pondered a moment. He puckered his lips.
'Pity, really'
'Yes, and I don't suppose you will hear from . . . .'
'No! No! Not that. Still, it's rather a shame.'
'What is?'
'Why, I rather took a fancy to you. Strange that I should ever say that to a human. Especially now I've got to live among them: have to find a quiet out of the way spot to retire to and forget about the world. But there you are, you'd only give me away to the rest of them and if there's one thing I can't stand it is crowds of humans spying on me. No. I'm sorry, but you'll have to be destroyed.'
Gordon blinked. 'Now look here, destroy? D'you mean: kill me.?
Wemble sighed. 'Yes. I can't trust you, a human, no matter what you promise.'
Somehow, Gordon did not feel frightened. He could not rid himself of the fantastic notion that this was all a nebulous phantasm more suited to a nursery dream land. And yet the sky was still there. The ground was firm beneath his feet, and over there birds were singing.
Wemble looked real enough, sitting there on the old milestone: but he was probably just a solid seeming facet of this optical and mental illusion.
'Do you not want to say your prayers? asked Wemble sympathetically. 'They usually do.'
Munroe looked at his new Bergen and sudden, flooding, overwhelming panic beat down the floodgates of his reason. He fought for control against it, like a chip in a millrace.
He straightened and brushed his hair out of his eyes.
'Those . . . . your . . . . .' he stumbled for the right words. Wemble lifted one eyebrow. 'Those relations of yours in Bergen you haven't heard from. Well, you won't. The Nazis over-ran it. They were death to mystery cults. There's been the biggest, most bloody war in history. And to-day the world's in a terrible mess.'
Gordon stopped, breathless, watching the gnome for reactions.
'Oh?' said Wemble, faintly interested.
'Yes, and that's not all,' rushed on Gordon. 'You plan to come out of hiding and find some nice quiet place to retire in, where man does not pry. What a hope! Everybody has a card with their name on it and a number allotted to them. Can't produce one and into the clink you go. Food, why, books must be produced for that, and if you acquire food without a book the police are on your track so fast you haven't time to eat it. Petrol, tobacco, sweets, nearly all the luxuries of life and many of the necessities are rationed down to a fine hairsbreadth of livability. And wars! Why the last one, which killed and maimed and made homeless countless millions of people, will be child's play to the next. Atom age! Blackout and disease. Bombs which can destroy a whole city in one flash, render the place unfit to live in for over fifty years. And you want a nice quiet place to live in! Rocket ships that can travel round the world so fast, sowing a radioactive dust, that the people at one end are still choking and gasping out their lives when the ships come round again with a fresh issue of bacteriological germs to finish off those stupid enough to want to go on living.
'And the income tax!'
Wemble was plainly lapping all this up, and Gordon piled on the agony, desperately hoping his plan would succeed. If it didn't . . .
He went on to tell Wemble all the things he could remember that were wrong with the world, which were, under the impetus of death, legion. Without giving the gnome time to think back or ask questions he cried violently: 'There's wars and rumors of wars. No one is safe. The atom age is here. And as for your nice quiet place to sleep, why, you're just as likely to have a bomb blow you up that was dropped hundreds of miles away. There's no place to hide. I feel right sorry for you, pal. You can't go back to your own people and man is all set to blow himself to blazes. You're in the red up to your neck.
'Don't you wish you had never been born?'
Wemble's puckish face had lost all sign of mirth. Consternation was written large in every creased line. He slumped down dejectedly.
'Yes I do!' he groaned.
There was no cosmical outpouring of titanic energies, no stupendous play of inconceivable powers.
Just a gentle rush of wind filling a vacuum, and Gordon was staring at a dry patch crowning the wet milestone top.
Thoughts flitted through his mind like wild birds, captive in a room, finding an open window.
'Of course, memory too.'
Gordon Munroe felt his rucksack thump into his side, the broken strap dangling infuriatingly across the curious dry patch of stone on the top of an old weatherbeaten milestone.
Data entered by Judy Bemis
Updated April 27, 2000. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.