NOVEL NEXT Book 2 - Chapter 17 - Gnomefestation & Sage Words
Under Ontario Canada, a vast network of interweaving tunnels spread under tireless porcelain fingers. From the lake's edge they burrowed up and under skyscrapers and subway tracks, north to villages, east until their soil pressed against the Sculpture Clan of Ottawa, westward towards Niagara Falls to battle the Lavender Clan, the tunnels wove together and ancient Relics were uncovered. Others controlled the sky, or the water, or relied on their heavy armaments. The Garden Gnomes of Allen Gardens chose dirt, and dirt chose them. From soil they had come, so from soil they would conquer.
"Watch your heads," Petal Gravewhistle cautioned while weaving around a constant stream of Garden Gnomes running dirt, rock, mud, rusty weapons, and supplies. Each worker grunted a "sir" and soldiered on. He pointed up at glowing mushroom lights the size of a basketball embedded in the ceiling. "Don't touch those. Trust me, you don't want to glance in on the Soil Mind."
"Soil Mind?" Snu asked while a handful of children gnomes, no larger than apples, danced in circles around her. All the children made sure to give Emilio a pat, which the cat accepted with grace, before darting off and diving headfirst through mud walls to cause a ruckus.
"Communication network which happens to provide light in the tunnels. Hold on please. I must receive my updates."
Gravewhistle leapt from the hardpacked dirt with an extended arm. His palm speared into the glowing mushroom's flesh. There wasn't any crunch or splatter, just a clean slide. Suddenly, he hung motionless, bright blue eyes rolling to white as the connection took hold with the Soil Mind. Deep in the mycelium web, other gnomes waited and communicated. At any given point, any gnome could join the network with a touch. One remained permanently plugged in, and as Gravewhistle joined them, his Core and mind joined the rest. Orders, resource tallies, warnings, battlefield chants, all of it made perfect sense in his mind. To Alex and Snu, he just looked like a little funny man dangling and doing mushroom monkey bars. In truth, he was connected to thousands. The general had stepped back into the command network of the Soil Mind and relayed his thoughts and received his own affirmations.
"This is…this is incredible, Emilio," Alex said to his cat, who sat and looked smug in the complex network of tunnels. "How far do these go?"
"Mreow." Emilio answered, at least.
The tunnels stretched, hacked out of dirt and stone. Flowers bloomed from walls and were arranged into murals of battles past. The air was muggy but clean of rot. Alex and Snu had passed a kindergarten room where scarred, matronly and patronly gnomes taught apple-sized children their lessons. They'd seen a chamber where elders rocked and tossed dice over mugs of tar-black tea. Kitchens where workers downed cups of vegetable stew before continuing in the labour. Alex had thought a few hundred gnomes hidden in Allen Gardens was all there were. He now understood he saw only the surface. It was just an outpost, and their power bloomed beneath just as much as it did under the sun. Sun and Shade was their motto, and in the shade is where they grew too.
Not all the tunnels were four feet high. Many were too small for Alex or Snu to pass through, and Gravewhistle clearly took them along a path they could maneuver. Everywhere they looked, they happened upon Garden Gnome life. Little arguments in rooms covered in rare plants and succulents. Bespeckled gnomes tinkering and constructing weapons from stolen refuse. From what they had happened upon, it was clear nothing was wasted, and the Garden Gnome's quiet conquest never ceased.
"Sage Mistletoe will see you now," Gravewhistle grunted as he dropped back down to the floor. When he saw Alex's long, tired face, he gave him a smile. "She's particularly interested in Brody, and to meet the companion of His Girthdom. Oldest Gnome in the whole Clan. A great honour."
Anxiety settled in Alex's belly, and Snu grasped his hand as the Steward of Sun and Shade led them deeper into the Gnomish Tunnels. They passed a training room where spindly adolescents free of any marring did handstand push ups under the barks of a Gnome missing an arm. Next was through a room where stolen books lined the walls. Most were massive, but a group of scribes wearing cardigans copied them down into thumb-sized booklets. The Gnomes were respectful, bowing to Emilio, and nodding to Alex and Snu.
"Hey, Gravewhistle," Alex called after the gnome. "Whatever happened to Don Badger? Last I heard you all took over his…uhh…region?"
"Don Badger has been fully embedded within our networks," Petal answered over his shoulder. "According to the Soil Mind, he's stationed on the frontlines alongside my wife, Petunia, near Niagara," he chuckled. "We watch him closely, of course. Slimy creature. For now, however, he sees the way the wind is blowing, and his logistics expertise has been...surprisingly helpful."
Gravewhistle led, with Emilio padding behind them, and before long, they arrived at a door made entirely of dense rosebush compacted together. The Gnome looked over his shoulder.
"What you see may shock you," He said gravely. "But Sage Mistletoe has accepted her role, and it is one of the most necessary components of our success. Humans may not understand our ways, but we do what we must. We will not stand idle and guard lawns again."
Gravewhistle grunted as he pulled the rosebush door aside. It's thorns scraped against his porcelain arms, but he held it wide open through the pain. Beyond the door, thick fragrant earth poured out, not unlike the perfume from Snu's Dungeon.
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At the center of the room sat Sage Mistletoe. She wasn't a porcelain gnome like all the others. She was much too old for that. Her hooked nose and warty face were carved from an ancient willow tree hundreds of years ago, the bark held together with her sheer will. Remaining was her head and neck fused into a mess of mushroom and tangled mistletoe. Fat, thick caps piled around her, their tendrils of glowing mycelium burrowing into her ears and where her neck should have been to root her into the living network. She had no body left, just an ancient, witchy head meant to scare off vermin which was not held in place by plant and mushroom. Her eyes were open, and instead of painted white, they were sharp and lit from within. She smiled like a grandmother greeting old friends, and the room brightened from her crooked teeth. Even Emilio hesitated, ears flat as he sat next to Alex. The cat wasn't scared, or bowing, but clearly this creature freaked Emilio out.
Alex was exhausted, but being in her presence woke him up. Thankfully she didn't seem to mean him, Emilio, or Snu harm according to his belly.
"Madame Mistletoe," Gravewhistle declared. "I have brought Bringer of Slice, Alex, Familiar Protector, Snu, and His Girthdom and Ruler of Sun and Shade, as requested."
"Ahhhhhhh," Sage Mistletoe rasped as the mushrooms vibrated to create her voice. "We are twinn'd, thou and I, boy. Threads and threads. Alex be linked to the true Ruler of Sun and Shade-aye! I feel that. Bound too, to this dame at thy side. Marked and marked and marked. Bound yet further still to a Lich fat with secrets. Curious. How curious."
She tilted her head and the cords of fungus tightened where the neck should have been. The glow off the mushrooms pulsed once. "And…haaah. Another string. A thread ne'er glimpsed in soil nor shade. Strange it winds around tee. Stranger still that it hides when I seek. A thread out of place. Tresspassin' root? Nay…Oh, how wondrous. How troublesome. A root yet unfound! Meant to be yet new to me!"
She cackled far too long for comfort. Still, Alex wasn't getting any terrible feelings from her. Snu's hand, however, was gripping his own like a death vice. Emilio seemed to have calmed down, licking his paw on the ground and lounging.
"You see something connected to me?" Alex asked.
"It's got to be Brody," Snu added, leaning in closer to Alex. "See? I told you he was real. Francesca is wrong. How can there be a root to nothing?"
"Nahh, lass," Sage's lips cracked apart in a wide smile and her wood splintered. "Root of naught is never truly naught! Nothing canst not be, for rhythm and wave make even silence sing. So long as thought hums, so long as dreams dream, aye, there is! Lest all be void and we but seeds unseeded."
She regarded Alex seriously. "Mmmm…This thread smell o' dreams. O' places should not be! Yet without nothing else could see. Where didst thou wander, little root? Little tree? Where did the soil lose a part of thee?"
Despite Alex's exhaustion, the words from the creepy shaman gnome jolted him with realization.
"Dreams! Dreams!" he blurted. "That's what it is! Brody isn't anywhere here, he's in the unspace!"
"The what?" Snu frowned.
"The who?" Gravewhistle asked.
"Mreow?" Emilio added curiously.
"The portal," Alex waved his hand in circles. "When I deliver for Nino and Nina, I go through it every time. It's like an inbetween place. Mr. Mystical once said…what was it? 'This is where dreams go to die!" He snapped his fingers. "That's where he is. That's why he wrote it like he was half mad. He's in the unspace!"
"I've never heard of such a place," Gravewhistle pulled his beard. "This 'unspace', where do we send our—"
"Mr. Mystical?" Sage Mistletoe's mushroom voice growled. Gravewhistle shut up at her tone. "A creature o' flip flop. He sought to unmake me. Hack my roots and burn my soil bare. Ha!" She rattled the mistletoe around her. "Show'd him. Yes I did."
"And now…he came to thee? Guesses I do. Held thy hand, helped thee stumble, whispering riddles and speaketh of purpose. Aye? That Mr. Mystical? What form doth he inhabit now?"
"You…you know him?" Alex asked with a dry throat. "He's a rat now. Well, he inhabits a rat now. He tried to kill you?"
Sage clacked her teeth together in her laugh. "Plays all sides, that one. Inhabits corpse or carrion form, aye. Rat or some form of shade. Makes no matter. The mushrooms whisper of the rot he doth bloom. Hear it, boy? Mr. Mystical is a mask name borrowed and thin. Though none doth know his true name. That be the name he hide."
She tried to lean her head forward, but was trapped in her web of fungi and plants. "And the name beneath? Best left unsung. Speak it? Nay. Hide from it, as It is a Hunter."
Emilio hissed with raised hackles at the end of her sentence. It was a deep, angry declaration from the cat Alex had only seen a few times. When Emilio defended him from various Monsters during his street days, when Emilio attacked Britanii, and when Emilio thought he was in trouble after his recent delivery to Scrum Lord. And if Alex trusted anyone, it was his fat grey cat.
Alex felt the chill from her words seeping into his stomach. He could believe that Mr. Mystical was up to no good. The rat ghost had helped him, yes, but the killing in the parking lot, the ominous passage delivered from the seeming void, the fact that he kept tabs on Alex. Mr. Mystical even had access to the unspace, and Brody was crying from a place where dead dreams lived.
So the unspace…Mr. Mystical…but why set his sight on me?
"Never trust a ghost," Snu said seriously. "Everyone knows that. Even Dungeon Bosses don't mess with them."
"Aye," Gravewhistle added. "Ain't never met a ghost without evil motives. Wearing another's skin is sign enough. But you missed the other part of that saying, Madame Snu. Never trust a ghost, but also never mess with a ghost."
"Seek thy thread-tree in place unseen," Sage Mistletoe spoke seriously. "Chase not in soil, nor in sunlit field. The hollow 'twixt where dream yet still bloom, there thy link lay."
"How are we supposed to get to the unspace?" Snu asked. "Nino and Nina just said they can't just allow anyone in through their portal. It doesn't work like that…I could look into it?"
"Aye, the Gnomish Brigade will begin our investigations. Any ideas of where to begin, Alex?"
"Yeah, actually," he answered and yawned deep underground.
In actuality, Sage Mistletoe's room was beneath an ancient rose bush in the Annex, thirty feet underground. Two hundred years ago, some of the first people to move into the area had planted a pink bush in their new home's tiny lawn. Their daughter, a crafty little weaselly type, had carved a friendly witch from wood to protect her family from her nightmares.
"We just need to talk to someone about a friend with a knife that can cut through anything."
"Oh," Snu responded. "She is going to be so pissed."