CHAPTER FOUR: SHORT TEMPER
All eyes, including those of the villagers below, turned to a squat hut perched upon a hill to the right of Captain Vaguely and Ghost-Tongue. Sitting like a pile of rocks barely mortared together, its straw roof and smoking chimney sat beneath a great oak tree in a wavering shade. A short wooden lean-to branched off one side of the stout structure and from it came clangs and bangs as someone was obviously at work upon an anvil.
“Codgrass-gobblin’ punkinmill!” resounded from the lean-to.
“Sounds rather savage,” the Captain noted. Ghost-Tongue nodded and pointed to the vale where all the folk fetching water were gasping and quickening their paces. “Delicate sensibilities,” the Captain nodded. “Remember what I said about the Gurglesplat and its odorous exile?”
Ghost-Tongue nodded, still watching the people scurry.
“I think it might better apply here,” said Captain Vaguely, “but what is foul is not so much the smell, but the language.”
“Your instincts are correct, Cap’n,” Ghost-Tongue replied. “For all intents and purposes… he’s cussing.”
“Glibthongit!”
The Captain flinched, which is much like a comet: rare and cosmic in origin. “If we can believe the Gurglesplat, which at this point I would say we can, there is a very foul-mouthed gnome over there by the name of Dhamnú. I was expecting just an engineer, but it seems he is a brownsmith as well. This bodes well for us, Jobi.”
“I would like to say, at this point, that it seems our quest is at an end,” Ghost-Tongue remarked, “but all I have is a broken ankle and one sweet-obsessed Gurglesplat hardly seems to qualify as danger in your company, Cap’n.”
“Don’t beat around the bush! What are you trying say, old boy?”
“Kollgrumpus! Get in there!”
Ghost-Tongue glanced at the hut, and then said, “I bet he’ll try to kill us.”
The Captain scoffed, “You always say that!”
“They always try to kill us.”
“Well that’s a very narrow-minded point of view, Jobi. Plenty of folk have not tried to kill us.”
“You mean the ones we haven’t met yet?”
“No, dash it,” the Captain grinned, “Regular folk. The hoi polloi. The great unwashed!”
“Ah,” said Ghost-Tongue. “The people you avoid.”
“The vast majority, Jobi! That is to whom I am referring! Just because we get into a scrape here and there while venturing boldly and nobly forth in the name of knowledge and understanding…”
“You mean interloping and otherwise burgling ancient, mystical realms?”
“I mean exploring the unknown!”
“If we are to explore everything we do not know we will be at this for all of eternity.”
“There’s the idea!” the Captain exclaimed, and began guiding his lanky Indian cohort down the slope of the hill in the direction of the stone hut.
Weaving between the narrow dells below the hills, they reached the foot of the hill upon which sat that noisy stone hut and began to climb. It was rather steep and the grass was slightly slick from the gnome smith’s miniature foundry, which made the going all the more precarious, but the Captain was quick to point out the metallic glint of shavings carried away by that runoff. The grass was coated in the stuff and gave the green blades a metallic sheen almost like mother of pearl. “Could be worth collecting,” he said. “Arcadian metals could come in handy.”
“You’re sorting that dust on your own, Cap’n,” Ghost-Tongue groaned. “I’m just a spirit guide.”
“You’re much more than that, old boy!” the Captain insisted. “You’re a constant nag and dead weight, as well.”
“Sounds like triple duty, then. When we get back to the lab, I’ll put in for a salary increase.”
“The day you turn in paperwork is the day I shave off my mustache.”
Soon they were standing in the shade of the great oak, and veered toward the lean-to. “Ahoy there!” the Captain cried as the neared.
“What the- Gabbledeegrot! Why you rotten bamfwarting slagheap!” Some rather violent hammering followed and then abruptly stopped. “Now who in the blarbaggis is interrupting me when I’m trying to work?”
A short, stout figure turned the corner of the hut just as the Captain and Ghost-Tongue reached it. His face was wide and flat and hung from it a long brown beard. It seemed his brow was furrowed several times over; giving a curious shape to thick eyebrows that all but covered small gray eyes set close together on either side of a bulbous nose.
If the scorched leather apron draped across his broad but squat figure did not ensure that this was the foul-mouthed fellow making all that racket, his identity was solidified when he said, “Who the kurdangle are you?”
“Captain Tripp Vaguely of Vague Enterprises, at your service, Master Dhamnú!” The gleam of the Captain’s best smile made the sun blink. “This is my adjunct and advisor, Ghost-Tongue of the Anasazi.” The Indian gave the gnome a nod.
“Kiss my cuddlethwump,” said the gnome, turning about, “I ain’t buyin’.”
As the smaller figure disappeared back around the corner of his hut, the Captain was quick to add, “And we are not selling!”
Captain Vaguely followed after the gnome, leaving Ghost-Tongue to brace himself against the stone wall. “Instead, Master Brownsmith,” said the Captain, “I seek your services.”
The gnome had returned to an anvil with a bit of copper presently in a near spherical shape. He was grabbing up a hammer and tongs and was preparing to beat on the near-orb, by which the Captain found himself stymied. “You’re going to hammer it into a ball?”
“Shapes need convincing,” said the gnome.
“Wouldn’t a cast be-“
“Are you a duldurf smith?”
“Not exactly though I have-“
“Then shut your glidfodden mouth.”
“That’s unlikely,” said Ghost-Tongue, limping around the corner.
“Here,” the Captain indicated. In his palm he held forth the tiny brass cannon.
Nearly set to begin striking the copper ball, the gnome sighed gruffly and looked over to the Captain. He squinted and leaned forward and gave the piece a long look before saying, “Aye, what of it?”
“This is your work, correct?” asked the Captain.
“Course it is,” Dhamnú answered. “Who else could make such a fine skelling piece of fairy ordinance? Not that those jek-headed skadhoogs would have it. ‘Ewww! That’s disgusting!’ the podgers said. ‘What are we going to do with guns?’ ‘Shove it up your little dust-packed gurfungies is what you can do with ‘em,’ I said.”
“But how can we be certain you are the craftsman?” the Captain asked.
“Flip it over. See that maker’s mark?”
“A mark?” the Captain wondered as he rolled the thing over in his hand. “I have inspected this piece thoroughly countless times and never saw a maker’s mark. How could I have missed it?”
The gnome came around his anvil and snatched the cannon from the Captain. He then held its bottom side up to the baffled human and pointed to a thin indentation. “That?” the Captain scoffed, “I thought that was a scratch. Is that your mark?”
The gnome held up one prominent finger to the Captain, who could now see the correlation between symbols. “I see. Well then good. You are the gnome we were looking for!”
The Captain retrieved a scroll from one of his many pockets and began to unfurl it saying, “Now if you’ll just sign this lengthy but well-written contract, we’ll find ourselves in business together and well on our way to-“
“Nudder off,” said Dhamnú.
“Wish that I could, but I doubt I am capable,” explained the Captain. “In any event, you see, my good gnome, Vague Enterprises is willing to pay you dearly for larger replicas of this very cannon; about eight in total and perhaps a few swivel guns as well.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Excuse me?” the Captain replied.
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br /> “The fairy cannon,” Dhamnú answered. “Where did you get the mulgagging thing?”
“I found it in the bottom of a well.”
Dhamnú gave the Captain a suspicious gaze. “What were you doing in the bottom of a well?”
“Looking for cannons,” the Captain said dryly. “Now hear me, Master Dhamnú, I don’t see how any of this-”
“Nudder off,” said Dhamnú and turned away with the cannon still in his hand.
“Very well,” said the Captain, “I was fetching a drink of water after chasing a harpy out of a little village in County Kerry. The thing came up with the bucket. A fine bit of serendipity don’t you think?”
Unfazed by the explanation, Dhamnú looked down and muttered, “Padthomping fairies. They just threw it away. In the blaggered realm of man no less.” His head then jerked back to the Captain. “How did you find me?”
“If you must know,” the Captain explained, tapping his goggles. “I must first introduce you to Vague Enterprise’s very own Transdimensional Aural-Sensitive Spectacles™! You see, I am a bit of an inventor as well. And with these little beauts I was able to look at the very nature of the materials used to craft the cannon. There I could see the hallmark signature of Arcadia. You see, this realm has a specific quinta essential resonance that-”
“’Nuff of that,” said Dhamnú. “How did you find me?”
“The Gurglesplat told us,” Ghost-Tongue broke in.
The silence that consumed the room was voluminous. As Dhamnú slowly turned his attention to the tall, lanky, and quite injured human leaning against his wall, his mouth fell open. “You spoke to the Gurglesplat?”
The Indian nodded and the Captain spoke. “Briefly, yes. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an accident.”
Dhamnú looked down at Ghost-Tongue’s cast and nodded, “Must’ve been an accident for you to have survived at all. The Garglesplat is a terror; a horror; a plague upon us all!”
“Hardly,” the Captain scoffed. “One little spill down a hole and the varmint snapped its neck. Tumbling to one’s death scarcely seems applicable to a terror.”
Again, silence conquered. The beady eyes of the gnome had become bright white ovals. He stood there stymied for a long moment before he gasped, “You… killed… the Gurglesplat?”
“Practically killed itself,” said the Captain nodding to Ghost-Tongue, who nodded back. “Honestly, I don’t comprehend your fear or amazement. It was just a little nervous critter; quite obsessed with keeping a quiet tone about things. Just wanted to be rid of us, really. Told us where you lived, described your hut and even showed us a pipe you made for it.” The Captain made a few mental connections and blurted, “Now what’s going on there? You’re crafting musical instruments for local plagues?”
When Dhamnú’s palm slammed into his forehead, the resulting smack was like a whip crack. “You cogthanged golnobbered brundlepuss gruggers…” he said.
“What’s wrong with you, old boy?” the Captain wondered. “You’ve gone quite pale.”
“You didn’t kill the skudmalloping Gurglesplat.”
“Oh?”
“You killed, Turbees.”
“Who’s that now?”
“Turbees is the goblin that keeps the feddered Gurglesplat from killin’ all of us!”
The Captain glanced to Ghost-Tongue who could not have been smiling wider.