From the Collected Stories of Bogwood Stump

Bogwood Stump, gnome, sat on one of his namesakes for height as he worked the shuttle back and forth. Like his clothing–and everything else about him–the fabric taking shape in front of him was rough, humble, and all in shades of brown. Anything else would never have occurred to him.

The loom he worked at wasn’t fancy or even what you’d call square, but he was as proud of it as he was of the seedlings sprouting at his feet. Its frame was decorated with small bits of the woods around him, while others were woven in among the threads–seed pods, nut shells, and the like. With his broad brown face and fresh leafy twigs caught in his tousled hair he looked like a bit of the woods himself. But then, of course, he was.

“Them fairies get all the glory,” he declared, and three furry heads nodded in agreement. A trio of chipmunks looked on as he worked, their tiny bodies fidgeting restlessly as they jostled each other on the trunk of a fallen log. “They end up in all the stories, and you’re not nobody unless you’re in the stories. And of course, they don’t like to mingle with us elementals, neither,” he added. “Act like we’re just mindless forces of nature, not worth their time.”

He continued weaving as he spoke, working his little hand-carved shuttle back and forth, over and under. He carefully pressed each finished row down with nimble earth-stained fingers, pausing now and then to straighten the weave. The branches framing his loom flexed with his movements, setting the leafy vine in one corner fluttering. The cloth continued to take shape in front of him as he resumed his lecture.

“What they forget is that we gnomes have always been good with our hands. Manifestation,” he explained, emphasizing each syllable. “That’s what we’re about. And people ought to know that.”

“I’ve heard the human tales, you know,” he told his audience of chipmunks. “They go on and on about how elegant the elves are. ‘Elegant’ my grass-stained bum,” he declared, punctuating the last word with a nod of his lumpy brown head. “The word is feeble, I’d say. Too dainty to bear any kind of work, so all they’ve got left is to put on airs and look pretty.”

“Gossamer, that’s another word they use in the tales,” he continued, working another acorn cap into the fabric. “As in ‘he dressed in gossamer robes,’ or ‘she wore a gossamer gown.’ Now at first,” he added with a conspiratorial wink, “I thought they was saying ‘gossiper’ instead, and I said to myself, ‘Now that is a word I would apply to the elves.’ They surely do love to talk, you see.”

“But what good’s gossamer when it comes to clothing?” he cried, turning the shuttle around to begin the next row. “Gossamer won’t keep you warm, and it surely won’t protect you from brambles.”

“Now my weaving can stand up to wear and tear,” he said proudly. “And the colors won’t show dirt, neither. You mark my words, I’ll put gnomish weaving on the map. It’ll be as storied as dwarfish metalwork or, or…” He cast about for another famous craftsfairy.

“Or them little men in green,” he finally came up with. “Got a monopoly on shoe-making, they do. No one wants a good solid gnome shoe, not since them leprechaun stories started making the rounds. ‘Course, we don’t have any gold, neither, but that’s not the point,” he said, wagging a finger at the chipmunks. “Point is, you need to be in the stories for people to seek you out.”

One of the chipmunks whistled softly, and another chattered in response.

“True, true,” said Bogwood Stump, nodding at each of them in turn. “But I don’t mean literally seek us out. We don’t need them humans tromping through our woods. Worse than the elves, the way they put on airs.”

A chipmunk muttered under his breath, scratching rapidly behind one ear with a hind leg. He replaced his foot on the tree trunk with a pronounced thud, punctuating the gesture with an indignant whistle.

“Exactly,” the gnome replied. “Won’t even respond to a friendly hello, just walk on by like they don’t even notice you. But,” he said, raising a grubby finger, “that will change when they know who they’re dealing with.”

He resumed his weaving, praising the quality of gnomish craftsmanship to his audience as he went. When they remained unconvinced, he regaled them with tales of his father’s stonecarving, his great-aunt’s treecrafting, and the fine ditch-digging of his third cousin (twice removed.) And no, he admitted, there were no tales of weaving yet, but that was his whole point. That was where he was going to make his mark.

He sat back when he reached the top of the loom, examining the finished fabric with a critical eye. Though the cloth started out neatly enough, it rapidly grew bunched in the middle and ragged around the edges. He could practically trace the contours of his impassioned ramblings in the way the weft tightened here and loosened there, and in the whole sections where he had forgotten to weave in any ornaments.

Bogwood Stump sighed, removing the misshapen cloth from the loom and placing it on top of the growing pile of similar pieces beside him. He had time to get it right. Gnomes aged like rocks and trees, and great art took time. He looked up to meet the three bright pairs of eyes watching him.

“We’re getting there, little friends,” he said contentedly, restringing the loom. “Got to give the stories time to build, after all. And like I said,” he added as he picked up the shuttle, “you’re not nobody unless you’re in the stories.”

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Text © 2009 H.D. Grogan – - Photos and Handmade Loom © 2009 Ariandalen

Chooser

It’s time. My gleaming hair falls unbound past my shoulders, and my crimson shirt slides like silk, loose and flowing over tight jeans. The jewelry I wear is minimal, but matches the gold of my hair. I’ve been watching my man for years, and tonight I finally go to meet him. He will not recognize me, of course, and may not even notice me tonight–not at first. He will be mine nonetheless; it has been woven from his birth.

My sisters are all out, but I know I’ll see them later. They each have their own preparations to make, their own fated appointments to keep. We often ride alone, although we work in concert.

I give a final shake of my hair and stride out of the room, swinging into my leather jacket and taking up my helmet from the table. My bike is waiting for me, sleek and eager, and we roar down the street with a rush of joy. The helmet rests lightly on my head, and my jacket feels like battle armor against the wind. I couldn’t travel any other way, being who I am.

The sun is almost down, splashing red and orange across the piled clouds. The streets are full of cars, windows rolled up against the crisp autumn air, most heading out of the city for the weekend. I dart between them, beyond reckless–I hear more than one pair of tires screech in panic as they skid an inch past my rear wheel. I laugh and speed on.

The streets are narrower here, and the traffic thinned out long ago. No one wants to drive here after dark, even with a heavy metal frame around him. Half the streetlights are cracked and dark, the other half flickering self-consciously. They hug their light shyly, though some share it with bare-legged hookers who shiver in the light to attract work for the darkness. The ones who notice me glare; a pimp calls out an offer as he sees my golden hair and my lean thighs gripping the bike. I disregard them all. That isn’t my line of work, nor could it ever be.

I turn a corner, my bike slowing now as its engine grows whisper-quiet. The flicker of the streetlights follows me like the crackle of lightning, and there’s a taste of tension in the air. He is near–the one destined for me. All that remains is to wait for the right moment.

The streets roar with a sound like thunder as the battle begins. I sit astride my bike unnoticed. The ambush has been planned for weeks, a force amassed and its weapons assembled in secret. Its outcome will change the balance of power in the city, but this does not concern me. My eyes are fixed upon my Chosen.

In most battles the Choice is made in the moment, reflecting valor and skill. Such is the path my sisters will take this night, elsewhere in the city, but not I. I have known of this moment, this warrior, since his birth. I have known what fate the Norns–my other sisters–wove for him, and I have waited. Soon it will be his moment; soon I will Choose.

In a circle of flashing light and wailing sound worthy of the old epics, he crouches above his fallen comrade, thunder roaring from his weapon as he pulls the other man to relative safety. Pinned by crossfire, he holds his position knowing that reinforcements are long, agonizing minutes away. Abandoning his partner might allow him to save himself, but I know this option never occurs to him. Anticipation runs through me as he makes his stand against superior numbers.

His hands are steady as his weapon spits fire, and two of his adversaries depart this plane. I can see them, lost and forlorn on the road to Hel, for they have lived lives of broken oaths and dishonor. I give them no further thought. It is only the bravest we will present to the Allfather, for Ragnarok approaches and the need for warriors is great. Such has been my task, and my sisters’, for centuries; we are the Choosers of the Slain.

A shiver courses through me, and I point, making my Choice. Time slows as he is struck–once, twice, reeling as he continues the fight. His eyes fix on mine as the third bullet tears him from this world; I reach my hand out to him. He wavers, perplexed, as wailing sirens announce his longed-for reinforcements, scattering his remaining foes. Understanding fills his eyes as he looks down at his mortal shell, fallen beside his partner whose life-thread the Norns have not yet cut. Satisfied, he lifts his eyes again to mine and takes my hand.

My sisters join me at last, our Chosen riding behind us as we roar into the night. The sound of our engines lingers in the night air as we grow ever more insubstantial in the world of Midgard, bringing our warriors to their reward in Valhalla.

__________

© 2009 H.D. Grogan

After the Flood

“What I don’t get,” Nicolas grumbled, brushing vampire dust off his jeans, “is if God sent the Flood to rid the world of monsters, how come there are still so many here?”

“Well,” replied Valentina, recovering the stake she’d thrown and giving it an idle flip before sheathing it, “a lot of them did die in the Flood. Most of the magical beasts did as well, most famously the unicorn. Some creatures didn’t care about the rising waters, though–sea monsters, of course, preferred it that way. We’re just lucky they didn’t find the Ark,” she mused with a quirk of her full, red lips. “It would have made a tasty meal for some kraken, and then where would we be?”

She sidled up close to him as she spoke, seductive as she always was after a kill. In the two short weeks that he’d been hunting with her, he’d learned that she could answer almost any question he had regarding their monstrous prey. He didn’t know where she’d learned it all, or how she’d become such a formidable fighter, but he didn’t much care. Though her accent was faintly Russian, he had met her in Belgium before traveling here to France on the hunt, and at this point he’d follow her anywhere. She’d saved his life, showed him a whole new world and, terrifying as it sometimes was, taught him to survive in it.

And the fact that her ferocity in battle was matched in the bedroom didn’t hurt, he reflected as she ran her hands up under his shirt. Her beautiful smooth face, framed by gleaming pale hair, shone in the light of the pale gibbous moon overhead. He wound his hands in that hair and kissed her, but his thoughts continued unabated. Releasing her, he continued his line of questioning as she pressed her lean body against him.

“And them?” he asked, nodding at the drifting piles of dust around them that caught the moonlight. “What about vampires?” He grinned lopsidedly. “Did Noah save the wrong bat or something?”

She rolled her eyes at him, clearly disinterested in answering historical questions right now. “No,” she said with exaggerated patience. “But what do the undead care for rising waters? They don’t need to breathe. Besides, most of these would have been made after the Flood.

Nicolas frowned pensively for a moment, though he almost lost his train of thought as she ran her tongue around his earlobe. He managed to keep some focus, though, even when she began nuzzling his neck and giving him playful love-bites. One was hard enough that he thought it might leave a mark, and he nearly dropped the line of inquiry right there and pulled her down onto the dusty ground. Still, something about the question continued to nag at him despite the distraction.

“Ok,” he said finally, a note of challenge in his voice. “Werewolves. I’d think Noah would notice a couple of wolf-men on his boat.”
“There were no wolf-men, no,” she conceded, smiling up at him. He could see the moon reflected in her night-dark eyes. “But there were wolves.”

He gaped at her in astonishment. “You mean–”

“Of course,” she interrupted, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The male was plain old Canis lupus, but the female was a werewolf–one of the oldest–and once the waters receded, she set about creating a pack. Her descendants spread across the earth, mingling with humans but always answering the call of the moon.”

“How–how do you know all this?” Nicolas stammered, pulling slightly away from her as a frightening possibility occurred to him. “Who are you?”

Valentina smiled again, teeth glinting white in the darkness as she reached up to caress the side of his neck where his skin still tingled from her bite.

“You’ll understand everything,” she murmured, “at the next full moon.”

__________

© 2009 H.D. Grogan