Gnome

by JunoMagic
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives-ShareAlike license

Gnome

She was a gnome. Not a colourful plastic garden gnome fabricated in Taiwan, not even one lovingly carved from wood in the Erzgebirge. Nor a potato-faced Harry Potter gnome, an annoying G’home Gnome or a proto-elf of Tolkienian dimensions.

She was simply a stout wood-sprite of small stature and great spirit.

Her gnomic wisdom was humble, true to her name – ‘genomos’, earth-dweller; contrary to flights of fancy of sentimental souls, wise men know that this is the word stem of ‘gnome’, and not ‘gnosis’. Thus was her wisdom, too: never venture where wild wights wait (if you can avoid it), hide from humans (at all cost), keep away from wily wizards (they are naught but trouble); the wet dell grows mushrooms well; western sun means brambly fun – that sort of thing, practical, and useful.

I am a wizard, so under normal circumstances, she would have kept away from me, had I not practically stumbled upon her, while she was engaged in a fierce fight with wights from the old Celtic fort.

I’d seen her before, her and her rootlings. She belonged to the tribe that had moved uphill from the banks of Bramble Stream after the humans built the lake. New territories were claimed, old ones defended anew. The battle I broke up was waged about ‘shrooming rights.

The wights had – all of a sudden, she insisted – decided that they didn’t want anyone on the land adjacent to the old fort. They hadn’t cared for many ages that the gnomes harvested the mushrooms growing there, and the gnomes had come to regard it as their right of old to gather mushrooms there. Although I doubt they were there before the wights. Gnomes come and go with the subtle shifts of the land, and though they never really disappear, they do not cling to the country the way wights do.

They depended on those mushrooms, she insisted. Even in bad years, when elsewhere in the forest no mushrooms could be found, this one meadow yielded plenty.

But now the wights had woken, and war was made instead of mushroom soup. Probably it was humans that stirred up the wights, bringing back bad memories of times long gone and old grief. Wights are like that – banned betwixt and between, the sighs of the wind, the moans of the tree, the fading memories of the stones. It’s best to leave them in peace, so they can slowly fade as the sun shines and the rain falls through the centuries.

However, for the small tribe of gnomes, it was a question of survival. Wars have been fought over less in the human realm. And wights know no law of war, no compromise, no peace treaties.

When the wights beheld me, they wisely retreated. Most of the gnomes followed suit (but choosing the opposite direction), keeping to their rule of avoiding wizards.

She remained where she was, in her snail helmet and her leaf armour, brandishing her blade of grass. Her mate had just fallen at her feet. She stood over him, willing to defend his body with her life. But I’m not a particularly evil wizard; not as good as some, especially at staying out of trouble, but no worse than others.

So I offered her my sympathies, and what help I could give – a proper burial for her mate, a shared meal of bread and beer and ham and honey. I listened as she told me the genesis of the ‘shrooms war, and pretended not to see her tears when she described the fateful stumble her mate had taken.

I knew the wight who’d felled him. A particularly vengeful spirit. She’d been a Celtic girl in life, raped and killed by Roman soldiers from the nearby border. A normal enough fate in those days, but they made her watch as they brutalized her betrothed before they killed her, in that dell where the mushrooms grow. So she cursed them, and thus herself. Hatred is a heavy burden.

‘What now?’ I asked the gnome. Gnomes can be nasty and spiteful when angered, and she had good reason.

But to my surprise she shrugged and adjusted the sturdy snail shell that served as her helmet. ‘I’ll try and find some more berries, I suppose, or scour the garbage bins at the picnic areas. Hope that winter comes late and doesn’t stay long, that I’ll be able to keep the bairns fed with himself gone and dead.’

‘That’s all?’

She scowled. ‘What else is there? He’s dead. Not even one of your ilk can bring him back. And she who killed him…’ Another shrug, another surprise. ‘She’s already dead. The worst you can do is chain her here longer. But the wood is growing ever smaller, wizard, though there are more trees here now than in olden days. And every summer the humans grow noisier and more numerous. Life is hard.’

I nodded. Life always is, always was, for one reason or another. ‘Anything I can do?’

Suddenly, she smiled. ‘You just did.’

I took my leave of the widow then, though not without bestowing what blessings are left to me these days. As I walked back towards the village, away from war and famine and vengeful spirits, towards apartment blocks with welfare housing and their own demons of alcoholism and boredom, drug abuse and aggression, I found myself wondering if the wise men got it wrong after all.

For even in her grief that gnome-woman was generous, and not without pity. Maybe ‘gnome’ stands for ‘gnosis’ after all, for wisdom, the wisdom of little things, of life going beyond war, of sweet berry-jam in cold winters, of forget-me-nots left for a lonely wight, of mushroom-soup shared with a wizard … or snap-shot granted to a curious camera.

Song of the day:

Link(s) of the day:

The travelling gnome! | Free the gnomes! | Photo of a gnome!

…and my wish for you today is:

May you find the wisdom of little things, and may it grant you comfort and peace, when big beliefs hold none.

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