Snow lay on the garden of Gramma Tickle but the old woman was out and about, hobbling around the vegetable patch like a particularly careworn grizzly bear in fur coat and wellies.
“If I didn’t like Russell’s Sprouts[1] so much, I’d leave the bloody things out ‘ere,” the old woman grumbled.
Badger, her black terrior[2], regarded her with his usual patience. He’d lived with Gramma for long enough to know that the best plan was to simply let her do her thing and be supportive. Currently, he was achieving this by watching her through the glass of the warm front room of her cottage. He wasn’t a bloody idiot after all.
Gramma snapped off a couple of stalks, turned and stomped back in through the front door. Badger shivered momentarily as an icy wind filled the little house; a presage, he suspected, of a more pervasive and rather richer breeze that would creep through from the bedroom tonight.
The old woman heaved off her coat, showering the floor with snow, and glanced over at Badger as he trotted towards her. “‘Ave you been sitting on the back of my chair lookin’ out the window again?” she said, looking at the suspicious dent in the cushion, “If I find another skidder when I come to sit down, there’ll be hells to pay.”
Badger raised his nose in a way intended to indicate his offence at such a remark before giving his arse a quick lick, just in case. It didn’t hurt to remove the evidence, after all.
The old woman had barely reached the kitchen, when there was a loud knock at the door. Badger climbed up onto the back of Gramma’s chair so he could look out of the window again. There, in the snow, was a neat line of footprints. Two feet, if Badger’s keen canine senses, and basic arithmetic, were anything to go by.
Try as he might, however, he couldn’t see who was at the door, which meant that whoever it was, they were either invisible or very small. Neither was an encouraging thought.
The old woman grumbled her way to the door. “‘Oo the ‘eck is martherin’ me at this time of the year,” she said, reaching the spy hole and looking through it.
“I can’t see nobody. If it’s those bloody kids again, I’ll show ‘em everoo messes with me only messes wi’me once.” She pulled at the iron lock and edged the door back. Badger watched her peer through the crack, and then, after a moment, look down.
“Oh, aye, there you are!” she said, opening the door to admit a pile of snow which shook itself off on the hallway floor and revealed itself to be a very small person.
The visitor bowed, his woolly hat depositing another few pounds of snow into Gramma’s hallway. He took his hat off and placed it on a peg. “Thank you,” he said, “my name is Skiver Skjeggestad and I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Now then, has anyone else arrived yet?”
“What?”
The dwarf looked from Gramma to Badger and back again, as if working out who was in charge. He decided, on balance, to stick with the old woman.
“You are Gramma Tickle, are you not?”
“I am,” Gramma replied.
Skiver gestured at the door, “And that is your door?”
“Of course it’s my bloody door, this is my ‘ouse!”
The dwarf looked rattled, but ploughed on regardless[3], “That is the door I was told to knock at; the door behind which the meeting would take place; the door with the sign upon it.”
“Sign? What sign?” Gramma, approaching her wit’s end (not a long way at the best of times) stomped to the front door and pulled it open again. The blast of cold air caused the fire in the living room to flare up as the old woman saw the large G rune carved into the wood.
“See,” Skiver said, “G for Gramma.”
“What the bloody ‘ell is goin’ on?” she said, slamming the door shut and confronting the dwarf. But before she could speak, there was another knock.
The old woman opened the door in a flash and two small figures fell onto the floor at her feet. They scrambled up, showering more snow on the already sodden slabs, and bowed. “Lopher and Slakker, pleased to make your acquaintance,” one said, before spotting the first dwarf behind Gramma and nodding curtly, “Skiver.”
“Slakker,” Skiver responded, “there seems to be some confusion, our hostess seems not to have been informed of our meeting here tonight.”
Slakker slapped his hand on his forehead, “I knew we shouldn’t have asked Shirka to arrange things, I bet she hasn’t even been up here to inspect the facilities, let alone inform the stool.”
Gramma felt as though she was at sea on a stormy day. “What the ‘ell is the stool?” she bellowed, her mind having picked one issue at random.
“Well, you are, of course,” Skiver replied, “as the stool, it is your task to run the meeting, ensure that agreement is reached and decisions made.”
“And provide cakes,” added a voice that turned out to belong to the hitherto inert Lopher, “and ale.”
Badger inched his way behind the old woman’s chair. He wanted to see what happened next but not be part of the collateral damage.
“Right, that’s it,” Gramma said, grabbing Skiver by the lapel and pulling him into the kitchen, his dirty boots dragging on the stone, “now, I want some plain answers. Let’s start with what the bloody hell are you doin’ in my house?”
Gramma let the dwarf go and he gasped as he drew breath again. “I don’t understand the confusion,” he wheezed then, after a moment’s thought, “may I ask how long you have been the occupier of this residence?”
The old girl’s brain gave up trying to work out what was going on and, for its own preservation, decided to simply answer the strange little man. “It’ll be fifty years next spring.”
Skiver smiled as he finally understood. “Then that explains it, our last meeting was nearly sixty years ago. You are a witch, though, aren’t you?” he asked, nervously.
Gramma brought her face down to his level, grimacing as she bent. “If you don’t explain yourself pretty bloody sharp, lad, you’re going to discover just how much of a witch I am.” The kitchen darkened as a large, twiggy branch swung into view outside the window and remained there, shivering.
Skiver cast a glance over at the window. “I represent one of the thirteen families of dwarfs that mine in the Butterlins Mountains,” he said, rattling off the words, “Lopher and Slakker are from two more and the other ten will be here shortly.”
“Thirteen? How the ‘ell am I supposed to fit thirteen of you lot in my lickle ‘ouse?”
Skiver shrugged, “We’re dwarfs,” he said, “we don’t take up much room. And we’ve met here before, or at least our predecessors have.”
“Well, what’s the meeting about?”
“I shouldn’t really say until everyone’s here,” Skiver said. Then, finally capitulating under Gramma’s iron stare, “But I suppose these are exceptional circumstances.”
So he told the old woman about what was happening underground to give the dwarfs such concern that they would tolerate each other’s company for an evening. And, as he talked, the knocks on the door continued.
[1] Invented by Rustle “Billy” Nome- an explosive cross between haricot beans and brussels sprouts. The sprouts themselves are smaller than standard brussels and clustered in groups of eight on multiple stalks per plant, hence the famous cry of market greengrocers everywhere “Billy Nome Eights, anyone fancy some Billy Nome Eights?”
[2] Yes, in his case, it is spelled that way. Badger has a murky past – find out more in the novelette “Amateur Grammatics”.
[3] It’s a well known trait in dwarfs and gets them into a lot of trouble.