Down by the waterfront, various small craft belonging to local fishermen lay pulled up along the beach. Their moonshadows darkened the silver sand, here and there sheltering some fisherman snoring with his head couched in the crook of his arm, a jug of sweet brown liquor lying empty beside him.
Through these shadows, “twixt fishing vessels leaning together with step masts crossed in X’s against the star-dappled sky, stole four darkly-clad figures. The tallest led the way, his topknot bouncing with each tip-toeing step. Across his back was slung a large lumpy sack, from which exuded an appalling odor that kept his three shorter companions at a distance of ten paces behind him. They made their way across the beach and up the main street of the village, keeping well within the shadows and avoiding the more well-lighted taverns.
Once beyond the last house, the street tapered off into a well-worn footpath, which entered a thick forest whose blossom-laden bows were stirred by the warm wind off the sea. The four conspirators crept beneath the dark eaves of the forest and paused, looking back along the way they had come to see if anyone was following.
“I don’t think anyone saw us,” the stoop-shouldered kender whispered as he unslung his pack and set it on the leaf-strewn ground. He straightened to his full four-foot height with a sigh, digging his knuckles into the small of his back.
“Ooooh,” Doctor Bothy groaned, clutching at his belly. “I shouldn’t have eaten so much haggis.” He had been ordered on this mission because he had asked for seconds at the inn.
“Let’s bury it here and get back to the ship,” Sir Grumdish muttered. He glared around the woods leaning over them with their dark, spreading branches. As chief security officer, it was his unfortunate duty to accompany the others on this nocturnal excursion. “I don’t like the feel of this forest. What do they call it?”
“The Black Fairy Wood,” Conundrum answered.
“I don’t know. I think they meant the Blackberry Wood,” Razmous said. “I think I smell some blackberries.”
“How can you smell anything except haggis?” Sir Grumdish snapped as he clapped a hand over his own nose and mouth.
“Oh, please don’t say haggis,” Doctor Bothy groaned.
“Let’s go a little deeper into the woods, at least,” the kender said with a wry grin and a sparkle in his periwinkle eyes. “So the villagers don’t see us. We wouldn’t want to offend them.” Picking up his sack and slinging it with a sickening squish over his shoulder, he crept deeper into the woods, leaving the light and noise of the sleepy village behind. His companions followed reluctantly.
When they had gone about a bowshot further into the woods, Sir Grumdish called them once more to a halt. “This is far enough,” he said as he pulled a shovel out of his pack and tossed it to the kender. A sliver of moonlight penetrated the canopy overhead, illuminating a small patch of leafy soil at their feet. A number of curious mushrooms or toadstools poked their speckled caps up through the mold.
“Let’s dig!” Sir Grumdish almost shouted as he produced a second shovel and jabbed it into the ground. He began flinging scoopfuls of dirt over his shoulder like some sort of demented badger burrowing into the hillside.
Dropping the sack full of haggis to the ground, Razmous then stood to the side, gripping the shovel in his nimble brown hands. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “Maybe haggis is what they call an acquired taste and we should give it another try.”
“Give me that,” Doctor Bothy muttered angrily as he took the kender’s shovel. “I’ll dig. Maybe it will get my mind off my poor belly. When I get back to the ship, I’m going to invent milk of amnesia. That’s a taste I would dearly love to acquire right now.”
“What will milk of… milk of… what will it do?” Conundrum asked as the doctor joined Sir Grumdish in his labors.
“Make you forget you are sick,” Doctor Bothy grunted in answer. “But a glass of regular old cold cow’s milk would do me just fine-or better yet, a bowl of vanilla-flavored frozen-sugar-cream.” He smacked his lips, then continued to dig.
Soon, the two gnomes had excavated a sizeable hole in the loamy forest floor. They towed the wet, heavy bag of haggis into it, and within another turn of the glass were tamping down a small mound of freshly turned black earth with the flats of their shovels. Sir Grumdish stood up, his old gnomish joints cracking with the effort. He stowed the two shovels in his pack, then looked to the kender.
But Razmous and Conundrum were busy staring at something off through the trees. “What is that?” Sir Grumdish whispered, stepping closer and peering over Conundrum’s shoulder.
“It just appeared,” Conundrum breathed in awe.
“It looks like a cottage,” the kender said. “A cottage made of-”
“Vanilla-flavored frozen-sugar-cream!” Doctor Bothy finished for him.
“Looks more like custard to me,” Conundrum offered.
“I was going to say butter,” Razmous said.
Doctor Bothy laughed and ran past his companions. “Don’t be ridiculous! Who ever heard of a cottage made of butter?” he cried, his last words fading away even as he disappeared into the darkness.
Despite his girth, the doctor displayed an unexpected agility and speed. No one could keep up with him, not even the nimble-footed kender. They raced after him as best they could while being careful not to brain themselves against some tree in the dark. But Doctor Bothy leaped and darted through wood and glen like some fey creature out of a dream.
He reached the cottage before any of the others, and they found him already eating his way through one of the walls. A strange, yellow light emanated from the interior of the cottage, setting it aglow in the midst of the woods. Doctor Bothy turned at Razmous’s shout, creamy goo dripping from his beard and the tip of his nose, and coating his arms up to the elbows.
“It ith fanitha-flaforefh frothenthugarcreamfh!” he shouted with his cheeks bulging full of frozen dessert.
“Truly?” Razmous cried with delight. He dearly loved vanilla-flavored frozen-sugar-cream, even more than the greediest gnome.
“Un-hungh!” the doctor moaned in ecstasy.
Razmous started forward, but Sir Grumdish pulled him back by the shoulder of his green vest. “Not so fast, kender!” he snarled, pushing Razmous into Conundrum’s arms. “Here, hold onto him and don’t let him go. I’m going after Doctor Bothy before anything happens. Something uncanny is afoot here.”
With that, he stomped off toward the doctor, who was even then teetering on his toes in an effort to sink his teeth into the fudge drooping from the eaves of the cottage.
Suddenly, Doctor Bothy gripped his ears, squeezed his head in his hands, and staggered back with a cry. Sir Grumdish rushed forward and steadied him, crying, “What’s the matter? Are you injured? Poisoned? Magicked?”
The doctor shook his head and tried to push Sir Grumdish away. “It’s nothing. A frozen-sugar-cream headache is all.”
Before Sir Grumdish could give voice to his annoyance with the doctor, a queer tittering giggle echoed through the forest. The doctor looked up in surprise. Sir Grumdish looked down. Conundrum heard it right in front of his face, so near that he fell backward over a log. But Razmous spun around, peering into the forest behind them. He heard the giggling everywhere.
Then, with a pop like a cork from a bottle of gigglehiccup, the magical house disappeared. Two more loud pops followed in succession, one for Doctor Bothy, and the second for Sir Grumdish, who vanished even as he was turning in surprise at the sudden and noisy disappearance of the good doctor. Razmous and Conundrum stared in horror for a moment at the now empty forest clearing, then turned, and without any clear purpose or direction, fled screaming into the night.
That is to say, Conundrum fled screaming. Razmous, being a kender, wasn’t exactly frightened. Instead, he was mightily concerned, and he ran calling, “Doctor Bothy! Sir Grumdish!” in his loud ringing kender voice. No one answered, and he didn’t wait around to listen. It was all he could do to keep up with his gnome companion.
Conundrum knew not in which direction he fled, whether toward Jachim or away from it. Neither was he particularly frightened, yet he felt almost as if some extra-terrestrial power had taken over his body and was hurling him as fast as his legs could carry him through a dark and fearsome forest.
Suddenly-and rather painfully-he caught his toe against a old gnarled root splaying across the path, and down he went. He threw out his hands to catch his fall and felt them sink up to his armpits in the soft leafy mold. But it
