“I’m guessing these guys are all named Grumpy,” Claire muttered, as she approached the bier. “None of them are smiling.”
Austin sat down in the shelter of a giant concrete mushroom and wrapped his tail around his toes. And ignored her.
Which was pretty much the response Claire expected. That dog comparison would likely haunt her for a while.
The hole itself was centered on the bier—no surprise since the vandalism had probably opened it. It was larger than mere vandalism could account for, though, and it had been seeping for some time. Unfortunately, the seepage wasn’t dissipating.
Which meant that something in the immediate area was absorbing it.
A quick search showed no wildlife, not even so much as a single pigeon although evidence of pigeons had been liberally splattered on all five dwarfs.
“I hope this isn’t going to be another one of those possessed squirrel sites. They’re always nuts.” She glanced over at the cat and, when he didn’t rise to the provocation, sighed. Great, my cat’s not even responding to bad jokes, Dean’s gone… Her attention elsewhere, she tripped over a piece of broken princess, barely catching herself on the shoulder of a stone dwarf. …and now I’ve twisted my ankle. How could this day possibly get any worse?
A small stone hand closed painfully around her wrist.
I had to ask.
Fortunately, the hands were more or less in proportion to the body, so although the grip pinched, it wasn’t difficult to break. Jerking free, Claire stepped away from the dwarf and felt something poke her in the back of the upper thigh.
It turned out to be a nose.
Her anatomical relief was short lived as this second dwarf made a grab for her knee, muttering, “Write on me, will you!”
He was pretty fast for concrete.
They all were.
“…rotten kids…”
“…ice cream on my hat…”
“…you want Happy, I’ll tell you what’ll make me happy, you little…”
“…gonna pay for those malt balls…”
“…I’ll hi your ho right up your…”
“Hey!” Claire danced away from the last dwarf and glared down at him. “Watch it, buster, you’re supposed to be a children’s display.”
Stone eyes narrowed. “Grind your bones to make my bread.”
“Oh, great…” She leaped off the concrete pad and onto scuffed grass. “…now they’re free-associating.”
The dwarfs came to the edge of the concrete but no farther.
Claire would have been a lot happier about that had they not been between her and the accident site. A quick jog around the perimeter proved she couldn’t outrun them and, as long as the site was open, they wouldn’t run down.
Secure in the knowledge that the Keeper couldn’t get past them, four of the dwarfs started a soccer game with Sleeping Beauty’s head while the fifth kept watch.
Two feints, a dodge, and an argument over whether it was entirely ethical to use chunks of dwarfs six and seven for goalposts, Claire realized she wasn’t going to get by without a plan. Or a distraction.
“Austin?”
“No.”
“I just wanted…”
“Tough. I’m not doing it.”
“Fine. Then what’ll distract five of the seven dwarfs?”
“A trademarked theme song?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You could sing the short version.”
“No.”
“You don’t think they’d be up to it?”
She sighed down at the cat. “Are you done?”
“I will be shortly.”
“Austin…”
“Okay. I’m done.” He took a quick lick at a flawless shoulder. “How about five concrete lady dwarfs?”
“Why not? I’ll just put an ad in the personals.” Claire shoved her hands into her pockets and glanced around at the broken bottles, the scattered garbage, the senseless vandalism. She didn’t even want to think about what the inside of Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’s wife’s house looked like—give some people a dark corner, and they’d do one of two things in it.
Well, maybe three things.
Or four.
“Ow!” Kicked a little too hard, Sleeping Beauty’s head rolled off the concrete and clipped Claire’s ankle. “Yuck it up,” she snarled, scooping up the head and taking aim at the clump of snickering dwarfs. “It’s about to be game over!” As she released her makeshift bowling ball, she had visions of a five/two split, an easy spare, and a quick end to the stalemate.
“You missed,” Austin pointed out, his tone mildly helpful.
“I know!” She had to shout to be heard above the laughter. Two of the dwarfs were propping each other up as they howled, one had fallen to the ground and was kicking little concrete heels in the air, and the last two were staggering around in increasingly smaller circles as they mocked her athletic ability.
It wasn’t what she’d intended, but it had the same effect.
A quick dash, a fast sidestep over a pile of stained feathers that suggested at least one of the pigeons had been slow to get away, and a graceless but adequate leap put her up on the bier.
Keepers learned early on that the repair didn’t have to be pretty as long as it did the job. Claire had personally learned it while closing a site at a book launch for a writer who very nearly acquired a life as interesting as his fiction—although it wouldn’t have gone on as long. In the end, she’d been forced to evoke the paranormal properties of a crab cake, two stuffed mushroom caps, and a miniature quiche. The caterer had been furious.
Though not as furious as the dwarfs.
Who were too short to climb up on the bier themselves. The stream of profanity this evoked made up in volume what they lacked in size. Claire assumed they’d learned the words from the vandals and not the children—but she wouldn’t have bet on it. Fortunately, concrete dwarfs were not fast thinkers. She had the parameters of the site almost determined when one of them yelled, “Pile up the broken bits. Build a ramp!”
As the first of the little men rose into view, Claire pulled a stub of sidewalk chalk from her pocket and scrawled the site definition across Sleeping Beauty’s one remaining smooth surface. Reaching into the possibilities, she closed the hole, turned, and came hip to face with the advancing
