Who Wants to Get Badgered?
(August 23-31, 2012)
10-They Need a Hero
"Being a hero means fighting back even when it seems impossible."—Stanford Pines
The cosmic weather turned rough.
Over the last couple of days, Jeff had introduced the badger to the Gnomes. They were resentful and wary—"She ate our Queen!" more than one Gnome exclaimed, even though technically they knew that wasn't true. They had all seen Klemmatha buried, and they all knew, intellectually, that her body was wounded but intact.
Still, that Gnomish word marbat that could mean either "kill" or "devour" made many Gnomes believe that the badger had indeed consumed their former Queen. They saw for themselves that the badger followed Jeff everywhere, that it offered no threat to him or anyone else, that in fact it now seemed gentle.
Still, even the daring young Gnomes of thirty or forty—roughly fourteen- and fifteen-year-old teens in human terms, kids who'd do anything with no thought of risk, refused to step up and pet the badger.
Jeff talked to her all the time, and as strange portents began to break out—dimensional quakes, suggesting that another realm was trying to impinge on reality—he warned the Gnome population to be ready. For what?
"for what danger comes," he told them.
"How do you even know there is danger?"
In desperation, Jeff blurted, "She told me!"
"The badger?"
"Badgers have a sense about these things," he fibbed. "Something really bad is coming."
He kept the Gnomes clustered in their homeland, and then when the sky ripped open and monstrous creatures poured out, Jeff gave them all orders: "Quickly, into the old burrows! Take nothing, but flee! Shmebulock! Here!" Jeff fastened the leash to the badger's collar and handed the loop to Shmebulock.
"Sh-sh-shmebulock?" his friend gasped, not willing to touch the leash.
Jeff hastily said, "Rabba garruh shig!" To Shmebulock, he said, "I spoke to her in the secret badger language. She's promised not to harm you and to obey you. Take her to safety now!"
"Shmebulock?" the Gnome asked, fearfully taking hold of the leash.
"You go, I'll stay. There are still feral Gnomes in danger, and I'll have to warn them. Go!"
Shmebulock trotted away, leading the badger.
A few of the ferals had the same idea—run! As deer, possums, and other wildlife stampeded from the forest, they joined the group, running on all fours. Near the Mystery Shack, the encountered Stanford and Dipper Pines, who crouched to avoid them. The birds and animals split their stream, but the Gnomes nearly ran right over them—"Out of the way! We're scampering here!"
Shmebulock led the badger into a concealed entrance to the old system of Gnome burrows. Ahead of him a thousand Gnomes jostled, traveling down the steep slope. Most of them had not set foot into the burrows for years, the younger ones never. Now, though, they fled, trying to get as deep as possible, as far away from whatever was happening on the surface as they could.
Even so, the earth trembled, and they staggered. Shmebulock, bringing up the rear, yelled, "Go! Go! Go!"
The Gnomes understood that as "Shmebulock!" but they seemed to understand.
Anyway, they went.
Jeff had picked up a petrified Gnome, one turned to stone. Things were changing so fast that he knew he had no chance of reaching the burrow entrances. He Blinked as far as he could—and wound up near the Mystery Shack.
Fiddleford McGucket staggered out of the woods, and around him surged a cluster of monsters—Manotaurs, at least one unicorn, the Multibear, Lilliputtians—and as he caught sight of Jeff, McGucket yelled, "Into th' Shack! It's our onliest hope, I reckon!"
And Mr. Mystery opened the door and yelled, "In, quick!"
"I got you!" Jeff panted to the petrified Gnome. The Blink had just about exhausted his strength.
Stan held the door open for them. But at the threshold, he said, "That ain't real, ya know."
"What?" Jeff asked. "It's one of my brother Gnomes—"
"It's a lawn ornament," Stan said. "Take a closer look."
Oops. It was one of the two that had stood outside the Ramirez house. "You deceived me!" Jeff said. He tossed the ceramic ornament back on the lawn, where it lay on its side.
"Come in or I lock the door," Stan said. The whole world shook in an earthquake. Jeff went inside.
There he saw a group of six or eight Gnomes. They weren't immediately familiar—and then Jeff realized they were ferals. He recognized old Khamgool, and Chafotz, among others. They didn't look well.
The Shack teemed with assorted creatures—a good many humans, like Pacifica, Candy, Grenda, and five beautiful young men dressed in white sweaters and jeans. But there were some Manotaurs, a few of the Lilliputtians milling around, the hulking Multibear, a very odd two-dimensional person who looked like a fugitive from a video game—
"What is happening?" Khamgool asked in the Gnome language.
"I think the world is ending," Jeff said in the same tongue.
"Then we free Gnomes will join with you," Khamgool said firmly. "When the end comes, Gnome should side with Gnome."
"Do we have a new Queen yet?" asked young Chafotz.
Impulsively, Jeff blurted, "Yes. Yes we do. Her name is—" he took a deep breath—"Queen Badgah. I—she has gone to lead the Civilized Gnomes to the deepest burrows. I lingered behind to—to help any Gnomes left on the surface."
"Then you are with us and we are with you," Khamgool said. "One Gnome for all Gnomes! All Gnomes for one Gnome!"
No one realized it at the time, but the Great Reconciliation began with that.
Before long, Dipper, Mabel, Wendy and Soos had returned. Then Fiddleford had come up with the idea for the Shacktron. That involved intensive, hard work, work that took weeks.
Except within the influence of Bill Cipher time had ceased to exist.
Everyone played a part. The larger creatures took care of the heavy lifting—but Gnomes had special abilities. They were craftsmen and diggers. In the course of excavating a route into the Cavern of the Giant Lizards, where dinosaurs were trapped in amber, the Gnome party broke through an old tunnel leading to a major burrow—and a Civilized Gnome stood in their way, brandishing a pickaxe. "Shmebulock!" he roared, poised to attack.
"No, no!" Jeff said, stepping between him and the work party. ""It's OK, old friend! How's Badgah?"
"Shmebulock? Shmebulock!"
"The others?"
A shrug. "Shmebulock."
"Let them remain where they'll be relatively safe," Jeff said. "We're going to attack the demon who's causing all this. Do you want to join us?"
"Shmebulock!"
"Good! Come on, we can use your pick."
Later still, when the Shacktron had been built, Jeff, Shmebulock, and the feral Gnomes were too small to be fired into the Fearamid. They remained behind with the crew, ready to do whatever they could to fight Bill.
Somehow Jeff and the Gnomes survived the wild battle with Bill Cipher—even when the Shack was thrown tumbling across the ground. They didn't know what was going on inside the Fearamid. As the injured and uninjured crept out of the fallen Shacktron, the monsters that had come through the rift with Bill closed in, capturing them all. To his horror, Jeff saw one of them swallow Birzherk, a feral Gnome, whole—
But then something happened—far overhead the Fearamid began to break up, huge blocks falling from it, vanishing as they descended, except for a few that plummeted to earth directly under the disintegrating pyramid. A hurricane wind spun out of the rift, sucking up the monsters—and the swallowed Gnome jolted out of the dimensional creature's gullet and landed not far away. Jeff rushed to him and found him dazed but uninjured.
Then as the last of the Fearamid vanished, the rift closed and a great blinding light erupted from it—
When the light faded, Jeff and Shmebulock and the ferals found themselves in a forest that felt normal. Fresh, even.
"What happened?" Jeff asked.
Something stirred in the undergrowth. The Gnomes took a defensive stance—
But then a black-and-white head came out of a burrow, followed by pointed red caps.
"She led us to the surface," Carson said. "She knew it was all over!"
The badger came to Jeff, used him as a brace, and reared on her hind legs. She nuzzled his cheek with hers.
Crowds of Gnomes now, most of them Civilized, many ferals, closed in. "You saved us!" one of them yelled, and they all began to cheer for Jeff.
He let the badger down gently and knelt beside her. He hugged her, and she rumbled happily.
Holding his hand up for silence, Jeff said, "Listen, people! Hear me now! I didn't save us. Our Queen saved us."
The Gnomes subsided to a confused murmuring.
"Our Queen that was told me to choose someone who was not a Gnome to be our new Queen," Jeff said. "I have chosen. Here she is—Queen Badger. Accept her and she will rule us wisely." Into the shocked silence, he called, "I speak her language! I will be her advisor and interpreter. Listen! She has saved us. Accept her as your Queen!"
Shmebulock cheered. Carson and Jason joined. And then, as a stone tossed into a still pool spreads widening ripples, the cheer spread through the crowd.
When Jeff stood again, the badger at his side, looking—even he couldn't deny it—regal, behold, around them knelt a thousand grateful Gnomes.
In the silence, Jeff heard himself speak: "Listen, all of you. Our Queen has given me her first command, and I give it now to you: Be one people, whether you dwell in the trees, or in the forest, or below the ground. One Gnome for all Gnomes; all Gnomes for one Gnome."
The forest held its breath.
And then all the leaves of the forest shook to the joyful cheer.
More was to come. Jeff learned that Mabel and Dipper had survived—but would be leaving in a matter of days.
Time, which had stopped, began to move again
To the feral Gnomes, Jeff sent greetings by way of those who had sheltered in the Mystery Shack. They did not take with them an order, a command, to rejoin the Civilized Gnomes. Instead, they took a message: All Gnomes are one people again.
Three younger Gnomes volunteered to take the message into the burrows, to the Deep Gnomes. They returned with the reply "We will think about it."
As much as Jeff could hope for, he supposed.
The Civilized Gnomes had time to say farewell to Dipper and Mabel.
To speak to Soos, the new Mr. Mystery.
To lay down the groundwork for a new approach to living with the other residents of the Valley.
"Shmebulock?" Shmebulock asked the day after the big bus had rolled away, taking Mabel and Dipper to their distant home.
"Yes," Jeff agreed. "It's all different now." They turned their eyes to the clearing in the forest where a thousand Gnomes, Civilized, a few ferals, even three or four Deep Ones, were feasting and dancing, celebrating the victory in their great battle, their survival, their hope renewed. And Jeff added, "But also, somehow, it's all the same again."
The Gnome Queen curled up, licked her paws, and took a nap.
The End