One Week of Wonder

5. Mabel's In a Jam

(August 24, 2015)

Part 2: Gnomens

"How about letting me go first this time?" Teek asked. His left eye was red and leaking tears after yet another fern frond had flapped across it. "In fact, I insist on it."

Mabel looked at him. "Ooh, forceful! I like that. OK, you're the boss, Teek. Lead on. But go exactly where I say, and don't you dare let a branch pop back and smack me!"

Smiling, Teek nodded, grabbed Mabel's shoulders, pulled her close, and kissed her. "How's that for forceful?" he asked.

Laughing, she shoved him away. "You're wasting time! Get going!" But as he turned, Mabel patted his butt. "Also, it was very nice. File that activity away for later. OK, I can see the tree up ahead there—we need to swerve toward the left, see?"

"Yeah, got it," Teek said. Keeping a straight path through woods where there were no paths was difficult, especially when the canopy of leaves cut off their view of their goal.

But Teek somehow stuck to the trail, and in five more minutes, Mabel crowed, "You did it! OK, there's the tree, there's the moss, so let's go around—wait, is this exactly opposite the moss?"

"Just a second." Teek went around the trunk of the tall dead tree, hoping it wouldn't fall on him. The pitted, woodpeckered, barkless wood had bleached to a gray-white. Except on the north side, where a thick growth of deep green, coarsely hairy moss splotched the trunk. Teek said, "I'm where the moss is. Let me back up so I can see where you are, too. OK, move to your left. No, your left. Well, it's my left, too—OK, stop, stop. Now pick up your left foot. No, other foot. Now step sideways with it until I tell you to stop. One more step. One more. Stop! Now you're facing the right direction. Hang on and don't move."

He came over to her. "You know your right from your left," he accused. "What's up with that?"

"Just messin' with you," she grinned.

"Uh-huh. I guess it's OK for you to waste time?"

"Uh-huh." She crossed her arms over his shoulders, her hands clasping his head, and pulled him close. "One for the road?"

They kissed again, and then Teek took the lead. Um, in walking, that is. Their way led over a series of low hillocks, bristling with jagged boulders and thick with ankle-tangling deadfalls of old wood. The going wasn't easy—though Teek thought he saw a trail that the Gnomes might have followed, only a Gnome or a medium-sized rabbit could have taken it. He and Mabel waded through waist-high undergrowth over about a dozen of the little hills. Then Mabel said, "Hsst!"

Teek stopped and frowned. "Huh?"

Impatiently, Mabel repeated, "Hsst! That's what Annie Droo always says in the mystery novels when she hears someone in the distance."

"You read Annie Droo mysteries?"

As though in a mild huff, Mabel demanded, "I used to! They're popular with girls. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," Teek said. "Up until I was about thirteen, I liked the Hardly Boys myself. Dad had the whole series from when he was a kid, and he gave them to me. Did you know the Annie Droos and the Hardly Boys are really the same books?"

Mabel shoved his shoulder, making him stagger for a step. "Get out of town!"

"It's true," Teek insisted. "Especially as the two series went on. Check it out. Find the Hardly Boys number fifteen—The Case of the Crimson Cat. Then read the Annie Droo book number fifteen. It's The Adventure of the Colorful Kitty. The plots and even a lot of the dialogue are exactly the same, but the names have been changed. Well, the names and the genders, but you know, they're basically the same story."

"Huh," Mabel said. "Who plagiarized who?"

"Nobody, I think," Teek said. "The authors—Dick W. Franklin and Kennalee Carlin—are really the same person. Those are pseudonyms."

"Really?" Mabel asked.

"Look it up," Teek suggested. "See, what I think happened was that the publishing company thought girls wouldn't read the boy ones and boys wouldn't read the girl ones, so it was OK to—"

"Hsst!"

"OK," Teek grumbled sotto voce. "I'll hsst."

They had been whispering and creeping closer to the indistinct sound of voices, or, more accurately, of a single voice. It was a male voice, a little high-pitched and irritable: "Steve, don't make me come down there! Lift with your knees! Your knees! No, don't lay on your back and grab the stick with your feet! You know what I mean, Mister!"

Teek pushed through the last heavy growth of ferns. Ahead of them, on this side of a broad, rocky-bedded creek, about three dozen Gnomes—all males—looked hard at work. Three of them bustled around a big jumble of fallen tree limbs, which appeared to have washed up there when the creek had flooded some time in the past. They busily tied different colored ribbons to the fallen branches—yellow, red, and blue.

"Hiya, Jeff!" Mabel yelled, making Jeff jump about twice his height into the air. His cap fell off, and he scrambled to replace it. Mabel noted that his head, despite rumors to the contrary, was not pointy. She said, "Sorry to scare you!"

The other Gnomes had frozen where they stood, even Steve, who now had a six-foot-long sapling trunk balanced sideways across his shoulders. "You didn't scare me!" Jeff insisted. "OK, fellas, take five! But no eating lunch yet! It isn't time! I'll tell you when it's time!"

As Mabel and Teek pushed out of the brush, they saw the Queen of the Gnomes, a placid, rather fat badger, curled up in the shade of a tree, snoozing. Her small gold-colored crown, which Mabel suspected had been pilfered from some Princess doll, rested beside her on the grass. "Jeff," Mabel said, "you remember Teek."

"Hi, human," Jeff said in a grumpy tone.

"I came to tell the Gnomes goodbye," Mabel said. "Dipper and I have to go home in a week. So, you know—have a good fall and winter, don't freeze or starve, and try to stay warm."

"That's exactly why we're here," Jeff said. He looked around at the sound of a loud clack! Steve lay on his back, both feet kicking the air. He'd tried to scurry between two closely-placed saplings, and the branch across his shoulders—it was tagged yellow—had jammed.

Jeff slapped his forehead. "Just leave the wood, Steve!" he yelled. "Pick it up you're your break's over! I swear, Steve, without me you'd die of sheer brainlessness!" When Steve, minus his burden, vanished in the undergrowth, Jeff turned back to the teens. "We'll miss you, Mabel. But since we've gone into the pest-control business, we're in decent shape, not like back when we had to liberate food from the humans. Yeah, we're here gathering kindling, firewood, and construction materials. It's supposed to be a hard winter."

"How can you tell?" Teek asked, sounding interested. "Rings on caterpillars? The way ants march in their lines? Bird migration patterns?"

"No," Jeff said, giving him a look. "The long-range forecasts on the Weather Channel."

"The yellow ribbons are for wood you can build things with," Teek said. "Blue ones are tied to the small stuff, so that's for kindling, I guess? And red's firewood?"

"You're quick. It took me three months to train the spotters that color coding," Jeff told him. "You interested in a part-time job?"

"Got one, thanks," Teek said.

"Listen," Mabel said, "we just met some girl Gnomes making jam."

"Yeah, the ladies are really jammin' today," Jeff said, waggling his eyebrows. "How're they doing?"

"Looks like they're doing awesome," Mabel said. "They've already got three whole great big stacks of jam jars filled up and corked. Listen, I asked them if we could have a taste, and they said we'd have to get your permission. What do you say, ex of my heart?"

Jeff darted an anxious glance at the slumbering badger. "Shhh-shhh," he said. "Cool it with the love talk. Her Majesty doesn't know about our personal history. Maybe it wouldn't matter if she did, but on the other hand, if she got jealous, she could eat me. Jam, huh? A taste, you say? You just want a lick?"

"I collect taste sensations!" Mabel said. "Come on, what do you say, old friend? Old buddy? Old chum? Old amigo?"

"I don't know what 'amigo' is," Jeff said. "And I'm not shark bait, but yeah, I'll take 'friend' and 'buddy.' Just a little jam, right?"

"A mere smidgen," Mabel said, rapidly batting her eyes.

Jeff shrugged. "Sure, OK. Tell Gnorma that I said it would be all right. Here, I'll give you a token." He looked around, picked up an acorn, and handed it up to Mabel. "Give this to her but be sure you offer it so the end with the little pointy thing is on top. That'll show her it's from me and that I—uh, that is, the Queen—gives her permission. Not too much jam, now—this is Gnome jam we're talking about, and I don't think it's ever been tested on humans."

"No prob, big guy!" Mabel said. "Hey, by the way, Dip and I are having our birthday party a week from today! Come to the Shack and bring your Gnome horde to join in!"

"Um—will there be cake?" Jeff asked, licking his lips.

"Oh, there will be so much cake!" Mabel said.

Doing a little shuffle-step dance, Jeff said, "Honey, it's a date!" He immediately flinched and then anxiously said to Teek, "Just a term of friendship. She and I are just friends."

"I know," Teek said, smiling. "Don't worry. If I'd taken it any other way, I'd have drop-kicked you by now."

"That's mighty neighborly of you!" Jeff said, beaming. He squinted up at the sun. "Excuse me, now, got to get this gang of slackers back to work if we're to have heat, light, and repair materials for the winter." He gave a shrill whistle, causing the badger to stir in her sleep, the way a dog will when it dreams it's chasing a rabbit, and red pointed caps popped up as the work party returned, muttering bitter complaints in Gnomish about how short the break had been.

"OK," Mabel said to Teek. "We're in business. Now all we have to do is find our way back to the jam session." She looked around. "Annnd all the trees look exactly alike."

Teek pulled out his phone and checked. "I've got two bars, which is enough," he said. He switched on the GPS app. "All right, I took the coordinates when we met the female Gnomes. And it's, let's see, that way. About half a mile. We can follow the creek bank part way. That should be easier going."

"You think of everything!" Mabel gushed. "That's worth a kiss!"

The two of them hadn't exactly sworn a pact of abstinence, as Wendy and Dipper had—but Teek and Mabel had at least talked it over, and they had drawn a few lines. So far, they hadn't crossed them. Well, maybe put a toe over now and then, but nothing drastic. However, after the kiss, Teek took the lead again and hurried as much as he could.

He liked Mabel a lot, she was attracted to him as well as attractive to him, and he loved the way she put everything she had into a simple kiss. Heck, from the beginning of the summer, the two of them were beginning to think they might truly be in love with each other. And they both felt how each of them would miss the other after September first.

And the kiss had been drawn out and very stimulating.

So Teek kept his eyes on his phone, his mind on the trail, and hurried.

As Dipper had once remarked, why tempt the fates?