From the backyards of the American suburbs to a fantasy world where dwarves, fairies, and dragons are real, the new book Dwarf Story promises to take readers on a journey where homework and cell phones collide with a mystical turf war. Yeah, it must be Wednesday!
Written by Professor W.W. Marplot, Dwarf Story tells the tale of middle-school student Arty, who stumbles upon “an ax-swinging, bearded, sweaty warrior Dwarf.” Soon he and his friends realize that all manner of magical creatures has converged on their everyday lives, which of course leads to an adventure as the kids follow the clues in an attempt to figure out the mystery behind these critters. “And also,” the book’s logline reminds us, “whether you can give aspirin to Pixies.”
According to Waxing Gibbous Books, Professor Welkin Westicotter Marplot, of Coillemuir, Scotland, “is a collector of esoteric tales of global wisdom and curator of ancient manuscripts. He is a recluse and, as he claims, has been collecting and collating adventure and fantasy stories for over a century.”
Arty Seeks Emma During Battle
Introduction
Arty, young teen science geek, is increasingly over his head as he and his friends—especially best friend Emma—try to navigate the many mysteries about them. Dwarves and elves and pixies and spriggans have appeared, and so has the evil Gwyllion. Her war against the fairy creatures has begun, and during an especially busy school week.
Now Emma has disappeared, but Arty’s Dwarf helped him find the tunnels and the magic needed to find her.
The Scene (Arty Narrates)
The way went upward, as before, but at intersecting tunnels I checked the mapmodelgram , and each time my path was laid out before me: The Dwarf-stone shone its light outward to the glowing cube, touching it with a slender beacon, marking where I—and it—were; its white light split into red, green, and gold where it struck the map.
“Coming, Emma!” I said to the tunnel walls.
At the last turn, the stone and map showed that the purple rainbow of the casket was near to my own emblem of colors: green and gold and red and purest white.
I smelled fresher air and saw a vague glow escaping from what must be the end of the tunnel. The air sought me, and sounds came, as if calling me.
I ran the rest of the way with no concern or weariness. What a mistake.
I was trapped.
I ran up the final paces of the tunnel; it was not steep but painfully bright with glare, and my last steps leveled me into an open, white world. The ground was hard, it was of flat stone, the air was cool and fresh, the smell of a May meadow. But I could not see yet, my eyes glazed, blinded in a negative white that I tried to blink away.
Then iron bars slid, metal clasped, doors slammed, gates shut, and as my eyes blinked, I found myself in a cage, like those I’d seen here before—near to the fairy dream mountain in the sky, which is where I was, at its foot.
The sky was white—plain, empty, clear, it hovered as a staggering, unreal, inexplicable well of white. Looking there was a frightening version of being blind. I did not look there.
Raised near to me, in a flawless pyramid, was the last height of the last of the rows of higher and higher, jagged, curved hilltops. This triangle—straight, perfect angles as if drawn by schoolchildren—sat atop a few others that descended below me on the opposite side, all of straight, smooth grey stone. The connected hills below were covered in rich green, and here and there were speckled with bright flowers, despite their ugly shapes.
Although this was a mountain, and the distances were great, I could see everything clearly, as if my eyes had special lenses, or this world itself was shaped and rounded to fit all its features, magically, into a smaller space. Clouds floated all around, above and below, but when they parted the horizon itself seemed close, and small, as if it were a ring that I could put on my finger.
But I had certainly landed right in it: into a jail in fairy world. I was trapped by black iron bars as thick as Cry’s arms, and the tunnel entrance was closed. It had a door of stone made of the very rock of the mountainside and clasped with a silver steel lock.
I looked at the map. My red-green-gold was near to the purple rainbow—the box that I thought Emma had. It never occurred to me that someone else had it—like the Old Woman of the—this —Mountain, and I was leading myself directly to our great enemy.
Suddenly, I was struck and fell to the hard ground. The sounds and colors on the air that had called me from the tunnel were now all around—they were the words and spells of the Gwyllion, and they grew louder as I cowered, my face to the stone.
I heard words, and thoughts came to my mind that confused me because, unlike anything else in my world, they made sense. I looked up but was snowblinded by the pure light and fairy airs.
Just as suddenly as I had been knocked to the ground, the spell stopped, and I saw clearly my surroundings. Dirty, ugly creatures fenced my cage, but the larger force was gone, and the words with it. All around—the mountainsides, the hills, the sky, the distant waters—were in motion: thousands of living things were flying, or marching, or crawling, all toward a large flat plain beneath me, jutting from the mountain. It looked familiar: I had seen it in Thryst’s eyes, all those years ago, on Wednesday, my first eyeventure .
The battle would be there. But I didn’t see any Dwarves. I was as alone as is possible. There was a crack like lightning, and I was stung with a sharp pain in my right leg. I cried out, and my thigh bled through a rip in my jeans. Tears came to my eyes, and anger rose up into my throat, choking me. There was another crack—above my head. It was a whip. Its many black tails fell to the ground and retreated to the ugly, Orc-like monster who held it.
The other creatures outside my cell were taunting me. I backed away, thinking that I had a lot of data but no weapons. Through all my adventures it never occurred to me to be armed.
I thought of Cry and Ted and their fantasy and video games as I moved into a far corner to avoid my attackers.
I tried to be brave; I thought of Emma and why I was here. The largest of the creatures—I did not want to look at them but saw that this fairy was about three feet tall, had a large, reddish head, ugly grey thick hair, and otherwise was gangly and rotten like an unwanted vegetable lying in a field—was spitting words at me. I tried to understand them, to picture them in English letters, to search for them in my memory of counter-spells to perhaps fight back. I cowered in the corner as bravely as I could—not crying and calling for my mom was as far as I got. My hands trembled, and a thrown stone knocked the phone out of my hand, another hit my lower lip, and I screamed back at them.
My scream was not heard—a larger, more potent voice had shrieked at the same time and it still echoed beneath and throughout the world. More armies of folkie bad guys moved then, coming out of holes in the mountains, and rising from the depths below. And my taunting captors also left me.
Then I saw Emma.
And I heard Mary. Not heard, felt . No, not felt, sensed . I knew she was near, or coming, or had her own spells that were doing battle in this valley—her will, and other spirits that were clean and clear like melting snow in rays of the sun—were opposing the will of the specters of the mountain. I sensed Sprugly the Spriggan; it felt familiar and good. The air was thick with the strength of Dwarf armies, the mystical motions of elves, the magic of wizards and witches, and others who were part of legends and lands and had friends to rescue, and a future to save.
Just as I was here to save Emma. Would she let me? Was there a spell for best friends turned bad?
She was with other children our age, coming up one of the green hills, almost directly below, a hundred yards away. I vaguely recognized some of the kids from school. Ahead and behind them walked and flew more of the type of nasty things that had stood outside my cage.
Was Emma now a leader, promoted by the Old Woman? Were these other kids her troops, or captives? This was worse than the two Teds, since those weren’t all that different.
I yelled to her. The wind picked up my voice and carried it to her. She looked up but did not respond.
I yelled to her to stop. To go back home. To be careful. To beware. To escape. She marched on. To help me? She marched on.
To capture me?
I read spells from my phone and started reciting—screaming—every word of everything I had, until my voice rasped with weariness and was weakened with tears.
Sore, my lower lip blubbered; my leg throbbed from the whip’s slash, it bled cold into my jeans. I grabbed the iron bars and, on tiptoes, watched as Emma’s troupe traveled along a ridge directly below me; their path headed directly to the battle plain.
