The Island of the Day Before Read online

  It was then that the merchant decided he needed a rest. They lay on the translucent grass. If the gnome squinted, he could see traces of soft earth within them. He found the grass pokey and uncomfortable to lie on, yet he said nothing to the merchant, who had already uncurled upon it with a sigh. They had their dinner; the gnome could not catch birds nor eat any fruit, and for a moment thought he would go hungry until the merchant, pitying him, gave him half a sandwich. The merchant puffed out his chest, saying, ‘Here, gnome. It is my sandwich, and this isn’t as agreed, but you may have some.’ The gnome nodded in thanks.

  Once they’d finished, the gnome began to scurry up the tree they had been leaning against.

  ‘Wait,’ called the merchant. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Why, up the tree,’ replied the gnome, ‘to sleep, of course.’

  ‘Ah, but I cannot climb up the tree.’

  ‘I know. But I can.’

  ‘It does not matter. If I cannot climb up the tree, you shouldn’t either.’

  ‘Why not, by moon and stars? I feel far better up here. I shan’t come down because you can’t come up.’

  ‘But you must! You shouldn’t be able to sleep above me like that.’

  ‘It wasn’t in our agreement. I’m not coming down.’

  The merchant scowled but said nothing more. Promptly, he sat beneath the very same tree, seeming as though he was suspended a few blades above the earth, wrapping his cloak about him tightly so that only his long nose poked out of the deep crimson fabric. The gnome had his arms crossed and was looking down his nose at the merchant, but he was too tired to frown for much longer, and turned over at last, falling asleep the moment his gnarly nose touched the tip of a transparent branch.

  Morning dawned bright and silver, the light bending and curving around thick branches so the gnome’s head spun, every tree glowing a faint shade of rose. He wobbled down the crystal tree, nearly slipping as he skimmed down the branch. The sharp scrape of his claws against the smooth glass abruptly roused the merchant, who till then had been grumbling faintly in his sleep. And the merchant rose with a jerky yelp, swinging his heavy cloak about, a demented bat startled into insanity. His robes made an odd smacking noise against the icy, quivering tree. Fissures began to appear at its base, sneaking up with a quiet crackling like the strokes of a madman’s paintbrush as the horrified gnome and stunned merchant looked on. Time, ever the manipulator, froze for less than a second. Wind ceased. Breathing ceased. The tinkling forest was petrified in the morning sun. Then the tree shattered with a sudden explosion, decades of light and rivers and breeze breaking apart with the roar of a furious chimera. The gnome flew off the splinters of glass, landing with a thud against the merchant so that his cloak whipped off his hunched back and they both fell to the ground. They opened their eyes only when the shower of shards, the onslaught of scorching rain, had stopped. They rose cautiously, the gnome feeling every part of him go blue with bruises, the merchant clutching at his back and rasping something about his hot-water bottle.

  A glittery, silky silver liquid was dripping out of the shattered stump. The gnome stared at it questioningly.

  ‘Pixie essence,’ the merchant muttered, breathless still. ‘It’s the reason this forest exists.’

  They spoke little as they gathered themselves up, the gnome now back on his own sore feet. It was with a solemn air that they continued onward, the grass scrunching beneath their soles as they went. The gnome, by this time, had grown terribly thirsty and seemed to be itching all over his tiny body.

  ‘Can you drink that pixie essence?’ he murmured, desperate enough to try either way.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ replied the merchant snootily, as though proud to have come up with such an answer himself. ‘It brings eternal life.’

  The gnome stopped short, blown away by a sentence. ‘What, the pixie essence?’

  The merchant turned to look at him, his expression one of a man making blatant the obvious. ‘Well, yes. Obviously.’

  The gnome struggled a moment to find words. Not even the right ones, just any words. ‘But then … why not … why hasn’t everyone … why haven’t you?’ he spluttered.

  The merchant scowled down at him as if he were an impertinent schoolboy. ‘Well, who’d want a thing like that? Besides, worry not about your thirst. We’ll be coming to a lake soon.’

  And silence fell again.

  They did indeed come to a lake soon, passing the last tree of the Glass Forest, looking to all the world as though it were nothing more than a grassy plain, its true crystal nature invisible in the orange sunshine. Except this lake wasn’t quite what the gnome had expected. It was a hot, bubbling crater of something thick and brown, with small bits of what looked like nuts floating at the surface. The gnome went closer, his keen nose sniffing of its own accord. The air was a sugary scented drug, gusts of wind the only break in the steady smell of … chocolate.

  ‘It’s chocolate!’ the gnome burst out. ‘It’s … it’s…’

  ‘Once again,’ the merchant muttered, rolling his weary eyes, ‘obviously.’

  ‘Okay,’ replied the gnome, pulling all of his little body up so that he stood as straight as he could, ‘how are we getting across?’

  The merchant, humming slightly, seemed to break out of his spell to glance at the gnome once more. ‘Oh, I haven’t the faintest, gnome.’ And with that, he went back to twiddling his thumbs.

  ‘But you knew we were coming this way.’ The gnome grinned, sure that this was some half-hearted prank. ‘You knew we needed to cross this lake.’

  ‘Correct!’ said the merchant, now rifling through his cloak, seemingly for a few chips or a banana.

  ‘Well, you must have some plan for crossing the lake! You can’t start out on a journey like that without knowing how you’re going to finish it!’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ the merchant responded stubbornly. ‘People do it all the time.’

  The gnome was now beginning to feel rather irritated. Part of him wanted to reason with the merchant and try to come up with a solution and the other part wanted to storm off and make his own way to the King of the Land Beyond. He was quite sure at this point that he could have made the journey just as well, if not better, by himself. He turned on his heel, on the verge of setting off, when he remembered the sandwich from the night before.

  He took a deep, whistling breath. ‘Right,’ he began, speaking as much to himself as to the merchant, who had now managed to find a banana and was chewing it loudly and merrily. ‘We need to find a boat of some sort.’

  ‘There aren’t any boats in these parts, little gnome,’ came the quick response. ‘We’ll have to go around it.’

  The gnome stared at the edges of the lake, wider than the buttercup horizon, and felt his tummy knot and sink within him.

  ‘Oy!’ came the call of a flustered ferryman. ‘Y’all needs a ride, yes?’

  The gnome turned, his heart searing alive once more. ‘A ferryman!’ he called out to the clouds. ‘Ah, perfect! Yes, we’d like a ride across for two, please.’

  The ferryman was a most extraordinary creature, with the head of a dirty white-and-black striped tiger and the body of an overfed duck, so that his top half kept trying to snap its hungry jaws at his bottom half, with little success. Yet the gnome, given how the journey had gone, had half expected an ogre, and he gladly climbed on to the large, comfortable boat the ferryman offered up, made of cool, solid white chocolate. The merchant stepped on as well, passing the ferryman a piece of glinting gold. He had seemed rather reluctant to let go of it, or perhaps he was simply reluctant to get so close to the ferryman’s claws.

  The moment they’d seated themselves reasonably well, the ferryman set off at an extraordinary pace, his bottom half flapping wildly with each strong movement of his tiger paws. The gnome tried not to stare, but kept imaging the loud, frightened squawking that should have accompanied such a movement. ‘Quick now, yeah?’ the ferryman put in. ‘Wasn’t expec
ting none customers this morn. Now you need move quickly; I’ve a big party coming through soon.’

  The gnome’s ears pricked up. ‘What party?’

  ‘Army,’ grunted the ferryman. ‘They needs me to get them all across. In one shot!’

  Quite apart from the impossibility of this statement, it was the speed with which the army had been mobilized that stunned the gnome. It was as though any hope for discussion was quite out of the question. Honestly, he thought to himself, smouldering where he sat, couldn’t they just do like he did and refuse to speak with each other for a while? Surely a war was a great deal of bother on both sides! Surely no one really wanted to fight! For some reason, he glared across the boat at the merchant, watching him dip a long spindly finger into the rich, smooth chocolate, only to yelp like a startled cat and shake his burning hand frantically in the cool breeze.

  The sun dipped lower in the sky, tired from the morning’s march. The breeze ruffled against the sides of the boat. The chocolate churned and gushed beneath them. The sky seemed to collapse in on itself, folding together at its weakest parts.

  At last, they reached the banks of the lake’s far side. The sky seemed mellower here; its once fiery orange had cooled to a mushy yellow. The ferryman thanked them for their time and their coins and their trust and shepherded them in the right direction till his webbed feet could no longer support his powerful tiger’s limbs. They trooped forward alone then, a gnome and a merchant headed straight for the sun, talking of things that, to each, was obvious, but to the other inconceivable.

  And the gnome spoke of his father, of the gnome trade passed down generations, of the world he’d grown up in, of his family crest and heritage, of his strip of land that in his childhood had been grassy and flower-filled in the sun. The merchant, in turn, spoke of his town, of the little flock of houses in the Land Above, of the men wielding tools they knew not how to use, and the women talking delightedly in clusters of a wedding none looked forward to, of the suffocating cosiness of the low-hanging jade sky.

  Their hearts swelled along with their stories, so different yet somehow speaking of the same thing.

  The thudding of drums and an elephant’s mighty trumpet halted the gnome in the middle of a particularly funny tale surrounding his mother, a cheese fountain, and an unusually large marshmallow.

  A magnificent army, rife with sharply curved knives, tight and hardened helmets, and spears longer than the trees they were meant to go over, rose up over the ridge. The king sat squarely in its centre, upon his overdressed royal elephant, forward enough to intimidate, far enough that he would never truly meet danger. The merchant and the gnome stood squarely in their path, unsure whether to bow or duck or move out of their way, settling on remaining unmoving and hesitant, as is often the case.

  The sound of the army’s marching feet, every clanging foot hitting the ground not quite as one, shaking the very soil beneath them, grew louder and louder till the first line of soldiers came to a halt before them. Their eyes were confused and frightened, yet their bodies were stiffer than the iron they carried. But it was naturally their knees that the gnome noticed most – their dirty, scruffy, metal knees that had scraped their shine away through the journey. The gnome saw his own watery, wide eyes reflected in them.

  The merchant cleared his throat, addressing the King of the Land Beyond, whose white-grey neatly trimmed beard and great golden halo boasted wisdom, yet whose bright fiery eyes and uptight, powerful posture betrayed ignorance. ‘O King,’ began the merchant with the air of a man well-rehearsed, ‘we have come from the Land Above.’ Furious whispers broke out amongst the ministers seated behind the king; clearly not rehearsed well enough. ‘Their King has not sent us!’ called the merchant over the disturbance. ‘We have come of our own accord. And we have come …’ Here he paused dramatically, all the better to reveal himself to be their greatest asset, and the gnome saw his chance.

  ‘To end this war before it begins!’ he cut in, earning him a look of horror from the King and his army and one of flushed treachery from the merchant. ‘Listen. I know war seems like the only solution right now. I know that it seems the simplest way to end this conflict. To you, at least.’

  ‘To us?’ scoffed an unusually wrinkled-looking minister. ‘That has been the solution for the last 500 years.’

  ‘And before that?’ asked the gnome, daring to hope.

  ‘I hadn’t been born. How am I to tell you?’ responded the ruffled minister.

  ‘Well, I bet they just based it on the stars or something! You see, war … it isn’t good. And it hurts people. Innocent people. People that never even wanted to fight in the first place. Which is why … we come from the Land Above with…’

  He heard the merchant snarl beside him. This was not going to plan.

  ‘With a peace offering!’

  And with a flourish, the gnome whipped out the tarot-reader’s bowl from the long, flowing cloak of the merchant. The merchant let out the cry of a magpie betrayed, snatching for the bowl, but the gnome flung it out of his grasp and up at the King. The King caught it.

  The world was hushed.

  The bowl glowed from between his fingers, its engravings dancing and shimmering in the sunshine. The King brushed away the gathered dust, and at once a smoky mist rose from the bowl, revealing the realm of the future, steady like a silent wind sweeping the dust away from a hundred explosions. The mist converged around the King, eliciting gasps from hopeful ministers, and the seconds ticked into minutes. Yet it soon became apparent once the fog receded that it had not changed anything about the King at all – except for his eyes. They were dulled yet passionate, a tempest locked tightly within them. They stared through the world as if it did not exist, glued to the black hole beyond.

  ‘Turn back,’ the King croaked, exhausted of life. ‘Turn back at once and send an urgent letter to the King of the Land Above – we will not fight. This war is over.’

  The gnome felt a rush of triumph, even as the ministers began to burst out in protest, even as the soldiers began to breathe once again. ‘But sir, why?’ ‘We mustn’t appear weak, sir!’ ‘If they lay soldiers upon our industrial land…’ ‘All is lost and ruined!’

  Ignoring them, the King turned to the gnome, waving the bowl in the air. ‘I’m keeping this.’

  ‘By all means,’ the gnome responded, while the merchant sputtered gibberish beside him.

  The journey home was a long one, longer than the journey to visit the King of the Land Beyond, for it was spent in a stony silence that not even dinner could overcome. Finally, towards the end of the day, when the stars began to reveal themselves from their clever hiding places, and the moon smiled lovingly down through its beaming craters, they neared the strip of land the gnome had once called the world. The gnome slowed his pace, turning to the merchant, who still refused to look at him. ‘Merchant,’ he began, intending to launch into a speech he had written an hour ago, ‘thank you for everything.’

  The merchant huffed angrily. ‘Is that all you have to say, gnome? After having cheated me out of such a miraculous prize?’

  ‘I would never cheat you!’ the gnome responded. ‘I entirely meant to give you the bowl, I’m sure. I’m sorry for how I behaved. It was all I could come up with at the time.’

  ‘And furthermore,’ the merchant continued, pretending to not have heard a word, ‘you lied to me. You never wanted my kind service, did you? Nor did you intend to give yours to me! You just wanted to prevent what could have been a glorious battle so that you could keep selling cheap goods from your pathetic little swamp!’

  Each took in a deep, long breath.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the gnome repeated, ‘I haven’t exactly been that great a travelling companion.’

  The merchant huffed again, his anger dwindling away into grumpiness.

  ‘But I promise you,’ the gnome went on, ‘any time you’re passing … if you ever want to buy anything … it’s all on me.’

  The merchant turned to look at hi
m, eyes fixed on this quiet little gnome, standing before him like a determined tree stump, this tiny little creature that had just prevented war. The gnome stood there in front of him, hands clasped, fingers interlocked, eyes brimming with concern and sincere regret. The merchant felt something changing within him, like a gear twisting slowly into place.

  ‘We have some great cooking utensils. And tea sets. And our necklaces, you must have some!’ the gnome rattled on.

  And the merchant, his eyes drifting downwards and then skittering up to meet the gnome’s, smiled for the first time.

  ‘I’ll have tea ready as well,’ the gnome went on, grinning back. ‘You should taste my scones. Mum’s recipe. Delicious!’

  ‘That sounds delightful.’

  Then, all at once, as though the stars had decreed it so, they clasped each other’s hands and shook firmly, each having wished for something slightly different yet knowing there couldn’t have been a more perfect ending to what had been an extraordinary day.

  The Little Town

  There was once a little town far off somewhere in the English countryside. No one really knew it was there, and if they knew once, they’d forgotten. The people in the town were compulsively sweet and cheerful, warding off negativity as one would mosquitos. They laughed as children and they laughed through the workday and they laughed when told they were dying. And so nothing of note ever happened in the little town, because nothing, to the town, was ever of note. And the little town was a little town till the end of its days. For all I know, it’s probably still there.

  Blame

  It’s no one’s fault. So, no one can be blamed. That bothers me. An accusation, no matter its truthfulness, provides a base to take off from. Without it, I’m out of work. But nothing. She gave me nothing.

  My mouth twists as I survey the morning paper. She’d made the headlines. Of course she had; she always did. Besides, it was the most brutal car crash in years. We get layers of frost on our roads in the winter, but I don’t believe that any sober fellow could have skidded into her that badly.