The Prisoner of Hyram Miel, Part Two
From Tales the Wind Told

By Brooks Mencher

T he day after Snorri Sturlesson left the forest, there was a general commotion and great concern. What would a gnome do in the wide world? Gnomes weren't built for that. Gnomes live in forests, sometimes in gardens if the gardens are big enough and there aren't many humans around. But why purposefully venture in the land of . . . men?

"I am Orsifawn," hummed the tree. "That is my name. It's my name. The wind has called me Orsifawn, and to the blowing wind, that is my name. 'Orsifawn, catch me!' said the wind! But I did not! And neither did I catch the little note, the poem, the poem that the wind, like a furred dragon, brought to the gnome. And the note fell to Earth in a swirl and in a dirt-puddle and my dear Snorri picked it up, alas!"

A bear also watched the gnome pick up the note and read it, and everyone there in the forest heard the gnome say:

"Here I have a piece of paper. And the words upon the paper say . . .

Now, this all sounds very different when it is a tree who is telling the story. Anyone would expect flutes and cellos to join in at any time. But they don't.

"I am a tree," said Orsifawn, "and the things that I know are these: Wind blows, water flows, Earth sits and wood grows! Fire burns, people talk, where birds can fly, gnomes can walk!

"This is my knowledge. Gnomes are light, they have no weight. You could fly one like a kite if you had a string! They are such funny people!

"But I have lost my gnome," said Orsifawn sadly. "And I must venture into the wide world to find him! In the world I'll find him. What else will I find? Knowledge? Hummmm. Hm. Friends?"

Orsifawn left the wood a few days later. She decided she would not miss the tumbled rocks that held her roots, and she told herself she would not miss the other trees or the saplings. But she missed her gnome! And she would not be gone that long.

She worked her way downhill until she came to the river. There was a muskrat there with a little coracle boat. Clearly, the boat was of gnomish design, and muskrats don't use boats, anyway. A clue! She was on the right track, and that was certain. The muskrat, who had been sunning himself on the riverbank inside the coracle, opened his eyes and studied the tree. Then he squinted his eyes and studied the tree even more.

Then the muskrat nodded his head in the direction of the river, indicating that the gnome, obviously, was on the other side.

But Orsifawn remained on the uninhabited side of the river and began the long walk downstream on the path. The muskrat shot up out the coracle and chattered loudly, trying to get the tree's attention, because the gnome had gone the other way! Upriver! Toward the village! The tree was going toward the city!

But the tree did not turn around, and the muskrat finally gave up, settled back in the boat, and resumed his nap in the sun. Surely, he'd see the tree coming back upstream in a little while, or in a few days at the most.

As Orsifawn made her way along the river, she was very wary of not being seen. After she had walked an hour or so, she hiked away from the river and uphill, and she hid there until it grew dark. There was no reason to show herself yet. Who knows what could happen?!

"So I waited. Waited," she said. "Look, you, my hands are the hands of trees, for my fingers are twigs, and they are not supple, but are stiff. Where is the heart of me? I will tell you. Every tree has a heart. A large tree, my father, for instance, had a heart deep inside and so high off the ground," she said, holding her branch-arm at about the height of a child.

"I will listen to the wind, listen to the dragon of the wind as he brushes my branches and tells me things that only the wind knows: Old stories, old ones. Some songs! And new! New songs! And news of the day . . . where is my gnome?

"But I know where the gnome is, for the wind has told me."

And it was true that Orsifawn did know where the gnome was: He was caught in the web of Hyram Miel!

T hat first night, as the tree rested beside the river and thought, an old man walked up to Orsifawn. He was a crazy man of the city. He talked to trees! He talked to trees, and therefore he talked to Orsifawn!

"You weren't here yesterday!" said the old codger. "Therefore, you are a traveling tree! A traveling tree! Do you need any pudding?" The old man had a small basket in which he had a crock of pudding that had been baked from thick milk and arrowroot, carberries and blueberries. "I will share my pudding with you, dear," he said.

Orsifawn responded by saying, "How very kind of you! I am so moved by your generosity!" Orsifawn's voice was not an easy thing to understand for a human being, especially at first. Usually, a person has to put his or her ear right onto the tree's trunk to hear it speak. Orsifawn did not expect to be understood.

"Oh, it's nothing," said the old man. "Pudding for you, pudding for me! Brother and sister are we! We should share!"

So the old man sat down and began to sort the pudding onto wood plates that he carried with him. "So, tell me what you are doing here," he said, not looking up but continuing to sort the pudding. "Here, where you never were before, I mean, and why so near the city, oh, the city, with its gabled roofs and set-stone streets! The city! Five bridges cross the river there, five stone bridges. The bridges, I cross them! Always in the right order! One, three, two, five, four! There are cathedrals! And there is a little grotto where the flower girl sells tulips. You would like that. Rare is the day when she will not have an extra flower for me, though I am poor and not much to look at!"

"Have you seen my gnome?" asked Orsifawn. "He is small. Dressed unbrightly . . . in muted tones, and his left eye is blue, his right is brown. He has a laugh! When he looks at you, it is as if he sees far in the distance. We call him Snorri Sturlesson, for he was named after the great Icelandic poet. The story goes that one day, as Snorri Sturlesson was tending his flowers in the wood, tending blossoms in the wood, the wind-dragon let fall a wisp of a note on filbrous paper, and so he saw this note and was greatly moved by the imagery and he was called away! My gnome was called away! What do you say to that, my friend?"

"Small as an apple, as they say? Your friend?" asked the old man.

"The size of that, size of that, yes," said Orsifawn.

"A terrible fate has fallen on the little fellow's shoulders, then, I fear," said the old man. "I wander across the river to the village, I hike to the city . . . Back and forth as the spirit moves me . . . Maybe I wade in the river! And maybe not, some days. The village, upriver, Hyram Miel, they're building a gallows to hang him's what I hear."

"What is that, this thing you say?" asked the tree.

"What is 'hang?' Um. Hang him, you know, by a rope from a timber. They're going to kill the gnome and they call him a devil. Do him in!"

"Why would they think him a devil, my friend? Why would they kill him?"

The old man shrugged his bony shoulders sadly and set the two plates of pudding in front of them in the grass. Each had a small plate and a shallow-bowled spoon. "We could rescue him," he said. "I have a plan."

Orsifawn leaned over the old man and smiled. A plan! How wonderful! "What is your plan, my friend, the plan that you have, that you have in your mind? What is the plan in your mind? And how did you know how to find me? How did you know that I was here, that I was here to find my gnome?"

"Do you hear the wind?" asked the old man.

"I hear the wind. The wind in my branches, the wind in your hair, thin as it may be, your hair."

"The wind tells me, yet it takes me so long to translate. You are better at listening to the wind, are you not? What says it?"

"They have locked up the gnome in the long building, says the wind. The wind tells me this news. They have locked the gnome in the building, and with him, a duck! So says the wind."

"Let us hatch our plan," said the old man. "But you must do our dirty work, sister tree! I myself cannot go to the village, for they pelt me with stones and apple cores and call me names. They call me Altybulby. That is not my name! They pitch muddy roots at me and call me Altybulby! Can you believe it?"

"Why do they call you that, call you the name of it, and what does it mean, what does the name they call you mean?" asked Orsifawn.

"Grandfather Potato!" shouted the old man in disbelief. "Or Old Potato Man!"

Orsifawn sat silently for quite some time. She hummed to herself, and toyed in her pudding with her spoon. Then she had a mouthful of pudding. "This is very good, my little brother. I find your pudding to be delicious."

The old man smiled.

Then Orsifawn continued. "I love your name: Altybulby," she said. "Grandfather Potato is a name of honor. I have always been fond of potato plants, with their broad green leaves, their little flowers, their golden fruit beneath the Earth, their roots beneath the Earth. It is a nightshade, most mysterious of plants! I will always call you Altybulby with the greatest respect."

This puzzled the old man, and he had to think about it for a while. When he was finished thinking, and had finished his pudding, he told the tree that he now agreed with her opinion, and decided to grow fond of such a name as Altybulby. "But what is your name, now that you know mine," he asked.

"Orsifawn," said the tree. "It means only itself, Altybulby. It is the name that came with me into the world. It is my seed name. All beings have a seed name, and it can be shared only with those whom you trust with your life, and it must never be uttered casually in any way."

"I will not betray your trust," he said. "So let us now lay out our plans to rescue Snorri Sturlesson, the prisoner of Hyram Miel."

And to that end, the old man led the tree to his home, which was hardly more than a cave in the side of a hill. It was sort of a pre-cave, really, a scooping out of the hillside by rain and wind, and by frost and ice in the winter. But there, Altybulby found some clothing and his favorite shawl and a skirt, a blouse and scarf, but no shoes. The tree laid out all the clothes, and knew that in her disguise she would look like an old woman with a stiff back and stiff hips and legs, and her skin was of course bark-like but she would be covered up with the shawl.

"In my wanderings," the old man began, "I notice people. I do! There is a child who sells flowers in the grotto beneath the fourth bridge in the city. She is ignored by all the villagers, and she is not seen by many in the city! But she will see you, and you will see her! I will hand to you these few tools and you, dressed as an old woman, will ask her for three flowers. Yes . . . I think you will ask for three flowers," he said, staring off into the sky as he constructed the plan in his mind.

"But you have no money, of course," he continued. "If we had money, well wouldn't that be suspicious?! So, I say, you trade her these," and he produced a small, thin crochet hook from a bowl of junk on a short table in his cave. Then he also brought out two long, thin iron wicks. They had been used in wool mill machinery: they were thin, strong and very stiff. "She is a smart one, I suspect, and she should be able to pick the window locks with these wondrous tools. But you must accomplish one more thing. You must unravel a bit of yarn from your shawl, roll it into a little yarnball, and give it to her."

"How interesting," said Orsifawn. "Will she do it? Will she free the gnome?"

"If she knows she is freeing your dearest friend, then she will do it! How do I know this? Because she is true. She is so true, that she is hardly noticed even by the people who live around her! Now, dress yourself up in this finery and let us begin. Then we will meet and see how it all went."

So Orsifawn put on the disguise, no shoes, a small scarf and the shawl, and she carried a basket full of old felt balls and bits of wood and a few coal clods so it looked as if she were on her morning errands.

"Goodbye," she said to Altybulby, and he waved goodbye to her as she waded across the river.

T he old man waited and waited. One hour, then two hours. Finally the whole day had passed, and then the night passed.

At dawn, the old man could see the tree wading back across the river. At about midway between the banks, Orsifawn paused and there she stood for nearly an hour. The old man was at first worried, but there seemed to be nothing horrible happening, so he decided to walk downstream to the crossing area and await the tree.

"The wind, the water," began Orsifawn, "words in the winds, warnings in the water, my friend!" She strode from the water and up the bank to where Altybulby was standing. He had a ragged linen towel and he helped the tree dry herself. Further up the bank, they sat in the sun.

"Alas," said Orsifawn, "no sooner have I arrived back to you, to your place on the land, the land on the other side, than our plan has failed! See, three flowers I have for you. Three flowers for your home, Alty. But the wind tells me things, the news on the wind, and let me tell you, that my Snorri Sturlesson escaped after your tools were used to pry the locks of his prison, but they most readily captured him again!"

Altybulby thought hard for a moment. For a moment and then an hour. He stood and walked in circles. He walked and walked, and the circles grew tighter and tighter until he was spinning in one place, spinning and spinning in his thought, until he stopped abruptly and fell to the ground because he was so dizzy.

But the old man was smiling and laughing as he sat on the dirt. "Then we will free him again, and for this we will need a few items, and there is little time, for you must return immediately to the city and to the grotto where the girl will be selling her flowers."

He scanned the ground quickly, then ran the short distance to his cave. There he found a wooden pipe about as long as half his forearm (he had long arms), and two bone knitting needles that were in an old stoneware jar on a shelf.

"Take these and run, run if you can!" he said urgently and out of breath. "But forget not this point: Get that girl's shoes! Rob her if you have to, but get her shoes or surely she will die!"

Orsifawn was aghast! "I will not ask, I will not wonder," she said. "I will take her shoes if it is the last thing I do on Earth, for I have met this girl and have grown to love her. She is a child to me like my own child . . . not quite as brown, but nearly as thin!"

And Orsifawn was off, into and across the water.

Altybulby whiled away the rest of the day, knowing there was nothing he could do to help. But he prepared a summer meal of bean and vegetable soup in a celery broth, which simmered all day while Orsifawn was away.

This time the tree arrived before sunset and the pair had a soup picnic and discussed various things. But at night, when they were asleep, the wind began to rustle the leaves near the entrance of the old man's cave.

He pushed on Orsifawn's shoulder, woke her up, and said, "The wind! The wind is at the door! What is it saying? Is it a message to us, here in the cave where we are resting?"

Orsifawn listened. "The gnome rides the duck across the water! This is good news, but we must wait and see what the morning will bring, Alty. I have a shiver of dread in my tree veins."

The tree's worry was justified, for only a short time later, she reported that the gnome had been recaptured and placed in a very difficult situation from which they had to engineer an escape. He was in a fence with a huge boulder suspended over him!

The old man thought and thought, although he knew he did not have much time. At first, he paced across his little cave, and then went outside to pace. Soon enough, he was walking in circles and the circles got tighter and tighter until he was spinning like a top! Suddenly he fell to the ground in a swoon, laughing very loudly and barely able to regain his balance.

"I have it," he shouted. "I have it!" He rushed into his cave and found a small earthenware jar of grease and a scissors. "I have it!" he shouted again. But he did not have everything, and ended up throwing everything out of his cave as he madly searched for the final item.

It didn't turn up. "Quickly, quickly," he said to himself. "A rope, a twine, a string, a braid, without the final ingredient, we are doomed!"

Orsifawn waited for the old man to explain. "Here, here," he said, "take this grease . . . I have saved it these many years. And take this scissors. But we need a strong twine or string, and we don't have one!"

Altybulby rolled on the ground, spinning in circles as if in agony. He pounded the dirt with his fists, and he looked like something frying in a hot frying pan. When he at last regained his composure, he explained to the tree what to do about the string. "Alas," he said, "our girl had such nice hair!"

Then the tree left and returned again, and the same events transpired. When they learned that the gnome had escaped and been recaptured a third time, the old man wrung his hands. "We have a worthy adversary, my dear tree, Orsifawn!" And with that he started a long and elaborate dance in front of his cave, and it was like a ballet performed by a raccoon and by a muskrat, as if all the leaps were short-legged leaps from four-legged beasts. In the final pirouette, Altybulby abruptly stopped, and it seemed as if time had stopped as well because the motion was so sudden.

Altybulby began to cry, but he stopped himself and made some tea. "My friend," he said, "pack up your clothes, we are hiking to Hyram Miel!"

T he voice of a tree is quite beautiful, if unexpected. There are some who don't believe that a tree has a voice, but if that is the case, then who does a gnome speak to all day while he is in the forest?

Trees do have voices, and though they may vary – some are high and some are low — the sounds are similar simply because they come from trees.

"If I were to describe such a voice," said Snorri Sturlesson to the duck, "I would have to say it sounds, especially at first, like a cello. Very similar, yes, or a bass viol, and some of the trees, the smaller ones, are a little higher pitched, more in the range of a viola."

The duck looked at him, and rustled himself a little as he sat on the thick plank flooring of the mill in which they were imprisoned.

"And the saplings sound like little violins! Not exactly, but . . . somewhat.

"There is a tree under which I have lived these many, many years, and I wish we were there now." He sighed. "But we're not, so I'll just tell you about my tree. It's not tall, and it's not too wide. But it's so old! . . . for a tree. Not so old for a gnome," he said with a laugh.

"Trees are good friends, and if a person can't have enough friends, then he can't have enough trees! Or she. He or she. And trees are he's and she's, too."

Snorri Sturlesson went to the corner of the room and retrieved two grain sacks that were half-filled with barley husks, and these became the beds of the gnome and the duck. He situated them in a corner, below a window overlooking the pond. He was a brave gnome because from the same window he could see the first timbers cut and pegged for the gallows.

He and the duck listened to the sound of the hammers outside on the market grounds, and also downstairs as the last of the boards were nailed and wedged over the doors, windows and coal chute of Hyram's Mill. It was a lonely, hollow sound and it echoed from the first story of the building up through the main floor where the milling was done, on up to the alcove where there was a very small bedroom for the miller during the grinding season.

There was an open stairway between the ground floor and the milling room, and an enclosed spiral staircase from the milling room to the upper alcove. Snorri Sturlesson found that he could make it from the alcove to the boarded-up door on the ground floor in slightly less than eight seconds. For the duck: about a minute because he saw no reason to hurry.

The days began to pass, somehow, and the gnome began to grow dim, as if a small light within him were passing into another world and into a cave. He grew more and more silent.

Fortunately, Snorri Sturlesson was remembered by his friend, Tol Marren. She had managed to dig out a small burrow behind the mill and she could secret herself in the bowl of the burrow and talk quietly with the imprisoned gnome during the darkest hours of the night.

"I have found ourselves a stash of yarn!" Snorri Sturlesson told her one night. "I was chasing one of the owls . . . a game of catch . . . catch the gnome, catch the owl . . . when I discovered a cone of wool! Here, take these knitting needles," he said, pushing the needles through a knothole through which they communicated during the long hours of the night. They were the needles that Tol Marren had given him when he was in the boat! "You can knit yourself a hat! For warmth! You have no hair!"

"I will knit and knit," said Tol Marren. "It is the oldest art. I will knit a scarf for my head and a shawl for my shoulders. But I have heard, Snorri Sturlesson, that they cannot work on the deadly gallows because they have no wood and no more wood or timber! I do not know why they are not crossing the river to the forest to cut the wood, but either they have not thought of it or they are afraid. But I do know that they have no wood, and soon the vice-magistrate must decide what to do."

"Alas," said the gnome, "they must wait for their entertainment!"

T he vice-magistrate did not solve the problem of how he would build a gallows without any wood. It was Gritsen who resolved that the necessary timbers must come from the only source in the village: from the mill itself.

"You mean, take us our hammers, take us our stones and rocks, and bit by board tear us out some gallows-wood?" asked Melkin, and he asked loudly so that everyone in the village hall could hear him, including the vice-magistrate.

"Aye, Melkin," said Gritsen, "for if we put our good shoulder to it, I am sure we could borry enough wood bits so as to podge together a sizeable and magnificent gallows for which to hang the dreaded rat-devil!"

A murmur went through the other villagers. There was only mild agreement at first, but that was followed by enthusiastic approval of the plan. "I have seen yon beast," said Gritsen, pointing to Hyram's Mill where the gnome was imprisoned, "at his most horrid! He has patches of scab upon him, and black shadows follows him about! I, myself, punted the monster from my doorstep, only to find that he swilled his course and flew about like a demon on thin, skin-covered wings, and he come down to land in the very village market grounds!"

"It was a courageous punt, my pet, and well spent!" said Melkin, and everyone nodded their heads.

In short order, the available villagers began the difficult process of dismantling Hyram's Mill. The vice-magistrate, who was pleased at the solution, remained in his office, and from there he could see both the mill and the gallows ground. At last, he would have his revenge on the rat-devil.

The wait was not long. It was only a matter of hours before the villagers began walking up to the mill and figuring out how the planks and timber of it could be re-worked into a gallows from which they could hang the gnome and the duck. Soon enough, there came a pounding on the structure of Hyram's Mill early one morning, just after Tol Marren had left her burrow to return to her coal shed.

Board by board and rafter by rafter, the villagers dismantled the mill until it looked like barely more than scaffolding that housed the enormous cogs and gears and the millstone - - the thick, circular millstone being the heart of the operation. As the building grew more and more skeletal, the prisoners, Snorri Sturlesson and the duck, were slowly pushed and prodded up and up to the very top, into the old alcove. When the criminals were safely isolated, the cogs, wheels and gears were finally removed and taken downhill to the gallows. Gone as well were the pulleys and ropes, the crates and boxes, the sacks and cats. Even the two owls had fled. What was left? There was only the lower staircase, followed by the upper spiral stairway, and a small floor that had been the miller's room. It was as if the stairs and the little room at the top were somehow suspended from above!

Every board that was taken from the mill was added to the gallows, which now loomed like a woodbat of death and like a skeleton of horror over the market grounds. It cast ragged shadows over the small apple orchard. The village was so caught up in the construction that even the apple harvest was ignored and the fruit fell from the trees and rotted on the ground.

Every night after all the wood had been taken, Tol Marren would leave her coal shed and climb the two stairways to the alcove, for the gnome and the duck lived in perpetual terror. She crawled up the stairs . . . there were neither walls nor rooms and almost nothing to hold onto. There was a single door at the top of the stairs, and the gnome and duck could not escape because they could not get through it or around it. There was nothing but air! So each night Tol Marren sat on one side of the door knitting and whispering, and the gnome and duck sat on the other.

On one night, there were villagers out on the market grounds. Tol Marren crept silently up the staircases like a cat and like a squirrel, but she did not dare even to whisper for fear of being caught by the meandering villagers. But in the silence of the night, Snorri Sturlesson sensed that Tol Marren was on the other side of the door. "Is that you, my friend?" he whispered as quietly as he could.

"I am here to see you," said Tol Marren.

"But I cannot see you, though I know that you are here," said the gnome. "Even without your voice, I can tell that you are near. I see that the villagers have now gone to their homes, and we may whisper among ourselves (but not the duck, he doesn't whisper and will have to remain quiet). Tell me about the flowers that grow at the edge of the forest, and tell me how you go about gathering them!"

"I will tell you about this," said the girl. "Each morning, I walk along the grass, which is brushed with dew because it is early in the morning. The sun is still asleep, and the moon grows tired from being up all night. All is silent. I cross the grass and walk along the river, which is bubbling and eddying. It has many voices and I can only understand a few. Beside the river, there will be a handful of flowers. Among the flowers are the long bladed leaves. In the flowers I can see the yellow of yellow, and the red of red, even without the light of day. So I carefully pick a few and fold them into the folds of linen, add river water and bundle them in my basket."

"And then do you walk to the city to sell them?" asked the gnome, though he knew for certain that this was the next thing she would say.

"I trade several to an old woman and she often gives me strange items . . . like grease or iron picks."

"Tell me, what does this old woman look like? How does she appear?" asked the gnome.

"She hides her face behind a shawl, so I have never seen her face, though I am sure it is kind. She is tall. Her hands are rough and brown. Her fingers are long and thin, like tree twigs. She leaves no footprints. She has no feet that I have ever seen!"

"I see," said Snorri Sturlesson, raising his eyebrows. "Tell me, what is her voice like?"

"That is very odd," said Tol Marren. "At first, I could not understand her. I could not hear the words, I suppose. But shortly, I could hear what she was saying and her voice was like this: a musical instrument! It was like wind humming over a hollow tree, and like a deep tone from a very large violin bowed with a very thick bow."

"No!" whispered the gnome loudly.

"Yes!" whispered the girl, just as loudly. The duck managed a closed-mouth quack-muffle. "Do you know her?!"

"She is a tree! A tree! From the forest!" said the gnome. "She has come to help! We are saved! Tell me, what is her name?!"

"Saved?" said the girl. "Yes, surely she has already saved you several times, for it was from her that I got all the tools that I used to rescue you! But I cannot tell you her name!"

"Hmm," said the gnome. "Orsifawn must rescue us one more time. I predict," he said slowly, "that she is already nearby, possibly waiting for the right moment!"

Tol Marren looked around. "She told me not to use her name! To whisper it, but only if I faced death itself!" She was so shaken at the gnome's speaking of the name that she nearly lost her balance on the stairs and could have toppled to the Earth below. But she regained her poise, and, thinking she might see Orsifawn somewhere below, she peered in every direction. Though it was dark, the moon was bright, and she had a very good view because she was quite high in the air and there were no walls around her. But she could see only a thin wisp of smoke coming from the edge of the forest on the far side of the river. Perhaps it was a campfire or a ghost.

"I had to say her name!" said the gnome. "We are safe, here, in this prison of air!"

They passed the rest of the night talking about rescue and escape, with Tol Marren knitting all the while. The wind had grown cool. The dark was dark. And the duck knew that dawn was not far off, and that the gallows were nearly completed.

D uring the time that Tol Marren climbed up the rickety staircases to visit the gnome, whose days were numbered and were now as few as the coins in Tol Marren's pockets, Orsifawn and Altybulby had hiked from his cave nearly to the village of Hyram Miel, and they camped on the uninhabited side of the river, where it was safe and where they could hide. The old man started a small fire to heat up some tea and a few vegetables. Orsifawn watched and leaned against a rock outcrop, thinking. Finally, she rustled her leaves and began asking the old man the questions that had built up inside her.

"In my mind, Altybulby, I have many questions. How may I go about finding the answers from you? Shall I ask you my questions and shall you answer me, provide me the answers, and ease my mind?" asked Orsifawn.

Thus began the secret conversation of the old man and the tree. In all the land, there is no conversation like it. And it had already begun! It continued like this:

"How is it that there is a child who will help us?" asked Orsifawn.

"I will tell you the answer. In the shrine of this child's heart, there is only joy. You will ask her to save your dearest friend, and therefore she will help," said Altybulby.

"How is it, my Altybulby, that though she has only joy in her heart, she is ignored by other people?" asked the tree.

"I will tell you the secret answer," said the old man. "She is like a spirit, though she is a girl. Many people simply do not see her because they are thinking in their minds many other thoughts. If they have a quiet thought, then they may see her shadow. Shall I go on?" asked the old man.

"Yes," said the tree. "But how can she sell her flowers if no one sees her?"

"A hundred people walk past her in her grotto below the bridge. Two hundred. Three hundred in a single day, for the market is a busy place. Only three people will see her. How do they see her? Something interrupts their thoughts, I suppose! They catch a glimpse of her, like a cat! Like a bird who flies off and you see only the flutter of a feather! And they see her and they see the flowers, and they may buy one or two. Yet she always has a few left over. She often gives them to me."

"How is it, Altybulby, that you see her, and so on?"

"I will tell you the secret answer. I am an old man. I hear the songs that the river sings. I listen to the wind, and so I hear the tales the wind tells, though I am slow to translate. They are very old! My dear Orsifawn, I listen well to the voices of trees, for many are ancient, and if I listen to you, and if I talk with you, is it so strange that I see the child who sells flowers?"

"How is it, then," continued Orsifawn, "that I have a seed name, which is Orsifawn, and yet you are called Potato Old Man by certain people and nothing else?"

"I will tell you the answer to that, also, for there are no secrets between us. My true name cannot be said. It is a very old language, and it is so old that it is the language of stones. But I can translate that name of mine, and if I do it is called, "I walk the Earth." That is my seed name."

Then Orsifawn grew incredibly silent. A long period of minutes and hours passed. Days did not pass, but it seemed as if they did.

Finally, Orsifawn spoke again. "Then you are very old, Altybulby. You are older than trees, for stones are older than trees."

"I am old," he said. "I'm not young!"

"You are older than water, for stones are older than the seas. I see. I have one more question, which has been much on my mind. Will you answer it?" asked the tree.

"Of course," said Altybulby.

"What is the shrine of the heart? That is my question to you."

"I will tell you the answer to your question. The shrine of the heart is the quietest place. If you look in there, you will find . . . our Tol Marren!!" he said, and laughed very hard until he choked and fell over. Then he got up, smiling, and said, "I think we have a visitor!"

T owards dawn, Tol Marren left the gnome and duck and descended the stringy stairs to return to her home. To her great surprise, though, the coal shed had been raided! Not a single lump of coal was left, and her few furnishings had been tipped and tumbled.

"My home has been destroyed," she said sadly. "But I will take myself and go sleep out under the stars. I may possibly wish to walk to the river and see what that campfire was all about, for someone may have a warm fire and something to eat or drink for a fellow traveler."

Soon she was standing with her coal-tinted cloak and a few other things on the riverside, peering across the water into a darkness that was interrupted only by the stars and the small fire near the edge of the forest. "Hello," she shouted (not too loudly) "is there anyone at the camp? I am a fellow traveler and have no home at the moment!"

Across the river, several people stood up and listened to her words. "We have a visitor!" said Altybulby to Orsifawn. "How lucky we are, for I can tell that this person will mean us no harm!"

"I know her voice well," said Orsifawn. "That is Tol Marren, the flower girl of the city and of the village! I will wade the wide river and carry her back across to us, for she weighs very little, I am sure. She will have news . . . perhaps even more than the wind." Orsifawn waded the river and carried Tol Marren back to the camp.

After they had all had dinner, the girl described the situation of the raid on her coal shack and the theft of all the coal, and the isolation of Snorri Sturlesson and the duck at the uppermost reaches of what was left of the mill. A look of great concern came over the old man's face. "It appeared to me today," he said, "that the gallows is a few thin nails from completion. I do not know what the coal has to do with it, but somehow the two are related. Therefore, I assume the critical day will be tomorrow. That will be the day that they will do-in the gnome, friend to Orsifawn. We must rest and prepare ourselves . . . though for what, I cannot tell."

In the dark of the night, Altybulby was still deep in thought. This was "hanging day" in Hyram Miel, he was sure. There must be a plan, a solution, a way to help Snorri Sturlesson and the duck escape! The others were still asleep when he began walking around, deep in thought. From one end of the camp to the other he went. Walk, walk, walk, skip. Walk, walk, walk, skip. He began pacing along the perimeter of the camp, and his circles grew smaller . . . and smaller . . . until he was buzzing around the ashes of the campfire like a moth around light and like bees around grapes. Orsifawn and Tol Marren woke to see the old man spinning perfectly in one place like a gyroscope.

"He does that on occasion," said Orsifawn. "It helps him think, and never have I seen him grow still without having a great, new inspiration!"

"I didn't know he could spin," said the girl. "Everyone in the village calls him Old Potato Man, and that's the only name that I know for him. But I think it's kind of sweet. Besides, I like potatoes."

Altybulby collapsed in a pile of dust and ashes, and spun a few extra spins as he lay on his back on the ground. Out of breath, he could only cough and gasp.

"Quickly, quickly," he said, "find me some wood, and from this wood, help me to carve . . . help me carve two fake legs! Two! I must have two fake legs that are the size of a gnome's, but a pudge longer!! We have only minutes left!"

In a flurry of running and seeking, Tol Marren and Orsifawn found two twigs the thickness of a gnome's leg, and Altybulby quickly carved them into shape with an old paring knife he had in his camping gear. He cut notches into the sides of the fake legs and in a few minutes, he held in his hand two miniature leg-like stilts. If any gnome were to walk about using these stilts, he would appear only slightly taller. There were knobs on the bottom end of each stilt so that a shoe could be put on the stilt to make it look like a real leg.

"We must stealthily get these to the gnome, known as Snorri Sturlesson," said the old man. "And only one person can sneak into the village to do it." He handed them to Tol Marren.

"I will do it," she said, "but is this all he needs?" She looked at the tree. "Usually, there's something extra. Like a string of hair, or no shoes," and she looked at her still bare feet.

"Go! Go!" said Altybulby, and quickly Orsifawn placed her on her shoulders and carried her across the river to the other side. Dawn was approaching; the first light of day could be seen hovering over the village gallows.

L ike a swift mouse and like a bee, Tol Marren glided up the wickery staircase until she came to the door that shut the gnome and duck off from the world. "Snorri Sturlesson!" she whispered loudly, "here I have a gift from your friends, from Orsifawn and from the potato man!"

The gnome reached around the door, careful not to lose his balance and fall to a hard-ground death below.

Potato man? Stilts? How unexpected! "Stilts?" he whispered. "I know only one thing to do with stilts, and that is wear them! But I cannot fathom why I must wear these stilts, carved as they are from fresh pinewood! And who might this Mr. Potato be?"

He held them in his hands. "But then, I have never had reason to question any of your gifts, Tol Marren, and I trust that under these strange circumstances the duck and I may very well survive our horrible day!"

He put on the stilts, and put his socks and shoes on the stilts and put on his pants over them, and no one would have known that the feet and legs were not his own.

"Now, you must run and escape," he said to the girl, "for the sun is rising, and the vice-magistrate will surely come today. For look, there stands the gallows, complete with hanging rope and a huge trough of coal. Tol Marren, they have lit the coal on fire, and will roll the red noggins into that shallow pit they have dug there below the scaffold! Oh, the horror of it! They will hang me and cook me!"

The duck squirmed and quacked quietly.

"Don't worry," said the girl, "surely the tree . . . surely old Altybulby . . . surely it can't all end like this!"

She flew down the steps and found a safe place at the edge of the village grounds where she could watch. There was not a doubt in her mind that if all else failed, she would run screaming to the gallows and save them all or die trying. But she would have to get closer than this.

There came the vice-magistrate. He wore his long black coat, and carried a small riding whip in his hand, though he had no horse. He was tall and gray, and his skin was gray and his face was long. A large number of villagers had surrounded the gallows and there was great excitement in the air.

Several men were dispatched to seize the gnome and grab the duck and bring them to the place of their demise. When they returned with their prisoners, a strange thing happened. As they were trying to tie the twine to the gnome, there on the terrible wooden platform, the fact that he had very little weight began to trouble the vice-magistrate. "Sir," he said to the gnome, "you have in you very little weight. Look, if I flick you with my finger," which the vice-magistrate did exactly at that moment, "you somewhat flutter into the air just a little and settle back down. As if you were full of air!" Then he flicked the duck, who did not flutter but did quack and try to bite the man.

"Therefore, according to the laws of physics as we know them in Hyram Miel, I find that it may be very difficult to hang you!" said the vice-magistrate. "But, if I tie your miserable feet to something very heavy," he said, his voice growing louder so the crowd could easily hear him, "Yes, if your feet were to be tied to something heavy, very heavy, then that would compensate for your pathetic lack of weight, and we would have a proper hanging after all! Hyram Miel deserves a proper hanging!"

A loud growl ran though the crowd, and the people looked madly about for something heavy that they could tie to the poor gnome so they could do him in. A few people picked up rocks, and others, boards or pinecones, but nothing seemed just right or heavy enough or easy to attach to the gnome's feet.

Snorri Sturlesson looked down at his fake legs. He was wearing his favorite stockings, which were striped: golden yellow from wolf-lichen dye and deep brown-red from pokeberry dye. They had been knitted for him by his own mother more than two hundred years ago! His shoes! Remarkable! They were hand-carved by his father nearly three hundred years ago! Roses were painted on the sides!

Yet, he thought, these heirlooms were attached to fake legs and feet! He studied them as he looked down. They looked real and not fake at all! He stood on the top platform of the gallows, very near the trap door that would send him to his doom.

Shortly, his thoughts were interrupted by the familiar voice of Gritsen, the villager. He looked over the edge, and could see her among the people. He listened.

"There's a creature there above us!" she was telling another woman, and pointing to the gallows platform. "No bigger'n an apple . . . that's what I told Melkin, didn't I, Melkin? I tell Melkin there's a creature there at the door meant to do us in, didn't I Melkin?" Melkin, of course, nodded and said, several times, "Yes, my pet, yes, my pet."

"Let us double knot the little rat-devil to the . . . MILLSTONE!" shouted Gritsen. "Surely he would kill us all! Only the millstone is heavy enough and strong enough to send the little lice-infested demon to his doom!"

A mob of half-a-dozen people stormed up to the skeletal remains of the old mill, and it took all of them, straining and puffing, to surround the huge, heavy stone and carry it downhill. Thus they took the very last remnant of what was once the village mill. They hoisted it onto the gallows platform with a rope and pulley that had also been taken from the mill.

A s the villagers prepared the final elements of the day, Tol Marren joined the mob below the gallows. Then she casually climbed up the ladder to the platform where she could see the gnome, the vice-magistrate and several villagers who had been assigned as guards. No one saw her, of course, because they never did. She was less than nothing. She was just a coal-smudged child. She had no shoes, she had no hair. She did not exist for them and she was dirty from coal-dust smudges.

She situated herself behind a crate in which extra rope and been coiled, and she was about the distance of one good leap from Snorri Sturlesson.

"What have we now?" said Snorri Sturlesson quietly to himself. "I stand here forlornly on the gallows, meager rope around my neck, roughened twine tied dramatically to my feet and the other end tied to the huge, old round stone of Hyram's Mill, which for many a long year turned grain to flour, and made barley corns into bread dough. And I am alone, for my friends are secretly waiting in the forest beyond the village, and my dear duck is naught but a bundle of duck-worry.

"I am Snorri Sturlesson, a forest gnome of the gardening variety. Can I help that? Can no one see that I am a gnome? I love my scarf, my socks, my wooden shoes, my duck, my friends and the forest and its trees and flowers. If something goes wrong, then it is curtains for me! Will I be remembered by my friends, by Orsifawn and this Old Potato Man, by Tol Marren, who has been my rescuer and comrade, my secret ally, and by a duck who sought only to give me a ride around the village? Will the wind remember Snorri Sturlesson?

"Above me, blue sky. Below me, I can begin to feel the heat of the coal fire under the scaffolding, for they have taken all their coal, the whole winter's supply, and built a slow-burning furnace beneath me to do me in further. I am sad they have done this."

No sooner had the gnome stopped his musing, than everything happened at once!

The vice-magistrate raised his arm! The signal!

Wham went the trap door! Zip when the stilts from Snorri Sturlesson's legs, yanked down through the trap to the furnace below, pulled by the huge millstone!

Tol Marren threw herself across the platform and grabbed the socks and shoes just as the rope and stone tumbled through the trap hole. The millstone crashed and smashed in to the coals and cracked in two on the ground far below with the resounding boom of lightning and thunder.

The duck threw himself into the air, escaping the grasp of the guards and flew to safety at the edge of the forest where Orsifawn and Altybulby were waiting.

A great cloud of smoke and white-gray, burning ash rose from the glowing coal pit, smothering everyone below and temporarily blinding all who remained on the platform. The vice-magistrate clawed at his eyes and the village guards wandered around with their hands and arms waving wildly in front of them, for no one could see in the ash storm.

The gallows, fueled by the coal furnace below, became engulfed in flames, and the villagers and vice-magistrate barely escaped with their lives!

By the time they regained their sight, there was only one thing to be seen. At the height of a tall tree, there was a gnome floating in mid-air like a kite! He held onto a rope, the gallows rope, and on the other end of it was Tol Marren, who grasped it in one hand and in the other she held the shoes and socks of the forest gnome. They floated into the air like a kite and kite-flier unhinged from the grip of the Earth and from the grasp of gravity! They ascended to the clouds, and soared and floated and glided away from the village and over the river.

"Gnomes are very light," Snorri Sturlesson shouted to Tol Marren. "We do this for fun when we are young! Hold tight until we clear the river, where it's safe!"

Below them, the flames of the timber gallows finally subsided, leaving only a pile of ash and blackened nails. The mill, Hyram's Mill, for which the village had been named, was just as completely gone. The great millstone which created the flour for the bread of every villager had been cracked in two. Gone now was the very means of their existence, and yet added to that was the burning of all the coal. There now could be no warmth for the autumn and the winter, and in a matter time . . . a week, a month, a season . . . the people of Hyram Miel would be forced to scatter like leaves in the wind and like rocks on a hillside, and they would become homeless wanderers who have no memories. They were gone.

O n the other side of the river, Snorri Sturlesson pulled on the socks that his mother had made for him two centuries ago. And he poked his feet into his 300-year-old shoes. They were so comfortable! He looked up at Orsifawn, and then at Tol Marren. Standing, the gnome introduced himself to Altybulby, and the old man bowed and presented him with a yellow flower. Then the old man revealed a thin length of twine, the very twine that had been braided from Tol Marren's hair. The gnome tied one end to his belt and coiled the rest and handed it to the girl and went and stood on a nearby rock.

"Tol Marren," said Snorri Sturlesson, "we will all go back to the forest. My duck will walk at your feet, for as I can see, he loves you dearly. I have been saved by Orsifawn and Altybulby, and they must walk with you and may even fly me somewhat if you wish. Please, fly me like a kite! I have many things to discuss with the wind on our way back. And, before I jump up into the air (for gnomes have very little weight, as you know), I ask only one thing."

"What is that thing, Snorri Sturlesson," asked Tol Marren.

"I wish to know: What ever did you write such a poem for, in the first place, for you needed no assistant and you had no garden! Your garden was the world and the riverbank. It was the forest edge and valleys and vales where the flowers of the world can be found!"

And Tol Marren said, "I am the traitor in the night; a silent, stealthy shadow.

"I am a whisper that few can hear, no one but you, or the tree whose voice is like a cello, or Altybulby the Potato Old Man. The whisper of the wind longs for my words, to catch them and drop them at your feet.

"Snorri Sturlesson," she said, "how else could we have met? I would only have been a myth to you . . . a voice, thin and distant, on the other side of a door at the top of stairway in the sky . . . a rumor in a faraway world. I was a note on the wind! I landed at your feet and the world was changed!"

The gnome thought for a moment, and then the moment passed. He clapped his hands in delight, and leaped a mighty two-legged leap into the air, and up he went, drifting higher and higher as Tol Marren let out more and more of the twine. And they all followed the gnome as he sailed on the end of the braided string, and they made their way into the forest, deeply, and there they stayed.

Tales the Wind Told is available in paperback from Lulu Press