Olaf the Gnome

Maisie and Archie were going somewhere important — or at least Maisie had decided it was important, which in practice amounted to the same thing. The river had been running high for two days after the rain, and Papa had mentioned that the little stones near the bend might be underwater by now. Maisie needed to see this immediately. Archie needed to see it too, mostly because Maisie had said the word hurry.

So they hurried, Maisie racing down the woodland path with Archie bouncing along behind her, his shorter legs working twice as hard just to keep pace.

"Wait for me!"

"I am!"

"No, you're not!"

She slowed just long enough for him to catch up, then took off again almost immediately. They flew past a patch of yellow flowers, jumped a fallen branch, and nearly barreled straight into someone standing in the middle of the path. Maisie dug her paws into the dirt and stopped short. Archie did not, and ran straight into her back.

"Ow."

"Why do you always do that?"

"Why do you always stop?"

The stranger turned around, and Maisie found herself looking at the smallest grown-up she had ever seen — barely up to Papa's knee, wearing a green coat with more pockets than she could count, a red cap drooping over one ear, and a fluffy white beard with several leaves inexplicably tangled into it. A little brown basket hung from his arm. He smiled at them like they were exactly who he'd expected to run into.

"Well, hello."

Maisie just stared. Archie leaned close to her ear, not quietly enough. "He's tiny."

"I heard that," the stranger said, and Archie ducked behind his sister.

"You're not supposed to say things like that," Maisie whispered.

"You said it with your face."

The stranger laughed at that, which gave Maisie a moment to look him over properly. "Are you a gnome?"

"I certainly hope so. I've been one for quite a long time."

Archie peeked back out. "What's your name?"

"Olaf."

Her ears lifted. "Olaf the Gnome?" Papa had mentioned him before — everyone in the woods seemed to know Olaf, who lived somewhere farther north where the path narrowed between the old trees. She had pictured someone a little more mysterious. Someone without a leaf in his beard.

He gave a small, formal bow. "That's me."

"What are you doing?" Archie asked.

"Walking."

Maisie glanced down the empty path behind him. "You're just standing there."

"I stopped."

"Why?"

He pointed to a patch of wild roses growing beneath the trees, and offered nothing further, as though the pointing had said everything necessary.

"For the flowers?" Maisie finally asked.

"For the flowers."

Archie leaned toward one of them, and Maisie caught his shoulder before he got too close. "Come on. We're going to the river."

Olaf shifted the basket on his arm. "So am I."

Maisie looked at him, then down the path, then back at him. "You're going to the river?"

"That was the plan."

"We can show you the way."

"I've been there before," he said, entirely pleasant about it, and Maisie considered this for a moment before deciding it made no real difference.

"You can come with us anyway."

"I'd like that."

She turned and set off immediately — and after several steps realized nobody was beside her. She looked back. Olaf was still standing near the roses. Archie, looking too, asked whether he was actually coming, and Maisie said she thought so, and a moment later he finally did start walking.

Slowly. Very slowly, one unhurried step and then another, and Maisie watched this happen with growing disbelief while Archie leaned over and whispered that maybe his legs didn't work right.

"They work fine," Olaf called, without raising his voice or his pace at all.

Archie's ears drooped. "He hears everything."

By the time he caught up — if caught up was even the right phrase, since Maisie and Archie had been standing perfectly still the entire time — Maisie was ready to go again.

"Ready?"

"I've been ready."

They set off once more, and Maisie made a genuine effort to walk instead of run, an effort that lasted roughly twenty seconds before she was several yards ahead with Archie caught somewhere in the gap between her and Olaf.

"Come on!"

Olaf kept walking at precisely the same speed he'd been walking the whole time. "You're really slow!" she called back.

"I've been told."

"Don't you want to get there?"

"I do."

"Then hurry."

He considered this seriously. "Why?"

She stopped in her tracks. "Because we're going there."

"Yes."

"And we're here."

"Yes."

"So we need to get from here to there."

"Eventually," he agreed, nodding as if this settled everything, and Maisie simply stared at him while Archie muttered that he was pretty sure Olaf was doing this on purpose.

They kept walking, the path curving through a stretch of tall grass where something blue flashed close to Maisie's face — and Olaf stopped again before she'd even finished flinching.

She groaned before she'd fully turned around. "What now?"

He pointed. A dragonfly hovered above the grass, its wings catching the sun in little flashes of blue and silver every time it turned, until it landed on a nearby reed and sat perfectly still. Archie wandered back toward it.

"It's shiny."

"It is."

Olaf crouched down to look closer, and Archie crouched right beside him while Maisie stayed exactly where she was. "We've seen dragonflies before," she said.

"This one?"

She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. "No." By then Archie was trying to crouch just as low as Olaf, and the dragonfly, apparently unimpressed by either of them, lifted off, circled once, and vanished toward the river.

Archie stood back up. "Okay. Now we can go."

Maisie sighed, and they made it a few more minutes before the next stop — a spiderweb this time, strung between two branches with tiny drops of dew still clinging to it. Archie stopped the moment Olaf did. Maisie kept walking for several more steps before she noticed nobody was behind her.

She turned around. "You guys!"

"Maisie, look!" Archie was already pointing, practically vibrating.

"I've seen spiderwebs."

"Not this one."

She looked despite herself, and had to admit — for about two seconds — that it really was enormous, the sunlight catching each droplet until the whole web seemed to glitter between the branches. "Okay. It's pretty. Can we go now?"

Olaf just smiled and kept walking, and a little farther along they found a snail crossing the path directly in front of them.

Maisie threw both paws in the air. "No."

Archie was already on the ground next to it. "It's a snail!"

"I know what a snail is."

"He's going somewhere."

"So are we!"

Archie watched it inch along, unbothered by her tone. "He's slower than Olaf."

"Finally," Olaf said, one hand pressed to his chest in mock gratitude, "someone appreciates my speed," and Archie laughed while Maisie decided the river would probably dry up entirely before they got there at this rate.

"I'm going ahead," she announced.

"Wait," Archie said, though he was still looking at the snail rather than her, and when she told him he could come, he glanced between the snail and his sister just long enough for it to be clear which one had won. "I'll catch up."

Maisie shook her head and took off down the path alone, past the big oak tree, through a stretch of ferns, over a muddy patch she cleared without getting a single paw dirty — a small private triumph she allowed herself to enjoy for exactly as long as it took the path to fork ahead of her. She barely slowed. She took the wider trail on the right.

A minute later Archie came crashing through the ferns behind her, breathless. "Wait!"

She stopped. "You finally left the snail?"

"He made it across. Olaf said it was a dangerous journey."

"It crossed a path."

"There were feet."

"Where's Olaf?" she asked, already moving again.

"Coming."

"How far back?"

Archie looked over his shoulder and admitted he had no idea, and they kept on down the trail, and kept on, and kept on, the trees growing thicker around them the whole way.

Eventually Maisie slowed. "Do you hear the river?"

They both stopped and listened. Birds. Leaves shifting overhead. A woodpecker somewhere far off. No river — none at all — and when Archie said so, Maisie frowned, suddenly less sure of the path than she'd been a minute ago. Mostly sure. A little sure. They walked another minute anyway, until the trail simply ended at a wall of thorny bushes.

Archie stared at them. "Is the river in there?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

"Because there's no river in a bush."

"Maybe it's behind them."

Maisie gave him a look, and he shrugged — you don't know that either — which was, infuriatingly, fair. She turned around.

"We took the wrong path."

Archie looked pleased that this had, for once, not been his fault. "You went first."

"I know."

"You were running."

"I know."

"You said we had to hurry."

"I know, Archie."

They walked all the way back, and by the time they reached the fork again, Olaf was already there — sitting on an old stump, eating an apple, as if he'd been waiting a comfortable while.

"How did you get here?" Maisie demanded.

"Walking."

"We went the wrong way."

"I noticed."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"You were very far ahead," he said, entirely without malice, and Maisie looked between the two trails, trying to work out how he'd known which one was right. He pointed to a small patch of mud beside the left trail, where tiny frog prints crossed in a neat line, and then to a stand of reeds growing farther down. "And I can hear the water."

Maisie listened. Now that she wasn't running, or arguing, or scrambling through ferns, she could hear it too — faint at first, then unmistakable. The river.

Archie grinned. "Olaf wins."

"I wasn't racing," Olaf said, which somehow made it worse.

"Can we go now?" Maisie asked, arms folded, and Olaf finished the last bite of his apple with maddening calm.

"Certainly."

This time she didn't run. She walked beside him — not because she'd suddenly decided slow was wonderful, because it still wasn't, it was painfully slow — but because she didn't especially want to pick another wrong path. Archie took the other side, peppering Olaf with questions about everything they passed. When Olaf knew the answer, he gave it. When he didn't, he said so plainly, without embarrassment, and Maisie found she liked that about him more than she expected to.

Before long he stopped again, and this time Maisie almost complained before she caught the smell first — roses, another patch growing beside the trail, these a deeper red than the ones near the start. Olaf didn't say anything about it. He simply leaned toward one and breathed in, and Archie copied him immediately while Maisie stood back with her paws crossed.

Then Archie looked over at her. "What?"

"Try it."

"I know what flowers smell like."

"Not this one."

She glanced at Olaf, who wasn't watching her at all, which somehow made it easier. She leaned toward the nearest rose. It smelled sweet, though not like the honey treats at Memaw's — cooler, somehow, mixed in with the damp earth and the trees around it. She breathed it in a second time before catching herself and straightening up fast.

"Okay. We can go."

Olaf nodded and said nothing else about it, though Maisie noticed she didn't walk quite as fast for a while after that.

They reached the river not long after. The water really was high, rushing hard around the bend and swallowing most of the little stones she'd wanted to see — only the biggest of them still poked above the surface.

"There!" She ran toward them, then stopped herself before she got too close to the current.

Olaf found a flat patch of grass and settled down, opening his basket to lay out a cloth, three small pieces of bread, a handful of berries, and a little bottle. Archie sat beside him without waiting to be asked.

"What's that?"

"Goat milk."

"Can I have some?"

Olaf poured a little into a wooden cup and handed it over. Archie took a sip, thought about it seriously, and took a second sip that answered the question better than words would have. Maisie came over and asked if it was good, and Archie just kept drinking, which was apparently confirmation enough. Olaf poured her a cup too, and for a while none of them did much of anything at all — the river rushing past, a frog croaking somewhere along the bank, clouds sliding slowly between the branches overhead.

One of them looked a little like a rabbit. Another looked like Papa, if Papa had an enormous nose.

Maisie almost said something. Archie beat her to it, pointing straight up. "That one looks like Papa."

"The nose?"

"The nose."

Olaf squinted upward with real consideration. "I don't know your papa."

"You'd know him from that cloud," Archie said, entirely serious, and Olaf nodded as though this were the most reasonable thing anyone had told him all day.

After they'd eaten, Maisie wandered down to the water's edge and watched a leaf spin slowly in a little whirlpool near the bank. She'd probably walked past that exact spot a hundred times without ever once stopping to watch the water do this. Olaf came to stand beside her.

"You really don't like hurrying, do you?"

"Sometimes I hurry."

"When?"

"When there's a reason."

"Getting somewhere isn't a reason?"

"Sometimes." He watched the leaf circle again before it caught the current and slid on. "I just wasn't trying to get here first."

Maisie thought about that for a while. Olaf didn't explain it any further, and didn't seem the least bit bothered by the silence that followed — which was around the moment Archie came sprinting toward them, shouting that there was a frog, over there, right there, and Maisie nearly took off running before she caught herself and glanced at Olaf instead. He was already smiling.

"Come on," she said, and he started walking — slowly, of course — until she groaned and told him not that slow, and he laughed and picked it up, just a little.

They spent the rest of the afternoon by the river. Maisie climbed rocks. Archie found three frogs, though Maisie privately suspected one of them was the same frog counted twice. Olaf sat in the grass looking perfectly content to do absolutely nothing until one of the kits came barreling over to show him something new.

When it was finally time to head home, they said their goodbyes near the fork in the path.

"Race you!" Archie shouted, and took off before he'd even finished the sentence. Maisie started after him — then stopped. The roses were right there beside the path again.

Archie made it several yards before he noticed he was running alone. He circled back. "What are you doing?"

Maisie was already bent toward one of the flowers. "Nothing."

"You're smelling the roses."

"No, I'm not."

"You are."

She breathed in again, and had to admit — at least to herself — that maybe she was. Archie leaned toward the flower right beside hers, and for a few seconds neither of them moved at all. Then Maisie straightened.

"Okay."

"Race you home?" Archie asked, already grinning.

She looked down the path, then back at the roses one last time.

"Yeah."

She took off, and Archie chased after her, laughing the whole way.

They were still Whits, after all.