For a moment, I considered pointing out the conflicting logic of Gwynn both being a perfect (and therefore smelly) goat and being upset that he had been cast out of the game for being smelly. But only for a second. Otherwise, I might have been looking at coming back to Chicago about a hundred years too late to grab a late-night meal at BK.
“I can certainly see why you were upset and offended, Your Majesty, sir.”
Some of the righteous indignation seemed to drain out of him, and he waved an irritated hand at me. “We’re talking about something important here, mortal,” he said. “We’re talking about baseball. Call me Gwynn.”
We had stopped at the last display cabinet, which was enormous by the standards of the furnishings of that hall, which is to say, about the size of a human wardrobe. On one of its shelves was a single outfit of clothing; blue jeans, a T-shirt, a leather jacket, with socks and shoes. On all the rest were the elongated rectangles of tickets—season tickets, in fact, and hundreds of them.
But the single stack of tickets on the top shelf sat next to the only team cap I’d seen.
Both tickets and cap bore the emblem of the Cubs.
“It was certainly a serious insult,” I said quietly. “And it’s obvious that a balancing response was in order. But, Gwynn, the insult was given you unwittingly, by mortals whose very stupidity prevented them from knowing what they were doing. Few enough there that day are even alive now. Is it just that their children be burdened with their mistake? Surely that fact also carries some weight within the heart of a wise and generous king.”
Gwynn let out a tired sigh and moved his right hand in a gesture that mimed pouring out water cupped in it. “Oh, aye, aye, Harry. The anger faded decades ago—mostly. It’s the principle of the thing, these days.”
“That’s something I can understand,” I said. “Sometimes you have to give weight to a principle to keep it from being taken away in a storm.”
He glanced up at me shrewdly. “Aye. I’ve heard as that’s something you would understand.”
I spread my hands and tried to sound diffident. “There must be some way of evening the scales between the Cubs and the Tylwyth Teg,” I said. “Some way to set this insult to rights and lay the matter to rest.”
“Oh, aye,” King Gwynn said. “It’s easy as dying. All we do is nothing. The spell would fade. Matters would resume their normal course.”
“But clearly you don’t wish to do such a thing,” I said. “It’s obviously an expenditure of resources for you to keep the curse alive.”
The small king suddenly smiled. “Truth be told, I stopped thinking of it as a curse years ago, lad.”
I arched my eyebrows.
“How do you regard it, then?” I asked him.
“As protection,” he said. “From the real curse of baseball.”
I looked from him to the tickets and thought about that for a moment. Then I said, “I understand.”
It was Gwynn’s turn to arch eyebrows at me. “Do ye now?” He studied me for a time and then smiled, nodding slowly. “Aye. Aye, ye do. Wise, for one so young.”
I shook my head ruefully. “Not wise enough.”
“Everyone with a lick of wisdom thinks that,” Gwynn replied. He regarded his tickets for a while, his hands clasped behind his back. “Now, ye’ve won the loyalty of some of the Wee Folk, and that is no quick or easy task. Ye’ve defied Sidhe queens. Ye’ve even stuck a thumb into the Erlking’s eye, and that tickles me to no end. And ye’ve been clever enough to find us, which few mortals have managed, and gone out of your way to be polite, which means more from you than it would from some others.”
I nodded quietly.
“So, Harry Dresden,” King Gwynn said, “I’ll be glad t’consider it, if ye say the Cubs wish me to cease my efforts.”
I thought about it for a long time before I gave him my answer.
Mr. Donovan sat down in my office in a different ridiculously expensive suit and regarded me soberly. “Well?”
“The curse stays,” I said. “Sorry.”
Mr. Donovan frowned, as though trying to determine whether or not I was pulling his leg. “I would have expected you to declare it gone and collect your fee.”
“I have this weird thing where I take professional ethics seriously,” I said. I pushed a piece of paper at him and said, “My invoice.”
He took it and turned it over. “It’s blank,” he said.
“Why type it up when it’s just a bunch of zeroes?”
He stared at me even harder.
“Look at it this way,” I said. “You haven’t paused to consider the upside of the Billy Goat Curse.”
“Upside?” he asked. “To losing?”
“Exactly,” I said. “How many times have you heard people complaining that professional ball wasn’t about anything but money these days?”
“What does that have to do—”
“That’s why everyone’s so locked on the Series these days. Not necessarily because it means you’re the best, because you’ve risen to a challenge and prevailed. The Series means millions of dollars for the club, for businesses, all kinds of money. Even the fans get obsessed with the Series, like it’s the only significant thing in baseball. Don’t even get me started on the stadiums all starting to be named after their corporate sponsors.”
“Do you have a point?” Donovan asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Baseball is about more than money and victory. It’s about facing challenges alone and on a team. It’s about spending time with friends and family and neighbors in a beautiful park, watching the game unfold. It’s…” I sighed. “It’s about fun, Mr. Donovan.”
“And you are contending that the curse is fun?”
“Think about it,” I said. “The Cubs have the most loyal, diehard fan following in Major League ball. Those fans aren’t in it to see the Cubs run rampant over other teams because they’ve spent more money hiring the best players. You know they aren’t—because they all know about the curse. If you know your team isn’t going to carry off the Series, then cheering them on becomes something more than yelling when they’re beating someone. It’s about tradition. It’s about loyalty to the team and camaraderie with the other fans, and win or lose, just enjoying the damned game.”
I spread my hands. “It’s about fun again, Mr. Donovan. Wrigley Field might be the only stadium in professional ball where you can say that.”
Donovan stared at me as though I’d started speaking in Welsh. “I don’t understand.”
I sighed again. “Yeah. I know.”
My ticket was for general admission, but I thought I’d take a look around before the game got started. Carlos Zambrano was on the mound warming up when I sat down next to Gwynn ap Nudd.
Human size, he was considerably over six feet tall, and he was dressed in the same clothes I’d seen back at his baseball shrine. Other than that, he looked exactly the way I remembered him. He was talking to a couple of folks in the row behind him, animatedly relating some kind of tale that revolved around the incredible arc of a single game-deciding breaking ball. I waited until he was finished with the story, and turned back out to the field.
“Good day,” Gwynn said to me.
I nodded my head just a little bit deeply. “And to you.”
He watched Zambrano warming up and grinned. “They’re going to fight through it eventually,” he said. “There are so many mortals now. Too many players and fans want them to do it.” His voice turned a little sad. “One day they will.”