“And what do I usually wear on this thumb?” the dwarf demanded angrily.
Tas hazarded a guess. “A golden ring?”
“And where is my golden ring?” Flint scowled at him.
“I don’t know, Flint,” said Tas. “Did you lose it?” He was concerned.
Flint reached out, took hold of Tasslehoff’s hand and thrust it in the kender’s face. He pointed. “What’s that?”
“My thumb,” said Tasslehoff, mystified.
“And what is on your thumb?”
Tas looked. He was amazed. He honestly had no recollection of having seen it before now. “A golden ring!”
The ring was too big for him and wobbled a bit. but he thought it looked well on him.
“It’s just like yours. Flint,” Tas said pleased.
“That’s because it is mine!” the irate dwarf bellowed.
“Is it?” Tas was pleased. “There! You thought you’d lost it and I found it for you. You must have dropped it.”
“Bosh!” Flint seized hold of the ring and snatched it off the kender’s thumb. He shook the ring under Tasslehoff’s nose. “This is why city guards with any sense never allow kender inside their gates!”
“Because we find things people have lost?” Tas was understandably confused.
“Because you can’t keep your hands out of people’s pockets!” Flint roared.
“The ring wasn’t in your pocket. Flint,” Tasslehoff felt called upon to point out. “It was on my thumb. Like I said, you must have dropped it…”
At that point Flint stomped off, the conversation ended, and Tasslehoff never did find out why gate guards were so narrow-minded.
Perhaps these guards would be different.
Hope springing eternal in Tas’s breast, he smartened himself up. He carefully combed the long topknot of hair that flowed down from the top of his head. He brushed off his bright purple trousers and straightened his green shirt and arranged all the bags and pouches that were slung over various parts of his body to their best advantage. Said bags and pouches contained all the kender’s worldly goods.
Tas had no idea what was in his pouches, for, like most kender, any object he “found” seemed the most wonderful and valuable object in the world (be it emerald ring or bird’s nest). something he would keep forever (a petrified frog), and he promptly forgot about it the moment he dropped it inside his pouch (how did that frog come to be petrified?) This made life a constant happy surprise for Tasslehoff, who was always finding the most marvelous and unexpected things every time he put his hand in his pouch.
Tugging up his orange stockings. Tas strolled down the hill and politely took his place at the end of the line. He soon found himself right up at the front, this clue to the fact that whenever the person in front of him glanced around and saw a kender standing behind him. that person immediately stepped out of line.
“You can go ahead,” the person would say, gesturing with one hand and holding the other hand tightly over whatever valuables he or she possessed.
“Why, thank you,” Tasslehoff would say, charmed, and he would move up a notch. He really liked the people of Pigeon Falls.
The next thing he knew, he was standing before the gate guard.
“Hullo,” said Tasslehoff Burrfoot cheerily, “I’ve come to Pigeon Falls to see the falling pigeons.”
The guard took one look at him. “No kender.”
“But I’ve never seen a falling pig—”
“No kender.”
“It’s just that—”
“No kender!” The guard emphasized his statement with a prod in the kender’s stomach from a very sharp spear.
“Ouch,” said Tasslehoff, and rubbing his maltreated stomach, he took his diminutive self sadly back to his tree.
It appeared that if he wanted to visit the town of Pigeon Falls, he would have to find some quiet and unobtrusive way to sneak inside.
A farmer and a hay cart provided the perfect opportunity. Tasslehoff could not only ride inside the town in comfort, he could take a little snooze at the same time. The kender gave the farmer a friendly wave, waited until the man had driven past him, then swiftly and nimbly ran down the hill, climbed up onto the cart, burrowed his way inside the fragrant hay, and closed his eyes. The cart rumbled over the bumpy road and the soothing motion lulled the kender to sleep.
The next thing Tas knew, he was being rudely stabbed in the backside by a pitch fork.
“Ouch!” he yelped.
“Ah, ha!” said a nasty voice. “I thought I’d find you trying to sneak in!”
A large hand reached inside the mound of hay, clapped itself over Tasslehoff’s belt, dragged him out, and dumped him unceremoniously on the ground.
“No kender,” said the gate guard, glaring. He made a threatening gesture with the pitchfork. “We don’t like kender in Pigeon Falls! Be gone with you!”
“Ferret-face,” Tas muttered, though only to himself.
Plucking hay out of his hair, he went back to sit under his tree. He hoped the falling pigeons were worth all this trouble, but he was beginning to doubt it.
Seeing as how he wasn’t likely to get in through the gate, Tas decided to take a little stroll around the outside of the city wall to locate some other way he might enter. As luck would have it, he found a drainage pipe that penetrated the wall. The pipe carried off rain water that collected in the streets and dumped it (and whatever else it picked up) into the river.
The only drawback to this was that the drainage pipe was fitted with an iron grate. This proved only a minor impediment. Tasslehoff brought out his lock pick tools and, first making certain that none of the guards walking around on top of the wall could see him, he set to work. In moments, the iron grate lay on the ground and the kender was crawling up the drain pipe.
Emerging, he washed off the muck as best he could in a horse trough, then set off to the see the sights.
“Excuse me, Mistress,” said Tasslehoff, walking into a baker’s shop, “I’m here to see the falling pigeons—”
The woman gave a shriek of fury that reminded Tasslehoff of one of Lord Soth’s banshees. She (the woman, not the banshee) picked up a broom, ran around the counter, and began smacking Tas over the head.
“Be gone!” Thwack!
“But, ma’am, I’m only—”
“Be gone with you!” Thwack, thwack!
“It’s just that I’ve never seen—”
“We don’t like kender!” Thwack, thwack, slam—the slam being where the woman shoved him out the door and slammed it shut on him.
Her shrieks roused the populace. Once in the street, Tas was set upon by other shopkeepers wielding various instruments of destruction, from brooms to shovels to clubs and, in the case of the butcher, a dead chicken.
Tas was saved from the onslaught by the self-same gate guard, who had been on his way home to dinner when he heard the commotion. He picked up the kender by the seat of his britches and the collar of his shirt, hauled him to the front gate, and tossed him headlong out into the dusty road.
“No kender!” the guard bellowed.
Tasslehoff stood up, brushed himself off, wiped the dead chicken juice out of his eyes, and yelled, “I didn’t want to see your stupid pigeons fall anyway!”
He was walking along the road, looking at this and that and everything and nothing, and thinking that this was probably the worst day of his life, when his sharp kender eyes saw, off in the distance, what appeared to be a cave.
Caves draw kender like flames draw moths. The thought that there might be something living in the cave, or that there might be treasure in the cave, or both together, is irresistible to kender. Tas immediately turned his footsteps in that direction.