The one thing that wasn't in the valley or on the mountain was other people. Nalvarre lived alone, and he liked it that way. By far, he preferred the company of meerkats to merchants, squirrels to squires. Nobody bothered him. No one even knew he was living there.
He lazed away the afternoon under the trees by the brook, watching the squirrels and laughing at their antics. There was no hurry. Really, he didn't even need the nuts. He had plenty of food already stored away, and he only wanted the nuts to make pies for Yule. He still liked to keep the holy days by cooking traditional foods, the sorts of things his mother used to make. He lay in the leaves and thought of all the wonderful things he liked to eat, until his stomach began to growl, and he thought of the barley cakes he'd baked that morning. Quickly, he gathered his laden baskets and hurried down the mountain, leaving the orchard to the squirrels.
The setting sun found him nearing his door. His house was built in the shade of a great beech tree, beside a bank where a mountain stream purled. The chimney stood out against the reddening sky, a tendril of smoke rising in the still autumn air. As he crossed the shallow stream, stepping with familiar ease from stone to stone, he noticed that his door stood ajar, though he remembered closing it. He'd had a problem in the past with trespassing bears, so he always made sure to close it when he went out.
Nalvarre quietly approached the house and set his baskets on the ground beside the woodpile before prying loose a wood axe from a log. He eased up beside the door and glanced quickly inside. The darkened room held no intruders, but a queer smell wafted from the open doorway. It was a wild, musky smell, but not like that of a bear. Some new creature had found its way to the mountain, something beyond Nalvarre's experience. He nervously gripped his axe.
"Hello?" he softly called. Nothing answered him. He slipped inside and peered warily about.
The room seemed empty, but the evidence of intruders was obvious. His favorite chair, the one in which he spent many a winter evening by the fire, lay in shambles on the floor. It was as though some giant had sat in it and collapsed it under his weight. Next, Nalvarre noticed that both the barley cakes he'd baked that morning were gone. A few crumbles on the table marked where he'd left them to cool. The lid of the apple barrel lay on the floor, and about half the apples were missing. He noted in passing that there wasn't a sign of an apple core anywhere, not even a seed. His butter churn was dismantled and lay in pieces under the table, and all the butter had been eaten. Even the bones from the fish he'd had for dinner last night were missing from the refuse jar beside the door. The only thing the marauder hadn't touched were the honey pots lining the mantle.
Nalvarre spun around as something trotted through the still-open door. It was a dog, a very big dog, which skidded to a stop at the sight of him. Not a wild animal, for despite the twigs and leaves snarled in her nappy gray fur, the dog had obviously been well cared for at some time. And not vicious, for the dog seemed more startled by Nalvarre's presence than anything else. Still, he held his axe at the ready. They faced each other across the kitchen table.
"How did you get here, girl?" Nalvarre asked in a calm but forced tone.
At the sound of his voice, her head dropped and her tail began to wag. She waggled over and nuzzled his extended hand. He leaned the axe against the table and stooped to pet her. She licked his face and thumped her tail against the floor.
"Are you lost? Where is your master?" Nalvarre asked as he examined her. She seemed in good condition, certainly well fed. "You've been eating well, I see," he said. "Probably from my larder." He petted and stroked her, picking leaves and other debris from her fur.
"You're a hunting dog," he said as he rose. He took a log from the bin beside the hearth and used it to stoke up the coals of his fire, then added wood chips and sticks until he had a small, merry blaze.
"Did you lose the trail? You've done a remarkable job of getting lost. There isn't a castle or village within miles of here," Nalvarre said. "I imagine you are hungry, aren't you? I was going to have barley cakes for my supper, but since you ate them, we'll have to find something else. How about fish? Do you like fish?"
The dog edged closer to the fire and wagged her tail.
"Fish it is, then. I'll just go out and see if there are any in my traps." He walked to the door and turned, expecting the dog to follow him, but she remained near the warmth of the hearth. "Why don't you stay here," he laughed. "I won't be long."
Nalvarre walked downstream about a hundred yards to a place where the current widened after spilling over a small fall. He waded out into the stream and reached under the surface, then pulled up a large, funnel-shaped basket woven of wooden sticks. In it wriggled five shinybrown trout. He nearly dropped the basket in his surprise. Never before had he caught so many at once. In the summer months, he would have returned to the stream those he couldn't eat himself, but tonight he had a guest, and since his winter store had been unexpectedly depleted, he decided he'd dry whatever fish he and the dog didn't eat. He waded ashore and sat on a rock to clean the fish while the last light remained in the sky.
As he returned to his cabin, Nalvarre heard voices inside, and through the open doorway, he saw shadows dancing on the walls. It sounded and looked like two or three or maybe fifty people arguing. There was a loud scream and a crash. He rushed inside.
He found in the middle of the floor a heap of broken sticks and thrashing blankets that had once been his bed. Somehow, it had fallen from the loft. In the midst of the disaster, several small creatures were fighting and spitting, punching and gouging, all the while cursing like drunken sailors. Nalvarre waded into this and grabbed one of them by the scruff of its neck, yanking it free of the wreckage. "A gully dwarf!" he exclaimed when he finally saw what he'd caught. The other two continued their battle.
"What's this all about?" he demanded, shaking the suddenly docile gully dwarf.
"Lumpo keep taking all of blanket," Uhoh explained.
"Not!" Lumpo shouted as he angrily swung his elbow and clocked Glabella under the chin. She went sprawling across the floor, a very surprised look on her face. Nalvarre angrily snatched her to her feet while Lumpo, victorious, settled down in the wreckage of the bed and pulled all the blankets around him. He didn't seem to mind the sticks and splinters.
"See," Glabella muttered drunkenly. "Him take all of blanket."
"Yes, I see," Nalvarre said. He reached in and pulled Lumpo from the bed and set him roughly on his feet. "I also see that you've wrecked my bed! Just look at it!"
The three gully dwarves gathered close to look at the bed. "It not a very good bed," Glabella commented.
"Stick poke me in back," Lumpo said as he rubbed his kidney. "How you sleep in bed like that?"
"It didn't used to look like that," Nalvarre said. "It used to be a good bed, until you three destroyed it. Just look at what you've done." He lifted the broken pieces of the bed, trying to see if any of it was salvageable. In frustration, he threw the pieces to the floor.
"And just look at my chair!" he shouted as he walked over to the fireplace. "You broke this, too, didn't you?"
"No. Millisant broke chair," Uhoh said with assurance.
Nalvarre turned to Glabella. "Why did you break my chair?" he asked.
"I not break chair. Millisant break chair," she said.
"Well, which one is Millisant?"