The grandiloquent announcement was followed by a tinny blast from a small horn. A narrow shadow appeared through the dancing light that streamed through the door, and was in a moment followed by the shadow’s noble owner.

A small man, barely two feet tall, strode regally into the chamber occupied by Fanny. His skin was brown and knobby, and his nose quite pronounced and sharp. His fingers were nimble and long and his feet, which were long also, were encased in pointed and heavily padded shoes. He wore a cloak of snow white rabbit fur, and a copper cap about which was wrapped a crown woven with leaves, nuts, and shiny metal baubles, from under which he regarded Fanny with a pair of glittering black eyes.

Two more creatures not unlike himself followed, though plainly dressed in hose and tunics of dirty reds, greens, and yellows, and wearing phrygian caps of the same sorts of color. They bore with them a child sized chair made of polished brass, which they placed in the center of the chamber well out of Fanny’s reach. With a grand bearing, the King took his seat.

Up to the present moment Fanny had not time to be astonished. Here she was, faced with something she had heard about all her life yet never believed existed. In the shocked state of her mind, Fanny was capable of little other than to marvel mutely at what was unfolding before her.

The King regarded her in silence for a while. Then, in a rich sort of voice that sounded a bit like the comfortable creak of fine old furniture, the little King spoke.

“Look about ye, Eveling. Ye are our prisoner. Do ye possess a tongue that works proper like? For we would be holding discourse with ye.”

“I…..I beg your pardon...Sir?”

“Eeeeeek! She calls him ‘sir’! You will show respect!”

“Show respect! Show respect!”

“Silence! Miss Howard be in an unfamiliar burrow, and don’t know one root from the other. Know ye then, Eveling, where is your place. We are Brungus, King of the Kobalds! And this, this is our domain! The roots and the bulbs, the warrens and the mines, and all the dwellings of the deeps. All these are ours, and all Kobald-kind know us as their King!”

“Your….Your Majesty, then?”

“That’ll do.”

The King clapped his long hands, and turned slightly towards the servants who stood to either side of him.

“You two, step outside and shut the door. We would be speaking with Miss Howard in private.”

“As you command, Your Dreadfulness!”

In a moment the door was shut and Fanny was alone with a preposterous reality sitting directly across from her, twiddling it’s thumbs.

Again the King spoke.

“We can speak more free like now. As King I am always quite formal like before my subjects. Have to be.”

“This isn’t……..this isn’t some sort of trick is it? I mean, I suppose I’m not dreaming, am I?”

“Ha ha! Oh, you humans are too funny for words! Always, always with your noses so high above the ground that you never see what lives in it! You get all scientific like, and then you up and decide to forget all what your ancestors knew for centuries. You put your big noses in your wormy little books and scoff at the wisdom of your forebears like such vain little children! We, we Kobalds, we live, work, hunt, and steal right under your noses, and you, you don’t just miss it all, you ignore it! We take a lamb, you blame the fox. There’s corn that’s missing, you blame the birds. We steal us some ale and you blame the beggar. There’s a spill on the floor, and you blame the dog. We dance on your roofs and sing songs down your chimneys and you, ha ha! You blame the wind!”

The little King doubled over in a fit of scratchy laughter.

“Ah yes, yes. All too funny! Still, it works out quite well enough. Not many of you really believe in us any more, which means you’re laying far fewer hexes about for us, which is powerful helpful. We are quite content for you to go on thinking we’re a myth, we are. Makes it so much easier to do business, see? Yes, it’s been such good business for so many years. There’s plenty about for the taking, and no one has been mindful for us for generations.”

“You’re….you’re thieves, then?”

“It’s good business that we do! Good honest Kobald business. Nothing tricksy or crooksy, no. We just collect our due and put hexes on things. Ah, ‘tis a good life! But things are more complicated like these days.”

Shock was flowing into curiosity as Fanny was gradually gaining a grasp on this new reality with which she had abruptly been faced. Years of reading was flooding back to her mind, and in this respect she felt an odd sort of identification with this alien creature that was now before her. Still, there were some matters of urgency which required her attention.

“Do you really eat people?”

The King nearly fell out of his little brass throne with laughter.

“Oh ho, aha! Yes yes yes! I mean no. No, we don’t eat people, not really. Too dangerous, and not honest business really. But in the old days we liked to have the idea get about that we did, makes people stay away, and makes for hilarious sport! Although, it did also get people to put more hexes on things, too, so it didn’t always work out. It’s better not to be believed in at all.”

“So why reveal yourselves to me? Why kidnap me?”

The King became abruptly sober and leaned back in his chair, twiddling his long thumbs.

“Well, see, that’s where the stones are buried, if ye’ll forgive a Kobald expression, Miss Howard….”

“There! I thought I heard you before! How do you know my name?”

“We know you pretty well enough, we do. We tend to do a lot of our our business around you more uppish humans, you got education you see, so you pay less attention to what’s around you, while the peasants still put a fair bit of hexes about. We know most of the folk here about, even though they don’t know us, tee hee! We rather like your family in particular, you’re good sorts for humans, after you own fashion mind ye. Which is why I wanted to have this little chat before...well, that’s as may be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Business. And I haven’t made up my mind about that either, not quite yet. I’m going to consult with my wives over the matter, if I can round up all twelve of them in time. Nice ladies, although they don’t take me half serious enough. They call me Walnut, which is not really respectful, as I am king and therefore have three names: Brickus Brackus Brungus, like so, you see? If they’re going to make up silly nicknames for their husband and king they should at least do it properly in threes.”

“So that is why you have kidnapped me? To make me as one of your wives?”

“Of course not. Among other things, I’d be too afraid you’d sit down carelessly one day and squash one of my subjects. I’m sure you’re quite the discreet and thoughtful person, but we diminutive creatures do have our little anxieties.”

“Indeed! I daresay I could throw you clear across the room if I had a mind to.”

“Don’t think about it. We may not have very grand magic, but it is powerful well suited to ourselves so to speak. Small and nasty, if you take me meaning. So don’t think about being foolish. Besides, one human wife might be bad enough, but to have all three of you on top of my own dozen dear Kobald maids... ”

“Three of us?”

“Oh yes! You, Miss Watson, and Miss Bellingham...of course, even if we wanted you lot for ourselves we wouldn’t have wanted her anyway, such a prying, pixi chasing busybody like that!”

“See here a moment, are you saying it was you who kidnapped Miss Watson? And Miss Bellingham.”

“Not our business, I assure ye! We’re just trying to avoid as much trouble as possible. It’s a matter of which way the soil is shifting, to use another Kobald expression.”

“But what about Black Abraham! Or the wolf tracks!”

“Ah yes, tee hee! The sailor’s tool! That was a clever one, I must say. Of course, it was his idea to put the blame on the pirate, but we made the little stick and left it there for people to find. As for the wolf tracks, well, you see, we always disguise our footprints, and we’re very good at it. It’s all part of doing good business. And we thought we’d make extra sure of things in case things went badly. We made those..”

The King pointed to a stack of cruel, studded clubs piled at the wall. Looking at them for the first time, Fanny notice that each one had a bit of fur on one end.

“...we wrapped our cudgels in wolf fur and made sure we left only wolf tracks. The real wolves belong to him, you see, and we’d rather they get the blame than people should ever suspect us. In case no one found or believed the pirate’s club, see? It’s all good business. That, and we’d rather like to be rid of those wolves anyway, see? But of course, don’t tell him any of that.”

“Him?”

“Like I said, it’s not our business. It’s his, really.”

“But who is he?”

“Calls himself ‘Kador’, but we hear he presents himself to your kind as a certain Mr. Gareth Larch.”

“Mr Larch?.......Yes, I recollect the name, but I don’t recall as I am especially acquainted with the man.”

“Not a surprise. People tend not to notice him much, he’s powerful cunning with the jinxes, and most people pay him no heed. But we noticed him. Right from the beginning.

He comes here about a year ago, see. Finds himself an empty Barrow, and starts introducing himself around the neighborhood. We knew he was trouble, from foreign parts, because no human ever takes notice of us unless he comes from far off, and we don’t want any doings with their kind. He makes himself at home amongst your kind too, but none of you ever paid him any heed, see, because he jinxes himself that way. You rather just say hello, let him buy you a drink or two, tell him gossip, and then never give him another thought. That’s how he works it.

But that kind of thing doesn’t work on us, we know about jinxes of that sort! Once you’re onto ‘em they don’t have any hold on you anymore, see? That’s why it’s harder to jinx children, they’re too observant of the little things of the world, and get all curious and nosey about small things adults won’t even notice. You’ve got to be mostly un-curious and unsuspicious like from the start for a jinx like that to hold ye. And to us, Kador was everything curious and suspicious.

He comes by the front door one day and introduces himself bold as brass! Him and his two lackeys. “Ain’t natural”, we say to ourselves. “Only foreigners of the queerest sort would pay us any heed, and only a powerful nosey one would know exactly where to look for us, and only one that was up to no good would have that many jinxes on him at once like that”. No, we don’t trust him at all. So we says “Howdeedo, and begone with ye”, and he went. But he came back. And he kept coming back.

Polite, he was, always proper like. He knew good manners he did. But he was queer and nosey. And soon he starts asking for favors and droppin’ all sorts of nasty hints about what will happen if we don’t play along proper like. And then he brought the wolves.”

The King shivered.

“Terrible wolves they are. Not proper, ordinary wolves at all, but true Verkas from the far south. It’s been surely a millennia or something since such creatures roamed anywhere in the Lands of Urse.

He has powerful friends, that Kador does, friends of an evil sort. And they have ambition. Great, terrible ambition. And Kador is their instrument.

We Kobalds, we live quiet like, you see. We collect our due and take our sport and don’t molest nobody (except when we hex ‘em). We don’t want trouble.

So, as King I took counsel, I did. We can’t go about our usual business like this, not with Varkas about. They’d been stalking our requisition parties of late and scouting our holes, and if Kador one day up and decides to let his pets have a go at us, well…….”

The King shivered again.

“We’re simple folk, but not that simple. We keep an eye about for what’s what, and we know the histories. Kador’s kind ruled here once, long ago. They never go away for ever, they always come back. So I had to make a decision, I did. I decided that it’s all a matter of which way the soil is shifting. Kador’s kind are getting powerful bold these days. Word is that even the Zard have been seen beyond the great desert, and that’s a bad omen if ever there was one....Zard were supposed to be extinct, you know (actually, you probably didn’t know, you humans don’t pay much attention to the world around ye). But it shouldn’t surprise much, I suppose. Kador’s kind, they always come back. Always. It’s all happened before, it’s in the histories.

So, I say to myself, so it’s better maybe to start being accommodating sooner than later. They were our masters once, and we hated them. But we are not large, our magic is not large, and our numbers aren’t large. We can’t resist them, not in the end. So, says I, we’ll do our best. Give ‘em what they want, I says. Much as I don’t want to. I’m dreadfully sorry. It’s not as if we have anything personal like against ye. We’d much rather it didn’t have to involve you.”

“Why does it have anything to do with me?”

“He asked for ye. Special like.”

“But why!”

“You’ll have to ask him that. We’ll be escortin’ ye to him soon. I’m sorry, Miss Howard. It’s been a pleasure speaking with ye in person like.”

The King arose and clapped his hands.

“Ogno, Morgo, Bingus! Attend!”

Three Kobalds in phrygian caps entered immediately upon the command. Two of them removed the throne, while the King spoke briefly to the third in muffled words Fanny could not understand. Then, they all left, and sealed the door tightly behind them.

Fanny was alone.