Grumpy
Part One
Vlad is by far the filthiest dwarf I know. His beard is studded with egg and cheese and he never bathes, not even on his birthday. He refuses to eat with utensils, even when we're eating stew, and if he catches us using napkins he accuses us of being "high and mighty." But within three days of the girl's arrival, he was bathing and shaving every day. And by the time she left, he was basting his face with cologne every hour and wearing a tweed coat to breakfast. That's the way it was. She knocked on our door one night, and everything changed. Just a few little taps of her finger -- da, da, da-da -- that's all it took to tear our world apart.
When she stooped into our cabin in her tattered, white ball gown, everything stopped. Sven had Vlad in a headlock -- it was Wrestling Night -- and as soon as she entered, he froze. He didn't even let go of Vlad's neck. He just stood there, staring up at her.
"Hi," he said, waving awkwardly with his free hand. Vlad's breathing was constricted by the headlock he was in, but he said 'Hi" too, in as dignified a voice as he could muster.
"I'm in danger," the girl said, her eyes as round as a child's. "Would it be all right... if I stayed here for a while?"
We spent the next two hours breathlessly introducing ourselves and frantically offering her stew. Then we cleared the den of shovels and transformed it into a guestroom. It wasn't easy -- we had to strap two spare beds together to make one that was large enough to fit her -- but it was thrilling work, with her smiling down on us the whole time, and ooh-ing and ah-ing our every move.
"I can't tell you much I appreciate this," she said. "It's so good to be here."
Nobody asked her any questions that night -- not even where she had come from. We were terrified, I think, that if we asked her what she was doing in our cabin, the insanity of her presence would occur to her for the first time, and she would leave us as suddenly as she had arrived.
"How am I ever going to learn seven names!" she said, cheerfully sipping beer in front of the fire. "It's going to take me forever!"
And later that night, when we skipped down the hall to our seven-tiered bunk-bed, that word kept reverberating through our minds: Forever, forever, forever...
If only.
At breakfast the girl was surrounded. Sven and Bob brought her toast at the same time and she had to accept both plates to be polite. Then the door swung open and Vlad marched into the room.
"Would you care for some jam?" he said. "We have knives as well, for spreading it onto things."
He had spent the night trimming his beard. It was crazily lopsided, but nobody could make fun of him because they had been grooming themselves too.
By the end of the week, everyone had undergone some kind of transformation. Ivan was the worst. He carved his club into a pipe and started wearing black all the time. Whenever she went into the garden, he sat down next to her with a slate and started sighing. Eventually, she would ask him what he was doing.
"Oh, nothing," he would say. "Just writing poetry."
Writing poetry! Two weeks ago, this guy was riding around the house on a pig. I'm serious: he fed the pig beer until it was too drunk to protest, then he jumped on its back and rode it around until they both passed out.
"I'd love to hear your poems!"
"I don't know... it's really just a hobby."
"Please?
So he'd read her his drivel -- it was always something incomprehensible, about rocks or clouds or both -- and she'd pat him on the head and tell him it was beautiful.
"That means a lot coming from you," he'd say, rubbing his beard like some kind of wizard. "Sometimes I feel like you're the only one around here who really understands me."
It was pathetic the way people acted around her. There were no more eating contests at dinner, only ludicrous conversations about "philosophy" and "literature." We only own four books and three of them are about mining procedure, so you can imagine what these talks amounted to.
"Nothing beats 'Mining: a manual,'" Ivan would say, watching her out of the corner of his eye, to make sure she was listening. "It's quite possibly the greatest book ever written. Oh, I know it might be a little challenging for some people's taste. But I like challenges. I guess that's just the kind of guy I am."
Sven was pretty bad too. He's the strongest dwarf in the house and he was constantly parading around the house with his shirt off.
"Who wants to arm wrestle?" he asked us, whenever she was in hearing distance. "Who wants to challenge me to an arm wrestle?"
Oh, and she knew what was going on. I could tell by the way she yawned before going to bed each night -- the way she clasped her hands above her head and arched her back. She was toying with us. When we sang songs after dinner, she kicked off her shoes and danced along to the melody, swinging her hips in a circle.
"Don't make me dance alone!" she shouted. And so we trotted onto the floor, like a pack of lap dogs, and shuffled around by her feet.
She gave us patronizing nicknames: Sleepy, Happy (mine was "Grumpy") -- and we allowed it. Hell, we encouraged it! We played up every shtick she assigned us, like a troupe of professional clowns, singing and tumbling for an audience of one.
Sometimes I felt like the only sane dwarf in the house. Everybody else was entertaining this idiotic fantasy -- that this girl, this beautiful young girl, might actually see something in one of us. All this posturing and posing! It was hopeless and pathetic and insane. I reminded myself of this fact a thousand times a day, whenever she looked at me or said hello or smiled in my direction. She was twice my size and half my age and I knew there was no point in trying.
But every night my calves were sore from standing on my toes.
Part Two
"Hello, Grumpy!"
I put down my mining shovel and waved. Why did I always have to wave? I knew it looked ridiculous but I always did it, whenever I saw her. It was like I had some kind of brain disease.
"Hi!" I said. "Hi."
She crouched down so she was at eye-level.
"Tough day in the mine?" she asked, casually tossing back her hair.
"Oh yeah," I said, feigning exhaustion. "Mining can be really brutal."
Why was I lying to her? Mining was never "brutal." We spent an hour a day in the caves at best and we devoted most of that time to drinking games.
"I don't know how you guys do it," she said.
"Well, I guess someone's got to do it," I heard myself saying. Christ, what the hell was I talking about?
I looked down at my feet and sighed.
"It's actually pretty easy," I admitted.
"Really?"
"Yeah," I said. "We're the only ones small enough to fit down the mine shafts, so they have to keep hiring us, no matter how horrible a job we do. We only go down once a day, and we never stay for more than an hour. Half of us don't even own shovels. It's a total scam."
"Is all that true?" she asked, smiling slightly.
"Yeah," I said. "But if anyone asks, the job's a living hell."
That's when she laughed. I don't know how to describe what it felt like, making this girl laugh. It was sort of like drinking a gallon of beer and then laying out in the sun. You felt like the world was a pretty good place after all, and even if you didn't believe in God, you could sort of understand why some people did.
"We should hang out more," she said. "I like talking to you."
And then she walked away, like nothing extraordinary had just happened.
We were singing work songs in the forest when things started to fall apart. We heard it before we saw it -- two enormous horses, clopping in-step through the woods, like a single, 8-legged beast.
"Quick!" she shouted. "Cover me with something!"
She dived onto the ground and we nervously draped our lunch sacks over her body. The carriage passed us thirty seconds later. The entire coach was studded with jewels and a giant black flagpole sprung from its center, like the mast of a great ship. The flag displayed the Royal Coat of Arms: a man wrestling three bears at the same time. We couldn't see the passengers, just the swinging arm of the whip-man. He slowed down when he passed us and glanced at the mound of lunch sacks -- but then he sped up and the carriage rolled out of sight.
"The coast is clear," Sven said, in a heroic tone of voice. He tossed the lunch sacks off her body and pulled her up by the hand.
"Thank you," she said, smiling awkwardly.
"Who are you hiding from?" Sven asked. "Is it the Queen?"
She didn't respond -- but we could tell by how nervous she looked that Sven had guessed it. The Queen was truly terrifying, a rumored sorceress who had poisoned her husband to become the sole ruler of the kingdom. She lived in an enormous stone castle, and nobody had laid eyes on her for years, except for her son, the Prince.
"So she's out to get you, huh?" Sven asked. "Well I bet it's because she jealous of your beauty."
Her cheeks reddened slightly -- and a nauseous wave of jealousy surged through my body. I hated Sven for making her blush like that.
"So that's it!" Sven said, grinning proudly. "Well, if I were the Queen, I'd be jealous too. Don't worry though. You're safe here...as long as I'm around to protect you."
By the end of the month, Sven was following her everywhere. He started carrying around a sword -- a heavy, wooden thing that was so big he had to carry it with both hands. And whenever she got up to go outside, he ran out ahead of her and made a big show of checking the yard for suspicious activity.
"It's clear," he'd yell, beckoning her with his stubby fingers.
"Thank you," she'd say, patting him on the head.
Sven called in sick one day and when the rest of us returned from the mine, he was sitting in the garden with her. I couldn't overhear their conversation, but I could tell from Sven's gestures that he was reenacting some kind of wrestling match, in which he had come out the winner. We started walking towards them -- but Sven saw us coming and he ran over to stop us.
"Listen up everyone," he said. "I think it would be best to just give her some space for a couple of days. She's going through a hard time right now."
"What do you mean?" Vlad said.
"I can't really talk about it," he said. "It's sort of between me and her. Just trust me."
Over the course of the next few days, a series of rumors went around the house: the queen was trying to kill her, a magic mirror had declared her the most beautiful girl in the world, a witch was on the prowl. But it was impossible to tell if any of this was true. Everyone was lying about the number of one-on-one conversations they had had with her, to try to intimidate everyone else.
Every activity had degenerated into a ridiculous, child-like contest for her attention. The seven of us would stay up late around the fire, laughing and singing as loudly as we could, and as soon as she went to bed, the singing would stop. We'd sit in silence for a moment, and then go off to our bunks. We had nothing to talk about when she wasn't around. We had nothing to say to each other.
She always woke up early, and everyone raced to the breakfast room first thing in the morning to maximize the amount of one-on-one time they had with her. We sleep in a seven-level bunk bed and I'm right in the middle. Every morning, I could hear the other guys waking up one by one, creaking down the ladder as silently as possible, trying to edge the other guys out.
We ran into her once on the way back from the mine. She was picking flowers by the side of the road, collecting them in a small wooden bowl. As soon as Sven saw her, he loudly offered to help Bob carry his mining sack.
"Let me give you a hand," he said, strutting over.
"I don't need any help," Bob muttered, glancing nervously at the girl to see if she had witnessed the exchange.
"Come on, let me carry it," Sven said. "It's no problem for me." When he reached for the sack, Bob exploded.
"I don't need any help, damn it! I can carry it myself!"
"All right," Sven said, flashing the girl a smile. "I was just trying to be nice. You looked like you were having some trouble."
Christ, I thought, she could do so much better than Sven. Everything he told her was a lie, or a calculated ploy designed to win her respect. She needed someone who was down to earth, someone who was honest with her. Someone who could make her laugh. I mean, yes, I had my flaws: stubby arms, overly hairy fingers, a naturally grumpy-looking face. But maybe she found these things endearing? Or at the very least, if she got to know me, maybe she could get used to them? I wasn't perfect, but if she gave me the chance I knew I could keep her entertained and happy, and protect her. I knew I could love her just as well as any other man.
Part Three
I decided to go out for a smoke; I needed to get away from the other dwarfs. Except that wasn't it. I wanted to find her, to spend some time alone with her without everyone else interrupting. I wandered around the cabin until I heard her voice. She was talking to someone -- Sven, probably. I walked towards her anyway; maybe he would leave by the time I got there, and I could be alone with her for a few seconds.
"Hey Grumpy!" she'd say.
"Hey," I'd say, nodding casually, as if I hadn't expected to run into her. "How's it going?"
I could tell something was wrong as soon as I saw her face; she was squinting angrily and shaking her head in protest. I looked up -- and saw a dark black streak above the trees: the Royal flag.
Could I rescue her? I dropped to my knees and stuffed some rocks into my pockets -- maybe I could throw them at her kidnapper from a distance... Or at the very least, I could create a diversion and give her a chance to escape. Then if I escaped, she'd remember my selflessness and reward me with her hand in marriage! I'd ask Sven to be the best man and he'd have to say yes to be polite... and we'd move into our own little house on the other side of the stream...by the time I had gotten to this stage of my fantasy, I could tell what was really going on.
"Come on, baby," the Prince was saying. "Why are you staying with these guys?"
"Because they're nice to me."
"Look. I've been in a stupor ever since you left. I'm living on the peak of Mount Verone, in an abandoned castle, without any servants. I barely eat, I never sleep..."
"Does Sophie visit you up there?"
"That's a cheap shot," the Prince said. "That's a really cheap shot."
He dragged his giant thumb across her cheek.
"Look," he said. "If you're trying to punish me... it's working. I've never felt this miserable in my entire life."
I peaked around the tree to get a better look. The Prince was physically perfect. Even the bags beneath his eyes were flawlessly symmetrical, like two little half-moons from a picture book.
"Think about it," he said.
"All right," she said.
When he galloped off, I saw her staring at the royal flag... and I could tell by the smile on her face that she was never going to leave him. Oh sure, she might run away for a couple of months every now and then to make him jealous. She could always find some dwarfs to live with, a cabin of non-threatening guys who would take her in and worship her and believe any crazy story she told them, about witches or magical mirrors. But deep down, she knew where she belonged.
When I got back to the cabin, I realized I was missing my pipe. It had fallen out of my pocket when I was stooped over, picking up rocks like a fool. I thought about going back to retrieve it, but I was worried I'd run into her. I was determined never to speak to her again.
I stared at her angrily throughout dinner, even going so far as to ignore her when she asked for more stew. But my resolve didn't last. I was sitting outside in the garden, looking up at the moon, when she approached me. I had been replaying her conversation with the prince over and over again in my head -- and her voice was so loud in my mind that it took me a second to realize that she was actually speaking to me in person.
"Is everything all right, Grumpy?"
"I'm fine."
She must have detected some bitterness in my voice, because she crouched down suddenly and looked into my eyes.
"Do you mind that I call you Grumpy?" she asked. "Because if you do, I won't do it anymore."
"It's all right," I said. "You can call me whatever you want."
"Good," she said. "You're not... mad at me, are you?"
"Why would I be mad at you?"
She laughed.
"Oh, I don't know..."
I started to walk away from her -- but then I felt a hard tap on my shoulder. It was my pipe -- the one I'd dropped in the woods.
"You dropped this," she said, smiling awkwardly.
I quickly took it from her, avoiding eye contact.
"Listen Grumpy," she said. "I'm really glad we're friends. And I just... I want you to know that. You know what I mean?"
I nodded, afraid that if I spoke, my voice would break. My eyes were already scalding.
"No matter what happens," she said. "I want us to stay friends"
She stuck out her hand -- and what else could I do? I shook it.
Part Four
"I have an announcement to make," Sven said, pacing back and forth across the dining room. "I've decided to ask the girl to marry me. I just wanted to let you guys know -- because you're my buddies and I don't want there to be any secrets between us."
"What makes you think she'll agree to that?" Vlad shouted, shaking his fists from across the room.
"Oh, I'm not too worried," Sven said. He looked so ridiculous, with his ridiculous, wooden sword. And the sad thing was: I knew he had about as good a chance as any of us.
The girl must have heard Sven's speech, because by the time he knocked on her door she had already put her plan into action.
"This apple has made me weak," the letter read. "I think it was poisoned by a witch. If I succumb, please carry me to the peak of Mount Verone and lay me on the grass. It is my final wish. Love always."
It was her way of letting everyone down gently, and I have to admit, it really did make things a lot easier. The house would be full of grief for a while, but I knew it would fade. I don't think we ever could have recovered from seven rejected marriage proposals.
She wasn't very good at pretending to be dead. Her eyelids fluttered a couple times on the way up the mountain -- and once, Bob stumbled over a root, and I'm pretty sure I heard her mutter something. But the other dwarfs were lost in their thoughts, and I doubt any of them noticed.
We laid her body gently on the grass and Sven said a few final words. I could tell that Ivan resented the fact that Sven was giving the eulogy, but he didn't protest. It was over, after all.
We marched down the mountain single-file. I was last in line and I'm pretty sure I was the only one who saw what happened next. First she tilted her head a little, to make sure we were gone. Then she stood up, dusted herself off, and knocked on the castle door. Within seconds I could hear the prince bounding across the moat, his heavy boots slapping against the stone. He barreled through the gate and threw his arms around her waist. He whispered something in her ear and she nodded enthusiastically, her eyes filling suddenly with tears. Then he lifted her off the ground and twirled her around in a circle, two, three times while she laughed and feigned protests. Her pale cheeks were flushed with crimson and her chest was heaving with excitement. I don't think she ever looked more beautiful. I looked away a second before they kissed.
"A miracle has occurred!" her wedding invitation would read. "The Prince has touched his lips to mine...and brought me back to life."
When we got back to the cabin, the first thing we saw was the table. We had spent the morning preparing a feast, and the sight of those eight fancy place settings practically reduced us to tears. We walked around the table in a circle, gawking at the spread like it was the work of total strangers. Eventually, Vlad jumped onto the table and gathered all the silverware, stuffing it into a sack for some other time. When he was finished, he dragged the girl's chair into the kitchen. It made a horrible screeching sound, like bark being ripped off a tree. He brought out the stew and we ate it in silence, staring straight down into our bowls. Sven was the first one to speak.
"Guys," he mumbled. "Can I ask you a question?"
I looked over at him. He hadn't touched his stew. He was scrunched up in his chair with his hands balled in his lap. He'd put his sword away and he looked even smaller than usual.
"Do you guys think the girl... would have said yes?"
We looked up from our bowls and scanned each other's faces, trying to figure out what to say. I realized that it was the first time in weeks that I had really looked at these guys. They looked more tired than usual. Their eyes were droopier and their postures worse. But they were still the same people I remembered from before, the same people who drank with me, and sang with me and saved me a spot at the table.
"You know what I think?" I said. "I think she would have said yes."
There was a brief pause. Then Bob cleared his throat.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah... I could see it all over her face. The way she looked at you and the way she smiled whenever you said anything--"
"It was in the bag," Vlad said. "You had it in the bag."
Sven coughed a couple times and rubbed his eyes. He started to say something, but then he stopped himself.
Vlad walked across the table and poked him in the chest.
"Hey," he said, his lips curling slightly. "Less moping, more wrestling."
There were a couple nods and some laughter and then, the next thing we knew, we were cheering, smacking the table with our fists, tossing food across the room--
"How about it?" Vlad said. "I'll spot you a headlock!"
Sven hesitated for a moment, but we kept chanting his name -- Sven! Sven! Sven! -- and eventually, he hoisted up his arms and threw them around Vlad's neck. It looked, for a moment, like an embrace.
