Elizabeth’s father couldn’t be bothered. He was a chemist by day and brought his studies home with him. He regarded cooking and cleaning as nuisances that he hired people to avoid. And he avoided gardening altogether.

He never applied fertilizer or insecticide, but did sprinkle seeds every spring, so the grubs, moles and cut worms happily chewed their way through new growth. The very large yard looked like an abandoned prison ground, which the neighbors hated and the bugs loved. And one other thing did too.

Elizabeth liked to dig. Not in sand, that was for toddlers. No, she was nine, and spent free afternoons excavating holes half as deep as she was tall.   She sometimes imagined she was digging for treasure, and sometimes that she was building a fort, but really, she just liked finding what the next spade-full held. The neighbors grumbled even more about this, but the yard was fenced, and there was really no way they could accidentally fall into any of the pot holes.

And then, one afternoon, deep in a hole, while leaning on her spade, something poked out of the side of the hole and fell to the bottom. The dirt brown something wriggled a bit. Too big to be a bug, she thought. Mole maybe? Curious, she crouched down to study it. Gnarly little arms and legs, a head with long beard and hair, all over it, but a hairless body. It was every bit of three inches long.

As Elizabeth leaned in closer it opened tiny eyes. She yanked her head back, but not before realizing that it was plainly a male something or other. It opened its mouth and she could faintly hear a basso profundo sound. She thought about climbing out of the hole and running away, then about whacking it with her spade, then about shoveling dirt on it and running away. But she did none of these. It was tiny and motionless, maybe helpless, and the most exciting thing she’d ever found digging. She leaned her head back in, cocking an ear to it.

And could just barely hear what sounded like words. She leaned a little further in. 

“Tainted grubs. Need milkweed sap. Help.”

Her expressions morphed through fright and into concern. She’d only just discovered this thing and it was dying. She climbed out of the hole, ran over to a weed patch (there were a lot of them in the yard) and yanked out some milkweed stalks. As the sap was seeping onto her hands she ran back, jumped down into the hole and held a stalk end against the tiny, fuzz surrounded mouth. The sap covered its face but she could see the mouth opening and shutting. It gurgled, then spoke again, slurring a bit through the sap.

“Thank you, little girl.”

She giggled, partly nervousness and partly because she was a thousand times the size of the tiny thing. “You’re welcome.”

It seemed to cringe. “I need to ask something else. Harsh sunlight can also harm me. Could you move me into the shade?”

Elizabeth thought for a second. She didn’t want to touch it, but did want to help. She propped the shovel on dirt mounds so the blade of the shovel, like an awning, provided the needed shade. “Better,” it said.

Questions were bubbling up in her like a shaken soda can, and she had to ask them.

“WHAT are you?”

“You would call me a gnome.”

“No, you’re not, gnomes are cute little fat men with pretty clothes and peaked hats.”

The fuzzy mouth crinkled into what could have been a smile. “Gnomes, my dear, live in the ground. Ask yourself how long pretty clothes would stay that way. And before you ask, the Brothers Grimm got it wrong. We don’t beat people up for a loaf of bread.”

“Oh. So you eat bugs?”

“My preference is earthworms, but, yes, bugs will do.”

“Why are you in our yard?”

The little gnome made a face. “Because your neighbors dump all kinds of chemicals on their lawns and gardens. Plant poisons and harsh growth chemicals make me really sick. Your yard has none of that. I can breathe without wheezing.”

“Do you have a name?”

The gnome looked offended. “Of course, do you?”

“My name is Elizabeth”

“Gnarbelblong is mine.”

She smiled. “That’s funny. Do all gnomes have names that start with the “nar” sound?”

“Of course. Our nicknames usually don’t though.”

Elizabeth was quiet for a few seconds. She could barely hear him speak, and wanted to pick him up and put him closer to her ear, but was afraid he’d bite or sting her. She looked down at the shovel shaded gnome and realized that he might still need help. “Will you be okay to crawl back into the dirt?”

Gnarbelblong rolled over, sinking his hands and forearms into the earth. “Not yet, I’m still shaky.”

Elizabeth squinched her eyes in concentration. Then sighed. “If I pick you up, will you bite me?”

“Of course not, I’m not some shrew.”

“And if I bring you home, will you promise to do what I tell you, to not cause any trouble?”

“That would be most kind of you. I should recover after a day or two.”

“Oh, wait, don’t you need to live in dirt?”

“That’s just where I prefer to live, not where I have to.”

“Okay.” She squatted down, put her fingers under Gnarbelblong, and grunted. He was as heavy as iron, heaver maybe. She lifted him up, and dropped him in her shirt pocket, which luckily didn’t rip.

She tilted her head toward him. “We don’t have any bugs or worms in the house, so maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

“The compost pile behind your back door should provide everything I need.”

“Oh. Okay, I guess.” 

And into the house they went. Her father, as absorbed in his work as ever, barely glanced at her. “Don’t forget to shower, my little mud hen.”

“Yes, dad.”

Elizabeth emptied out her little jewelry case, and folded in a wash cloth. “That should keep you warm”

The tiny smile was radiant. “Not needed, but your care is appreciated.”

She excused herself to shower and have supper. Then, while it was still light, she brought Gnarbelblong out to the compost pile. He moved slowly and, from his expression, painfully into the moistly rotting mix of vegetables, greens and humous. After a quarter hour, she began to worry about him, but just then he slithered out of the pile, a worm end still wriggling in his mouth. “A most tasty Annelida,” he advised. 

“If you say so.” She picked him up in a paper towel, and, cupping him in the palm of her hand, went back to her bedroom. “Gnarbelblong, would it be okay if I asked you more questions?”

“Of course, my dear, within reason.”

“I know what you eat, but what do you do all day and night in the ground?”

He smiled. “Gnomes are of the earth, and it is the earth we tend to- minerals and elements, compounds and strata. We feel the birth pains of granite.”

Elizabeth didn’t understand this, but nodded anyway. “Are there lady gnomes?”

“Oh yes, but we are dispersed, and meeting one is a once in a century ecstasy.”

She didn’t quite understand that either.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell my dad you’re here or what you are.”

“Thank you, but we rely on the power of your skepticism. Should you tell about me no one will believe you.”    The gnome looked a little sad. “I’ll need to recover here tonight and will leave before first light.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “But we’ve only just met, you can’t, the doors are all closed.”

He grinned. “Did you really think all we could do was burrow underground looking for insects?” He disappeared, then reappeared on her bureau. “You have been most kind to a creature you feared. Tomorrow afternoon go back to your hole. I’ll have left you a little something. If you have a difficult question that you think I can answer, ask it while holding this thing. Who knows, I might know the answer.”

And with that the gnome lay down and slept. Elizabeth, confused and disappointed to lose him so soon, eventually slept as well. When she woke up the next morning, he was gone, leaving only mud smudges on the washcloth.

She resisted the urge to immediately run out to her hole, but it took a mighty effort. Finally late that afternoon, she could resist no longer and ran out into the yard. There, shining like silver, was a life-size statuette of Gnarbelblong. There was a note next to it. ‘Only dangerous if you ask about what you crave and not about what you need to know. It’s platinum of course, gold is much overrated.’

---