The Gnome Also Rises

A single drop of water marked the beginning of the end, threatening to expose the gnome hidden inside.

It began with a sound. A tiny, insignificant sound that should have been lost in the vast, quiet cold of a proper winter afternoon. But it wasn't a proper winter afternoon. It was a fraud, a meteorological betrayal of the highest order. The sun, a buttery, unwelcome smear in the pale blue sky, was throwing off heat like a faulty radiator. And the sound, the terrible sound, was the *plink... plonk... plink* of water.

Milo, crouched low behind what was once the mighty east wall of Fort Frostbite, heard it first. His ears, perpetually tuned to the frequency of impending disaster, twitched inside his woolen hat. He froze, a half-packed snowball forgotten in his mittened hand. He tilted his head, listening past the cheerful chirping of a very confused robin.

*Plink.*

It was coming from inside the fort.

"Pete," he whispered, the word a puff of steam in the warm air. "Did you hear that?"

Pete, his younger sister, was on her stomach on the fort’s parapet, meticulously arranging a line of acorn-cap soldiers. She was humming a tuneless, warbling song about a squirrel who became king of the world. She did not look up.

"Hear what? The sound of King Acorn's army marching to glorious victory? 'Cause I hear that. It's very loud. Tramp, tramp, tramp!"

"No. Not that." Milo crab-walked closer, his snow pants making a *shuff-shuff-shuff* sound against the softening snow. He pressed his ear against the interior wall of their magnificent creation. It had taken them all of Saturday to build it, a towering, crenelated masterpiece of packed snow and ice-slicked walls. It was their command center, their castle, their secret hiding place. And inside its hollow heart, nestled in a carefully carved alcove, sat Bartholomew.

*Plonk.*

The sound was clearer now. Deeper. More ominous. It was the sound of melting. Milo’s blood went cold, a strange sensation on such a warm day.

"Pete. Seriously." His voice was tight. "It's the fort. It's... it's sweating."

That got her attention. Pete rolled over, dislodging King Acorn and his entire battalion, who tumbled silently into a slushy puddle below. She scrunched up her face, her freckled nose wrinkling.

"Don't be dumb, Milo. Forts don't sweat. People sweat. Mr. Henderson sweats when he has to mow the steep part of his lawn."

The mention of their neighbor's name hung in the air like a guillotine. Mr. Henderson. The man whose prize-winning petunias they had accidentally flattened last summer. The man whose newspaper they had once used for papier-mâché. The man who polished his prize garden gnome with a special cloth every single Sunday.

Bartholomew.

Milo scrambled inside the fort’s low entrance, his boots sinking into the wet floor with a squelch. The air inside was cool but damp, smelling of earth and trapped winter. And there, on his little snow-shelf, sat the gnome. His pointy red hat was gleaming, his ceramic beard was impeccably white, and his fishing rod was held at a jaunty, eternally optimistic angle. And from the tip of his hat, a single, fat droplet of water was gathering.

Milo watched, horrified, as it swelled, trembled, and then fell.

*Plink.*

It landed right on Bartholomew's black boot, a tiny, dark blemish on the otherwise pristine hiding place. Another drop was already forming in its place.

Pete crawled in behind him, her eyes widening. "Oh," she said softly. "It *is* sweating."

"It's not sweating, it's melting!" Milo hissed, gesturing wildly at the ceiling of their icy chamber. The once-smooth dome was now pocked and uneven, glistening with a sinister sheen. "The whole thing is melting! The sun!"

They both scrambled back outside and looked up. The sun was a tyrant in the sky, laughing at them. The beautiful, sharp edges of their fort were slumping. The crisp, white walls were turning a dingy, translucent grey. Puddles were forming around the base, little moats of their own destruction.

"So?" Pete said, trying for nonchalance but chewing on the string of her mitten, a sure sign of panic. "We'll just... put him back before it all falls down."

"Put him back where?" Milo’s voice was rising, climbing the ladder of hysteria. "Mr. Henderson is at his sister's house in Milltown! He's not back until five o'clock! It's..." He yanked up the sleeve of his coat to look at the cheap digital watch he'd gotten in a cereal box. "It's one-fifteen! The whole fort could be a puddle by two! He'll be sitting there in the mud for everyone to see!"

The image flashed in both their minds simultaneously: Bartholomew the gnome, a bright spot of red and white in a sea of brown backyard slush, looking accusingly toward their house. And then, the image of Mr. Henderson's car pulling into the driveway. Of Mr. Henderson's face, which normally looked like a grumpy potato, turning the color of a furious plum.

"Okay. Okay. Don't panic." Pete said, beginning to panic. She started pacing in a tight circle, her boots making sucking sounds in the muck. "We need a plan."

"I had a plan!" Milo shot back, his hands flapping at his sides. "The plan was 'borrow' Bartholomew for the 'Neighborhood Objects as Art' presentation, hide him in the snow fort where he'd be safe, and put him back Sunday morning before Mr. Henderson even woke up! The plan did not account for a freak heatwave in the middle of February!"

"It's not a heatwave, it's just sunny," Pete argued, though her heart wasn't in it.

"It's forty-five degrees! To a snow fort, that's the surface of Mercury!"

A chunk of snow slid off the top of the wall with a wet *schlop* and landed at Pete's feet. They both stared at it. It was no longer snow. It was a sad, grey lump of slush.

"Okay," Milo said, taking a shaky breath and trying to seize control. He was the older brother. He was supposed to be in charge of things. "Okay. We need to... we need to make it cold again. We need to fight the sun."

Pete stopped pacing and looked at him, her eyes gleaming with the manic light of a terrible idea. "How do you fight the sun? With a giant space-slingshot?"

"No, you idiot! We shade it! We... we reinforce the walls!" Milo looked around the yard, his gaze frantic. His eyes landed on the forgotten pile of snow they had shoveled from the driveway that morning. It was on the north side of the house, still mostly in shadow. "There! More snow! We just have to pile more snow on top! It'll act as insulation!"

It was a flawed plan, but it was a plan. And a flawed plan was infinitely better than no plan at all. Without another word, they sprang into action. They grabbed their shovels, plastic and brightly colored, tools of winter fun now repurposed for a desperate, high-stakes construction project.

"Get the wet, packy stuff from the bottom!" Milo yelled, already scooping up a heavy load of slush and running it toward the fort. He splattered it against the sagging south wall, the one taking the most direct solar abuse. It didn't stick so much as slide, a pathetic smear of grey against grey.

Pete followed with her own shovelful. "It's too heavy! It's making it worse!"

"No it's not! It's... it's just settling!" Milo insisted, grabbing another load. His gloves were already soaked through, the icy water seeping into his fingertips. His back ached. This was nothing like the joyful, crisp work of building the fort on Saturday. This was a grim, frantic battle against physics. They worked in a frenzy, a whirlwind of flying slush and grunted commands.

"More on this corner! It's starting to lean!"

"I'm trying! My arms feel like noodles!"

"Don't think about the noodles, think about Mr. Henderson's face!"

That was all the motivation they needed. They shoveled and slapped and packed, their breath coming in ragged, steamy gasps. The fort no longer looked like a majestic castle. It was becoming a lumpy, misshapen mound, a vaguely fort-shaped pile of dirty snow. And still, the dripping continued. It was faster now. A constant, steady *pitter-patter* from within, the frantic heartbeat of their impending doom.

After ten minutes of grueling, pointless labor, Milo stopped and leaned on his shovel, chest heaving. Sweat was trickling down his forehead, stinging his eyes. "It's not working," he gasped. "We're just piling more water on top of the water."

Pete threw her shovel down in disgust. "The sun is too strong! It's like a giant laser beam of melting!" She kicked at the base of the fort, and a new river of meltwater streamed out from the impact. "We need a roof! A giant, sun-blocking roof!"

Milo's eyes scanned the yard again. The garage. The garage was full of junk. And junk was sometimes useful. "The umbrella!" he shouted. "The big beach umbrella!"

It was a stroke of genius. Pete's face lit up. "Yes! The stripy one!"

They abandoned their shovels and sprinted for the garage. Milo fumbled with the side door, his numb fingers struggling with the knob. They burst inside, into the cool, dusty darkness that smelled of gasoline and old fertilizer. There it was, leaning in a corner behind the lawnmower and a stack of bald tires: the giant beach umbrella, a relic from a vacation two summers ago. It was obnoxiously cheerful, with wide, alternating stripes of sunshine yellow and ocean blue.

It was heavy and awkward. They each grabbed an end and wrestled it out the door, knocking over a rake in the process which clattered loudly to the concrete floor. They froze, listening. Silence. No sign of Mr. Henderson. The coast was clear.

Getting the umbrella into position was a slapstick nightmare. Milo tried to jam the pointed end into the top of the fort, but the snow was too soft and it just kept sinking.

"I can't get it to stand up!" he grunted, pushing with all his might.

"Let me try!" Pete scrambled up the slushy side of the mound, her boots finding no purchase. She slid back down, landing in a heap. "It's too slippery!"

"Okay, new plan!" Milo declared, his mind racing. "We don't stick it *in* the fort. We open it up and just... lay it on top! Like a hat! A giant, sun-proof hat!"

It took both of them to push the mechanism to open the huge umbrella. With a loud *WHOOMP*, it sprang open, a massive canvas flower of yellow and blue. It was even bigger than they remembered. They maneuvered it over the lumpy fort, the metal ribs scraping against the slush. Finally, they got it centered. It covered the whole structure, casting a wide, striped shadow.

They stood back, panting, admiring their work. The dripping from inside the fort seemed to slow, just a little. The direct assault from the sun had been repelled.

"See?" Milo said, a triumphant grin spreading across his face. "Teamwork. Brains and brawn."

"I'm the brains," Pete stated.

"No, I'm the brains, you're the... brawn assistant."

"My idea was the roof! Umbrellas are a type of roof!"

"I thought of the *specific* umbrella! That's tactical thinking!"

Their argument was cut short by a new, horrifying sound. It was a low *creeeak*, followed by a soft, wet *thump*. They looked at the umbrella. The center pole, weighed down by the heavy, waterlogged canvas, was slowly, inexorably, pushing its way down through the weakened roof of the fort. A small crater was forming in the center of the umbrella.

"It's... it's caving in," Pete whispered.

"No, it's not," Milo said, though his eyes were wide with terror. "It's just... settling."

The pole sank another inch. Then another. They were no longer protecting the fort; they were actively squashing it. And inside, directly beneath that descending metal pole, was Bartholomew.

"GET IT OFF!" Milo shrieked. They lunged for the umbrella, grabbing the edges and trying to heave it sideways. The wet canvas was heavy as a lead blanket. They slipped and slid in the muddy slush, their combined strength barely enough to budge it. With a final, desperate heave, they managed to slide it off the mound. It landed with a wet slap in a puddle, its cheerful stripes now smeared with mud and grey slush.

They stared at the damage. There was now a perfect, circular hole in the roof of the fort, directly over the gnome's hiding place. Sunlight streamed through it like a spotlight in a prison movie, illuminating their precious, ceramic hostage.

The dripping was back, and it was worse than ever. It was a miniature rainstorm inside the snow cave.

"Okay," Pete said, her voice unnervingly calm. "The umbrella was a bad idea."

"It was YOUR idea!" Milo yelled, pointing an accusing, wet-gloved finger.

"My idea was 'a roof'! You chose the 'heavy, gnome-crushing' model!"

"We have to get him out of there!" Milo decided, diving for the entrance. He crawled inside. It was a disaster zone. The shelf had partially collapsed. Bartholomew was tilted at a precarious angle, his fishing rod now pointing directly at the ground. Water was streaming from the new hole in the roof, pouring directly onto his little red hat.

*Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.* It was like water torture. For gnomes.

"He's drowning!" Milo cried out from within the collapsing structure.

"Gnomes can't drown, they're made of... gnome stuff," Pete called back, peering nervously over the wall.

"He's getting wet! Mr. Henderson will know! He'll see the water spots! He uses a special polish! It probably has, I don't know, hydrophobic properties!"

Milo grabbed Bartholomew. The ceramic was cold and slick with water. He was heavier than he looked. Milo backed out of the crumbling entrance, clutching the gnome to his chest like a rescued baby.

They stood in the watery, wrecked backyard, holding the evidence of their crime. The sun continued its relentless assault. The fort was a lost cause, a slowly dissolving monument to their bad decisions. It was two o'clock. They had three hours.

"Now what?" Pete asked, her voice small. She poked the gnome's belly. "We can't just stand here holding him."

"We need to keep him cold," Milo said, thinking furiously. "The ground is cold. The snow is cold. But it's all wet. The problem isn't just the heat. It's the water." He looked at the gnome, then back at the house. An idea, so brilliant and so stupid it could only be born of pure desperation, began to form in his mind.

"The freezer," he breathed.

Pete's eyes lit up again. "The big one? In the garage?"

"Yes!" Milo was energized, a general rallying his troops for one last, insane charge. "It's perfect! It's dark, it's cold, it's secure! We'll just put him in there until five minutes before Mr. Henderson gets home. We'll wrap him in a towel so he doesn't get freezer burn."

"Do gnomes get freezer burn?" Pete wondered.

"I'm not taking any chances!" Milo declared. "Come on!"

Clutching Bartholomew between them, they slogged across the swampy lawn to the garage. The gnome seemed to stare at them with his painted-on eyes, a silent, judgmental passenger on their voyage of idiocy. They hauled the garage door up with a loud rumble, wincing at the noise. Inside, against the back wall, stood the chest freezer, a large, white humming box of salvation.

Milo lifted the heavy lid. A blast of frosty air washed over them, smelling of frozen pizzas and forgotten leftovers. The inside was a chaotic landscape of frost-covered boxes and mysterious, foil-wrapped packages.

"Okay, make a space," Milo commanded. "Right here, between the peas and what I think is leftover Thanksgiving turkey."

Pete started shifting packages around. "It's full. There's no room."

"Make room!" Milo grunted, struggling to hold the heavy gnome. "This is a matter of life and... and being grounded for the rest of our natural lives!"

Pete heaved a giant, frozen block of something—maybe chili, maybe a science experiment from last summer—out of the freezer and let it drop to the floor. She cleared a space just big enough for a small, ceramic fisherman.

"Wait!" Milo said. "The towel!" He put the gnome down carefully on the concrete and ran back into the house through the kitchen door. He returned a moment later with a faded green dish towel.

"For his dignity," Milo explained, wrapping it gently around Bartholomew's midsection like a bathrobe.

They carefully lowered the swaddled gnome into the icy tomb and nestled him between a bag of frozen peas and a box of fish sticks. He looked absurd, a garden ornament having a cryogenic nap.

"Perfect," Pete said with satisfaction.

They lowered the lid of the freezer, plunging Bartholomew back into darkness. The soft hum of the compressor was the only sound. They had done it. The gnome was safe. The crisis was averted.

Milo leaned against the freezer, weak with relief. "Okay. Two hours and forty-five minutes. We just have to act normal. Nobody will suspect a thing."

They walked out of the garage, blinking in the bright sunlight. The remains of Fort Frostbite were a sorry sight, a grey, pockmarked hump rapidly shrinking into the lawn. The beach umbrella lay discarded like a broken toy. The whole yard was a muddy, soupy mess.

"We should... probably clean this up," Pete suggested.

"Yeah," Milo agreed. "Later. Right now, I need to not think about gnomes or Mr. Henderson or melting for at least ten minutes."

They went inside, leaving wet, muddy tracks all over the kitchen floor. Their mom would be mad about that later, but it was a distant, manageable problem compared to the gnome-sized catastrophe they had just narrowly avoided. For a brief, blissful hour, there was peace. They ate cookies. They watched cartoons. They almost forgot about the ceramic man in their freezer.

It was Pete who remembered first. They were in the middle of a commercial for a screamingly loud monster truck rally when her eyes went wide.

"Milo," she said, her voice a horrified whisper.

"What?" he mumbled, his mouth full of chocolate chip cookie.

"The peas."

"What about the peas?" he asked, annoyed at the interruption.

"He's in there with the peas. And the corn. And the fish sticks. And Mom is making that casserole for dinner tonight. The one with the... with the mixed vegetables."

Milo froze. The cookie in his hand suddenly felt very heavy. His eyes met Pete's across the living room. They didn't need to say anything else. They both saw the future playing out in crystal clear, slow-motion horror: their mom, humming a cheerful tune, heading out to the garage. Opening the freezer to get the bag of mixed vegetables. Reaching in, past the turkey and the chili. Her hand closing around a small, pointy, red... hat.

They were out of their seats and moving before the monster truck commercial was even over. They burst back out into the garage, their hearts pounding in a rhythm of pure dread. Milo threw open the freezer lid. There was Bartholomew, nestled in his towel, looking peaceful.

"Get him out! Get him out!" Pete urged, dancing from foot to foot.

Milo lifted the gnome. He was now painfully, shockingly cold. The ceramic felt like a block of ice. "Okay, okay! Now what? We can't take him inside! She'll see him!"

"We have to hide him outside again!" Pete said.

"Where?" Milo shrieked, looking out at the backyard. The sun was lower in the sky now, but the damage was done. The fort was little more than a pile of slush. The yard was a network of puddles. There was nowhere to hide a gnome.

"Behind the bush!" Pete pointed to the big rhododendron bush near Mr. Henderson's fence.

"He'll see him from his kitchen window! It's the first place he'll look!"

"In the shed?"

"It's locked!"

"Then... then..." Pete's eyes darted around, landing on the wreckage of their fort. A new, even more terrible idea dawned. "We have to rebuild. We have to make it cold again. For real this time."

Milo stared at her. Then at the slush pile. Then at the freezing cold gnome in his arms.

"You're insane," he said.

"We have ice cubes!" she shot back, her voice ringing with desperate conviction. "We have all the frozen stuff from the freezer! We can make an igloo of frozen food!"

Milo opened his mouth to argue, to explain the fundamental laws of thermodynamics to his eight-year-old sister. But he stopped. Because as insane as it was, it was the only idea they had. Their options had narrowed to 'Guaranteed Catastrophe' or 'Insanely Complicated and Probably Futile Plan That Might Just Work'. He chose the latter.

"Get the wagon," he said, his voice grim. "We're going to need everything."

What followed was perhaps the strangest construction project in the history of suburban backyards. They started by emptying half the contents of the chest freezer into their little red wagon. Bags of frozen peas, corn, and carrots. Boxes of fish sticks and chicken nuggets. Several foil-wrapped objects of unknown origin. And, crucially, two large trays of ice cubes from the kitchen freezer.

Milo laid Bartholomew down gently in the shade of the house, his towel-wrap still in place. "Guard him," he ordered Pete. "I'll start on the foundation."

Their new plan was not to rebuild the entire fort, but to construct a smaller, more concentrated fortress of cold around the gnome himself. A tomb. A sarcophagus of frozen goods.

Milo started by making a thick wall of slush, packing it down as hard as he could. Then came the reinforcements. He took the ice cube trays and began laying the cubes into the slush like bricks. It was tedious, slippery work.

"This is going to take forever!" Pete yelled, hopping on one foot to stay warm. "Mr. Henderson will be home in ninety minutes!"

"Then stop hopping and start helping!" Milo yelled back. "We need mortar! Frozen pea mortar!"

Pete grabbed a bag of frozen peas. The little green spheres were hard as marbles. She began shoving them into the cracks between the ice cubes and the slush. It was absurd. It was ridiculous. But it was something to do.

They worked in a silent, focused fury. They built a low, circular wall of slush, ice, and frozen vegetables around the spot where Bartholomew would lie. They used a box of fish sticks to reinforce a weak corner. They filled a gap with a solid brick of frozen spinach.

The sun kept sinking, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. The air was getting colder, but not fast enough. Their masterpiece of frozen food and slush was still weeping water from every pore. The peas were starting to thaw, leaving little green streaks down the sides of their wall.

"We need more cold!" Milo said, his teeth chattering. His gloves were useless, his fingers were numb stumps. "What else is in the wagon?"

Pete peered in. "Uh... a bag of shrimp, two frozen pizza crusts, and that big chili thing."

"Okay. We'll use the chili as a buttress." Milo grabbed the heavy, foil-wrapped brick. It was shaped like a bread loaf. He wedged it against the outside of their low wall. "And the pizzas... they can be the roof!"

They laid the two round, frozen discs of dough over the top of their structure, leaving a small opening. The whole thing looked like a melting, garbage-strewn Hobbithole. It was the most pathetic thing Milo had ever built.

"It's beautiful," Pete whispered, her eyes shining.

"Time to put him in," Milo said gravely. He unwrapped Bartholomew from his towel and gently slid him into the icy, vegetable-studded tomb. Then, they sealed the entrance with the bag of frozen shrimp, packing slush and loose corn kernels into the gaps.

They stood back. Their work was done. In the middle of their ruined, muddy backyard sat a small, lumpy mound of frozen food and dirty snow, glistening under the setting sun. Inside, Bartholomew the gnome waited.

For the first time all afternoon, they stopped. The frantic energy drained away, replaced by a deep, bone-aching exhaustion. They were covered in mud. Pete had a pea stuck in her hair. Milo's jeans were soaked through to the knee. They had fought the sun, and it felt like they had, at best, managed a draw.

"You think it'll hold?" Pete asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Milo looked at the slushy, shrimp-sealed mound. He looked at the long, dark shadows stretching across the lawn. He looked at Mr. Henderson's dark, quiet house. "I don't know," he said honestly. "But we did everything we could."

They looked at each other. A strange understanding passed between them. They had started the day as bickering siblings, and they were ending it as partners in crime, co-conspirators in a desperate battle against the laws of nature. A small smile touched Milo's lips. He reached out and brushed the pea from Pete's hair.

It was in that quiet moment of exhausted camaraderie, as the last sliver of the sun dipped below the horizon, that they heard it. A sound that cut through the evening stillness, a sound far more terrifying than a thousand drips of melting water.

It was the sound of a latch turning.

Across the lawn, a soft yellow light bloomed in Mr. Henderson's kitchen window. And then, with a low, drawn-out groan of old hinges, the back door began to swing open.