Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men Read online

  Gnome on Girl on Gnome:

  A Love Story

  DESPITE HER best intentions, Marguerite Frunklin had never been in love before. She'd been in lust, as had all the girls back home in Ohio when they'd first found out James Franco was studying for a PhD in English, but love was something magical and mysterious to her. It was something she'd been forced to cobble together in her mind with a soulful blend of romantic passages from Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray; from what she'd seen so far, she was pretty sure true love involved at least a limited degree of emotional abuse and dumb and pretty girls taking orders from extraordinarily attractive jackasses.

  Marguerite knew she was pretty enough, but she was never sure she could fake being that stupid.

  "It's not like you had any boyfriends back in Ohio," her brother Bradley said as they stood along the Avenue in the old town of Sintra. They were waiting for one girl or another of his.

  "You're a jerk," she said. "You used to be a lot less of one back in Ohio."

  He grinned. "I also had braces and a lazy eye. Luckily I didn't have to bring those with me to Portugal. Things change, French Fry."

  "Let's not play the nickname game. We all have a past, Bradizzle."

  He punched her on the shoulder; he'd probably meant it to be lighter.

  Two of the local guys were walking toward them; Diogo and Netuno, both dressed in soccer shirts and giving her a look.

  She still felt like she was back in high school, standing by the lockers and being evaluated.

  "They like you," Bradley said.

  "Sure they do."

  "They do. I'll tell ya, French Fry, if I was worried you'd ever close the deal with one of these guys, I'd have to start kicking a lot more asses."

  "Shut up."

  Marguerite silently prayed that the boys would find some distraction before they reached her. She felt nervous enough to vomit.

  "Boa tarde," Diogo said with a smile.

  She knew he was talking to her, but she pretended it was all meant for Bradley. She slowly looked down at her feet.

  "You are going?" Diogo asked.

  "Yes, I have to go," Marguerite said. "We need to get home."

  "He's asking if you're going to his party, dumbass," Bradley said.

  "Tell him no."

  "Tell him yourself."

  Diogo started to laugh. "You should go," he said. "It will be fun."

  "I can't," she said.

  "Why not?" Bradley asked.

  "You know why not."

  "No... I can't say I do." He wasn't going to help.

  "I have to study."

  "It's Friday night. No one has to study."

  "I do," she said.

  Bradley grinned. "No... I'm pretty sure you don't have anything to study."

  "Then you can go," Diogo said.

  "I can't," she said.

  "You work too hard."

  "I know. I... I need to go now."

  She waved awkwardly and turned to leave.

  "She's shy," Bradley said. "You may have to give her a few glasses of ginja to get her to... uh... open up."

  Marguerite prayed to God that no one else caught the joke Bradley was going for. Since English was their second language...

  "It's a joke," Bradley said. "You guys are supposed to laugh. I'm saying that you should get my sister drunk, Diogo."

  Diogo and Netuno looked confused but they laughed, Diogo a little too heartily.

  Marguerite could feel her face blushing.

  "She's blushing, guys," Bradley said. "You know what that means..."

  Marguerite couldn't take it; she couldn't stay to defend herself. Bradley would have kept on her like he always did, until she was in tears and everyone else was pointing and laughing.

  Marguerite ran home and picked a fight with her father instead. It was his fault they were there, anyway.

  Maybe in Ohio, Marguerite thought as she lay on her bed. Maybe there she could have gotten somewhere with a boy, but now that her father had dragged them to Portugal she felt like she was drowning in a foreign language; she didn't know more than a couple words of Portuguese.

  And she didn't know what the boys expected from her; did she need to be clever and funny, or was she supposed to simply smile and nod? The Portuguese girls didn't say much to Bradley; they just let him talk on and on about whatever, smiling politely until he'd start sucking on their faces. Would a boy like Diogo want this American girl to sit back and listen to him drone on in a language she could barely understand? She had no way of figuring that out, not without embarrassing herself completely in the process.

  Marguerite just wanted to fall in love; she didn't want to have to worry about all the legwork.

  Bradley didn't have those problems; he'd arrived in Portugal like a fully formed man of action. This new Bradley was nothing like the awkward boy with too many teeth who'd always hung around Marguerite and her friends, hoping his amazing ability to buy alcohol would lead to a girlfriend.

  In Portugal Bradley got exactly what he wanted. He made it look so easy.

  He'd taken more than a few of them to the marbled bottom floor of the Initiation Well, which would also be a pretty good euphemism for whatever he did to those girls once they got down there.

  "It's to initiate the secret members of the Knights Templar," Bradley had told her once. "At the bottom of the well, representing the ninth circle of Hades, they'd swear an oath. They'd pledge their lives, swearing that they'd rather suffer forever in hell than bring dishonor to the rite."

  "And that really works?" she'd asked. "You take them down there and give them a bunch of crap and they get all open for business?"

  "It doesn't matter what I say... it's how I say it."

  She remembered rolling her eyes at him, pretending that she thought it was all so stupid, but secretly wishing that Diogo or Netuno or... well, she wasn't sure about funny-eared Rafael... no, not Rafael... but wishing one of the boys would give her some bullcrap about ancient knights or solemn oaths. All it would take was one bronze-skinned Pork and Cheese boy to look past her boss-level of awkwardness... just one, and then Marguerite would finally know what all the fuss was about.

  Until then, she'd lay in bed and wait. And play a little Xbox with some of her friends back home once they came online.

  "It was a great party," awkward Rafael told her the next afternoon as he followed along beside her on the way to the butcher; Sintra is a town where there's always a bored guy or two hovering around the girls as they try and do whatever.

  "You went?" Marguerite asked.

  "Not really."

  "Not really?"

  "I walked by. It looked like fun."

  Marguerite knew that Rafael wouldn't have been invited. She decided not to press any further, to spare his feelings and because she didn't feel like talking.

  "Do you like Portugal?" he asked.

  "It's nice."

  "Yes. Even our bedrooms smell like fish."

  That made her smile.

  He smiled, too. "And every time you look down at your dinner plate, there's a set of eyeballs staring back up at you."

  Marguerite laughed. It sounded like he was reciting a joke book.

  "What do you think of the driving?" he asked, bouncing as he walked.

  "Are you setting up a joke?"

  He blushed and nodded.

  She laughed again. "It's something," she said.

  "In Portugal we spend as much time driving on the sidewalks as we do on the road."

  She gave him a little smirk. "Not your best."

  "Sorry," he said. "Your brother told me you play video games."

  "Don't girls play video games in Portugal?"

  "I don't know. I play video games. Maybe we should play sometime?"

  "Maybe," Marguerite replied. She'd already lost interest.

  As much as she wanted someone to notice her... no. Not Rafael. He just didn't count.
/>   Marguerite spent the rest of her day out by herself, since her father had chosen to work from home rather than drive in to Lisbon on a Saturday, and the last thing she wanted to do was apologize for the most recent most terrible things she'd ever said to him.

  He'd chosen his career over his family. He'd left Marguerite's mother locked in a hospital ward in Cincinnati. He'd given Bradley everything he'd ever wanted, while giving Marguerite nothing more than his pale complexion that would burn in minutes in the Portuguese sun if she didn't dunk her face in a gallon of sunscreen three times a day.

  There was no way she would say she's sorry.

  So on days like that she'd leave her Xbox and go out, wandering the mountains of the moon that towered over the town of Sintra, sketching in her notebook and identifying plants, and wishing for something unusual to happen.

  She'd been walking through the grounds of the great and mystical estate of Quinta da Regaleira, on a cloudy day, strolling through the lush gardens that are always on the line between scenic and overgrown. It was a place that was not nearly as old as the mountains around it, but still it seemed almost as magical to her.

  She'd been walking not far from the Initiation Well, the stone staircase that descends into the earth, when she stumbled on two plastic garden gnomes.

  One looked playful, with a toothy smile and a long light gray beard, dressed in an orange hat and tunic and no pants, while the other was more serious-looking, dressed all in dark brown with a pipe hanging out of his mouth. The second gnome had a dark and curly beard, and nothing about him seemed friendly. The two gnomes looked nothing like a matching pair.

  "Who left you here?" she asked them, almost as if she expected an answer. There was no way those gnomes belonged in the glade of blue and white flowers and brown-capped mushrooms.

  She sat down beside them, nibbling on one of the mushrooms that she recognized from one of her field guides, finding it edible but bland; still, it reminded her of home, of picnics at Shawnee Lookout, of having friends and family around her, of not being half a world away, of not being so damned lonely all the time.

  She picked up the gnomes, cradling them in her arms like two hairy watermelons, carrying them with her as she decided to climb down the stairs of the stone-columned well. She'd only been down there with Bradley and his bragging before; now she had two little guides, funny-looking and plastic, to take her down the mystical stairway, and she felt both like laughing and crying at the two-foot boyfriends she'd found.

  As she walked with the gnomes she started to feel funny, as though her heart were beating louder; she could feel the pulsing through the gnomes themselves, as if they themselves had grown little hearts of their own. Had she been wrong about the mushrooms? She didn't think that was it; Marguerite felt that she was probably just overwhelmed by loneliness.

  The trip down was long, a hundred and twenty steps if she remembered it right, and she paused at each of the platforms, not that she'd admit that she needed to catch her breath so often. She'd once been an athlete, but now she just felt like a freckled cream puff.

  She reached the bottom half-winded, and walked out from the dark stairwell into the marble floor in the middle. She looked straight up, past the rows of stairs and stone columns, up to the cloudy spring sky; it had started to rain lightly, and the drops of water fell like mist on their way down to the deep.

  "It feels magical," she said. She realized that she was either talking to nobody or to two plastic gnomes.

  Marguerite put them both down on the floor, placing each on a red arrow of their own, pointing to what she thought were east and south.

  "I'll take the north," she said as she stepped onto an arrow of her own. She dropped down to one knee and could feel her eyes welling up with tears. She felt like an idiot.

  "You're upset," someone said. A warm voice... a friendly, older man.

  "A little," she replied. She looked around but could not see him. She found it unnerving to be talking to an unknown man hiding in the shadows.

  "You are beautiful... you shine like an angel from heaven."

  "You're weirding me out, sir. I... I can't see you."

  "Look to your feet, my darling."

  She looked down, and there she saw the little orange gnome looking back up at her, the plastic now gone and his smile now real.

  "It's magic, dumbass," the other gnome said, his voice hard and unfriendly. He was just as alive but not nearly as pleasant.

  "I think it's the mushrooms," Marguerite said. "I need a new field guide."

  "Tell me of love, my angel," the orange gnome said. "Tell me of the love you want for your life."

  "Tell us what you like to do for kicks," the brown gnome said.

  They were alone down there, as far as she could tell, so she told them what she wanted. "I just want to be in love... it doesn't matter who it is. It's the feeling I want... not the boy or anything. Well, okay... not Rafael..."

  "Would you love me?" the orange gnome asked. "Could you love a humble creature of the soil?"

  "You can have us both," the brown gnome said with little enthusiasm. "The two of us, right here, right now. No waiting."

  "That's very nice," Marguerite said, truly flattered, "but I'm not the kind of girl who goes for that type of thing."

  "We've been waiting forever for you, Marguerite," the orange gnome said. "For as long as there's been magic in these mountains we've been waiting."

  "It's more or less our destiny to make love to you," the brown gnome said. "So it's easier if you just say 'yes'".

  "I need to go," she said. "Some friends are waiting for me at the Chapel."

  She felt the grip of four small hands on her ankles. Her first instinct was to kick the dirty gnomes as hard as she could, but for some reason she didn't. She could have ended it there, threw them off and stomped on their little heads, but she didn't.

  She wanted something to happen.

  Soon they were both hugging her with their entire bodies, holding her firmly and amorously... or possibly humping her legs.

  "Love us, Marguerite," the orange gnome said.

  "Let's find somewhere a little more private," the brown gnome said.

  "I guess I have a few minutes," she said.

  The gnomes led her toward the dark at the edge of the well, pulling on her knees and almost tripping her. As they reached where the stairs met the rock, a door opened to a tunnel that she'd never seen before.

  "A second tunnel," she said.

  "Our secret tunnel," the orange gnome said.

  "Where it'll just be the three of us," the brown gnome said.

  They went into the tunnel, stepping into the dark. The stone door closed behind them, and all of the light disappeared.

  "I can't see," she said.

  They kept leading her, so she felt she had no choice but to trust them, and they walked for another few minutes before they stopped tugging at her knees.

  "This is our quiet and humble home," the orange gnome said.

  "Take off your clothes and lie down," the brown gnome said.

  "This doesn't sound like love to me," Marguerite said.

  "It's passion unbridled," the orange gnome said. "It burns like an eternal flame for you, my angel."

  "Do you want this or not?" the brown gnome asked.

  She knew she did.

  She took off her shirt and her pants, and laid down with only her underwear on. The ground beneath her was much warmer and softer than she expected, like a bed of grass and flower petals. It smelled even better than the gardens above.

  "How does this work?" she asked. "You guys are like less than two feet tall."

  "Love finds a way," the orange gnome said.

  "It's not about size," the brown gnome said. "It's all in how you use it."

  Marguerite didn't ask any more questions, and soon she felt the hands on her body, removing her underwear and touching her skin. It felt different, like one of those massage machi
nes at the shopping mall, or what she'd expect it felt like if you wandered naked through a waterless car wash. It wasn't what she'd imagined, but it did feel good.

  Both gnomes touched her and both gnomes kissed her. She couldn't be sure who was who, though she managed a strong guess from the feel of each beard. They tickled her in a way she'd never expected, and she was surprised at just how arousing it was.

  There were more than a few minutes of touching and kissing, and biting and the faintest pulling of her hair. And then she was pretty sure both gnomes had their way with her, the first soft and gentle, the second rough and hard. Each one was special in its own way, but she knew which lover she preferred.

  She felt two tiny kisses against her lips, one after the other.

  And then the gnomes were gone.

  Marguerite felt around blindly for her underwear; failing that she eventually found the rest of her clothes. She got dressed and started pushing along the wall towards where she thought she'd come in, finding her way through the blackness with many bumps and scrapes against the cold and hard cavern.

  Finally she came to what she thought was the hidden rock door, but she couldn't find a way to open it. She shoved her whole body against it, weathering the scratching of the stone against her skin.

  She called out for help but she didn't think anyone could hear her.

  She stood there for a few minutes, too overwhelmed to weep, and then she made her way back to the grass and flower bed, to see if the tunnel carried on beyond it. She felt all along the rock, looking for a passage, but the only way in was where she'd come from; she was trapped underground, abandoned by her small and bearded lovers.

  It didn't feel real anymore. She didn't see how they could have left her behind.

  Exhausted, she curled up on the grass and flower bed and went to sleep.

  Marguerite woke up to the rays of the sun, and for a moment it felt like she'd never left the glade of blue and white flowers and little brown-capped mushrooms. But she remembered what had happened, and she noticed right then that her bra and panties were still missing.

  She looked over to where the orange and brown gnomes had been. No one was there.

  She stood up and found her way to the Initiation Well, wondering if the gnomes were down there, but she felt silly and didn't want to climb all the way back down. She turned and walked back towards the Chapel, wondering if she could trust what she remembered.

  On her way past one of the sculpted fountains, she saw her brother Bradley and his latest date, a dark-haired girl with a long and pretty nose. Each of them had a little plastic gnome bundled in their arms.

  "Hey," Bradley said as he held up his orange-hatted gnome, "look what we found just outside the Chapel. Some jerk-off just left them in the grass."

  Marguerite froze, unable to come up with something to say.

  "Are you okay?" the girl asked in passable English. "Is this your sister, Bradley?"

  "Uh, Marguerite," Bradley said, "you with us?"

  "What are you going to do with those?" Marguerite asked.

  Bradley shrugged. "We might throw them down the well... that'd freak out whoever's standing at the bottom."

  Marguerite heard the chirp of a phone.

  Bradley pulled his phone from the pocket and glanced at the screen. "Dammit," he said, "I think I've got to run." He turned to his date. "I can drop you back in town if you'd like."

  The girl gave a little pout. "But we just got here," she said. "You promised you'd show me the well."

  "I can show you the well," Marguerite said with a smile. "Bradley talks about it so much that I'm more than qualified to give you the tour."

  The girl looked her over for a moment before nodding. She gave Bradley a kiss on the cheek. "I'll see you later?"

  Bradley smiled at the girl before shooting Marguerite a quick angry look. "I'll see you guys," he said before turning to leave.

  "Wait," Marguerite said. "What about that garden gnome?"

  Bradley tossed the orange gnome over to her, and she caught it without trouble. He stomped away, and Marguerite led the pretty long-nosed girl back to the glade of flowers and mushrooms. She wanted to make sure she repeated each step exactly.

  They both nibbled on a mushroom as Marguerite started telling the story of the Templars, making it all up as she went. The girl seemed really nice, and Marguerite had a feeling that she would appreciate what was coming.

  But there was still one thing left to do.

  "Hold on," Marguerite said.

  "What is it?"

  "Can I see your gnome?"

  She held out the brown-hatted gnome with the stern and serious face. Marguerite handed the orange one over in exchange; she had no need for it.

  "I like this one better," the pretty Portuguese girl said. "He has a nice smile."

  "We all have our favorites," Marguerite said as she held the brown gnome close to her chest. "Now let me show you the Initiation Well. It's really like nothing else in the world."

  Marguerite started to feel her little gnome's heart begin to beat; she knew it was real.

  Marguerite woke up in the sunlight again, with the pretty Portuguese girl still sleeping beside her.

  She gently squeezed the girl's shoulder.

  "I don't even know your name," Marguerite said.

  "My name is Adelia," she said. She started to cry.

  "What's wrong?"

  "That was wrong. I don't know what happened."

  "It was magic. That's a good thing."

  "No," Adelia said, "that's not good. It's wrong."

  "Fine," Marguerite said. "Whatever." She stood up. "If you hated it so much you don't ever have to do it again."

  "Where are the... gnomos?"

  "Probably where you and Bradley found them before."

  "The chapel," Adelia said. "We must get them."

  She got up and started walking briskly toward the chapel.

  Marguerite felt she had no choice but to follow.

  They found the gnomes lying in a bed of purple and yellow flowers growing alongside the white walls of the chapel.

  Adelia picked up the brown-hatted gnome and passed it to Marguerite.

  "What are we going to do with them?" Marguerite asked.

  "We're going to be rid of them," Adelia said. She picked up the other gnome.

  "Let's find a garbage can or something."

  "No... don't be foolish. We have to destroy them."

  "Destroy them? What are you talking about?"

  Adelia started walking back toward the glade of blue and white flowers, clutching her orange-hatted gnome.

  She sat down on the grass, tossing the gnome down beside her. She started plucking flowers and laying them in a pile.

  "What are you doing?" Marguerite asked.

  Adelia didn't answer.

  "Adelia..."

  "I'm going to light them on fire," Adelia said.

  She pulled out a lighter.

  "You smoke?" Marguerite asked.

  "I smoke... something..."

  "You can't start a fire in the middle of the garden," Marguerite said.

  "Don't try to stop me." She knelt down and struck the lighter.

  The flame wouldn't catch.

  "We will take them to my house," Adelia said. "And burn them."

  "No," Marguerite said. "I won't let you."

  "We had sex with them. That is wrong."

  "Why is it wrong?"

  Adelia gave up on lighting her pile of dying flowers. "If it's not wrong, you would want me to tell your brother?"

  Marguerite's mind filled with images of Bradley pointing and laughing, mocking her, probably creating a Facebook Fan Page for "Marguerite and the Brown Gnome: Love and Marriage in the Grotto" and inviting every last friend and relative to the non-existent nuptials. Bradley would do that. She knew he would.

  And Diogo would find out. And Netuno would find out. And Rafael... well, he'd
know, too, and he'd probably tell every last gamer on Xbox LIVE about it.

  "Okay," Marguerite said, "we'll burn them. We'll burn them and we won't tell anyone what happened."

  She felt ashamed, but she wasn't sure if it was the memory of her threesome, or their foursome, or of her sudden betrayal of the little plastic friends she'd only just made.

  Marguerite knew that everything that came after would be mind-numbingly normal.

  Adelia mellowed once they reached her back garden. She even offered Marguerite a can of Sumol Zero, which Marguerite gladly accepted despite the fact that she felt the pineapple soda tasted a little bit like deer piss.

  The two plastic gnomes sat on a stone ledge, looking quite natural beside the small garden of peas and potatoes.

  "I'm sorry if I am seeming rude," Adelia said as they sat down at a small lattice table. "I am... envergonhado."

  "I don't know what that means."

  "It's... shame."

  "Oh. That I get. But I don't think it's fair to them."

  "To the gnomos?"

  "Yeah. They're just doing what gnomes do, I guess."

  Adelia laughed. "You sound like a girl in love with pl?stico."

  Marguerite laughed, too. "Maybe I am," she said.

  Adelia leaned in toward Marguerite and placed her hand on Marguerite's knee. "Did you like it?" she asked in a whisper.

  Marguerite nodded.

  "I liked it, also," Adelia said.

  "Maybe we shouldn't burn them."

  Adelia nodded. "Maybe we should keep them here."

  "They look like they belong," Marguerite said.

  Marguerite stood up from her chair and walked over to the gnomes. She bent over and gave both gnome foreheads a kiss.

  "In love with plastic," she said with a grin.

  The next few weeks were strange and wonderful for Marguerite, and she was sure they'd felt the same for Adelia. They'd meet every few days, when they both were free from work and study, and they'd take the two little gnomes up to Adelia's bedroom. Sometimes they found mushrooms to eat, and sometimes they didn't; they found in time that the mushrooms weren't needed.

  Bradley complained about their new friendship, telling Marguerite that she ought to have picked an uglier girl to be her bestie.

  But Marguerite didn't listen and she just didn't care, and she found that nothing Bradley said to embarrass her, like joking to Diogo and Netuno about her shyness, or asking the boys from the nearby high school if they'd ever wondered just what a pale-skinned ginger girl looked like down below... none of it seemed to bother her anymore.

  She wasn't embarrassed. She had no reason to be.

  And after those few weeks Marguerite had started to notice that the young men of Sintra were treating her differently.

  Diogo and Netuno and even Rafael... they were talking to Marguerite like she was worth talking to, and not just worth looking at. And she was talking to them, and the old urges to throw up, or curl up in a fetal position... those urges were gone.

  "Would you like to go to Quinta with me?" Diogo asked her one day as they walked along the Avenue. "I would love to show it to you."

  Marguerite laughed. "Have you forgotten who my brother is? He's an old pro at taking girls to Quinta."

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Then I won't ruin this for you." She grabbed his hand and squeezed. "I'd love to go to Quinta with you."

  They kept walking, but with their hands locked together.

  "Oh..." Marguerite said, "do you mean right now?"

  Diogo smiled and nodded. "If you have time."

  Marguerite leaned over and gave the young man a kiss on the cheek.

  He took her through the gardens for a little while to start, telling her stories about Quinta that she'd heard two months before from her brother, although when Diogo told the stories they sounded far better, even with a few mispronounced words.

  They reached the glade of flowers and mushrooms.

  Diogo knelt down and picked up a mushroom. "Have you tried it?" he asked.

  "I have," she said, "but I don't feel like having any today."

  "Just eat it." He took an oversized bite and held out the rest.

  "No," she said.

  "I want to show you the pozo iniciatico," Diogo said.

  "The Initiation Well," Marguerite said.

  Diogo nodded and led her down the path.

  "At the bottom of the well is the nine circle of hell," Diogo said. "The knights would give an... oath, and they would say that they would be happier in hell than they would be to make dishonor to the Templ?rios."

  Marguerite nodded. She was in heaven.

  They walked together down the winding steps of the well, deep into the earth. Diogo was getting grabbier, moving from her hands to her thighs, to her hips, to her rear... she didn't mind at all. It was about time someone made a big deal over her.

  When they reached the marble floor and the red arrows, Diogo went in for the kiss. It was a little sloppier than she'd expected from a guy who'd seemed so smooth, but she still liked it.

  "You are beautiful," Diogo said, brushing a tuft of hair from her forehead.

  "So are you," Marguerite said.

  Diogo laughed. And then he kissed her again.

  "What are you doing?" a voice called out, deep and loud and frightening.

  Diogo pulled back.

  Marguerite stood and watched as Diogo glanced around the bottom of the well, more nervous than she'd have expected.

  "It's not funny," Diogo said. "Who are you?"

  "Marguerite..." the voice said. "Where has your beloved gone, Marguerite?"

  "What beloved?" Marguerite asked.

  "Do you not love another? One of my humble men?"

  "This is stupid," Diogo said. "Who are you?"

  Marguerite walked over toward the dark at the edge of the well, to where the stone met the rock.

  The door was open, the tunnel before them.

  "I am not going in there," Diogo said.

  "You are not welcome in here," the voice said. "Leave us, Diogo. You are a fool."

  "We should go, Marguerite," Diogo said. "This is not funny."

  Marguerite nodded. "I want to get out of here," she said.

  She felt the hands on her legs, far too low to be from Diogo. She started kicking out, but she felt more hands come.

  But she couldn't see the hands.

  "They've got me," Marguerite said. "Help me, Diogo!"

  Diogo laughed. "You are joking."

  The invisible hands all pulled at once, and Marguerite dropped to the floor. The hands lifted her, and she felt her body being carried towards the blackness.

  "Diogo!"

  As she was pulled into the tunnel, Marguerite watched Diogo as he kept talking to her as if she was standing beside him. And then she saw Diogo's slobbery tongue making out with thin air, his hands grabbing at an ass that wasn't there.

  "Diogo!"

  He couldn't hear her.

  The invisible hands kept their grip. And they brought her deeper into the tunnel.

  The light disappeared and everywhere was dark; she knew the door had been closed once again.

  They laid her down on the soft bed she remembered.

  And then the hands let her go.

  Marguerite stayed where she'd been placed for several minutes, waiting for someone to come. She hadn't recognized the deep voice; it wasn't from her brown-hatted gnome or from his orange-hatted friend. The voice didn't sound like a gnome, really, not that she had too many examples to draw from.

  Marguerite stood up and felt her way around the tunnel, just as she had before. And just like before, she couldn't find a way out. She tried not to panic, to tell herself that all she had to do was go to sleep, that she'd wake up in the glade of flowers and mushrooms and then she may or may not need to buy another set of underwear.

  But it felt different that time.


  Marguerite waited for a while, and eventually the boredom grew to the point where she was able to lay down on the bed and fall asleep.

  Marguerite awoke in darkness. There was no sun, and she couldn't see the moon.

  And there was no breeze.

  And she could still feel the soft bed beneath her.

  She was still in the tunnel.

  She was hungry and especially thirsty; she could tell that she'd been asleep for more than a few hours.

  "I want to leave," she said.

  The voice didn't answer.

  "Let me out of here!"

  Marguerite wanted to sob, but she knew that wouldn't help. It wasn't like whatever dark power had locked her there was going to be swayed by a few years.

  She walked back to the beginning of the tunnel, to where the door had once been but no longer was; she'd begun to know the gentle meanders so well in the darkness that she didn't even need to feel around for the walls.

  If the door were ever to open again... that would be her only chance. So she waited.

  And waited some more.

  She couldn't tell how long she'd been there. At least a day... or maybe not. She'd never been so thirsty before, nor as hungry.

  Was Bradley out looking for her? Did Diogo finally realize that he was making out with his imagination? Would Adelia know she was missing? Would Adelia even care?

  Then the deep voice spoke, rumbling through the tunnels.

  "Adelia..." the voice said. "Para onde foi o teu amado, Adelia?"

  Light poured into the tunnel. The door was open.

  She could see Adelia outside. Adelia... and Rafael.

  Not Bradley or Diogo.

  Marguerite tried to run to them, but the moment she took her first step she felt a hand on her ankle. And more invisible hands came, and she was unable to move.

  "Help me!" she screamed.

  Adelia looked over to her. "Marguerite!" she called. "What are you doing?"

  "Where's Marguerite?" Rafael asked.

  "I can't move," Marguerite said.

  Adelia took a step toward the tunnel.

  "No," Rafael said. "Wait here."

  He charged through the door.

  And then he stopped, one foot locked in half of a step.

  He was being pulled, Marguerite knew. The hands were trying to keep him away from her.

  "Let him go," Marguerite said. "Please."

  "Another fool," the voice said. "You will die today, Rafael."

  "Don't hurt him. I'll stay with my beloved. I won't run away."

  "And Adelia? Where has her beloved gone?"

  "My beloved?" Adelia asked.

  "Your gnome," Marguerite said.

  "You are asking if I love the gnome?" she asked.

  "Where has your beloved gone?" the voice asked again.

  "I love him," Adelia said. "Let us go."

  "No," Rafael said, still straining against the hands. "I love Marguerite. Eu te amo, Marguerite."

  "She is pledged to another," the voice said. "I must protect the hearts of my humble men."

  "These women cannot live their lives in love with gnomes and no one else. They will never be happy."

  "It's true," Marguerite said. "I need more than plastic."

  "But I'm willing to share," Rafael said.

  "A little presumptuous, Rafael."

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Will you pledge to love my humble men?" the voice asked.

  Marguerite nodded. "I will," she said.

  "I will love my gnomo," Adelia said. "If I can see other people."

  I felt the hands release me. I saw Rafael drop his lifted foot.

  "This is a solemn vow," the voice said. "Um voto solene."

  Rafael grabbed Marguerite's hand and led her out of the tunnel.

  The door closed behind them.

  The three climbed up the stairs of the Initiation Well without a single word spoken. Rafael was still gripping Marguerite's hand.

  They reached the top as the sun was starting to set.

  "I hope I did not offend you, Marguerite," Rafael said. "I was trying to keep you safe."

  "It's okay," Marguerite said. "You can let go of my hand now."

  Rafael took his hand back with a blush. "I think you girls should leave the town," he said. "We don't know how far this... magia can reach."

  Marguerite shook her head. "We promised."

  "We did," Adelia said. "We cannot run away."

  They made their way down the path to the chapel as the sky grew darker.

  Marguerite reached out for Rafael's hand.

  She wasn't sure what she meant by it. She certainly hoped he wasn't really in love with her or anything.

  But maybe Rafael... maybe he was worth a chance.