“Yes, of course,” said Myles. “Because that is who I am. Don’t you believe me?”
“Of course I do, little man. I know my own brother’s face when I see it.”
Myles toyed with the stem of his martini glass. “I need to talk with you alone, Arty. Can’t Butler wait outside for a few moments? It’s family talk.”
“Butler is family. You know that, brother.”
Myles pouted. “I know, but this is embarrassing.”
“Butler has seen it all before. We have no secrets from him.”
“Couldn’t he just step outside for a minute?”
Butler stood silently behind Artemis, arms folded in an aggressive manner, which is not difficult to do with forearms the size of baked hams and sleeves that creak like old chairs.
“No, Myles. Butler stays.”
“Very well, Arty. You know best.”
Artemis leaned back in his chair. “What happened to the Berserker inside you, Myles?”
The four-year-old shrugged. “He went away. He was driving my head; then he left.”
“What was his name?”
Myles rolled his eyeballs upward, checking out his own brain. “Erm…Mr. Gobdaw, I believe.”
Artemis nodded like someone with a great deal of knowledge on the subject of this Gobdaw person would. “Ah yes, Gobdaw. I have heard all about Gobdaw from our fairy friends.”
“I think he was called Gobdaw the Legendary Warrior.”
Artemis chuckled. “I am sure he would like you to think that.”
“Because it’s true,” said Myles, with a slight tension around his mouth.
“That’s not what we heard, is it, Butler?”
Butler did not answer or gesture in any way, but somehow he gave the impression of a negative response.
“No,” continued Artemis. “What we heard from our fairy sources was that this Gobdaw person is a bit of a joke, to be frank.”
Myles’s fingers squeaked on the neck of his glass. “Joke? Who says that?”
“Everybody,” said Artemis, opening his laptop and checking the screen. “It’s in all the fairy history books. Here it is, look. Gobdaw the Gullible, they call him, which is nice because of the alliteration. There’s another article that refers to your Berserker friend as Gobdaw the Stinkworm, which I believe is a term used to describe a person who gets blamed for everything. We humans would call that a fall guy, or a scapegoat.”
Myles’s cheeks were rosy red now. “Stinkworm?
Stinkworm, you say? Why would I…why would Gobdaw be called a stinkworm?”
“It’s sad, really, pathetic, but apparently this Gobdaw character was the one who convinced his leader to let the entire Berserker unit get themselves buried around a gate.”
“A magical gate,” said Myles. “That protected the fairy elements.”
“That is what they were told, but in truth the gate was nothing more than a pile of stones. A diversion leading nowhere. The Berserkers spent ten thousand years guarding rocks.”
Myles kneaded his eyes. “No. That’s not…no. I saw it, in Gobdaw’s memories. The gate is real.”
Artemis laughed softly. “Gobdaw the Gullible. It’s a little cruel. There’s a rhyme, you know.”
“A rhyme?” rasped Myles, and rasping is unusual in four-year-olds.
“Oh yes, a schoolyard rhyme. Would you care to hear it?”
Myles seemed to be wrestling with his own face. “No. Yes, tell me.”
“Very well. Here goes.” Artemis cleared his throat theatrically.
“Gobdaw, Gobdaw,
Buried in the ground,
Watching over sticks and stones,
Never to be found.”
Artemis hid a smile behind his hand. “Children can be so cruel.”
Myles snapped in two ways. Firstly his patience snapped, revealing him to be in fact Gobdaw; and secondly his fingers snapped the martini glass’s stem, leaving him with a deadly weapon clasped in his tiny fingers.
“Death to the humans!” he squealed in Gnommish, vaulting onto the desk and racing across toward Artemis.
In combat, Gobdaw liked to visualize his strikes just before executing them. He found that it helped him to focus. So, in his mind he leaped gracefully from the lip of the desk, landed on Artemis’s chest, and plunged his glass stiletto into Artemis’s neck. This would have the double effect of killing the Mud Boy and also showering Gobdaw himself in arterial blood, which would help to make him look a little more fearsome.
What actually happened was a little different. Butler reached out and plucked Gobdaw from the air in mid-leap, flicked the glass stem from his grasp, and then wrapped him firmly in the prison of his meaty arms.
Artemis leaned forward in his chair. “There is a second verse,” he said. “But perhaps now is not the time.”
Gobdaw struggled furiously, but he had been utterly neutralized. In desperation, he tried the fairy mesmer.
“You will order Butler to release me,” he intoned.
Artemis was amused. “I doubt it,” he said. “You have barely enough magic to keep Myles in check.”
“Just kill me, then, and be done with it,” said Gobdaw without the slightest quiver in his voice.