Thousand: Three Hundred Twenty-Five

of moss and grunts at feeling bare stone. He nods and picks up a stone with a red centipede curled on its damp underside. He tickles the centipede’s back. All stone and paint. The fish in the gnome’s head nibbles on a nerve and the gnome flinches. “Are you all right?” Butternut asks. “Fish,” says the fisher gnome. “There’s a storm on the mountain.” The girl is looking up toward a dark cloud that seems to be squeezed around the middle of the slope. The gnome picks up the girl’s basket and hangs it around the neck of the leprechaun.