5

  Bee-bee couldn’t believe how fast Ham was growing. His paws were still quite large proprotioned to the rest of his body, but his snout came up to her chest, and he’d gotten much longer. Never had she seen a beast as fluffy as him. Not even a cloud would be as fluffy as him, she bet.

  A bigger, fluffier Ham meant a stronger Ham. Their walks were quite the adventure. Just this morning, their daily walk was twice as long as usual. Ham had pulled her all through the city. Bee-bee had done her best to bounce after him. When it came to thoroughfares, she pulled him close, and he listened to her; elsewise, Ham led the way.

  Was it the cold that had Ham so excited to be out? Summer wasn’t so hot anymore, and Ham certainly wanted to stay out much longer. She did too, but they needed to open shop. And they were late for it. That’s okay, that’s okay!

  Bee-bee unleashed Ham from his harness after they returned, and she closed the front door to the rathskeller. She and Ham were beat. Bee-bee felt her heart working hard, and Ham panted furiously. He had all his teeth on display—all the way to the back!—and his tongue was chugging. He looked at her like he was asking what was next.

  “Tom pies,” said Bee-bee.

  Bee-bee washed her hands—one of the most amazing feelings she’d ever discovered—and got right to work.

  “First thing we gotta do is straighten the tables.”

  Bee-bee was already less than half as tall as a human, and the tables were so low that they came up to her waist. Whatever their point had been, they were perfect for her. Ham, us usual, didn’t care for the prep work involved in making tom pies. While he plopped upon their bedding by the front door, and continued to pant, Bee-bee prepared her flour, yesterday’s boil of tomatoes, grated cheese, and herbs.

  She sold twelve tom pies yesterday. Or did she? Twelve, right?

  “Twelve?” she asked Ham.

  Ham looked at her from the corner of an eye.

  “Maybe ten,” she said.

  So she prepared ten balls of dough. Of course it was hard work, and everything ended up dusted with flour: her apron, her crown, her nose, her vamps and toecaps, the floor, and the beams of sunlight that suddenly dropped in through the windows.

  She smoothed her rolling pin with a hand, floured that too, and rolled out the first few balls of dough until they were flat enough. One day she would practice her circles. Or maybe not. Who said a pie had to be shaped like a pie anyway! Probably a human.

  With a long-handled ladle, she dropped a flow of tomato sauce onto each flattened shape of dough. She spread the tomato sauce out but couldn’t help herself from sampling the sauce with what remained in the ladle. Just a little test, she thought, and she downed an entire ladle’s worth. She glugged the sweet, savory, meaty, acidic, and succulent sauce. She cleaned her teeth with her tongue, she smacked her lips, and she murmured how good it was.

  The echoes of her pleasure affected Ham.

  No sooner did Ham’s claws click upon the floor. He came right over to her, aimed his snout at the ladle which hovered between Bee-bee and the table of unbaked tom pies, and licked his nose.

  Upon a wooden spoon reserved for Ham, Bee-bee plopped tomato sauce. Ham lapped at the wooden spoon. He was so focused on the spoon that he looked at it cross-eyed. What a silly Ham, thought Bee-bee. Did she do that too when she ate? She bet she did. Yes, that means that’s more in common!

  Above all, they both adored tom pie. How perfect then that it was time to put them to bake, so Bee-bee hoisted her paddle, and she charged the oven. The inverted hourglass ran its course, and Bee-bee blindly fetched the sizzling tom pies from the oven. She set them upon a table reserved for fully baked tom pies and then threw two more into the oven.

  While those baked, she opened the front door, and hung her open sign. A human customer was already at the top of the stairs! She was a young woman, and she smiled and waved at Bee-bee.

  “Good morning!” said she.

  “Yup yup,” said Bee-bee.

  “One tom pie, please.”

  “Anything on top?”

  “Ham and green peppers, please.”

  The green pepper, again? When Olive and Arthie had suggested she keep a stock of vegetables, Bee-bee had balked at that. Vegetables? On a delicious tom pie? On a fresh, hot tom pie? She would never understand the habits of humans. If she thinked too much on it, she would gag, so she bumbled to her cutting board and sliced one green pepper.

  The customer had her flat basket at the ready, so Bee-bee transferred the tom pie over, and the woman transferred back coin. Seeing coin come in was one of Bee-bee’s favorite things in the world. She had never made this much money working as a goblin freebooter. Never had she been so appreciated for her work! Never had she been able to get a good night’s rest! Never had she gone so long without being yelled at! No, never!

  Humans even thanked her! That was also a first. This morning was no exception. As humans bought tom pie after tom pie, Bee-bee felt that it was so wonderful to make humans smile. When the last customer of the morning carried off yet another tom pie with mushrooms on it, Bee-bee beelined back down to the rathskeller. She had baked three tom pies too many, and it was lunch time! Yup, yup; yum, yum!

  Ham seemed to sense what time it was, for he was up and wagging his tail. He seemed very, very happy. Happier than Bee-bee had ever seen him before! Ham barked. She understood exactly how he felt. She felt her happiness burgeon too!

  “Time for eating!”

  Bee-bee scampered over to the table where she kept fully baked tom pies. Ham galloped with her. She set her hands on the table, and Ham set his snout on the table.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What?” said Bee-bee. “There were three tom pies a moment ago!”

  An extremely happy Ham gazed up at Bee-bee with great glossy eyes. His wagging tail shook half of him. He paused, extended his snout, and a burp escaped him, which he felt the need to afterwards sniff. Bee-bee sniffed too, but all she smelled was tom pie, presumably from the two remaining tom pies from where steam was still rising. One, two….

  “What happened? Where did it go?”

  Ham barked, and it seemed he could no longer contain himself. He sped around the rathskeller, and he barked and shouted, and he slid around corners, and he bolted under the tables. He stopped at the front door and sniffed.

  “I know, I know! It was right here! Did someone take it? Ham, did you see who took it?”

  Ham dashed right over and slid right into her legs. He sat, and he licked his nose, and he offered a paw to shake. Bee-bee always shook Ham’s paw when it was offered. With such a good Ham, she had to. Had to!

  Bee-bee never offered one of those tom pies to anyone. Ham didn’t see anyone take it. Did someone sneak in and steal it? Bee-bee gasped. A thief!

  Bee-bee frowned, and she began pacing. Ham barked as he trotted beside her. Yes, yes, they would eat, but Bee-bee first needed to figure out what just happened. Just what did happen?

  A thief had come in and stolen one of her tom pies! That’s what must have happened! Oh, she despised thieves! The thing was, it wasn’t just a thief. It was a sneak-thief! No one had seen it! Ham was so good at smelling, and the sneak-thief had even evaded his detection. Did that mean this wasn’t a normal sneak-thief? Oh, it was a sneaky-sneak-thief! It was probably a big ‘ol sneaky-sneak-thief that tiptoed right under their noses! It was probably laughing at them with a mouthful of tom pie by now!

  “I can’t believe this!” said Bee-bee. “Can you imagine, Ham? It’s probably long gone by now, sitting in tree shade all nice and comfy. It’s probably shoving the whole tom pie into its mouth right now! It’s probably got a big mouth with sharp teeth. It’s probably furry too; that’s why it was so sneaky! I can almost hear it laughing, and its big eyes are holding back tears from laughing so hard. Stupid sneaky-sneak-thief eyes! They’re probably as big as a fish-bear’s! Maybe it is a monster fish-bear! And it probably eats goblins too! I bet it has horns! Oh, no, Ham! We’re dealing with a horned, tom pie stealing, cackling, sneaky-sneak-thief monster fish-bear!”

  What a horrible thing! What a terrible time it was to operate a delicious tom pie shop with something like that tiptoeing amuck!

  Bee-bee tiptoe-stomped back and forth. “It probably snuck in like this!” She clutched the edge of the table where the tom pie had gone missing. She licked her lips. “And it probably licked its big fat lips when it found a defenseless perfect tom pie!”

  Ham barked beside her. and he pawed at the table leg where the baked tom pies were cooling.

  “Hmm,” said Bee-bee. “You’re right. What if it hadn’t eaten the tom pie yet? Or what if it was selling it for profit? We gotta do something about this! We need to put up signs! That’s what humans do, don’t they?”

  Bee-bee closed shop for the rest of the day. Finding her missing tom pie was her priority. She tried to enlist Olive and Arthie, but they didn’t exactly understand what a horned monster fish-bear sneaky-sneak-thief was in the first place, and they’d suggested that she might have miscounted. Bee-bee felt insulted at that, for she knew her one to one hundred.

  To appease her grumpy side, Olive and Arthie introduced Bee-bee to Nova. They’d left Ham at home because he’d put himself in a nap, and Bee-bee didn’t have the heart to disturb him. She’d been ruthlessly woken from her naps as a freebooter, and those moments were the worst of her life. No, no; she couldn’t do that to Ham! Plus, the sneak-thief might come back!

  They met Nova at the front steps of his studio barn a few blocks away. Nova was a tall human, and his limbs were goblin thin. He had magic. His magic wasn’t anything amazing, like making magical ptooey beer, but at least it sounded helpful. If only Bee-bee could clearly explain what she needed! Everyone kept getting stuck on the fish-bear sneak-thief!

  “I’m sure we’ll sort everything out in short order,” said Nova. “Come on in Bee-bee. Let’s make some posters.”

  “Oh, Arthie, will she be all right?” said Olive.

  “What do you mean? Nova is a good acquaintance of mine! He’ll do right by her.”

  “But Bee-bee can be hard to understand at times.”

  “I’m quite patient, I assure you,” said Nova, “and I’ll be ten fold more patient for our little goblin.”

  Bee-bee smiled so hard her ears went back. Ham’s charisma must have rubbed off on her.

  Nova led them into the studio, and Olive and Arthie headed back home. Illustrations abounded in the studio in deep colors: on parchments stacked upon tables, on canvases set upon easels, on cloth pinned beneath screens, on notebook pages laid open, on long cloths hung high on the walls. Never had Bee-bee seen so many illustrations. She felt as though she’d stumbled into a garden where all the colors were rich and flat.

  “So, let’s start from the beginning,” said Nova. He clapped his hands, and he dragged a stool over and offered her the seat.

  Bee-bee clambered up and slumped there. She gawked at all the figures in all the art: the deep lines, the shapes, the strokes and fill of color. How strange for there to be so much color in one place, thought Bee-bee. She wanted to keep gawking, but she was there for a reason, and Nova needed her to tell him everything all over again. Oh, did she really have to start over?

  Bee-bee told him everything all over again; however, weary from her retellings, she went through things as fast as she could.

  “I see,” said Nova. He scraped the parchment of a coil-bound pad with a dark utensil as he listened and asked questions. “Tom is missing.”

  “Yes!” Finally, someone understood her! Oh, Peg-tooth! At last!

  “If anyone finds Tom, they should bring him to your shop?”

  “At the tom pie shop, where else?”

  “Tom in a tom pie shop. That’s very cute. So, here’s what I’ve got.” Nova flipped his parchment around, and revealed what he’d been sketching. “I made Tom nice and big and as happy as I could make him.”

  Ham’s face was big and center. Beneath him read Tom is Missing! If you find me, please return me to Bee-Bee and Hams Tom Pie shop. Beneath both the illustration and the text was a scrumptious tom pie with little bits of crispy ham on it. At the bottom was a rendition of her sign which hung on wrought iron rings.

  “As you can see,” said Nova as he pointed at the little squares on the tom pie, “I’ve made sure to add ham, just as you requested.”

  “Ham and ham!” said Bee-bee. Oh, that was very—what was the word?—cute!

  “And ham and ham and ham,” said Nova.

  “He’s so big and center! I like it!” And as for the missing tom pie, “Do you think it’s long gone, and I’ll never see it again?”

  “Oh dear,” said Nova. “I’m sure he’s wandering around the city and having the time of his life. Don’t you worry, we’ll do our best to find him.”

  Was the tom pie really a boy? Bee-bee had never referred to any tom pie as a him before. Gah, this guy was good! If he knew tom pie that well then Bee-bee felt sure to see her tom pie again.

  “When do we put up my missing posters?” she said.

  Nova dashed across the room. He set his sketch down upon a white table, and he hovered one hand over the image. After snapping his fingers, red filled the sauce of the sketched tom pie, and the lines sharpened. He snapped his fingers again, and orange filled some of the tom pie. Every time Nova snapped his fingers, a new color filled the sketch until the whole image was one complete art. He set it upon a stack of parchment, and then he downed a potion bottle filled with tinkling blue liquid. He performed a martial clap over the stack. Smiling, he glanced at Bee-bee and said, “Come see.”

  Bee-bee bounced off her stool, and she beelined over. Nova spread the stack out, and Bee-bee’s eyes went wide. She gasped, for all the parchments in the stack were now perfect copies of her missing tom poster.

  “I usually charge a few gold for art and printing,” said Nova, “but this is your precious Tom we’re talking about. I’ll only charge you fifty silver.”

  “Oh, I hope that sneak-thief hasn’t gobbled him up,” said Bee-bee, and she growled. “When do we put these up.”

  “Well that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

  Bee-bee fetched fifty silver from a number of pockets. With a great many thanks, she grabbed as much of the stack of missing posters as she could.

  “I’ll be back for the rest,” she called back as she bolted out.