The notice appeared on Tuesday morning.

It was there when Penny carried her cup of coffee out to check on her vegetable garden. She kept the garden in the front yard. The plants got more sun there, and it kept the seedlings safe from Stella, who would eat the ones that smelled delicious and just dig up and roll in the ones that didn’t. The plants seemed content there, even the new seedlings. The beans exuberantly muscled their way toward the trellises she’d put out to catch them, and squash and zucchini plants were already shoving their way up toward sunlight.

She saw the notice when she turned back to the door: a bright yellow sheet of paper, attached to the doorknob with a rubber band. Penny yanked it off, expecting an advertisement to buy cheap houses or spray for mosquitoes or something. She glanced at it, then scanned it more closely. Her eyes caught on phrases like “grass is more than 12” tall” and “you will be fined.” It had photographs of her yard, apparently to prove that someone had actually looked at the offending grass.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” she demanded.

*          *          *

“Oh, yeah,” Helen said, scanning the notice over the remains of her carrot muffin. “It’s that guy who lives over on Flamenco Drive. You know, the one with all the azaleas.”

Penny frowned. She never walked Stella that way — her loop tended to cover the east side of the neighborhood. “I’ve never met the man.”

“You’ve seen him, though,” Emily assured her. “He must take three walks a day. Carries a cane and wears a big sun hat. Mr. Harris, I think is his name.”

“Oh, that guy. Yeah.” In the months since she started working from home full time, Penny had been shocked to learn how many people were out and about in the neighborhood during the day. She’d always assumed that everyone followed the same routine she had — up by seven, in the car by eight, joining the river of traffic that clotted the roads to uptown or the other executive parks that dotted the city, leaving the neighborhood to the stay-at-home moms and the mailman until six. But the place was swarming. Construction crews filled the air with a constant cacophony of hammering and sawing. Workmen appeared at all hours to inspect HVACs, set up cable, repair roofs or siding, sweep chimneys, landscape, and do the hundreds of other jobs required to keep an urban neighborhood functioning. At least a dozen mothers converged daily on the park with their strollers. An army of retirees puttered along on slow meandering walks under the broad shade of the pin oaks.

And these women who worked from home, professionals who’d somehow become her little coffee club. Helen, the lawyer, ran her own practice from a laptop and a cell phone. Emily wrote stories for half a dozen blogs and online magazines. Tanya ran a fashion design label, selling dresses and accessories through Etsy and a handful of other sites. Rhonda, like Penny, worked remotely doing program design and analysis.

“He seems so friendly,” Tanya remarked. “He waves at just about anybody.”

“He’s an asshole,” Emily retorted. “He carries a little notebook around and makes notes about everybody. If there’s something wrong with your yard — litter, a car parked on the grass, lawn too long,” she nodded at Penny, “—he narcs you out to the city. He’s the one who called animal control last year when he saw Chester sitting in our front yard.”

“Seriously?” Penny asked. Emily’s dog Chester, a rotund, profoundly lazy black Labrador, spent his few waking hours every day seeking out a good patch of sunlight for his next nap. “Don’t you have an electric fence?”

“Yep. And signs all over the place telling people about it. Not that it matters much — I don’t think Chester would rouse himself if you stood on the sidewalk waving a raw steak at him. But I still had to fill out all the paperwork and pay a fine when they showed up to impound him.”

Rhonda snorted. “Good thing we don’t have an HOA,” she said. “That guy would probably wind up being president somehow, and then we’d have real trouble.”

“To be fair, though,” Helen said, “your grass is a little long.”

Penny snorted. This was the problem with lawyers. The ability to argue both sides of any point was a professional requirement. “Of course it is. It’s been raining for two straight weeks. Everyone’s lawn is a little long right now.”

The others fell silent, regarding their coffee tactfully.

Penny sighed. “Oh, fine. I know. I’ve been busy.”

“It should be dry this week, though,” Helen said. “It says here that you won’t have to pay a fine if you mow it within seven days.”

“I just don’t get why anyone would go around monitoring everyone else’s yards,” Rhonda said, dismissing the merits of Penny’s lawn. “I mean, why doesn’t this Harris guy have anything better to do?”

“And why go straight to the city?” Tanya asked. “I got one of those last summer, too. He could have just said something to me directly, or put a note on my door. I would’ve taken care of it.” She shrugged, toying with her coffee mug. “I actually assumed it was a race thing. I mean, I didn’t know who it was from, but you know. It happens. I guess it’s good to know he’s a jerk to everybody.”

“An equal opportunity asshole,” Emily agreed.

“I can lend you a kid to mow,” Helen offered. She had two teenage boys who towered over her like sapling trees. “I think Ryan’s basketball camp doesn’t start until next week. I can text him now if you want.”

“No, it’s fine,” Penny said. “I just finished up a project, so I’ve got some time the rest of this week.”

“Aha, that’s why we get homemade muffins this morning,” Rhonda said, with a grin, reaching for another one.

“Of course,” Penny said. “Anyone want more coffee?”

*          *          *

What with one thing and another, though, she didn’t get it done on Tuesday. After the coffee hour broke up, she cleaned up, washing and drying the dishes and the muffin pan, bagging the leftover muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast, wiping down the counters. She swept the floors, then poured herself the last cup of coffee and spent some time checking in with the office, answering her neglected emails and following up with her program director.

It was nearly lunchtime when Stella put her head in Penny’s lap, whining softly. “It’s that time, huh?” Penny asked. Rising, she grabbed Stella’s leash for their daily walk.

She took the long way, winding up through the neighborhood and past the community garden, and then wrapping around the park. As usual, Stella barreled down the sidewalk in a straight line like an over-caffeinated speed walker. By the time they neared home again, she’d worn herself out and settled more or less to heel. But she tensed, growling a low warning, as they approached the house.

Penny narrowed her eyes. A man stood on the sidewalk in front of her house, surveying her lawn with apparent disapproval. He wore a giant hat, and carried a gnarled wooden walking stick.

She squared her shoulders and strode up to him. “May I help you?”

He turned to her, frowning. His eyebrows were works of art, bristling out of their own accord like ill-behaved hedges. “This lawn is overgrown.”

“Yes,” Penny answered, “so the city tells me. I take it you notified them?”

“I did,” he said. “There are laws, you know. Laws and ordinances.”

“So it seems.” The notice had cited some ordinance or another. “But, you see, Mr. Harris, is it? I’ve been working on a rather large project for work. So I’ve just been a bit delayed in getting it mowed.”

“The laws exist for a reason.”

“I’m sure they do,” Penny could not imagine what it could be. “I do wish, though, that you had simply talked to me, rather than feeling the need to go to the city.”

“It’s not my job to remind you of your civic responsibility as a homeowner.”

Penny frowned. Clearly, she was dealing with the kind of man who wrote letters to the editor of the local paper, and wrote lengthy criticisms on the backs of comment cards in restaurants. “Talking to me directly would have been far more neighborly,” she pointed out, as gently as she could.

“You’re a fine one to talk about being neighborly, keeping your yard like that.”

“Right,” she said, stepping away. “Well, message received, Mr. Harris. Have a good day.”

“So are you going to mow today?” he called after her.

Stella turned, lifting an eyebrow. “The city’s notice gives me seven days, Mr. Harris.”

*          *          *

Penny planned to mow Wednesday. No point in giving Mr. Harris an apoplectic fit, after all. But then she checked her email, and found a new assignment from her project director. She launched into the coding, and barely came up for air at lunchtime to take Stella on a quick walk around the block.

That evening, she went out to check on her garden. The lawn had grown into a tall, tangled jungle. Here and there, she could make out the telltale gray green spikes of new thistles cropping up, hidden in the webs of clover and weeds.

Still. She had six more days.

*          *          *

On Thursday, she sent the program in for review, and decided to take Stella for a longer walk. She returned to find Mr. Harris standing in front of her house again, examining her yard through a pair of old-fashioned brass binoculars.

Penny marched into his line of view, gratified when he jumped and dropped the binoculars at her sudden, no doubt grotesquely magnified, appearance. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He sputtered, checking the binoculars to be sure they’d taken no hurt. They hung from a strap around his neck, so they’d only fallen to his belly. There was, Penny reflected with a sort of vicious pettiness, plenty of padding there to soften the impact.

“I’m checking your yard, of course,” he said. “If you won’t mow it like a responsible person, the least you could do is keep an eye on it.”

“For what?” she demanded. “Do I need to keep track of how fast it’s growing? I do have a job, Mr. Harris. I don’t have time to worry about whether my lawn meets your aesthetic standards.”

“Aesthetic? I could care less about how it looks, you idiot woman,” he retorted.

“Excuse me?”

“The ordinances exist for a reason. When your grass is this long, it attracts all manner of pests and creatures.”

Penny closed her mouth on her next reply, caught by his words. “Creatures,” she repeated. “Do you mean, like, snakes?”

“Those too, probably,” he said, shifting his eyes.

Penny sighed. “You are absurd.”

“When are you going to mow?” Mr. Harris demanded as she strode away from him.

“I’ve got five days, Mr. Harris.”

*          *          *

She resolved to mow on Friday evening, after she’d shut down work for the day and before her Friday evening ritual of cooking herself a fancy dinner and drinking too much wine.

But then she saw the gnome.

Friday morning she went through her usual routine: get up, let Stella out, make the coffee, feed Stella, check her email, meditate, write in her journal. Then she poured another cup of coffee and wandered out to check on the garden.

The garden did not really need checking on yet, beyond turning on the irrigation drip hose. The tomato, basil, and peppers had barely grown since she’d planted them, stunted and ridiculous-looking in their oversized cages. The sweet potatoes skulked shyly, spindly nothings recovering from the trauma of their shipping. What she had, right now, wasn’t so much a garden as an embryo of a garden, a lot of mulch and sweet black earth and baby plants.

But the seedlings fascinated her, even more than when they were mature and producing. She loved watching them change and open and grow.  So she took her coffee outside to have a look. And stopped cold, splashing coffee all over her pajamas.

A fox stood in the tangled mess of the lawn, staring at her with startled eyes. Its sharp little teeth held the corpse of a dead rabbit by the scruff. The rabbit stared blankly through liquid black eyes, blood dripping red onto the grass.

The fox wore a saddle, leather embroidered with bright thread. And in the saddle sat a tiny man.

The man shrieked at her through his tangled beard, a tinny high-pitched bellow that could have been a greeting or a war cry. Then he leveled a tiny crossbow and pulled the trigger. The bolt struck her shin like a wasp sting.

The fox swiveled around on its haunches. Fox and rider vanished into the green tangle.

*          *          *

Mr. Harris opened the door around the eighth or ninth time she rang the bell. “Yes?”

“You weren’t talking about snakes, were you?” Penny demanded.

“Pardon?”

“Yesterday, when you said my yard would attract pests and creatures. You weren’t talking about snakes.”

“Of course I wasn’t talking about snakes,” he said. “Why should I care about snakes?”

Penny limped, uninvited, into his house. “So what was that little bastard?”

He stared at her. “Do come in,” he muttered. “May I take your coat? Perhaps you’d like a brandy?”

She perked up. “I’d love one,” she said. “And also to know what that thing shot me with.”

“Shot you?” One tangled eyebrow lifted.

Penny gestured at her shin. The wound was small — no bigger around than a pencil — but bloody. She worried more about the swelling and fever-heat starting to radiate from the spot, as though she’d been stung by a particularly nasty breed of hornet. “It — he — had a crossbow, and he shot me. Then rode away on a goddamn fox.”

He paled. “Come into the kitchen.”

Penny followed him, looking around curiously. She would have expected this kind of place from an elderly bachelor, sparsely decorated with furniture that looked more lumpy and comfortable than stylish. His kitchen hadn’t been updated in a couple of decades or so. He gestured for her to sit at the table, then pulled a first aid kit down from atop the fridge. A yellow cat rolled over in its patch of sunlight on the floor and glared at her disapprovingly before drifting back to sleep.

Mr. Harris opened the kit and drew out a pair of surgical gloves and a long-nose forceps.

“Are you a doctor?” she asked, surprised.

“Retired teacher,” he answered. “Biology. I’ve just had enough experience with gnomes to keep the kit properly stocked.”

“Wait.” She drew back from his examination of her shin. “You’re telling me I got shot by a gnome?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I call them. No idea what they call themselves. Pixies, elves, fairies, Martians — who knows?” He pulled her foot gently back into place and bent over the wound. “Aha. I see it.” He picked up the forceps, then rummaged in the kit for a bottle of alcohol and gauze pads. The sharp smell of alcohol filled the air as he wiped down the forceps. “This’ll probably hurt more than getting shot,” he warned her. “Sometimes the bolts will have barbs, to make them harder to take out.”

She nodded, gritting her teeth. “I’ll be okay.”

It did, in fact, hurt more than getting shot.

*          *          *

After he’d cleaned and bandaged the wound, Mr. Harris washed off the little bolt and handed it to her. It was shorter than her pinky, a slim little thing made of some lightweight wood with, as he’d said, a barbed tip.

“Gnomes, huh?”

“Gnomes,” he confirmed. “You don’t usually get them in yards — they like the woods, or open fields. There are a bunch of them in the park, of course, and down along the creek. They don’t have much use for the kind of grass most homeowners like. But if you get an overgrown yard, especially one with lots of native plants and wildflowers, that’ll attract them.”

She ignored the accusatory note in his voice. “Why?”

“A yard like yours, there’s good hunting and plants they can eat. Good places to hide, too, if the grass is long enough.”

“So if I mow, they’ll go away?”

“Too late for that now,” he said. “They’ll fight you if you try to mow.”

“So what do I do? Are there…gnome exterminators or something?”

He frowned. “Oh, no. You can’t kill them. If you kill even a single one, you’ll start a blood war with the whole tribe.”

“So what, then?”

He leaned forward. “Catch and release.”

*          *          *

Mr. Harris’s garage turned out to be a cross between a trapper’s shed and an armory.

Penny pondered the wall full of crossbows, bows, and dart guns, the rack of snares and miniature clawed bear traps, the mass of bamboo cages with trick doors hanging from the ceiling like a grotesque spider web. “You’re…really into this, aren’t you?”

“Gnomes are a menace.” He surveyed the row of snares and traps. “What color was the one who shot you?”

“What color?”

“His clothes. What color was he wearing?”

“Um.” Penny tried to remember. “Blue, I think?”

Mr. Harris grunted and took down several of the snares, dropping them into a wheelbarrow.

“So, you’re the neighborhood watch for gnomes?”

“Something like that.”

“And that’s why you go around reporting people’s lawns to the city?”

He shrugged, scanning the cages on the ceiling. “Gnomes like overgrown lawns.”

“So why not just tell people that? Why not put it in the newsletter or something, instead of going around tattling on your neighbors?”

He paused, regarding her. “Would you have believed me? Yesterday, when you asked me about snakes, would you have taken me seriously if I had said, ‘no, but there are gnomes, and they’re more than capable of bringing down a full-grown human’?”

“Okay, probably not.”

He shook his head. “Probably not,” he echoed. Using a long-handled hook, he took down several bamboo cages. “Old men are allowed eccentricities, within limits. I take three walks a day in a ridiculous hat and cane, with a pair of field glasses around my neck, and people just assume that I’m a birdwatcher or a busybody or just a bored geezer tired of watching Fox News. That’s acceptable eccentricity. I suspect that people would feel less accepting, if I told them that I’m watching for gnomes.”

He took several dart guns off the wall, along with two belts studded with darts for reloading. “Tranquilizers?” she asked.

“Yes.” He added them to the wheelbarrow. “Oh, and you’ll want these.” He handed her a set of what looked like ski goggles.

“I will?” They were tremendously sporty and absurd.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Imagine if that bolt had hit you in the eye, instead of the shin.”

Blanching, she put on the ski goggles to be sure the straps fit correctly.

*          *          *

Hours later, Penny shifted her weight on her aching, cramped legs, crouching between the bean trellises and the hydrangeas. They had set the bamboo cage-traps and snares in the yard, and she cradled one of the dart guns in her hands, hoping she’d actually hit something if she had to use it.

Mr. Harris crouched down in the natural area, a shadow between the fig trees and the viburnum. He’d insisted on separate hiding places, brushing off her concern that they would shoot each other. “The darts won’t have much effect on humans.”

Penny wondered what a retired science teacher was doing with a garage full of traps and a pair of night-vision field glasses. He’d declined to answer that question.

She hadn’t even been aware of the creaks and whistles of the night creatures — insects, she supposed, and frogs, and the occasional sleepy warble of a bird — until they suddenly fell silent. Mr. Harris, half-lost in the shadows of the hickory tree — tensed and shifted, scanning the landscape through his field glasses.

She barely heard the click, followed by the whispering whistle of something flying through the air, then the soft thud of a small body hitting the ground.

Then, an outraged cacophony of warrior cries, high-pitched and wordless, punctuated by the snaps of bamboo traps springing closed.

Penny shouldered herself off the wall, stepping out to stand among the trellises. She felt a familiar biting pain when bolts struck her in the arm and thigh. She sighted on one of the little bastards, perched on an enormous rabbit among her lettuces, and pulled the trigger. The gnome tumbled off the back of the rabbit, which sprang away unharmed.

That was her only successful shot, in the short pitched battle for possession of her front yard. She scored one other casualty when another gnome leapt at her from a perch high in the branches of the boxwoods. Out of sheer instinct, Penny swatted it away. It flew into the bricks of the house and slid to the ground, stunned.

Most of them had attacked Mr. Harris, who wheeled around amid what seemed a shrieking horde of tiny warriors, shooting coolly into their midst with his dart gun or simply sweeping at them with his stick. He seemed utterly calm, fighting with a quiet economy of motion that bespoke years of experience.

After mere minutes, the yard fell silent, except for the high-pitched, spitting yammering that came from the bamboo cages.

Mr. Harris scooped up the rest — the ones that had been tranquilized or captured in the snares, and dropped them into an empty cage. Wordlessly, Penny fetched his wheelbarrow from where they’d stashed it, and together they loaded it up with the occupied cages.

“So where do we release them?” she asked, eyeing them.

“We’ll have to take them to McGraw Park,” he said. “It’s the closest neutral ground.”

“We can’t just take them to the neighborhood park?”

“Occupied by a rival tribe,” he said. “This lot probably wanted your land as a base to invade their territory.”

One of the gnomes glared up at them through the bars of its cage, snarling a string of disgusted words.

“We’d better take them there now, while it’s dark,” Mr. Harris sighed. “No sense trucking them around in daylight.”

*          *          *

They treated their injuries, then loaded the cages into his battered old pickup truck. Then they climbed in and rode silently for a time toward the park.

“Won’t they just come back to my yard?” she asked after a time.

“Probably not. They seem to view defeat in battle as sacrosanct. You’ve won your claim to your land, and they will honor that victory.” She felt his sidelong glance. “But you should mow tomorrow, just to be sure.”

Penny snorted. “You know, you’re right. If you’d told me that I should mow my lawn to keep away gnomes, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.”

He shrugged. “Probably not.”

“You would’ve seemed like less of an ass, though.”

He smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind next time.”

###