by E. D. Baker
“I don’t know,” Jak said. “Those goblins could have a dozen ways into this room and that was just the most obvious. I think we should sleep under the beds, just in case. It would be harder for them to find us there, and it might give me enough time to do something. It’s dirty, but a little bit of dirt is better than a whole lot of dead.”
“You mean he wants to kill us?” Tamisin asked, her voice rising to a near squeak.
“That’s one of the possibilities,” said Jak. “But we’re not going to give him the chance. Take that blanket off the bed. You can roll yourself up in it. I want you to crawl under the bed and make yourself comfortable. There’s no telling how long we’ll have to stay there. And whatever you do, don’t come out until I tell you to. I don’t know much about lizard goblins, but if we’re lucky, they don’t see well in the dark.”
The cobwebs and layer of dust under the bed made Tamisin glad that she had taken Jak’s advice and brought the blanket with her. Using her purse as a pillow, she curled up in the musty-smelling blanket and stared at the underside of the bed above her. She tried not to fall asleep, but after Jak blew out the candle and crawled under the other bed, the darkness was absolute and her eyes kept closing.
“When do you think that goblin will come?” she whispered to Jak.
“Probably as soon as he thinks we’re asleep.”
“Pretty soon then, huh?”
“As long as we’re quiet.”
“So what if we stay up all night talking? Do you think they’d leave us alone?”
“I don’t think I could,” Jak murmured. “I’m practically asleep as it is.”
“Yeah,” said Tamisin, “me, too.”
“Jak,” she whispered a minute later. “What will happen to us if we both fall asleep? Jak?” When he didn’t answer, she knew he had already drifted off. It was up to her to stay awake, so as long as she could manage it … Tamisin yawned and rubbed her eyes. A moment later, she, too, was asleep.
“Snake snot!”
Tamisin’s eyes shot open when someone swore only a few inches away. She recognized the voice of the goblin waiter even though he hadn’t said much. He couldn’t have found her already, could he? Thunder rumbled in the distance. Tamisin held her breath as the goblin scrambled to his feet. Apparently, he couldn’t see in the dark, because he still acted as if she was in the bed, not under it.
“What is it, Gob?” whispered a scratchier voice.
“I tripped over somebody’s shoes! It’s so dark in here I can’t see my hand in front of my face! First the door wouldn’t open, and now this. I’m glad I oiled the hinges on the trapdoor last week.”
“Shut up, Gob. You’ll wake them!”
“I put the potion in the juice. We can’t wake them. They’re sleeping like the dead.”
“Or will be soon enough,” Gob snickered. “Got your knife?”
“In my hand. Where’s the bed?”
“Ow! You jabbed my belly, you brainless flea! Stop waving that knife around and get over here. Take my hand, Hob … that’s it. The bed’s right there. I’ll go to this one … Ready? Now!”
Tamisin cowered under the bed as the two goblins hacked and slashed at the mattresses. She wondered if Jak was awake or if he was sleeping through it all. Even if the goblins didn’t wake him, surely the thunder would. It had gotten closer and a whole lot louder. The two goblins didn’t seem to hear it though, because they kept stabbing the beds as if nothing else in the world mattered. When they finally stopped, they were both panting from exertion. Tamisin was afraid to think about what would come next.
“That should do it,” said Gob. “They’ll have more holes in them now than Granny Nutshell’s cheese. We’ll have the money come morning. Let me see if this one … wait! Nobody’s here!”
“Of course somebody’s there. We just stabbed them, didn’t we? Wait a minute! This one’s empty, too!”
Tamisin could hear the goblin beside her fumbling with the bedding, trying to find her blood-soaked body. It wouldn’t be long before they started looking somewhere else—like under the bed.
Suddenly the goblin on the other side of the room crashed to the floor. “Hey!” he shouted. “Why did you trip me?”
“What are you talking about?” said the one standing over Tamisin’s bed. “I didn’t … Ow! My nose! What’s the big idea!”
“I didn’t touch you, you big baby! What makes you think …”
Tamisin heard the thud of a blow landing. “That hurt!” squealed a goblin. “Don’t think you’re getting away with that, you slippery-tongued …”
“Why you—!”
Tamisin lay under the bed, not sure what to think. It sounded as if the two goblins were fighting, but she couldn’t imagine why they would be unless … It occurred to her that Jak might have done something. He’d talked about luck and whether or not the goblins could see in the dark. If he got the two of them fighting with each other …
Voices outside the room were shouting, “What’s going on in there?” “We’re trying to get some sleep!” “Quit making that racket!”
The door flew open and candlelight from the hall lit the room. Tamisin saw Jak step behind the now-open door.
The hallway was full of the inn’s patrons, but it was one of the gray ladies who stomped into the room. She was still poking her eye in place when she shouted, “Stop it this instant, you two!” in a voice that reminded Tamisin of a gym teacher she’d once hated. The goblins drew apart, scowling furiously at each other. Neither one seemed to notice Jak.
“Bob!” the gray woman shouted into the hallway. “Come see what your nephews have done.”
“Is it safe to come out now?” Tamisin asked from under the bed.
“Sure,” said Jak. Seeing him standing there for the first time, the two goblins looked confused.
“What’s going on in here?” asked Bob, forcing his way into the room. When he spotted the ruined mattresses, he looked almost expectant, but then disappointment set in and finally anger. It struck Tamisin that he had known about the attack and had thought to find them dead in their beds. If so many of his other guests hadn’t been standing there, she thought he might still have done something awful to her and Jak. As it was he didn’t dare touch them now, so he began shouting at the two younger lizard goblins.
“Gobbledygook, Hobnob, what do you two think you’re doing?” roared Bob.
The waiters turned with a start, their mouths gaping in surprise.
“Uncle Thingamabob! We were just—”
“We didn’t mean—”
The innkeeper’s face was bright red. “Were you trying to kill a guest?” he said. “How will we get repeat customers if you kill them on their first stay? And what about the mattresses? I paid good money for them! The cost of replacing those is coming out of your wages.”
“We’re sorry, Uncle Bob!” croaked his nephews.
Bob was still scolding the two younger goblins when the gray woman turned to Tamisin and said, “Are you all right, my dear? From the look of things, I’d say you’ve had a dreadful experience. Why don’t you come with me so you can freshen up?”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Tamisin, trying not to look at the woman’s gaping eye socket. “Can my friend Jak come, too?”
“That’s okay, Tam. You go ahead. I want to make sure that we get another room.” He gave the innkeeper a look. The goblin opened his mouth to protest until he saw the faces of the other guests.
“I’ll take care of it,” Bob said.
The three gray women were very gracious to Tamisin. They let her use the pitcher of water they’d paid to have brought to their room, claiming that she needed it more than they did. While Tamisin washed the grime from her face and hands and combed the cobwebs from her hair, the old ladies sat on their beds facing her as if all three could see what she was doing. When Tamisin turned to thank them, the woman with the eye said, “You’re quite welcome, my dear. If there’s ever anything else we can do to help …”
“Tamisin,
are you ready?” Jak said from the open doorway. “Bob found us another room.”
“I thought they didn’t have any others,” said Tamisin, following him into the hall. She was closing the door when she saw that the three women were sitting with their heads together, whispering. When she thanked them and waved good-bye, the one with the eye waved back, giving her a wide, empty-mouthed smile.
Jak took her hand in his. “It’s amazing how much a story can change when you have witnesses.”
Their new room couldn’t have been more different from the first. A shiny lantern glowed on a table between two comfortable beds. There was a window with curtains and, just as Jak had been promised, a real lock on the door that worked from the inside. Tamisin groaned as she lay down on the soft mattress. “This is so much better,” she said. “Don’t you think so, Jak? Jak?” She turned her head to look at her companion, but he was already asleep.
Tamisin pulled the blanket up to her chin and snuggled down under the covers. She’d been wary of Jak almost since she met him, but he had always been nice to her and had gone out of his way to protect her from the nastier goblins, first at his party and then that very night at the inn. It was foolish to distrust him just because he was half goblin. Having seen how well he could fight and how protective he was of her, Tamisin realized that she felt safe when she was around him. It was a nice thought, especially when she was drifting off to sleep.
When they went downstairs to pay their bill the next morning, some of the guests who had been there the night before still lingered in the taproom. The three gray women were seated at the table closest to the door. Everyone grew quiet when Tamisin walked into the room, but when she turned to stand beside Jak she could hear them start talking again in not-quite-whispers.
“She looks just like her.”
“I told you so!”
“I seen her once when I was a girl. It can’t be her, though. What would she be doin’ in a place like this?”
Tamisin was wondering who they were talking about when a familiar masked figure walked through the door.
“Tobi, what are you doing here?” Jak asked.
The little goblin looked relieved to see them, but all he said was, “I thought ya might like some company on the road, seein’ ya’ve got a long way to travel.”
“We need to go.” Jak cast a nervous glance at the people seated at the tables, who had all stopped talking and were obviously trying to listen in on his conversation. “Come on, Tamisin,” Jak said, hustling her past Tobi.
The cats were outside, waiting under an old oak. They stood and stretched, then fell into line behind Jak and Tamisin as they set off down the path. “We don’t want everyone knowing where we are, remember?” Jak said, keeping his voice low. “We were trying to avoid attracting attention, not wave a flag and say, ‘Look at us!’ After last night everyone who was at the inn will be talking about what happened. Soon everyone will know that we stayed at the Green Beetle. And now, with Tobi showing up and announcing where we were headed …”
“But he didn’t,” Tamisin began.
“He was about to,” Jak said, scowling.
“Hey, you two! Wait for me!” Tobi was running down the path, waving his tail behind him. “Ya left so fast,” Tobi panted, “that I couldn’t keep up. Ya always were faster than a griffin late fer dinner, Jak. Back at school when we was runnin’ races … Lookie there! Ya got cats followin’ ya. I know they liked ya on the other side, but I didn’t expect to see ’em here.”
“You were in school together?” asked Tamisin.
Tobi nodded. “Sure. Jak and me been best buds since we was young ’uns. Ya mean ta say he never told ya bout good ole Tobi?”
“No, he never did.” Tamisin gave Jak a curious look, then smiled at the raccoon goblin. “But then, I never told him about you either. Like how you followed me every day for weeks.”
Tobi grimaced. “Ya knew ’bout that? I could-a sworn …”
Tamisin’s smile grew. “And how much you like big dogs in fenced-in yards. Now, Jak,” she said, turning to face him, “I want to know: who is this ‘she’ those people were talking about back there?”
Chapter 18
Jak shook his head. “I heard them talking, too, but I have no idea who ‘she’ is.”
Tamisin turned to the little masked goblin. “The people back at the inn said that I looked like someone. Do you have any idea who it might be?”
Tobi looked away as if he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Me? I ain’t got no idea, thought, opinion. Maybe it was a friend of theirs?”
“Tobi,” said Jak. “What do you know that you’re not telling us? You’re talking in threes, and you do that only when you’re agitated.”
“I don’t know anything, less than nothing, no idea!” said Tobi.
“Really?” said Jak. “Why do I find that so hard to believe? Well then, tell us something you do know. Have you heard anything more about that reward?”
“I still don’t know who offered it, if that’s what ya mean,” said Tobi. “The reward itself is the usual—twelve pieces of fairy gold for delivering the girl, dead or alive. Did I forget to mention that last part?”
“Yeah, you did,” Jak said. “But it explains what happened last night. The innkeeper’s nephews tried to kill us.”
“And I heard them mention money,” Tamisin added.
“What?” squeaked Tobi. “They can’t … They shouldn’t … No one can …” The little goblin’s tail twitched and his ears flicked back and forth. “I knew there were goblins lookin’ for her, but I never thought …” Squaring his shoulders, he looked up at his friend. “Ya can’t go to yer uncle’s, Jak. It wouldn’t be safe, secure, out of harm’s way. Ya gotta take her to the fairy queen. She’s the only one who could protect the girl.”
“Titania? Why her?” asked Jak.
“Because no one will try to hurt a fairy while she’s under the queen’s protection.”
“My uncle …”
“Doesn’t command all the goblins or any of the rest of the fey. It has to be Titania! Look at it this way, Jak. If ya take her to yer uncle, ya’ll be drawin’ a whole lot of trouble straight to his doorstep. The fairy queen can handle it. Can yer family?”
“I don’t want to cause your family any problems,” said Tamisin.
Jak glanced from one earnest face to the other. He had promised his uncle that he’d bring her and had been hoping to make him proud. If he didn’t take her now, his uncle would think he was a failure, or even worse, a traitor. However, if he did take her to Targin, he could be endangering the very person he was trying to help. Somehow Tamisin’s safety had become a lot more important than his pride, so Jak straightened his shoulders and nodded. “To Titania, then. It makes more sense that we’d go there anyway. Nihlo’s up to something and he already knows we were going to his father’s den. He’d probably be waiting for us when we got there.”
“Good thinkin’, Jak!” exclaimed Tobi. “This time of year Titania’ll be in the Old Forest, gettin’ ready for the midsummer’s dance.”
“Which way is that?” asked Tamisin.
“Through the woods,” Jak said. “We’ll have to go around the Sograssy Sea. But before we go any farther, I want to make sure no one’s following us. I wouldn’t put it past Bob and his nephews to want to finish what they started.”
“I’ll go with you,” Tamisin said.
“No,” said Jak. “You won’t. I want you and Tobi to hide somewhere off the path where no one could see you. Over here looks good.” Jak began following a deer trail back into the woods, then left the trail and picked his way through the underbrush, circling around so their tracks wouldn’t be easy to find. He stopped when he found a small clearing, and gestured to the ground. “Have a seat right here. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can. Tobi, you keep an eye on her. I’m counting on you.”
“If you’re gone too long, I’m going to come looking for you,” Tamisin warned.
“Me, too,” piped up Tobi.
“Fair enough,” said Jak and he disappeared into the underbrush along with one of the cats.
Tamisin could still hear Jak making his way back to the path when Tobi started eyeing the closest tree. “Ya’ll have ta ’scuse me fer a coupla minutes. I got some business ta see to.”
“But Jak said you should stay here with me,” said Tamisin.
“I won’t be long,” he replied. “Ya just hunker down and don’t move. I’ll be back before ya know it.”
“All right, just …,” Tamisin began, but he was gone.
Tamisin’s stomach rumbled. Jak had made them skip breakfast in his hurry to leave the inn, so after finding a mossy patch without too many anthills, she sat cross-legged on the ground and opened her purse to take out a lemon cookie that had once been a breath mint. She was wondering how much longer Jak would be gone when the leaves of the undergrowth rustled. The cat that had stayed with her stood up and sniffed the air. Whatever the cat smelled didn’t leave her too concerned, because she lay down and rested her head on her paws. Tamisin decided that Jak must be coming back already and was about to call out to him when a huge white horselike head bearing a long silver horn parted the leaves and a unicorn stepped into the clearing.
Tamisin had seen pictures of unicorns, of course, but most of the artists who had drawn them had made them look delicate. This unicorn was sleek and beautiful, but there wasn’t anything delicate about him. Except for the horn, he looked like a white racehorse, but was bigger than any horse she’d ever seen. He snorted when he saw her, and his brown eyes flashed almost crimson. His mane was silver streaked with gold, and it shed sparks when he shook it. He took a step toward Tamisin, then pawed the ground as if not sure what to do.
Tamisin tried to remember the magazine articles she’d read about how to act when encountering wild animals. Should she run to the closest tree and climb it? Should she jump up and shout, trying to make herself look big and fierce? Maybe she should lie down and play dead, hoping the unicorn would sniff her and walk away. She sat motionless, unable to make up her mind.