by JL Bryan
Chapter Twenty
When he got home, Jason spent most of the evening in his room, listening to music on his headphones, but nothing sounded good to him. He felt stupid, and hurt, and stupid for letting himself get hurt.
Much later, close to midnight, he was awoken by a scratching sound under his bed. He leaned over, lifted the comforter, and looked underneath.
It was Grizlemor, arranging a small, straw-stuffed pillowcase and a rough burlap blanket in the space below the bed. There was also a rickety three-legged table with a wind-up alarm clock, and a lamp where a firefly orbited above tiny leaves and flowers.
“What are you doing?” Jason whispered.
“Just arranging my new place,” Grizlemor replied. “What do you think? Not much of a view, but it's roomy.”
“Your new...What? You can't live under my bed! And why would you want to?”
“Well, young sir, I can't live at home any more, and it's all on account of you. So, by any measure of justice, it's your job to provide suitable lodging during my displacement.”
“Why can't you go home?”
“Queensguard.” Grizlemor lay on one elbow on his blanket. “They're searching Goblin Row. I came home to find them ransacking my apartment pit. Had to run before they spotted me. I can only hope they didn't find my stash-hole.”
“Why were they doing that?”
“Because of you!” Grizlemor snapped. “The Queensguard's mad as hornets about finding those stolen instruments. Magic leaking into the human world, and all of that. It violates the Supreme Law.”
“What, the Constitution?”
“Not human law. Are you dense? The Supreme Law. The great covenant among the Folk, when we left man-world after the Iron Wars.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Human and Folk—that's us, goblins and fairies and elves and such—had a terrible war long ago. Your side won. So when we left your world, the Supreme Law was established by leaders of each kind of Folk. Rule one: Draw no attention from man-world. That means keeping all magic over on our side, hidden from your kind. Of course, rule two is that Folk shall not use iron against other Folk, yet there's the Queensguard, threatening everyone with their iron swords.”
“Oh. But you didn't break the law, I did.”
“As if it matters!” Grizlemor's green face looked agitated. “I led a man-whelp down to Faerie. It no longer matters whether the instruments are recovered—the Queen will punish me. Perhaps she'll throw me in the Labyrinth to be torn apart by beasts.” He shuddered.
“You don't have anywhere else to go?”
“Don't even try to run me off,” Grizlemor said. “It's too late for me to make amends, so now I have to make sure you don't get caught. It'll be my hide tacked to the palace wall if they find you.”
“I'm sorry,” Jason said. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of a goblin living in his room, but Grizlemor's troubles really were Jason's fault. “Are you sure you want to stay down there?”
“I like it very much.” Grizlemor fluffed the straw pillow and lay back against it, crossing his legs. He took up a small leather-bound book and a tiny pair of half-glasses that looked like they'd been swiped from a grandma doll somewhere. He wore them low on his nose. “Now, if you'll leave me to my reading...”
“Wait. I need to know how the instruments work.”
“Not being a musician, I wouldn't know,” Grizlemor said.
“But you know some things. You know they drain energy from kids, and you said that helps power the magic in the fairy world.”
Grizlemor sighed and looked up from his book. “What do you want to know? I'll share what little bits of knowledge I have, if it'll help you avoid trouble.”
“Where do the kids come from? How do they end up in Faerie?”
“Fairy rings,” Grizlemor said. “Remember the ring of mushrooms within which the young people dance?”
“Yes...”
“Here in man-world, such rings grow around the edges of soft spots between the worlds. Man-whelps can be lured into them by the faintest notes of fairy music. Once inside the ring, they fall through into the Faerie.”
“So they're doorways. Like the one we used.”
“Not exactly.” Grizlemor sighed again, as if he found it ridiculous that Jason didn't already know these things. “A soft spot with a fairy ring is like a fishing net cast by the fairies. It's meant to lure people in. Fairies can create and remove them at will, with their magic. But they can't close the major doorways between our worlds, because those are holes that were left when the Folk cut their favorite places out of this world and moved them down to the elfland.”
“You mean fairy-land, right? Faerie?”
“Let's not get off on a historical tangent,” Grizlemor said. “It was the elfland then, but it's fairy-land now.”
“I don't get it,” Jason said.
“Do you want to know about the instruments or not?” Grizlemor was looking impatient, tapping his book with a green thumb.
“Yeah, tell me about those.”
“As we were saying, the fairies create and control the soft spots. Their purpose is to trap human children so they can be drained of energy. The soft spot takes them directly to one of the little music parks in Faerie. There, in my world, the ring of mushrooms acts as a barrier—the human pups can't just wander outside the dancing-circle and do as they please. Not that they often try. They notice very little but the music.”
“And when they're drained, they go back where they came from?”
“Correct,” Grizlemor said. “Usually. They may pop up in a fairy ring in the wrong part of man-world, but back to man-world they go, in any case.”
“That doesn't seem right, trapping and draining people like that.”
Grizlemor snorted. “As if you aren't doing the same with your music.”
Jason didn't know what to make of that, so he asked, “Grizlemor, the music almost destroyed my friend's house. How can we stop the instruments from being destructive?”
“Don't play them.” Grizlemor began leafing through his book, as if he'd lost his place.
“Other than that.”
“How should I know? It takes seventy-seven years of conservatory training before the Guild certifies you as a professional musician. I've had...let me consider...zero years of such training.”
“But we don't want to wreck everything each time we play.”
“Then play softly, I suppose.” Grizlemor shrugged. “I'd prefer you didn't play them at all. You'll only draw the fairies' attention. And they'll be quite vengeful.”
“How vengeful?”
“Have you ever been pecked to death by a vulture? Or slowly eaten from the inside by slime-worms? Or ripped apart by a blunt-toothed brainbug?”
“No...”
“Well, you might be.”
“Great.”
“Ask yourself if fame and fortune are worth a horrible death for you and your friends,” Grizlemor said. “I know it's a difficult question.”
“Are the fairies really that evil?”
“Evil? You're the thief. You've brought this on yourself.”
Jason thought about that.
“Now, if you don't mind, it's been a long day. I'd like a bit of pleasure reading before sleep.”
“What are you reading?”
“Gobbligan's Wake. It's a stream of conscious meditation on the nature of goblinness. You wouldn't understand it.” Grizlemor pulled the comforter down like a curtain, closing off Jason's view of him.
Jason lay back on his pillow.
“I've got a monster living under my bed,” he said.
“Goblin,” Grizlemor corrected. “'Monster' is an offensive term.” There was a cracking sound, then something thunked into the underside of Jason's bed. Jason could feel his springs rattle at the impact.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked.
“Clipping my toenails.” Another
crack, another thunk that rattled the bed. “Problem?”
“No.” Jason listened, his lip curling a little as the goblin's next toenail clipping buried itself like an arrow into the boxspring. And the next. And the next.