Odds Are Good

by Bruce Coville

  That’s what I’d like to do someday. After all, I’ve been down here delivering nightmares for nearly thirty years now. The thing is, being a messenger of darkness and fear is the kind of work that twists a guy.

  I’m not the person I used to be.

  Even so, I dream of going back to the other side to stay.

  It won’t be long now. I’ve found a weakness in the boundary between the worlds. It’s not as good as the one under my bed was, at least not yet. But it will be when I’m done with it. A place where someone real, someone living, could pass through into this world.

  It’s under a bed, of course.

  Maybe yours.

  The thing is, I’ll feel funny about pulling another kid down here to take my place. After all, he or she won’t be any happier doing this than I am.

  That’s why I sent this dream to the person who’s writing this story. I figure if I send a warning, if I give kids a fighting chance to save themselves, I won’t have to feel so bad when I finally do bring one of them down here.

  Well, there it is. Now you know what might be waiting under your bed. You know what can happen if you don’t get out.

  Whether you do anything about it or not—well, that’s up to you. But I’ve done my time. Sooner or later someone is going to take my place down here. Sooner or later someone—maybe you—is going to have my job.

  Sleep well, friend.

  I’ll see you in your dreams.

  The Stinky Princess

  Once there was a princess named Violet who didn’t smell very good.

  This was an unnatural condition for a princess, of course, and it did not reflect well on her parents. On the other hand, it had nothing to do with either her birth or her upbringing. In fact, she had started out smelling just fine. When she was born, she had smelled as a rosebud does when it is just beginning to open on a misty morning in early June. When she was a little girl, she had smelled of mischief and mud pies (it was a small kingdom, and she had an understanding nurse), as well as cinnamon, apples, and sunny afternoons. And when she was just becoming a young lady, she smelled of clear mountain streams a moment before the rain comes, of lilacs, and of a small red blossom called dear-to-my-heart that grew on the castle grounds and nowhere else.

  So, all in all, she smelled just as a princess should, and her parents were pretty well satisfied. More satisfied than the princess herself, certainly. Violet found her own smell boring, and often declared that there must be many far more interesting scents in the world, a statement that always gave her mother a bad case of the quivering vapors.

  It did not improve matters any when Bindlepod the goblin came to visit.

  If it had been up to him, the king never would have allowed the goblin into the court to begin with. Alas for him, Bindlepod was not merely a goblin, but an ambassador from Goblinland, with which the kingdom had recently been at war. So the king was obliged not merely to let him in, but to offer him hospitality.

  Bindlepod’s skin was the color of rotting toadstools. His bare feet slapped on the stone floors of the castle like dirty dishrags. The pupils of his oversize yellow eyes did not stay still, but instead swam about like tadpoles—which made it very distracting to try to hold a conversation with him.

  But the most distressing thing about him was his smell. While nobody could say exactly what it was Bindlepod smelled of, everybody agreed that it was distinctly unpleasant, and somehow made them think of dark and distant places.

  Everybody, that is, except the princess.

  She thought Bindlepod smelled quite interesting.

  “You must be joking, darling,” said the queen, speaking through the handkerchief she was holding over her mouth and nose.

  “Of course I’m not joking,” said Violet.

  “But he’s . . . he’s revolting,” sputtered the king.

  “I don’t think so,” said the princess calmly.

  “I can’t stand this!” cried the queen, and she fled the room, shedding copious tears as she went.

  “There,” said the king. “Now see what you’ve done?”

  “What?” asked Violet, who was totally baffled. “What have I done?”

  “As if you didn’t know,” sniffed her father bitterly.

  Later that day, the princess was walking in the castle garden when she spotted Bindlepod’s frog, which was nearly as tall as she was. It was wearing its saddle, as if Bindlepod had just returned from a ride, or was about to leave on one.

  A little farther on she spotted the goblin himself. He was perched on the stone wall, gnawing a raw fish.

  Violet walked over and looked at him for a few moments. He nodded at her but said nothing, preferring to give his attention to the fish.

  “My parents don’t like you,” she said, partly because she was annoyed, but mostly to see how he would respond.

  The goblin took another bite of the fish, smacking his lips as he did. Then he said, “I’m not surprised. Are you?”

  “I think they’re pains,” said the princess, surprising herself with her bitterness.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, either,” said Bindlepod. He cleaned the last of the flesh from the fish’s spine, sucked out its eyes, then tossed the skeleton over his shoulder. It landed in the moat with a tiny splash.

  “My parents are not merely pains,” said the princess, warming to her topic. “They’re royal pains.”

  “That’s appropriate,” said the goblin, who privately thought of Violet as sweet, but dangerous.

  Violet climbed onto the wall and took a seat next to Bindlepod. “What’s it like in Goblinland?” she asked.

  Bindlepod shrugged. “Nice enough, if you’re a goblin. It’s a bit darker than here, but that’s mostly because it’s underground. It’s damp, too. We call it Nilbog, by the way, not Goblinland. That’s rude. It would be like calling your kingdom Peopleland.”

  “Is Nilbog smelly?”

  Bindlepod closed his eyes and seemed to be remembering something. “Yes,” he said at last, with just a hint of a smile. “Very.”

  “Let’s go there,” said the princess.

  “You,” said the goblin, “are walking trouble, a danger zone with feet.”

  “Does that mean no?” asked Violet.

  “It means never in a million years!”

  Then he hopped down from the wall, whistled for his frog, and rode away.

  Every day for the next two years Violet asked Bindlepod to take her to Nilbog, and every day the goblin told her no. This was not because he did not like her. Actually, he had come to find the princess fairly interesting. He had even begun to like her odor, which was not nearly as boring as that of her parents. But much as Bindlepod liked the princess, he liked his own skin even better. More specifically, he liked his skin exactly where it was and preferred to keep it there rather than have it peeled from his bones while he was still living—an event he was fairly sure would occur were he to run off with the king’s daughter.

  At the end of the second year, it was time for Bindlepod to return to his own land. As he saddled his frog to leave, the princess once again asked if he would take her along.

  “Not for all the jewels in your father’s treasury,” said the goblin. “Nor all the fish in his moat,” he added, hoping to make the point more clearly.

  Princess Violet wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re not very nice!”

  “I never claimed to be,” replied the goblin. “And you’re something of a stinker yourself, when it comes right down to it.”

  Then he went to say good-bye to her parents.

  Late in the first morning of the trip back to Nilbog, Bindlepod’s frog stopped in the middle of the road and said, “I am not taking another hop until you get that princess out of the saddlebag.”

  “What are you talking about?” cried Bindlepod in alarm.

  “The princess,” said the frog patiently. “She’s in the saddlebag, and I’m getting tired of carrying her.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before now?
” asked Bindlepod, torn between exasperation and despair.

  “She bribed me,” said the frog. “With june bugs. You know I can’t resist june bugs.”

  Bindlepod groaned and climbed down from his steed’s spotted green back. Poking the saddlebag, he said, “Princess, are you in there?”

  No one answered.

  Even so, the shape of the saddlebag was distinctly suspicious. So Bindlepod unstrapped it from the frog, loosened the top, and turned it over.

  Out tumbled the princess.

  Bindlepod sighed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Going to Nilbog,” said Princess Violet, picking herself up from the road and brushing the dust from her backside.

  “You most certainly are not,” said Bindlepod.

  For a moment Violet considered telling him that if he tried to take her back she would claim he had kidnapped her to begin with, then had a change of heart, but only after he had done unspeakable things to her, and so on. She decided against this tactic, mostly because she had always hated the girls who acted that way in stories. It was a cheap way to get what you wanted.

  “Well, if it’s not Nilbog, it will be somewhere else,” she said. “I’m not going back, and you can’t make me.”

  “She’s got a point,” put in the frog. “Even if you took her back, they probably wouldn’t let her in on account of . . . well, you know.”

  “I know,” said Bindlepod. “The smell.”

  This conversation alarmed Violet considerably. Despite her wish to escape from the palace, she had done so assuming that she could return any time she wanted. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  “The smell,” said Bindlepod again. “You’ve been in my saddlebag for three hours already. By now the smell will have worn deep into your skin. Your parents may have put up with goblin smell on me, but they certainly aren’t going to accept it on their daughter.”

  “Well, I’ll just wash,” said Princess Violet indignantly.

  “Goblin smell doesn’t come off with mere soap and water,” said Bindlepod. He sounded offended at the thought.

  “What does it take?” asked the princess, indignation turning to alarm.

  “A dip in Fire Lake, if I remember correctly,” said the frog.

  “Good grief!” cried Bindlepod. “We can’t expect her to do that! There’s no telling how she might come out.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Violet, more alarmed than ever.

  “Never mind,” said Bindlepod. “Be quiet. I have to think.”

  “Never an easy task for him,” put in the frog with a smirk.

  “Shut up!” snapped the goblin.

  The frog winked one melon-size eye at Violet but said nothing more.

  An hour later Bindlepod stood, stretched (a movement that created an odd symphony of pops, clicks, and crackles), and said, “We’re turning back. Even if the princess’s parents don’t let her in, we have to let them know what’s happened. If we don’t, they’re going to assume I stole her, and before you know it we’ll be at war all over again.”

  He climbed onto the frog. “Come on, Princess, hop up here behind me. And no complaints from you about the extra load,” he added, digging his heels into the frog’s side to get him moving again. “If you’d said something to begin with, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  They had traveled only about a third of the way back to the castle when they found the king coming in their direction. His brow was dark, he was dressed for war, and he had a hundred knights riding behind him.

  Violet, who had not expected this, was both frightened and thrilled.

  “Hail, King Vitril!” said Bindlepod, springing down from the frog.

  The king said nothing.

  “I have your daughter,” said Bindlepod, gesturing to where Violet was perched atop the frog. “I was just bringing her home.”

  “Why did you take her to begin with?” demanded the king.

  “He didn’t!” cried Violet, scrambling down from the frog’s back. “He didn’t, Papa! I snuck into his saddlebag, because I wanted to see the world. I longed for new sights and sounds and smells. I’m sorry if I caused you any worry.”

  She raced to her father’s side. But when the king dismounted to embrace her, he made a terrible face.

  “Euuuw!” he cried. “You stink of goblin!”

  And, indeed, the princess—who had once smelled of apple blossoms and spiced muffins—now had a distinctly strange odor about her. A quick sniff was more apt to remind you of wind-wild October nights and distant caverns than of dew on the grass and freshly washed laundry. A deeper inhalation of the scent was likely to bring to mind secrets better left unspoken.

  The king looked at his daughter sadly. “I can’t take you home like this. It would never do, not at all.”

  Violet’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You can’t be serious, Papa!”

  “Alas, I am utterly serious,” said her father. “What do you think your mother would say if she got a whiff of you now? The smell would break her heart quite in half.” He turned toward Bindlepod. “Had you taken my daughter against her will, I would have cleft you in two, fed both parts to my dogs, then ridden in vengeance against your people. As she chose to go with you, I leave her to you.”

  With that he bade his daughter farewell, told her to be wise and good, and to write as often as she was able, apologized for not embracing her, then climbed onto his horse and rode for home.

  The astonished princess stood in the road, blinking back tears as she watched her father gallop away. It is, after all, one thing to run away from home. It is another thing entirely to run away and discover that they don’t want you back.

  She stood watching until the army had galloped completely out of sight, and neither Bindlepod nor the frog said a word to disturb her. Finally, when she could no longer see even the smallest cloud of dust from beneath the horses’ hooves, she sighed and turned her face toward Nilbog.

  Bindlepod still said nothing, simply held out one clammy hand and helped her onto the frog’s back.

  Toward evening on the third day of their journey, they came to an opening in the side of a hill.

  “This is the path to Nilbog,” said the goblin. “Are you still sure you want to go with us?”

  Violet looked at the dark hole, then glanced back toward her old home. After a while she nodded. “I’ll go in.”

  Bindlepod and Violet dismounted, for the entrance was too low for the frog to carry them through. Bindlepod took the princess by the hand and led the way into the cavern.

  It was darker than Violet had imagined possible.

  “How can you see?” she asked, as she picked her way forward on the stony path. She was holding tight to the goblin’s hand and was secretly terrified that if he let go of her she would never find her way to the light again.

  “There’s enough light,” replied Bindlepod. “It’s just that your eyes are too small.”

  “It gets better soon, anyway,” added the frog.

  And, indeed, after another five or ten minutes, she could see a dim glow ahead of them, which was like food to her light-starved eyes.

  The glow turned out to be coming from some greenish mushrooms that grew along the cavern walls. It was sufficiently bright to let her walk with confidence, though not bright enough to cast shadows. Violet noticed that it gave an odd tinge to Bindlepod and his frog. Then she held up her hand and realized that the light made her look strange, too.

  Narrow stone bridges took them across dark chasms. Winding passages with many tunnels branching to the sides carried them deeper into the earth. And at last they arrived at the entrance to Nilbog—or, at least, one of the entrances.

  It was carved in the shape of a great mouth. Within that mouth, barring their path forward, were dozens of spiky stone teeth.

  An enormously fat creature who looked something like a goblin, though not entirely, was leaning against one side of the entrance, cleaning his navel with a sharpened bone. When he saw th
em coming, he opened his yellow eyes a little wider but made no movement.

  Bindlepod stopped a respectful distance away. He stuck out his long tongue by way of salute, then said, “Greetings, Frelg. I return from the land above.”

  “Not alone, I notice,” said Frelg, shifting his huge bulk to the side just a bit.

  “Princess Violet wished to see our world,” said Bindlepod, not referring to the fact that her father had banned her from returning home.

  “Come here,” said Frelg. “Not you, Princess! Just Bindlepod.”

  The goblin stepped forward. Frelg lurched to his feet, and the princess shuddered to see that he was twice the height of Bindlepod. Bending forward—not easy, given his enormous bulk—he began to sniff.

  Sniff. Sniff sniff.

  Frelg frowned in disgust. “Whooie!” he cried. “You stink, Bindlepod! You smell of quiet rooms and cramped hearts, tiny minds and tiny places. You smell small and nasty.”

  Hearing this, the princess grew nervous. “Does that mean he’s not going to let us in?” she whispered to the frog in a quivering voice.

  “If I sent you away, then I would have a tiny little mind, too, wouldn’t I?” asked Frelg, who had heard her in spite of her caution. (No surprise, really, given the size of his ears.) “You may enter. Just don’t be surprised if people are not particularly happy to smell you.”

  With that he wobbled his way from in front of the gate and gestured for them to enter. At the same time the stone teeth slid out of sight, leaving the path clear.

  With Bindlepod leading the way, they passed through the gate into a long dark tunnel that led down at a steep angle. After about an hour the tunnel widened and they came out on a ledge overlooking a stone city. It was lit all about by that same glowing fungus.

  Bindlepod sighed with pleasure. “Home.”

  Not for me, thought the princess sadly, wondering what was to become of her.