Goblins in the Castle

by Bruce Coville

  “My name is William!” I snapped after the third time he called me this. I regretted my words immediately, remembering that Hulda had told me names were magical, and much could be done by someone who knew your true name. I had thought it was pretty silly at the time, but with everything that had gone on during the last few days, this didn’t seem like a time to take chances with things like that.

  “Yucko!” cried Herky when we came to the first stream we had to cross. “Herky don’t like water!” Then he scrambled up my leg and insisted on riding on my shoulder.

  “All right,” I said. “As long as you don’t pull my hair!”

  “Bad Herky like butterhead hair,” he said, grabbing a handful and giving it a tug just light enough that I couldn’t really call it a pull.

  I sighed and crossed the stream. Shortly after we got to the other side Herky spotted a bird and threw himself into the air in a vain attempt to catch it.

  “Bad bird!” he muttered when he fell face first among the leaves. “Herky mad at bird.”

  It took another half hour to reach the waterfall. We had gone about half the distance when I heard a pattering above us. It sounded like thousands of tiny feet. At first I didn’t know what could be making the sound. Then I realized that it was . . .

  “Rain!” cried Herky. “Yike, yike, yike! No rain! Make it stop, William!”

  “I can’t stop the rain, Herky.”

  “Put me in bag! Herky hate rain.”

  He was shivering, and his funny little face looked so miserable I actually wanted to help him. “All right, just a minute,” I said. “I have to clean it out first.”

  Going behind a large tree, I removed the cloak, the amulet, and the golden collar. The amulet I placed around my neck. I rolled the cloak, which was made of a light fabric, and tucked it inside my shirt. I stared at the golden collar for a moment, wondering what to do with it. Finally I pulled up my shirt and tried wrapping it around my waist. To my surprise, it fit. Was it bigger than I thought, or had it stretched somehow? How big was the Goblin King’s neck? I fastened the collar over the cloak, holding it in place.

  The rain was falling faster.

  “Hurry!” pleaded Herky from the other side of the tree.

  “Make sure he stays where he is!” I called to Fauna.

  “Look, goblin,” she muttered, “you make one move toward that tree, and I’ll have a goblin skin hanging on my wall.”

  “Girl bad!” cried Herky. “Help, William, help!”

  I stepped back from around the tree. “You didn’t have to terrorize the poor thing,” I said.

  Fauna shrugged and thrust her knife back into its sheath.

  “Do you have room for these?” I asked, holding out the food packets Granny Pinchbottom had given me.

  She took them and tucked them into the pouch she carried at her side. When I opened the top of my own bag Herky jumped in as if it were his long-lost home.

  “No rain!” he cried, pulling the edges together. “Bad rain go away!”

  I secured the top and swung the bag over my shoulder.

  Fauna took the lead again. At first the trees sheltered us from the rain. But as the drops began to fall faster and the top levels of the forest grew soaked, the rain began dripping through. Cold and uncomfortable, I began to wish that someone was carrying me in a pack on his back.

  We began to run, leaping over stones and roots that were growing slick with moisture. Thunder and lightning played overhead, and Herky shouted “Yow!” every time the sky rumbled with their power.

  The waterfall was even taller than I remembered. We heard it before we saw it, and as we started toward it I was amazed at how loud it became. Our path followed the stream that flowed from the base of the falls. The trees did not offer much cover here, and the rain began to pound against us.

  “What now?” asked Fauna as we drew near the falls.

  “Let’s go under there,” I replied, pointing to a rocky overhang where we could get out of the rain.

  The waterfall itself poured over a sheer cliff that blocked any other progress in that direction, landing in a wide pool that foamed with the force of the water striking it.

  We ducked into the space I had indicated. It was not deep enough to be a cave, but did have sufficient room for me to study the map without exposing it to the rain.

  I extracted the map from my shirt. To my surprise, it was bone dry. I was even more surprised when I unfolded it.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Fauna, when she saw the look on my face.

  “This has changed since the last time I looked at it!”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “Granny Pinchbottom.”

  She shrugged, as if that explained everything.

  I looked at the map again. The bottom left corner still said “You are here.” But instead of the clearing it showed the waterfall where we were now standing. According to the diagram above it, we were supposed to go under the waterfall.

  “Herky’s not going to like this,” I muttered, showing the map to Fauna.

  “Who cares? Let’s get moving.”

  We stepped back out into the rain—which was nothing compared to the deluge that engulfed us when we climbed the rocks leading to the waterfall. The spray alone was enough to soak us. When we reached the base of the falls itself we found no secret, dry path hidden beside it. We had to go straight through.

  Nodding to each other, we stepped forward.

  “Yow!” cried Herky as the water hit us. “William bad!”

  The pounding water nearly tore the bag from my hands. It was almost impossible to keep my footing, and I slipped three or four times. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear anything other than the roar of the falling water.

  Then suddenly we were through and on the other side. Even though I was soaked to the skin, it was a relief to be out of the falling water.

  Herky didn’t seem to think so. “Bad, bad, bad!” he sputtered. “Bad William! William bad!”

  “Oh, be quiet!” I snapped. Swinging the bag in front of me, I opened the top and pulled him out by the scruff of his neck. He squirmed out of my hand and shook himself vigorously.

  We were in a large cave. Though I had expected this side of the waterfall to be dark, the space was suffused with a soft glow. After a while I realized that it came from some kind of fungus that was growing all over the rocks.

  “Look!” said Fauna.

  I turned in the direction she was pointing. Resting on a boulder was a large wooden sign that said, in neat letters, THIS WAY TO NILBOG.

  On the bottom someone had scrawled Turn back now, while you still can!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THROUGH CAVERNS DEEP AND DARK

  The caves seemed to go on forever. Sometimes there were signs to point the way, sometimes not. We passed through chambers slick with moisture, chambers dry as toast, chambers where some strange source of heat made us feel as if we were walking through an oven. Some places were so high and vast I felt as if we were outside again—except there was no sky, only a distant darkness.

  I thought of Igor often. What were the goblins doing to him? I hoped we would find him soon—though what we would do when that happened, how we might rescue him, I had no idea. At least I had Granny Pinchbottom’s gifts to help me.

  The first of those gifts became useful sooner than I expected. This was because the glowing fungus began to disappear as we traveled away from the waterfall. Though Herky seemed to have no trouble traveling in the darkness, Fauna and I found it harder and harder to go on.

  I took out the amulet. It cast no light. I shook it, wondering if there was some secret to making it work. Nothing. But when the last of the fungus was gone, and the darkness had become complete, the amulet began to glow all by itself—faintly at first, then brighter and brighter, until I had to take it away from my neck. I held it over my head like a lantern, and it provided more than enough light for us to continue.

  We stopped to eat in a small chamber that h
ad walls streaked with veins of red and umber. Stalactites and stalagmites filled it like fangs run amok, growing everywhere instead of in an orderly half circle. Leaning against one of the stalagmites, I asked Fauna to pass around the food packets I had given her when I had made room in my bag for Herky.

  “No lizards?” asked the little goblin wistfully when the food came his way.

  When I shook my head he ran away. He came back a little while later, smiling. I didn’t ask him what he had done.

  “What are we going to do when we get to Nilbog?” asked Fauna, cutting a slice of cheese with her knife.

  “I don’t know if I should say,” I whispered, gesturing toward Herky. He sat a couple of feet away, licking his toes with his long orange tongue.

  Fauna nodded. I was glad to drop the conversation. Other than the fact that I was going to try to put the golden collar around the Goblin King’s neck, I had no idea what we were going to do when we got there.

  Herky was not so uncertain. “Party!” he cried.

  “What?” asked Fauna.

  “Herky be glad glad glad to be home. Home good. Herky say have party!”

  “Listen, Herky. The goblins will be glad to see you. At least, I assume they will,” I added, wondering if they might consider him as much of a nuisance as I sometimes did. “But I don’t think they’ll be glad to see Fauna and me.”

  He looked troubled. “You goblin friends,” he said at last. “Herky friends, goblin friends!”

  “Even so, it might be better if you didn’t tell anyone about us,” I said. “We could be a secret.”

  “Herky bad at secrets,” he replied, tugging on one of his huge ears.

  “Maybe I should skin him now and get it over with,” whispered Fauna.

  I glared at her. She glared back.

  • • •

  When I was done eating I took out the map and examined it by the light of the amulet. According to the bottom corner—the section marked “You are here”—we were in a chamber that had three possible exits. We were supposed to leave by the one farthest to the right.

  I returned the food packets to my bag. “Let’s get going,” I said.

  Fauna pushed herself to her feet. Herky scrambled up my leg. “Want ride!” he said.

  We threaded our way among the stalagmites and stalactites, coming at last to the far wall. Though the map said we should take the passage farthest to the right, the passage in the center had a wooden sign in front of it that said, as had others along the way, “This way to Nilbog.”

  “Now what do we do?” I said in exasperation.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Fauna.

  I explained.

  “Follow sign!” said Herky. “Goblin sign good! Good goblin sign, be home soon!”

  “I wouldn’t follow a goblin sign for anything,” said Fauna. “It’s either crazy, a lie, or a trap.”

  “This way!” said Herky. “Herky remember now! This way to home!”

  “Have you been this way before?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, yes! This way good!”

  “Are you going to trust him, or Granny Pinchbottom’s map?” asked Fauna.

  “Me, me, me!” cried Herky. “Herky want to go home!” Scrambling off my shoulder, he shot into the middle tunnel.

  “Herky!” I cried. “Come back!”

  “Leave him. We’re better off without him. For all you know, he was a spy anyway.”

  Before I could reply, Herky’s voice came echoing out of the tunnel. “Ouch! Ouch, ouch, ouchers! William! Help Herky, William!”

  Right tunnel or wrong, I couldn’t leave him if he was in trouble. “Come on,” I said. Without waiting to see if Fauna would follow me, I raced into the tunnel. It didn’t occur to me that she didn’t have much choice, that I had the only source of light. If she didn’t follow me, she would be left alone in the darkness.

  She did point this out to me afterward.

  I didn’t have to go far to find out what was wrong. The tunnel, between three and four feet wide, was strewn with large stones of all shapes and sizes. Herky had been scrambling over one of them and had managed to get his tail caught in a crack. As I came up to him he was howling and trying to tug it loose.

  “Ow, yow, wowie ouchers!” he shouted. He yanked at it, which only pulled it more tightly into the crack of the boulder.

  “Herky, stop! You’ll never get it out that way.”

  “Owie ouchers!” he cried, continuing to tug at it.

  “Stop!” I yelled, grabbing him around the waist.

  At that moment Fauna joined us. “I could cut it out for you,” she said, reaching for her knife.

  “Yow!” cried Herky. He tried to scramble up to my shoulder, but of course his tail held him in place. His sharp fingers dug into my arms.

  “Stop!” I said. “Fauna isn’t going to cut off your tail—are you, Fauna?”

  “I ought to, considering the trouble he’s causing,” she replied. But she took her hand off the knife.

  “Just help me,” I said.

  I held the amulet over the rock, and we examined the situation. Herky’s frantic efforts to free himself had wedged his tail deeply into the cleft in the stone. Even worse, the abuse had made it start to swell.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” said Fauna.

  I nodded. “You’ll have to hold still, Herky, or you’re going to make it worse.”

  “Owie!”

  “Fauna, I’ll hold him—you try to get the tail loose.”

  Setting the amulet on a nearby rock, I locked my hands around Herky’s waist. Fauna began to work at releasing the tail. Despite her harsh words her fingers were gentle as she tried to pry it free. “This is going to hurt,” she whispered after a moment.

  “No owies!” cried Herky.

  “Look, you have three choices,” said Fauna harshly. “You can stay here forever. I can cut off your tail. Or you can suffer quietly while I loosen this thing, which wouldn’t be stuck at all if you had stayed with us to begin with.”

  “Girl mean,” whimpered Herky, snuggling against me.

  Fauna ignored him and continued to work at the tail. After a moment she took out her knife.

  “No!” cried Herky.

  “Be quiet. I’m not going to cut it off, I’m going to pry it loose. William, hold him so he doesn’t wiggle.”

  I tightened my grip around Herky’s waist. With the cutting edge pointing down, Fauna slipped her knife under his tail. She began to rock the blade up and down, trying to lift the tail with the wide, flat edge of the blade.

  “Owie, owie, owie,” whispered Herky, burying his head against my shirt and squirming back and forth.

  Fauna didn’t tell him to be quiet. She just kept rocking the knife. Herky clutched my shirt more tightly.

  “Got it!” said Fauna a moment later.

  “It’s all right, Herky,” I said. “Fauna got it out.”

  “Herky hurty!”

  I wasn’t surprised. His tail was swollen and bruised. The skin where it had been caught was torn, and something green was oozing out. I wondered if it was goblin blood.

  “We should wrap that,” said Fauna.

  Turning Herky in my lap, I pulled one side of my shirt out of my britches. “Cut a strip off the bottom of this.”

  Fauna used her knife to start a tear, then ripped a strip of cloth about fifteen inches long from the bottom of the shirt. When she was done I tucked the shirt back in so it would hold the cloak and the collar in place. Fauna wrapped the strip of cloth around Herky’s tail and tied it.

  As we were getting up to go I heard a rumbling sound. It came from where we had entered the tunnel.

  “What’s that?” I whispered.

  “Rocks,” said Fauna. “Or maybe one big rock.”

  Then I heard something even worse than the sound of moving rocks. It was the sound of goblins laughing.

  “Come on!” I shouted. Snatching the amulet, I raced toward the opening.

  It was too late. It had b
een sealed.

  “Uh-oh,” said Herky. “Maybe this way bad after all.”

  I took out the map. It was blank, except for the bottom left corner. Where it used to say, “You are here” it now read, “DANGER! YOU HAVE LEFT THE PATH! RETURN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE ROCKS

  A half hour of clawing at rocks, a half hour of breaking our nails and bloodying our fingers convinced us there was no possibility of returning the way we had come.

  “This is your fault,” said Fauna to Herky. “We should have left you here to rot.”

  “Girl mean,” said Herky. But he said it without much spirit.

  Since we couldn’t go back, we decided to go forward—though I had some concern about whether we might be walking into a goblin trap.

  Holding the amulet aloft, I led the way past Herky’s rock on through the tunnel, which was narrow but very high.

  After a while the wall on our right disappeared, leaving a high wall to our left and flat, open space to the right. I wondered if the way out lay somewhere in that direction. But if we went that way, we could quickly become lost in the emptiness. By sticking with the wall we could always retrace our steps—though what good that would do us I didn’t know.

  Sometimes I thought I heard footsteps behind us. But when I stopped to listen more carefully the footsteps—if that’s what they were—stopped, too.

  None of us spoke much, not even Herky.

  The rock wall to our left was smooth. Sometimes water trickled down its surface. When we got thirsty enough we would lap some of the water from the wall. It was cold and sweet.

  The decision to stay with the wall proved wise, because after a while the floor to the right disappeared as well. Now we were walking along a ledge about a foot and a half wide, with a rocky wall to the left and a sheer drop to the right. I held the amulet out over the dark drop. Its light did not reach to the bottom.

  When we came to a notch in the wall big enough for the three of us to sit safely back from the edge of the abyss we stopped for a rest. I passed around some food.