I stared at him in amazement.
“Finally the Baron called me in. He was a good man—quiet, solid, stern. He knew something had to be done about the madness of the goblins, so he asked for my help. Together we spent a year and a day poring through old volumes until we found the key to locking away the goblins. We spent another year and a day preparing the spell. When all was in readiness we sent Igor to the goblins with a message inviting them to the castle for a conference. Igor and the goblins had been friendly, and the poor fool never understood our real plan. Of course, I also used a little magic to help keep him confused.
“On Halloween night the goblins arrived, and the Baron and I put our plan into effect. The silly creatures were so happy to be at the castle, so excited about having a party, that they were completely surprised when the ring of fire surrounded them. Once they were trapped I worked the spell that drew their spirits out of their bodies and imprisoned them in the place we had prepared in the tower.”
“And then you cut off my head!” screamed the King, his eyes bulging with rage.
Ishmael looked at his hands and shook his head sadly.
“You know, in the old days that spell would have kept him quiet for hours. I think I need to get more sleep.”
“You cut off my head!” screamed the King. “You said you were my friend, and then you cut off my head!”
“Well, you didn’t need it anymore. Who thought you would ever be back in your body?” He turned to me. “Cutting off his head put the final seal on the spell. Of course, things that happened to his body while his spirit was out of it didn’t affect it the way they normally would have. Anyway, you can see that you cast away years of effort when you opened that door. But it wasn’t really your fault. No one had warned you what was there, and I hadn’t realized that that meddling fool Granny Pinchbottom was setting you up to break the binding.”
I had heard enough. I could tell the goblins were wild and crazy. But if Ishmael thought the kind of lying treachery he was talking about so calmly was better, if he thought Igor and Granny Pinchbottom were fools, if he thought having “too many children” around was a terrible thing, then I decided I would go for the craziness.
Wondering if he really could turn me into a toad, I started toward the bed. At the same moment the goblins outside shook free of the spell and broke down the door.
The result was instant chaos. The goblins—and there were a lot of them now—stumbled over one another as they tried to get through the door. I was trying to reach the King. Ishmael was trying to stop me and hold off the goblins at the same time. Fauna was trying to keep the King’s head from rolling off the bed. The King was screaming and trying to bite her.
“Stop it! Stop it, all of you!” cried Ishmael.
I think he was trying to do too much at once. His spell didn’t stop me; it simply slowed me down, as if I were in a dream. It did the same to the goblins, who were tumbling toward me, but moving more like feathers than cannonballs.
Ishmael’s spell provided time for one more thing to happen as something came from the outside, something that wasn’t slowed down by his magic. I heard it first, a deep rumble of a voice coming up the stairs. “William! William, you all right?”
“Igor! Igor, I’m here!”
“See, William?” shouted Herky, bursting through the door. “Bad Herky got Igor for you!”
And then Ishmael’s spell came totally undone. I was flying toward the bed, the goblins were flying toward me, and Igor was flying through the door. Landing on the golden cover, I scrambled up the bed. Ignoring the screams of the King, I grabbed the thing Fauna had tossed to the bed earlier and threw it across the room. “Igor!” I shouted. “Catch!”
“Igor’s bear!” he cried joyously as he snatched it out of the air. Then he laid into the goblins that were attacking me, crying, “Bop! Bop! Boppity bop bop! You goblins leave that William alone!”
Goblins flew in all directions, bouncing off the walls and screaming with rage. This time they didn’t outnumber Igor by hundreds, only by dozens. “Igor happy, William!” he cried as he thrashed about him with the bear.
I didn’t have time to answer. As I began to wrap the collar about the King’s neck Ishmael snatched the head from the bed. He pulled back his arm. With a shock of horror I realized that he was about to fling the head out the window. I lunged toward him but got tangled in the King’s clothing.
“Fauna!” I cried. “Stop him!”
Ishmael released the head. It sailed straight toward the window.
Fauna leapt up and caught it.
With a scream of rage Ishmael raced toward her. Turning, she threw the head toward Igor.
“Bop!” yelled Igor, smacking the head with the bear and sending it flying back toward me. I grabbed it from the air.
Ishmael turned toward me again, his face twisted with fury. He raised his hands, and I expected to find myself turning into a toad at any moment. But before the old wizard could make another move Herky went bounding through the air and landed on his shoulder. “Bad!” he cried. “Bad, bad!”
Ishmael staggered backwards. With Herky still clinging to his shoulder, he fell through the open window.
“Herky!” I cried in horror.
“Murder, fire, arson!” screamed the King. “Eat the dogs! Kiss your feet good-bye! Die, die, die!”
Fauna scrambled onto the bed, grabbed the King’s head by the ears, and placed it firmly on his neck.
I could see tears in her eyes.
Ducking as Igor sent a goblin flying over my head, I wrapped the golden collar around the King’s neck. Making sure that head and neck were carefully tucked into the collar, I fastened the buckle.
For a moment it felt as if the entire city was holding its breath. The battle between Igor and the goblins stopped. The only movement was that of Fauna placing her hand on the King’s forehead.
Like the city, I held my breath.
“Ishmael bad!” squeaked a familiar voice.
“Herky!” I cried as I saw the little goblin climb back over the windowsill. “How did you get back here?”
“Down bad!” he said. “Jump good! Jump far, grab wall, hold tight.”
Fauna smiled. But before she could say anything the King began to move. First his chest began to rise and fall. Then after a moment, he stretched his hands. Lifting his arms, he stared at his fingers, wiggled them—and began to laugh. It was not the laugh of a mad creature. It was a deep, happy laugh, the laugh of someone who has looked at something and found it so good that it fills him with joy.
“Peace,” he said to the goblins who filled the room, to Igor, to Fauna, to me. “It’s over.”
Somehow the city knew it was over, too. Granny Pinchbottom had said that the King and his people had a mystic connection. She must have been right, because we could hear a rising cry of joy and triumph from below.
I crossed to the window to look out at the city. Goblins were flowing out of their buildings, filling the streets, singing, dancing, leaping about with the same wild energy I had seen before. Yet it was different in a way. It took me a moment to realize that what underlay the energy now was not rage but joy.
Herky scrambled onto my shoulder.
Rising from his bed, the King joined us at the window. Fauna came to stand with us, and then Igor, too. The other goblins—the ones who had been fighting Igor but moments before—clustered behind us.
I stared down at the dark water below, wondering if Ishmael had fallen into it or if he had somehow managed to vanish halfway through the fall, returning to wherever it was that he had come from.
The King put his arm around my shoulders. “I name you goblin friend,” he said.
Igor put his arm around my shoulders from the other side. “William Igor friend,” he said.
“Yow!” said Herky, climbing onto my head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GOBLIN FRIENDS
The return to Toad-in-a-Cage Castle wasn’t nearly as difficult as the journey to N
ilbog, because the goblins showed us a quick and easy path back to the surface. But not right away. We stayed in Nilbog for another three “days” while the goblins celebrated the King’s recovery.
The King declared that Fauna and I were his special friends, and had us moved into rooms right beneath his own. They even gave Fauna her knife back.
Now that Ishmael had admitted that Igor had not known about the plot against the goblins and had been tricked into bringing them to Toad-in-a-Cage Castle, the goblins were willing to forgive my friend for everything that had happened.
It took Igor longer to get used to the idea that the goblins were no longer his enemies than it did them. It finally began to sink in when the two of us took a walk through the streets of Nilbog and several goblins of different sorts gave him cheerful greetings.
Suddenly Igor began to hit himself on the head with his bear. “Now Igor remember!” he cried. “Goblins and Igor used to be friends. Then old Baron told Igor they were bad. Igor got confused. What good? What bad? Goblins seem good to Igor. Baron seem good to Igor. Good Baron say good goblins bad.”
“Plus Ishmael used magic to confuse you,” I pointed out.
Igor squeezed his bear, which had lost an ear during the battle in the tower. “This all make Igor’s head hurt,” he said.
• • •
The goblins had another feast. This time Herky, Fauna, Igor, and I all sat at the head table, and the King made a speech about how we were Goblin Friends forever.
Later I asked him if the goblins were going to come back out into the world.
“Not right away,” he said sadly. “It will take time for us to return. You can’t push something out as far as we were pushed and have it come back that easily. But we’ll be back. I promise.”
One goblin did come back: Herky announced that he wanted to make the journey to the surface with us.
• • •
Of all the surprising things that happened after I discovered Igor, I sometimes think the most surprising was the reaction we got when we crossed the drawbridge of Toad-in-a-Cage Castle.
Hulda was the first to see us. “William!” she bellowed, thrusting her round face out of a tower window. “William, you’ve come home!”
Home? I guess it was home, though I had never really thought that Hulda and the others thought of it as my home.
Her joyous cries of greeting brought Karl and the Baron to the windows. Soon they had joined us on the drawbridge—the very drawbridge where the Baron had found me eleven years earlier. It took the better part of an hour to get our story out, and we had to tell it over and over for the next two days, adding details and tying up loose ends.
“Well, that certainly explains a lot,” said the Baron over and over. “And I never suspected what grandfather had actually done.”
That night Hulda cooked a special dinner, which everyone except Herky enjoyed. It was strange to have Igor at the table with us, and Karl kept glancing at him nervously.
• • •
After dinner Karl and I built a huge fire in the sitting room, which was the coziest room in the castle. Then we “adventurers,” as the Baron now called us, had to tell our story one more time. Karl made notes. Hulda helped Igor fix the bear’s ear.
When we were done the Baron invited Igor, Herky, and Fauna to live in the castle.
“Igor live in castle already,” said Igor, sounding puzzled.
“Well, er, I meant upstairs, with the rest of us,” said the Baron, seeming a little flustered.
“Igor like that,” said Igor, giving the Baron a little bop with his bear.
“And how about you, young woman?” asked the Baron.
Fauna shook her head. “It’s a very nice offer,” she said. “But I already have a home. However, I would like to visit every now and then, if it’s all right with you.”
“It would be just fine with me!” roared the Baron.
She looked at me questioningly.
“And with me,” I said firmly.
She smiled.
Herky was busy cleaning dust out of a corner. “Herky stay, too!” he cried. “Lots to do here. This place good mess!”
• • •
Later that night I went to the North Tower. The door hung open, and on the other side I could see—a staircase.
“It changed about a week ago,” said Karl, coming up behind me.
I wondered if Ishmael had really died in his fall from the tower. Maybe his magic had vanished with him.
“Have you been up there?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Let’s take a look,” I said.
I led the way. The stair curved around and around, opening onto many rooms, all of them perfectly normal looking. I wondered where they had been during the time the tower had been the goblins’ prison.
At the top of the stairs was a trapdoor. I lifted it and climbed out. The roof of the tower was flat, surrounded by a low wall.
Overhead the night sky blazed with stars.
Stretching in all directions, as far as I could see, was the world.
I realized that I had barely seen any of it—just a little of what was underneath it.
“Why don’t we go out?” I said to Karl. “Why does almost no one come here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, leaning against the wall and looking out into the darkness. “It was as if the whole castle was locked up somehow, trapped in some strange dream. Things have been different here since the night you let the goblins loose—as if we’re waking up.”
I smiled.
At a sound behind me I turned and saw Igor, Herky, and Fauna coming to join us.
“Good!” said Herky, climbing onto the edge of the wall and looking out at the world below us.
“Pretty,” said Igor, hugging his bear.
“Needs work,” said Fauna.
I didn’t say anything. Not because I was keeping a secret. Just because sometimes words aren’t necessary.
Sometimes being with friends is all you need.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I first met Igor on Halloween night in 1973. I had been a student teacher in a first grade class for the previous two months and the assignment had ended the week before. I was mourning the fact that I would not be sharing my favorite holiday with the kids that I had become so fond of, when Igor . . . happened.
He soon became an important part of my life. As a teacher, first in second grade and later in fourth grade, I had to let Igor visit my classroom every year at Halloween. He was always badly behaved, roaring around the room and bopping the kids on the head with his bear. But the kids seemed to love him anyway.
Igor had an aura of mystery about him. Though he was my half-mad twin brother, he was born on Halloween. (My own birthday is in May.) None of us knew how this could be; it just was.
All through the year we would talk about Igor. Sometimes we did Igor math problems. Some of the kids wrote notes to him. He was part of our classroom life.
Finally I decided to write a story about Igor. At first, I thought it would be a picture book. That didn’t work. Then I tried a modern story. That didn’t work either. Igor, who was said to live in the cellar beneath the cellar beneath the cellar beneath my house, needed a different, older kind of world to rampage around in.
Then one night Igor himself brought me Goblins in the Castle. When I asked him where it had come from, who William really was, he was either unable or unwilling to tell me.
That’s the way he is.
I took the book to school and read it to my class. It became a Halloween tradition. Sometimes Igor would even read the final chapters when he came for his Halloween visit.
Though I loved the story, fifteen years went by before I found a home for it at Minstrel Books, for which I give great thanks to my editor Pat MacDonald. It was only appropriate that my wife, Katherine Coville, provide the illustrations for the story, as she had had to put up with Igor every Halloween for many, many years.
What is true
about this story? That’s hard to say. The only thing I know for sure is that if you try to lock away life’s wild energy, sooner or later there will be a price to pay.
As for Igor—well, he’s still around, though he appears very rarely these days. Still, if some Halloween night you get a sudden BOP! on the head, don’t be too frightened. It’s probably only Igor and his bear, out enjoying their favorite holiday.
BRUCE COVILLE has published more than one hundred books, which have sold more than 16 million copies. Among his most popular titles are My Teacher Is an Alien, Into the Land of the Unicorns, and The Monster’s Ring. Bruce also founded Full Cast Audio, a company that creates recordings of the best in children’s and young adult literature. He lives in Syracuse, New York, with his wife, Katherine.
ALADDIN
SIMON & SCHUSTER, NEW YORK
Visit us at
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com
authors.simonandschuster.com/Bruce-Coville
Read the fantastical sequel to Goblins in the Castle :
Goblins on the Prowl
And don’t forget these other Bruce Coville titles:
My Teacher Is an Alien
My Teacher Fried My Brains
My Teacher Glows in the Dark
My Teacher Flunked the Planet
WE HOPE YOU LOVED READING THIS EBOOK!
We have SO many more books for kids in the in-beTWEEN age that we’d love to share with you! Sign up for our IN THE MIDDLE books newsletter and you’ll receive news about other great books, exclusive excerpts, games, author interviews, and more!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com/middle
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Goblins in the Castle Page 11