Goblin Secrets

by William Alexander

  “Graba!” Rownie called out into the wide and dusty air. “I have words for you! Come hear them yourself!”

  Tell me about my brother, he said silently. Come and tell me anything at all about Rowan, in exchange for the chance to catch me. Come help me find him.

  At first only silence answered. The light faded, and raindrops pattered against the glass overhead. Then gearwork noise echoed throughout the station, bouncing back and forth between stone floors and columns. He thought the sound might be Graba’s legs making their long strides through a station corridor, but it wasn’t.

  A single railcar drove through the tunnel at the far side of the station and came to a halt on the track only a few paces from where Rownie stood. It was an actual, working, gleaming railcar. Thick curtains covered long glass windows on the inside. The mirrored brass finish had been polished and scrubbed, so there was hardly any tarnish on it anywhere.

  Rownie stared at the splendid thing. He took a few steps closer. How did it get here? he wondered. They must have pumped the water out of the whole tunnel.

  The railcar doors opened. The Captain of the Guard stepped down to the platform. Vass followed behind him. She wore no expression on her face at all.

  “Rownie of Southside,” the Captain said. “The Lord Mayor of all Zombay would speak with you.”

  Act III, Scene VI

  ROWNIE WAS UNPREPARED for this turn of events. He stared at the Captain of the Guard with his mouth hanging open.

  The Captain marched forward. His boots rang out against the polished stone floor. His irises tocked and ticked in small, perfect circles as he focused on Rownie and bore down on him. The Captain took hold of Rownie’s arms and steered him toward the railcar before Rownie could even think about slipping on the fox mask and declaring himself uncatchable.

  “You are not under arrest,” the Captain said. “You are suspected of having broken lawful edicts of this city, but you are not under arrest. The Lord Mayor would speak with you.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” said Vass.

  Rownie glared at her. “I gave you a message for Graba.”

  Vass nodded. “And it would be so much worse for you if she were here instead,” she told him. Her voice was cold. Her face was cold. Both were glass-smooth and offered nothing to hold on to.

  She went back inside the railcar. The Captain of the Guard pushed Rownie through the doorway after her, and shut the door behind them all.

  Gold lanterns burned inside. Red cloth covered the floor, the windows, and the far wall in hanging curtains. A long dining table took up most of the space, and a sumptuous meal of roast goose and fresh fruit took up most of the table. Rownie could smell the crispy goose skin. He had never in his life eaten goose, but at that moment he very much wanted to try it.

  Chefs had refletched the bird and posed it upright. Its wings stretched out to their full span across the table. Both the wings and neck had been filled with tiny filaments of gearwork. The wings flapped slowly back and forth. The beak opened and sang a little tune. It was pretty. It did not sound much like a goose.

  The Lord Mayor of Zombay cut chest meat from this seemingly live bird, and took a bite.

  Rownie stared. The Mayor smiled at him from behind his trim beard and his chins. He only looked a little bit like his statue. He was not a very wide man, but he did have a few extra chins.

  Vass sat down beside the Lord Mayor as though she had every right to be there, or anywhere else that she might choose.

  “Welcome, young sir,” said the Mayor. He wore many rings. They knocked together when he moved his hands—and his hands were always moving. “I would like to offer you employment in my own private troupe of actors.”

  As he spoke, the railcar shuddered and moved. Rownie felt it slide over rails and down into the tunnel, down under the River, down in a long, straight line toward Northside. The cooked goose flapped its wings and sang another song.

  Rownie thought about the Mayor’s words. He tried to make them make any kind of sense. “Your own what?”

  “My own private troupe,” the Mayor said again. “I have a few of them here with me.” He clapped his hands. The red curtains at the front of the railcar opened to reveal a small stage. Three performers stood, bowed, and began to tell a story in dumb show. They were all three masked. One mask had been painted with sharp, straight lines, like a tattooed map of Northside, and crowned with a coronet of small towers—Zombay towers, not as they currently stood, but as they used to stand. The mask wore a stern and kingly expression. The other two masks looked like fish.

  Rownie forgot about how tasty the goose must be, and he almost forgot how absurd it was that Vass sat beside the Lord Mayor of Zombay. “You outlawed acting!” he shouted. He tried to keep his voice down. He couldn’t. “How can you have a troupe of your own, and a stage of your own, when you just outlawed them all?”

  The secret play continued to unfold. The three performers didn’t seem to notice or mind that their audience was talking among themselves rather than paying proper attention. They went on telling their silent story, indifferent to whomever might be watching.

  “It is true,” said the Mayor. His rings knocked together. “I did outlaw the theater. But just because a thing is not good for everyone doesn’t mean that I should not still enjoy it, if I can.” He winked. “Have an almond.”

  He tossed Rownie a small, spiced nut. Rownie caught it. Outrage boiled up inside him, but he tried to swallow it down. Shouting at the Lord Mayor was probably not a clever thing to do, especially under the cold and ticking watchfulness of the Guard Captain, so Rownie ate the almond instead. He chewed it furiously until there was nothing left.

  The Mayor continued with his meal and offered nothing more to Rownie. Vass ate a few grapes and also offered nothing. The railcar moved smoothly on its track, somewhere underneath the River.

  “Floods are coming, you know,” the Mayor said. He said it to Vass and not to Rownie.

  “I know they are, sir,” said Vass.

  “They are expected to fill the ravine entirely and rise up as high as Southside—which is, of course, lower and closer to the River. The damage will be very severe.” The Mayor shook his head, and his chins, at the tragedy. “I am doing what I can to prepare. I am pulling together enough funds to rebuild, after the flooding has come and gone. We will return the city to its days of glory, and we will help Southside recover—and help to make it a more orderly place.”

  “That is very good of you, sir,” said Vass. She ate another grape. Rownie found it impossible to tell whether she was pandering to the Mayor or honestly agreeing with him or possibly making fun of him. Her voice and her face were still glass-smooth.

  “Thank you,” said the Mayor. “I do what I can. But meanwhile, before the devastation comes, it would be sensible to be in Northside. We should remain high out of reach of the coming floods—most especially since I have masked performers to address the River on behalf of the north.” He waved one hand at the stage and at the actors, without actually looking in their direction. “You understand this, of course,” he said to Vass. “It is why you came to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Vass. “It is.” She looked at Rownie. There was something new in her face. “Graba hates rivals,” she said. “She hates them. I’ll have to leave Southside anyway, someday, just as soon as I learn enough witchwork from her. There used to be lots of witchworkers in Southside, but now there’s only her. She makes certain that there’s only ever her.” The glass-seeming surface of her voice cracked. She spoke as though she wanted Rownie to understand. “I need somewhere else to go. I’ll go north. The Mayor already promised me a house of my own. A grand house. I won’t have to sleep on straw. I won’t have to climb through windows. I won’t have to run errands for Graba, not ever again. All I had to do for it was tell the Mayor about you.”

  “So you see,” said the Mayor, turning to address Rownie directly, “it would be best to avoid the southern half of the city until after the floods ha
ve come and gone, and obviously the bridge cannot grant sanctuary in this case. In the meantime I offer you employment and a place in my household. It is a great honor to serve as a member of the Lord Mayor’s Troupe. They have their own stage in my house, you know, and it is far more grand than that little goblin platform you walked on recently. Do you understand what an honor this is?”

  Rownie started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He tried not to, and that set off a rapid cascade of hiccups.

  The Mayor’s smile slipped a little. He took a few more bites of goose. Vass stared at Rownie as though he had turned into some sort of fish. The three actors continued their pantomime without noticing anything else.

  “I do understand,” Rownie said, between hiccups. “You want it to happen. You want Southside to drown, so you can make it like Northside, and just another part of Northside. You arrested everybody who ever wore a mask—even me—to make sure Southside will drown.”

  The Mayor struck Rownie with one ring-covered hand. It hurt.

  “I speak for this city, child,” he said. His voice was cold. “I do. No one is going to wear a piece of plaster and pretend to speak for Zombay. No one is going to negotiate on behalf of Zombay—not to armies or to diplomats or to the River itself—unless I appoint them to do so. That is my office. I will uphold it, and you will show proper respect. Do not pretend to be other than you are.”

  “What am I, then?” Rownie asked. It was an honest question.

  The Mayor did not answer, and Vass did not answer, because something smacked against the side of the railcar. The Mayor moved a red curtain away from one long window. Lantern light from inside the car illuminated the curved brick of the tunnel outside.

  Birds flew through the tunnel, surrounding them, overtaking them. Pigeon wings knocked against the window’s glass.

  The Mayor looked annoyed. Vass looked terrified. Her eyes were wide circles. “It’s her,” she said. “She’s coming for us. She won’t let us get across.”

  “It’s only birds,” said the Mayor. But pigeons flew by in dozens and droves now. The railcar shuddered as they threw themselves between the wheels and the track.

  Rownie should have been scared. He wasn’t. He stopped thinking about the birds, because the crowned mask of Northside had slipped from the lead actor’s face. That face was as familiar to Rownie as any could be.

  The railcar shook and slid to a halt. The lights inside sputtered and went out.

  “Rowan?” Rownie asked in the dark.

  Act III, Scene VII

  THE MAYOR SHOUTED SOMETHING. Rownie heard him, but he did not listen, and he did not notice what the Mayor said.

  Vass chanted. A single lantern bloomed on the wall. She took it down. The Mayor gave orders to the Guard Captain, who drew his sword and used it to shatter a window. Rownie ignored them all. He stared at Rowan. Rowan stared at nothing. The loose strap of the mask was down around his neck. The mask itself sat empty over his chest. The play had been interrupted, and now none of the three players moved.

  The Mayor put a chair under the broken window and ordered the Captain through. The Captain climbed through. He pulled Rownie behind him.

  Rownie fought. He yelled. He put everything he had, and everything he had ever had, into pulling in the opposite direction. He shouted his brother’s name, which was his own name made tall, and Rowan went on staring at nothing in a calm and empty sort of way. Rownie went on fighting, but it did not matter. The sleeve of his dust-colored coat ripped as the Guard Captain pulled him through the empty space where the window used to be, out into the tunnel. The ground underfoot was thick with dead birds.

  The Captain of the Guard called back to the Mayor and told him that the tunnel was empty, and that the wheels of the railcar were so caked with bird pieces that they could not be made to turn again. The only way back into Northside would be to walk there.

  The Mayor climbed out the broken window. Vass went with him. She carried the single lantern she had spoken to.

  By that lantern light, Rownie saw Graba.

  Graba perched on her talons, on the railcar’s roof. She climbed down with one long step, followed by another. She loomed over them with her legs extended, until it seemed that the space of the tunnel was made out of Graba and only existed to suit her purposes.

  The Captain of the Guard raised his sword. Graba spoke to him in a low chant. “Your workings are broken. Your sight, it is broken. Your vision is filled with the sight of its breaking.” She said this as though it were already true, and it became true as she said it. Springs sprung and gears shattered in the glass workings of his eyes. He cried out, stumbling, and dropped the sword.

  He also dropped his grip on Rownie’s arm. Rownie crept slowly back toward the wreckage of the railcar.

  “There, there,” said Graba, as though comforting the Captain. She reached with one talon and knocked him against the tunnel wall. He slid down, his hands covering his broken eyes.

  Graba turned to Vass and the Mayor. She looked at Vass as though deciding whether or not she might be edible. “Hello, granddaughter,” she said. “Hello, little rival.”

  Vass stood very straight. “Hello, Graba,” she said. Her voice sounded cracked and fragile, but it also sounded brave. “I’m not your grandchild. None of us ever were.”

  “But you are,” said Graba. She reached for Vass with one hand to tuck a lock of hair away from her face and behind one ear. The hair fell forward again. “What else could you be? I took you in, all of you, when you had no one else. I made you a home when your elders had drowned or starved or run off without you, abandoning all of you. Who else might you belong to, now, if not your Graba?”

  Vass held up her chin. “Thank you for that. But I’m still not your grandchild.”

  Graba gave her a long, considering look, and crossed both arms in front of her. “I’m thinking that you may be right in this,” she said, her voice full of wonder and hurt. “You may not be mine any longer. Go on to Northside, then. Make the Mayor keep his promises, and make him suffer if he doesn’t give you that house of your own. You’ve made this choice, so make it a sticky one. No good will come of it if you go wavering—not from him, and not at all from me.”

  The Mayor chose that moment to speak up in an affronted and important-sounding voice. “Do not refer to me as though I were not here, witchworker.”

  Graba smiled. She looked delighted. She looked as though she had just crunched her teeth down on the tastiest egg imaginable.

  “The Mayor is not here,” Graba told Vass. “I would hurt him if he were here—and then he would never make good on his bright promises to you. This is my gift, and it will be my last one. To enjoy it, you should be running. The whole of this tunnel will fill up with floodwater, and very soon. The floods are coming. They are coming today.”

  Graba leaned forward and squinted hard with her squinty eye. “You should tell his mayorship that even if the River wipes Southside as clean as an uncarved gravestone, I will still make sure and certain he never, ever rebuilds it to his liking. Southside is mine. Tell him I said so, now. I would tell him myself, but he is not here. I would hurt him very much if he were here. I would set beautiful curses on him.”

  The Mayor sputtered in his outrage. Vass put the lit lantern in his hand. “Please start running, sir,” she said. “You aren’t here. You shouldn’t be here.” He sputtered further. Then he turned and ran away northward, into the dark of the tunnel.

  Vass paused. She looked at Rownie. Rownie wasn’t sure what she meant by that look. Then Vass helped the Guard Captain to his feet, and the two of them followed the Mayor. All three vanished down the tunnel’s throat.

  Rownie remained in the dark, with Graba. He tried to remember how to breathe.

  Act III, Scene VIII

  GRABA SPOKE IN A VERY LOW CHANT. The brick and stone of the tunnel’s wall began to glow green, like the color of young burnbugs. In that green glow she looked down at Rownie as though examining a piece of market fruit for fungus and
rot. She smelled familiar, a musty and feathery smell.

  “You have a message for me, runt?” she asked. The air between them stretched as tight and tense as fiddle strings.

  Rownie felt fear, bone-deep and burning. He did not run. He knew that there could be no running from Graba, with no hiding places in the tunnel and her long legs striding easily behind him. He showed Graba that he would not run, and he gave his message.

  “I wanted your help to find Rowan,” he said, “but then I found him. He’s in the railcar. He didn’t move, and he didn’t know me when I shouted. He just stood there, all empty-looking, and I don’t know what’s wrong. Please help him. I’ll come back with you. I’ll be your grandchild again.”

  He tried to stand like a giant.

  Graba stood like Graba, and grunted. “You still smell like thieving and tin.”

  “I haven’t Changed,” Rownie told her. “I’m not a goblin. I’m not a Changeling. I’ll come back.”

  Graba reached up with one talon, took hold of the railcar, and ripped away the front of it. Metal shrieked against metal as she tore it apart. Rownie flinched. It was a painful thing to hear.

  The three actors did not react to the sight or the sound of Graba’s coming. She nudged the two in fish masks aside with her foot, and then squinted at the third.

  The Northside mask still dangled from Rowan’s neck. Graba plucked it from him, dropped it on the tunnel floor, and stepped on it. Rowan did not seem to notice. He stood very still, and looked away at nothing much.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Rownie asked.

  Graba tore open the front of Rowan’s shirt. A red scar, sharp and clean, ran down his chest. Rownie knew what that meant. He tried very hard not to know what that meant. The world changed shape around him, and this new shape was not what it was supposed to be. Graba scowled and spat.