Goblin Quest

by Philip Reeve

  “Buzz,” said Spurtle miserably, dangling there. He didn’t feel like a bee and he didn’t think he looked like a bee, and he was terribly afraid that if the others let go of that branch or the rope snapped then he would drop into the tree, and the tree would think he was another helping of dinner rather than a useful pollinator. He could see the pale glow of the flower below him, inside that cage of trunks. Tiny shapes were flying in and out of the cage, their wings shining softly in the light from the huge petals.

  “Moths!” said Spurtle. “Skarper, I reckon it’s moths what pollentates this flower, not bees at all!”

  “Try making a noise like a moth, then!” called Skarper.

  “What noise do moths make?’ Spurtle asked.

  “Anchovies!” growled Gutgust, sweating with the effort of keeping Spurtle airborne. Spurtle was the smallest of the goblins, which was why Skarper had chosen him to be the bee, but he was still quite a weight. The long branch was difficult to control, too; it kept swaying about with Spurtle dangling from the end of it like a fish on a line, crashing into the surrounding trees.

  Skarper felt that sad, deflating-balloon feeling that always came to him when a brilliant plan turned out not to be so brilliant after all. “All right,” he said. “Let him down. We’ll have to think of something else.”

  Gutgust took the words “Let him down” a bit too literally. He simply let go of the branch. The weight of the fake bee was far too much for Skarper to support alone. The branch crashed down, and Spurtle fell with a terrified squeal right on top of the mantrap tree. His sudden arrival seemed to confuse it. It opened its cage of trunks, then closed them again as if to trap this new victim along with the others. But Skarper leaped forward and threw himself between two of the trunks before they could spring back together. He wasn’t strong enough to hold them apart alone, but he shouted for Gutgust, and the burly goblin joined him, pushing with all his strength against the trunks as they struggled to close. Meanwhile, Skarper darted between his legs and dragged out Henwyn, then Zeewa. Then Skarper pulled Spurtle out, and Gutgust jumped clear and let the tree crash shut.

  It kept opening and closing for a while after that, creaking and snapping as if it was angry at being robbed of its prey. But the goblins and their friends were far away by then, and at last it fell still, and the woods were quiet again.

  The night was almost worn out, and the goblins were weary. They scrambled up to the hilltop on the far side of the woods, dragging Zeewa and Henwyn with them, and fell asleep there in a big heap. But Henwyn did not sleep for long: he had slept enough, and as soon as the sun showed its head above the Bonehill Mountains he was up and urging the others to awake and be on their way. “There is no time to lose!” he kept saying. “Rhind will be halfway to the sea by now!” In fact he was very embarrassed by all the trouble he had caused. All he seemed to do these days was get captured, first by Woolmarkers, then by a tree. He was well aware that he had almost got himself and Zeewa eaten when they were only a few hours’ march from Clovenstone, and he was determined to make amends, and to take more care on the rest of this quest.

  Before they left that place, Skarper skirted back round the edge of the wood to the road on the far side. He dragged a dead branch across it to make a barricade and propped a rock against the branch on which he scratched:

  DANGER!

  MAN EATING TREE* AHEAD!

  DANGER!

  *IT ALSO EATS LADIES

  When he had finished he stood back to admire his work, and that was when he noticed the corner of an old board poking out of some bracken further down the hillside. That would have made a much better sign, he thought, as he went toiling down the steep slope to fetch it. But when he pulled it from the bracken he found that it was a sign already. A few moments’ searching and he found the rusty nail sticking out of the birch tree where it had once been hung.

  So either it fell off by accident, thought Skarper, or someone pulled it down and hid it. And I’m guessing that someone was Prince Rhind of the Woolmark. And I’m also thinking that pulling down and hiding danger signs is not very friendly…

  “Skarper!” There was Henwyn, a tiny figure on the hill beyond the woods, waving his arms, all eager to be off.

  Skarper hammered the sign back into place with a rock and went running to join him.

  They set off through the sunrise, and after a few miles they found Flegg and Grumpling, asleep on a hillock by the side of the road. Small hills humped up there, and a long, pinkish outcropping of stone stuck up through the turf on the summit of the one nearest to the road. Grumpling was sitting with his back against it, while Flegg had curled up like a dog in the wet heather nearby.

  “Let’s creep past and leave them there,” suggested Zeewa. “They’re no use to us, running off like that at the first sign of trouble.”

  “No,” said Henwyn. “This is Grumpling’s quest as well as ours. And we may yet have need of his strength, and Flegg’s cunning.” And he left the road and set off up one of the little wandering sheep tracks that led through the heather to the stone.

  Grumpling opened one eye as Henwyn climbed towards him.

  “I thought you was all getting eaten,” he said. “That’s what he told me.” And he lashed out and kicked Flegg, who went rolling down the slope into a patch of tall thistles.

  “I thought so too,” said Henwyn. “But Skarper and the others all worked together and managed to save me.”

  Grumpling didn’t look as overjoyed at this happy news as he might, but it was early, and he had slept badly, propped against that hard old rock. Flegg didn’t exactly seem delighted either, but that was understandable since he was full of prickles.

  “We’re bound for the sea,” said Henwyn, holding out a hand to help Grumpling up. “With luck, we may still catch that thief Rhind before he reaches Floonhaven and takes ship.”

  Grumpling didn’t take the proffered hand. “I don’t need no softling’s help just standing up,” he growled. He clambered to his feet, and after a good scratch he joined the others and they set off again, with Flegg hopping along behind, trying to pick the prickles from his paws.

  Over the morning moors came Fraddon, wading through the chest-deep mist which hung in all the valleys, and setting his feet down carefully in case there were farms or animal pens down there beneath the whiteness.

  He had woken with the memory of a tiny voice that called his name, “Fraddon! Fraddon!”, faint and far away. He had thought at first that it must be the memory of a dream, but then, as the sun rose, he had remembered how Henwyn had sat on that rock by the stream over there and talked to him about the goblins and some peril or other, and a quest. He started to wonder if they had set out on their quest, and decided that they probably had. And perhaps something had gone wrong with it, and it had been Henwyn or Skarper he had heard calling for help in the night.

  So he had lifted his big feet, one by one, out of the earth and the weeds that had grown up around them. The twiglings scurried down out of his hair and beard, complaining in their rustly voices. He had stepped over the outer wall near Westerly Gate and set off across the moor, following the course of the Oeth and the old road that ran beside it.

  The mist and the goblins were both long gone by the time he reached the wood in the dip of the road. He noticed the barricade which Skarper had made, the old danger sign and the new. The tallest trees in the little wood were not as tall as him. He squeezed his way between them, running his hands over their crowns of leaves. Not a bad wood, he decided, but something had gone wrong with it – and there at its heart he found the mantrap tree.

  “Poor old thing,” said Fraddon. “This is no place for the likes of you to grow.”

  The mantrap nipped at his huge fingers as he parted its trunks, making sure that none of his friends was trapped inside. When he was certain that it was empty, he carefully uprooted it and tucked it under his arm. He knew quiet co
rners in Clovenstone where a tree like this could grow. The magic in the soil would nurture it, and he would bring it deer or wild pigs sometimes, and have the twiglings make a fence around it to stop foolish goblins being trapped by it.

  The tree stopped struggling when he lifted it up. He shook the soil from its trailing roots and tucked it under his arm, then stepped up on to the hill beyond the wood to see if he could see Skarper and his friends.

  He couldn’t, but he saw something else. A little way to the north, low hills clumped close to the road, and the sun shone warmly on a pinkish outcropping of rock. It was the rock that Grumpling had slept beside, but Fraddon didn’t know that: it wasn’t that which drew his eye to it and made him stride north and kneel beside it.

  He set the mantrap carefully aside and started to brush away the earth from around the rock. It wasn’t really a rock; not quite. It was becoming something, part stone and part something else. It was warm with more than just the sun’s heat.

  Perhaps there was a seam of slowsilver beneath this place, thought Fraddon. He tore the roots of the grass with his big, blunt fingernails. Perhaps the magic from Clovenstone had washed down with the waters of the River Oeth and found its way into these hills. He pulled back the turf like a green blanket. He brushed away the crumbs and clods of peaty soil, and revealed not bedrock, but a huge face, whose nose was the outcropping that had poked up through the grass.

  Years and years and years ago, among the northernmost peaks of the Bonehill Mountains, Fraddon had seen rock faces like this: giants freshly budded from the ground, the earth’s idea of a man. He had been one himself, in times that he could barely remember, dreaming his earth dreams before the giant he thought of as his father had helped him from the ground. He had not expected to find another here.

  It looked so peaceful, that huge face, that he wondered if it would be right to wake the new giant. But now that the soil had been cleared away, the new giant could feel the warmth of the sun and the breath of the wind against his stony face. He stirred his limbs, the long hills moving sleepily beneath their coverlets of grass. He opened his eyes, deep and blue, like twin tarns. He looked up at Fraddon…

  …Who thought, What now? He will need to be told things and taught things, otherwise he’ll rampage about like the wild giants of old, stamping people’s houses flat and stealing cows by the handful, and never knowing any better. I can’t take charge of him – I’m too old, too tired, too sad…

  But no one else was going to do it. There was no other giant within a thousand miles of that place.

  The new giant smiled at Fraddon. He half raised his head, and laughed as the song of the birds and the sigh of the windblown grass trickled into the caverns of his ears. Loose stones tumbled from the hill of his chest as he sat up; streams changed their courses as his huge limbs heaved free of the earth.

  He was three, four, five times as big as Fraddon. I had not realized how small I’d grown, thought Fraddon. He was almost afraid of the new giant, but at the same time he felt something new beginning, just as he had all those years before when he had waded into the sea off Choon Head to pick up that lovely ship, and met Princess Ned.

  He held out his hand, and the huge, stony-warm hand of the new giant grasped it, and the new giant laughed with a noise like landslides.

  “Welcome to the world,” said Fraddon, and then remembered that the new giant would need a name, and decided that he should be called Bryn, which means “hill” in the language of the Westlands. “Welcome to the world, Bryn!”

  Henwyn, Zeewa and the goblins walked all morning, and by noon they could see the sea, which looked like a low blue-grey wall built along the northern horizon. The road swung west, running parallel with the coast through a high, bare country called the Wastes of Ulawn. What trees grew there were low and bent over by the wind, which came always from the north, bringing the salt smell of the sea with it. The people of that land seemed to spend their time building walls: long, crumbly, drystone walls which wandered aimlessly over the low hills, dividing the land up into tiny fields where squawking gangs of gulls hunted for worms.

  Of the people themselves, there was little trace at first. The rare houses that the goblins passed were shut tight. Ploughs and carts stood abandoned in the fields. At one farmstead a herd of red cows grazed, but they were the only sign of life. Grumpling wanted to kill one of the cows for snacks, but Skarper and the others persuaded him that that would not be friendly. He ate some seagulls instead, which made him do loud, feathery burps as they marched on.

  And then, at last, they turned a corner and found the people of Ulawn waiting for them.

  It did not look like a friendly crowd. They had made a barricade across the road with carts and barrels and old doors, and they crouched behind it, clutching pitchforks and scythes and other farm tools of the dual-purpose type that can be used for either farming or poking goblins.

  “Begone, foul creatures!” shouted their leader, a large, red-faced woman with a flail. Beside her, a boy whirled a sling and sent one of the hard stones of the place whizzing through the air to hit Gutgust neatly in the middle of his narrow forehead.

  “Anchovies!” said Gutgust in surprise, as the stone rebounded with a hollow thud.

  Skarper and Zeewa shoved Henwyn to the front. It seemed pretty clear that these folk didn’t like goblins, but everybody liked Henwyn.

  “Greetings, good people of Ulawn!” said Henwyn, in his friendliest and most cheerful voice. “We are your neighbours from Clovenstone, and we are passing through this country on our way to Floonhaven. We seek Prince Rhind of the Woolmark and his companions. Perhaps they have passed this way?”

  “Aye,” said the red-faced woman. “That they have. And the prince warned us that you might be following behind him. Goblin raiders, come down from the Lych Lord’s old towers to steal our houses and burn down our cattle.”

  “’Twas the other way round, Mags,” said a man behind her.

  “Don’t matter which way round it were,” said Mags, flushing even darker red. “No goblin shall cross our country! We have not forgotten the tales of olden times, when goblin gangs burned Oethmouth and Wainscott, and murdered the poor king of Porthstrewy.”

  “That’s not fair!” said Henwyn. “That was ages and ages ago! Goblins are different nowadays. They aren’t rampaging savages any more.” He glanced behind him, and shuffled sideways to try and hide Grumpling, who was glaring murderously at the Ulawn folk and fingering his axe, his fangs caked with gulls’ blood and feathers. “We don’t want any trouble,” he promised. “We need to find Prince Rhind.”

  “Prince Rhind told us you’d say that,” said Mags, narrowing her eyes. “‘There be human traitors running with these goblins,’ he said, ‘and they’ll try to lull you with sweet words into letting them pass. But don’t you go listening to them, for if you do, there will be blood and fire and death, just as there was when the King of Porthstrewy took pity on a goblin.”

  “Oh bother Prince Rhind,” said Henwyn angrily. For, of course, it was only natural that the folk of Ulawn, living so near to Clovenstone, would still remember the dreadful things that goblins of old had done. Rhind had been clever enough to realize that, and to play upon their fears.

  “Let’s kill ’em all,” said Grumpling. “And then we can eat their cows. These seagull birds in’t very filling.”

  “I heard that!” shouted Mags, from behind the barricade. “I heard what that big goblin said!” A flurry of sling-stones fell upon the goblins, and also upon Henwyn and Zeewa, whose hides were not so thick. One of the people behind the barricade even had a bow, and shot an arrow which stuck through Skarper’s hat. “Arrers!” screeched Skarper and Flegg and Spurtle. The travellers from Clovenstone retreated in an undignified scramble and gathered out of range to discuss their next move.

  “I still say we kill ’em all,” growled Grumpling.

  “But there’s only seve
n of us an’ there’s loads of them and they’ve got arrers!” complained Flegg.

  “But we is goblins, an’ they is only softlings,” said Grumpling, fingering his axe.

  “We’re not killing anybody,” said Henwyn. “We don’t want people to start thinking that the goblins of Clovenstone are the kind of goblins who go about murdering their neighbours.”

  “They already do think that!” said Zeewa, ducking as a lucky slingshot ricocheted off a roadside boulder and dinged against Spurtle’s rusty helmet.

  “They only believe it because that rotten Rhind has been spreading lies about us,” said Skarper. “Let’s prove he’s wrong.”

  The other goblins agreed. Apart from Grumpling, none of them wanted to have to fight those angry softlings, with their slings and arrers and pointy implements.

  Henwyn fetched out his hanky and held it over his head as a flag of truce while he walked back towards the barricade.

  “If we cannot pass this way,” he said, “will you tell us of some other road that will take us to Floonhaven?”

  “This is the only road,” said Mags.

  “Well, there is the old road,” said one of the others.

  “Be quiet,” Mags snapped at him.

  “’Tis all right, Mags. Not even goblins would be crazy enough to walk the old road.”

  “We are not crazy,” said Henwyn. “Well, except for Grumpling. And possibly Gutgust. But our need is dire, and if this old road is the only way to reach Floonhaven, then that is the road that we shall walk. How do we find it?”