by Philip Reeve
“Who are you?” they demanded, beards bristling with anger. “What goblin dares to trespass in the mines of the dwarves?”
Dwarves and goblins were no longer at war. A truce had been arranged after the Battle of Adherak and the fall of the Giant Dwarf, and the dwarves had withdrawn quietly to their mines. But they still had no liking for goblinkind, and to find five goblins (along with two random “biglings”, as they called human beings) wandering around in their tin mine as if they owned it must have come as a nasty shock.
For a long moment the two sides faced each other in the lantern light. Henwyn was afraid that they had escaped the jaws of the sea serpents only to die upon the blades of the dwarves.
Then one of the dwarves raised a sculpted steel-helmet visor and said in a surprisingly friendly and high-pitched voice, “Skarper? Henwyn? Is that you?”
“Etty!” said Skarper.
The dwarf maiden pulled her helmet right off and shook out her long, fair plaits. Round faced and rosy cheeked, she looked just as girlish as she had the previous year when Skarper had showed her around Coriander, yet she was clearly a person of importance here; the other dwarves lowered their weapons at her command, and one took the helmet from her.
“And Zeewa too!” she cried, running down off the ledge and hugging Skarper, Henwyn and Zeewa one by one, while the other dwarves looked on in embarrassment, and the goblins shuffled backwards for fear they might get hugged too. Since the dawn of time dwarves had hated goblins and goblins had hated dwarves, but if there was one thing both races could agree on it was that they didn’t hold with a lot of soppy hugging.
Etty Durgarsdottir had always been a forward-thinking sort of dwarf, however, and was not afraid to adopt the customs of the biglings when she thought that they were good customs. She was the first dwarf maiden in all of dwarven history to become a surveyor rather than a dwarf-wife, and she showed her friends the silver badge of her office with pride.
“This is my first mine,” she said happily. “The king of Floonhaven asked us here to help him reopen the old tin workings, and now we are digging whole new galleries and finding masses of good tin. Come, I’ll show you the workface…”
“Did you say Floonhaven?” asked Henwyn.
“Aye…”
“That’s where we are bound!” said Skarper. “This black-hearted villain called Prince Rhind pinched something from Clovenstone…”
“My scratchbackler,” grumbled Grumpling.
“And we must fetch it back!” said Skarper. “It’s terribly important!”
“Can’t you scratch your backs with summat else?” asked Etty, then saw how very serious they all looked, and realized that they couldn’t.
“Come to my house,” she said. “There you can eat, and drink, and rest, and dry your wet things. Then I can set you on the dwarf road to Floonhaven. But first, I must show you my new invention!”
Etty was very proud of her new invention. When she first came to the Nibbled Coast, and discovered how much tin was left in these old Floonish mines, she had started to wonder what use it could all be put to – for dwarves do not greatly value tin, preferring iron and gold, silver and slowsilver. It was all very well shipping the ingots south for the human smiths of Lusuenn and Coriander to turn into cheap plates and bathtubs, but she was sure a dwarf should be able to think of some new and ingenious use for it. And after a few weeks of turning the problem over in her head, she had.
Unfortunately, dwarves didn’t greatly value new ideas either, so none of the miners she worked with were very impressed. She was delighted to have a chance to show off her clever invention to Skarper, Henwyn and the rest of the company from Clovenstone.
They stripped off their soggy clothes and rinsed the sea’s salt out of them, and hung them to dry in the mine’s huge underground kitchens. Then Etty took them to her house – a two-storey cave hollowed out of the side of one of the old mines – and they sat in her parlour, wrapped in blankets and nibbling dwarven pasties, while she fetched out her new idea to show them.
It was a cylinder of tin, about as big as a beer mug, but with no handle, and both ends were sealed.
“Lovely!” said Henwyn.
“Very interesting,” said Zeewa, politely.
“What is it?” said Skarper.
“I call it a tin can,” said Etty. “You put food inside it.”
“What sort of food?” asked Skarper with interest, licking pasty crumbs off his nose.
“Oh, soup, vegetables, sausages, pudding … anything you like!” said Etty. “Yes, Gutgust, even anchovies.”
“How do you get the food in there?” asked Henwyn, picking up the tin can and looking at it. “There are no openings.”
“You weld the lid on once it’s been filled,” said Etty proudly.
“Like a sort of metal pasty?” asked Skarper.
Grumpling snatched the tin can from Henwyn and bit it hard. “Ow! It’s a bit crunchy.”
“You are not meant to eat it!” said Etty, grabbing the tin and frowning at the dents Grumpling’s fangs had made.
“’Ow do you opens it then?”
“With one of these,” said Etty, and drew a small tool from her belt. “I call it a ‘tin opener’. Watch…”
And, so saying, she cut the top off the can. There were sausages inside this one, preserved in brine, and their delicious, salty, sausagey aroma filled the little stone room. Grumpling swiped the tin back, emptied the sausages into his open mouth, swallowed the tin too, and belched loudly.
“Weren’t you listening?” asked Skarper. “You aren’t meant to eat the whole thing.”
“The skin’s the best bit,” said Grumpling. “Like wiv baked potatoes.”
“But why would anyone want armoured sausages?” asked Henwyn.
“Food stays fresh inside these tin cans for ages,” said Etty. “The onion soup I canned six months ago is still as fresh as the day it went in. I think you could preserve things this way for years. That would be very useful for people in deep mines, where provisions are hard to come by.”
“Or people on long sea voyages…” mused Henwyn.
“It’s a very clever idea,” admitted Zeewa. “How did you come to think of it?”
“It came to me in a dream,” said Etty, and her eyes took on that faraway look which told her listeners that she was about to start recounting a mystical experience.
“It was soon after I came here,” she said. “That was not very long after the Battle of Adherak, and I had many strange dreams around that time. I think I may have breathed in too much of the slowsilver fumes while Skarper and I were inside the Giant Dwarf, for they began to feel more like visions than dreams. Most faded as soon as I woke, but this particular one lingered in my memory.
“In my dream, I found myself in a strange land. There were tall buildings, higher even than the manhouses we saw in Coriander, and people moved around in magical carriages which needed no horses to pull them. Everywhere there was noise, and light, and colour. Ahead of me I saw a huge building, easily as big as the High King’s castle of Boskennack. And above its doors were great letters, wrought of coloured glass and lit from within by some enchantment. In the language of that place, which I was able to read in my dream, the letters spelled out: SUPERMARKET.
“In and out of that wide doorway went the people of this wonderful land. They were biglings, and most were pushing little carts of silver wire. These they filled with produce, which was piled high on all the shelves and stalls inside. I followed them in, and wandered wondering past caves of ice, and mountains of fruit and vegetables. There was more food there than I have seen in my whole life! And there seemed to be no stallholders; everyone was simply helping themselves to the stuff on display. And yet they all looked gloomy, as if visiting this super market was the most tedious of chores.”
“I passed a bakery, and stalls of fine fres
h fish, and went down an avenue lined with shelves. And upon those shelves, in endless ranks, I beheld tin cans. I did not recognize them as being made of tin at first, because they had been wrapped in paper, and the paper was painted with the most lifelike pictures of the food that was inside them. But when I picked one off the shelf I realized at once what it was. I began tearing off the paper wrappings and studying the tins’ construction, wondering at the craftmanship of the smiths who had made them…”
“And then what?’ asked Skarper. He was the only one of the goblins who was still listening. The others had been so moved by Etty’s description of all the food that they just sat there dazed, gurgling quietly to themselves.
“Then one of the guardians of the place approached me,” said Etty, frowning as she tried to recall every detail of her dream. “I think she was a priestess, for she was dressed in a tabard of some fine coloured cloth, and she wore a brooch of strange design upon her breast, on which was written in gilded letters: Sharon Matthews – Junior Manager. And she spoke to me in the tongue of that country, saying, ‘’Ere, what the blinking ’ell do you think you’re doing?’ And with that, my dream was over, and I awoke and found myself in my own bunk, here in the mine.”
“Strange indeed,” said Zeewa.
“Fentongoose says that there are other worlds beside this one,” said Henwyn. “He says that sometimes the boundary between the worlds grows thin, and things may pass across it. So perhaps it was real, this super market that you saw.”
“Perhaps,” said Etty, her eyes still alight with the memories. “But whether it was real or merely a dream, the memory of it stayed with me. And one day when I was thinking what we could make from all this tin, my mind went back again to the super market. Our world too shall have tin cans, I decided. Except that in our world, no one seems to want them.”
“But they’re so useful!” Zeewa said.
Etty rolled her eyes. “Oh, you know what dwarves are like. My father Durgar and the New Council, up in Delverdale, they disapprove of everything that is not ancient custom, handed down to us from our great-great-great-great grandsires.”
Henwyn had an idea. “We may soon be embarking on a sea voyage ourselves. Could we buy some of your tin cans to take with us?”
“A sea voyage?” said the goblins, horrified. After what had happened on the cliff road they never wanted to see the sea again.
Henwyn said, “Well, if we can’t catch up with Rhind before he leaves Floonhaven we shall have to take ship ourselves, and go after him. And we shall need provisions, since all our provisions were spoiled by the sea.”
“Or eaten by the sea sperpents!” said Flegg with a shudder.
“Like poor Spurtle,” said Skarper, ears drooping again at the thought of their lost friend.
Etty frowned. “I hope you will be careful,” she said. “I’ve talked to sea captains in Floonhaven, and they told me that the sea serpents are solitary creatures who live far out in the western deeps and keep themselves to themselves. I have never heard of so many swarming together, and so close to shore. It sounds to me as if they were conjured here by magic. This Prince Rhind must have a great and powerful sorcerer with him.”
Henwyn scratched his head. “Well, he’s got Prawl.”
“But Prawl isn’t great,” said Skarper.
“Or powerful,” agreed Henwyn.
“Or a sorcerer,” said Skarper. “Not really. He’s just a sort of … he’s just Prawl.”
Etty shook her head till her plaits swung. “It was some evil magic that called those creatures to the Nibbled Coast at the very moment you were passing along the cliff road. And what about the storm, blowing up like that at just the same instant? It is still howling about out there; listen to the water trickling down through the cliffs. Yes, it was magic, all right. Worm magic and weather magic. And someone must be at the root of it.”
A few miles away, at Floonhaven, Prawl was thinking the exact same thing. He did not know anything about the sea serpents, of course, but he had seen the storm, which struck the coast just to the east of the little town. It had been a sudden storm, and strangely focused, so that although it howled and raged against those eastward cliffs the sky above Floonhaven stayed clear, and the fishing smacks in the harbour barely stirred upon the calm mirror of the sea. And Prawl could not help noticing that those angry-looking clouds, spitting rain and lightning at the cliffs, were the exact same blue-black colour as the pebble which Ninnis the cook had given him: the pebble she had had him toss into the sea just before the storm began.
It made him wonder about Mistress Ninnis. She was a cheerful soul, and her apple turnovers were simply superb. But didn’t it seem odd that someone with the second sight and the power to conjure storms should be content to cook dinners for Prince Rhind? Everyone knew that there was good money to be made these days in the fortune-telling line (especially if you really could tell fortunes).
He would have liked to have properly looked inside that little leather bag which dangled from her belt. He would have liked to examine some of the other ingredients which Ninnis kept, bagged and bottled, in her wagon. He would very much have liked to have read the huge old leather-bound book she often consulted, with those strange runes embossed upon its cover, over which she had pasted a brown paper label bearing the handwritten word RECIPES.
But it was too late by then. The cart and horses had been sold, and King Floon’s men were busy loading the contents aboard the Swan of Govannon. Prince Rhind was determined to leave with the tide that very evening. As soon as Prawl told him that the goblins were still behind them he had flung himself into the business of lading the ship and getting himself and his companions aboard.
He had tried telling King Floon about the goblins, hoping that he might turn the people of Floonhaven against them just as he had the farming folk of Ulawn, but King Floon had only said, “So the goblins are coming, are they? I shall be glad to see them. Excellent fellows nowadays, from all I’ve heard. I’m very partial to that cheese of theirs.”
“Oh yes!” agreed Queen Harlyn. “My brother, Lord Ponsadane, told us how bravely they fought the Giant Dwarf at the Battle of Adherak. And Henwyn of Clovenstone is very handsome, they say.”
“It is such a pity that you are in so much haste to leave,” King Floon protested. “We had been hoping that you might stop with us at the castle. We had prepared a feast, with dancing and jugglers and a roast pig with an apple in its mouth and all that sort of thing. Perhaps we could invite Henwyn and the goblins to join us, if they arrive in time?”
“Nothing I’d like better,” said Rhind, “but, alas, our quest must come first. We mean to raise Elvensea, and we must do it while the moon and stars are right, the tides just so. Give our love to Henwyn and those peculiar friends of his!”
“We must hope they don’t get too badly delayed by that storm,” said Ninnis, and looked towards the east, where the blue-black clouds still hung above the Nibbled Coast and reached tongues of lightning down to lick the cliffs.
Safe inside the dwarven mines, Skarper and the others put their dry clothes on again and loaded their packs with Etty’s tin cans.
The tins were heavy, and when Etty called Skarper aside and said she had a gift for him he was not sure that he could carry it. But the thing she gave him, wrapped in soft cloth, was small, and weighed almost nothing. It was a silver chain, delicate but very strong. Hanging from it was a dark stone, smaller than a hen’s egg, and criss-crossed with threads of bright ore.
“It is slowsilver,” she said. “It is supposed to bring good fortune. My father gave it to me, but I am quite safe here in my mine, and you, setting off over the wide sea… I think you will have more need of it than me. You can wear it around your neck, beneath your tunic.”
Skarper was not sure what to say. He was a goblin, and had a goblin’s love of shiny stuff, but he knew that this amulet was worth more than money to Etty.
/>
“I am sorry about poor Spurtle,” Etty said, while he stood there wondering whether he should refuse it.
“Oh, all goblins die sooner or later,” he replied, trying to sound careless. “Hatchlings are forever falling off the towers at Clovenstone, or blowing each other up, or getting squashed. It’s amazing Spurtle lasted as long as he did, really.”
But he was sorry, too. It was not just Clovenstone that had changed since the Keep fell. The goblins themselves were different; they were finding ways to deal with other goblins that did not just involve hitting them. The downside of that was, they cared about each other more, and the loss of one of them hurt the others. Losing Spurtle had felt as bad as losing Princess Ned.
And then he realized that that was why Etty wanted him to take her lucky stone – to try to stop him ending up like poor old Spurtle. So, although he didn’t put much faith in amulets, he looped the silver chain over his head.
“Thank you,” he said. “And when I return from over the wide sea, I shall bring it back to you.”
“Skarper,” she said, “you are the sweetest of goblins.”
“Shhhh!” said Skarper. He didn’t want one of the others hearing that. Sweet is the last thing a goblin wants to be.
One of the first improvements that Etty and her friends from Delverdale had made when they took over the old Floonish mines was to dig a long tunnel linking them to the harbour at Floonhaven. It was too flat to run one of their cunning gravity-assisted railways along, but there were carts, and a small stable of diremoles to pull them. Into one of these carts climbed Henwyn, Zeewa and the goblins, wrinkling their noses at the mole’s earthy stench, and trying not to remember how frightening those vast underground beasties had been when they had faced them in battle.
But this diremole – whose name was Butterscotch – seemed peaceable enough. She was a sleepy creature, and in place of the spiky armour of the fighting moles, she wore only the harness which the cart was hitched to, and a big candelabra like a rack of antlers strapped to her blunt velvet head.