Goblin Secrets (Alexander, William)

by William Alexander

  “Nonny!” Thomas roared from across the tower. “Please do not break any more of our masks!”

  “Especially not that one over there!” said Essa, pointing. “It’s my favorite!”

  “Which one?” Rownie asked. It was difficult to pick one mask out of the roiling chaos. “The blue one?”

  “No, the one next to it, the one named Semmerling. Doesn’t it look like a Semmerling to you? That blue one might also be my favorite, though. See its eyebrows? Those really are fantastic eyebrows. Oh, hey, be careful of the giant.”

  She shoved Rownie to the right and leaped to the left. A giant boot came crashing down between them.

  Rownie looked up. The mask he had worn looked down. It reached for him with new and giant hands. Rownie swung wildly with his halberd, tripped, stumbled, and rolled out of the way. Giant fingers grasped at the empty air above him.

  Rownie picked himself up and slashed at the giant’s boots, but the boots were thick and tough—or at least made of air pretending to be thick and tough—and the halberd only scuffed one.

  “I bet you can’t turn into a burnbug!” Rownie called up to the giant.

  The giant ignored the taunt and reached for him again, to crush him or to eat him or else replace Rownie’s face with its own and play at being a boy who had once played a giant. Rownie didn’t bother running away. Its legs were very much longer than his, and it would catch him if he ran. Instead he took three steps backward.

  The giant followed. A swinging, tree-size piece of clock swung into it and knocked the mask away from its imagined shoulders.

  The giant body faded. The giant mask fell. Rownie caught it before it hit the ground. He looked up, grinning—but everyone else was busy, and no one had noticed his victory.

  Rownie saw Patch throw juggling knives through ghostly mask-bodies, convincing the masks that the bodies were not actually there, and then catching each mask as it fell.

  He saw Nonny fire her sling in the air, trying to keep the bird masks away without breaking them.

  He saw Essa face off against her favorites.

  He heard Thomas roar invectives in the midst of his own duel.

  He heard Semele keep several masks at bay with old and heavy words.

  Rownie set the giant mask carefully down on the floor, hefted his halberd, and went to help Semele. He had to swing his way through many phantom mask-bodies to reach her.

  Semele ended her chant, and dozens of masks clattered to the floor in a wide circle.

  “This is an excellent curse we are fighting,” she said. “This is a curse to be commended and admired. The bond between mask and performer has been twisted, and now they wish to play those who have played them.”

  “Why are so many of them after you?” Rownie asked. The words came out of him in a wheeze—his halberd was unwieldy, and his arms were starting to hurt. “Have you played them all?”

  “No,” said Semele. “I wrote them all, and many I have also carved.”

  Rownie swung at two long-nosed masks given bodies by this commendable curse—and then he remembered how the curse had been made and delivered. It’s a present of welcoming home, Graba had said to Vass when she gave her the errand.

  “I know whose curse this is,” he said.

  “So do I, yes,” said Semele. A pigeon perched above them, on the workings of the clock. Semele spoke to it. “I see you there,” she called. “I see you wearing the bird, as you wear the grubby children of your household.”

  The pigeon flapped its wings, and hooted.

  Semele crossed her arms and sniffed. She did not seem concerned. “Child-thief? You do not care much for your charges while you have them—only when they are taken from you, when anything is taken from you. And you might have come yourself, yes. You send a sending instead, hiding inside birds and bullying us with our own masks. You might have come yourself to face me.”

  The pigeon gave an unpigeonlike shriek, and dove down at Semele.

  “I do not have time for you,” said Semele. “I did not come home to Zombay for you.” She waved one hand, dismissing the bird. It flew away upward, shrieking, and vanished among the highest pieces of interlocking clockworks.

  Rownie didn’t have time to be impressed. The mask revenants massed together into a silent crowd of bright colors and grotesque shapes, and they came for Semele. Some of the masks were hinged at the mouths and eyelids. These opened wide their eyes and gnashed their teeth. Semele sent most of them back with charms, and Rownie fought with the rest. He poked his halberd up at a ghoulish false face.

  “I can break this curse,” Rownie said, just as soon as he could pause and spare the breath. “I know where it is.” He knew where Vass had put it.

  “Then go,” Semele told him. “I will hold them off, yes, while you go.”

  Rownie went.

  Act III, Scene IV

  IT WAS NOT EASY TO HURRY with a halberd. Rownie stumbled, and almost fell over. He realized that he might lose an arm or a leg or a head if he did fall. The ax at the end of the pole was very sharp. He dropped the thing with a clatter and a crash, leaving it behind, even though many embodied masks stood between him and the staircase. There were too many to fight. He dodged instead. He tried not to be dazzled or distracted by the sudden movements of dancing and fighting and bold colors and swirling shapes in all corners of his vision. He made for the stairs, reached them, and went down.

  It was dark in the stables, with Horace all folded up and hiding the coal-glow. Rownie felt his way along the wall, found the door, and undid the latch. He went out into the fog. He went through the alley and up the stone steps to the front doors of the Clock Tower. The doors were sealed and shut. The chains had long ago rusted together, and could not be unlocked.

  Tied among these thick and thickly rusting chains, Rownie found a leather bag. Smoke poured out of it, of a darker shade than the fog. He didn’t want to touch it. He wished that he had kept the halberd, so he could poke at the thing from a distance or at least carry it away on the end of a long pole. But he didn’t have a halberd. He only had his hands.

  Rownie took a deep breath, took the curse bag with both hands, and ripped it away from the Clock Tower doors.

  He expected the thing to be hot and burning. It wasn’t. The curse bag was cold, and the cold burned him.

  He turned around and looked for the nearest space between buildings where he could toss the bag down and into the River—flowing water was the very best way to wash off a curse—and then he stopped.

  The fox mask stood before him, directly before him. It wore a fine suit, with leather gloves and leather boots. The fox nodded, polite, a gentleman’s greeting.

  It did not attack him. It did not peel away its own fox face to mask Rownie with. It did not come any closer. Instead the fox stood aside, and gestured with one gloved paw.

  Rownie went cautiously in that direction. He crossed the street, holding the curse bag as though it were an egg or a fallen, fledgling bird. The coldness of it hurt. It seeped into the bones of his fingers and made his hands feel as though they were no longer his.

  The fox followed him.

  Together they went down an alleyway on the downstream side, farther away from the Clock Tower. Rownie reached over the edge of the low stone wall and dropped the curse bag. It fell into the fog, and into the River, and was gone. Rownie hoped that the River didn’t mind. He rubbed his hands together to chase away the cold, and they started to feel like they belonged to him again.

  “Thanks,” he said to the fox—but the fox was not there. The empty mask lay faceup on the stones beside him. Rownie picked it up. He wore it around his neck by the string, without putting it on.

  Back inside the Clock Tower, many masks lay scattered on the floor. Rownie glanced at the upstream clock face, and saw that the moon was setting. Night was ending. The morning would be here soon.

  He found the rest of the troupe where they had taken refuge among the bookshelves.

  “Well done, Rownie,” Semele
said.

  “Yes, very well done,” said Thomas, poking cautiously at a fallen mask with his cane-sword. “I am curious to know what it is you actually did, of course, but I can wait.”

  Essa set her halberd aside and picked up the mask with the excellent eyebrows. “That was very strange,” she said. “I got a little bit in character whenever one of my masks came close to me, and that made it really hard to fight when they were the weepy sorts of characters who made me feel like swooning.”

  “Whereas I remain filled to the very brim of my hat with tragic intensity,” said Thomas. “Excuse me, please.” The old goblin left for some other part of the tower.

  “Best we not disturb him for a good long while,” said Semele. “We should put these masks back where they belong, and perhaps chain them in place . . . but the task can wait for morning, yes. It will require care. Some of them should only be handled with the left hand, and we will first have to gather many lengths of short, stout chain. We should wait, to be sure of doing it properly. To bed now, yes.”

  The troupe stumbled toward several small bunks near the pantry shelves. Rownie went with them. He found a bed of his own. He took off his coat, because the bed already had blankets. Both his folded coat and the fox mask he stashed underneath the bunk.

  Rownie was tired beyond tired, but he did not sleep. Not yet. His thoughts spun like the workings at the center of the Clock Tower—always moving, always turning, never still.

  He wondered what Graba might know about Rowan and his whereabouts, what sort of hints and inklings she might have. He wondered how he could possibly get her to tell him what she knew. Graba did not share, but she did bargain, and Rownie had gone on many market errands for her. He knew how to bargain. To offer a deal he needed to have something Graba wanted—and he had one thing that she did.

  He made a choice, and after that he slept.

  Act III, Scene V

  MORNING LIGHT CREPT THROUGH the downstream clock face. A stained-glass sun ticked upward from the very edge of a glass horizon.

  Rownie woke after just a few hours’ sleep. The rest of the troupe still seemed to be unconscious. He heard snores and saw lumps of blankets on the other bunks. He couldn’t tell who was snoring. It might have been Essa.

  He sat up on the edge of his bed. The masks still lay on the floor where they had fallen. Rownie put on his coat, picked up the fox mask, and found himself a breakfast of dried fruit and cold flatbread in the pantry. It felt strange to take the food. It felt like stealing, even though he knew that it wasn’t, even though Essa had told him that it was perfectly fine to snack from the pantry cupboards. In Graba’s household, every hungry mouth was on its own.

  He sat on the floor, chewing shriveled fruit pieces with the fox face on his knee, and he wondered where Graba might have moved her household. He needed to find her—or to find someone else who could find her.

  He had a message for Graba.

  Rownie stood and tucked the fox mask inside his coat. This also felt like stealing. He told himself that it was only borrowing, and hoped he would have the chance to bring it back. Besides, the fox had followed him last night, all on its own.

  He took in a long breath, and headed for the staircase.

  “Good morning to you, Rownie,” said Semele, before he had gotten very far.

  Rownie jumped. “Morning,” he said, nervous and guilty feeling.

  Semele did not look as though she had slept. She picked up a fallen mask and considered it sadly.

  “Cracked all the way through,” she said. “It is not a hopeful sign to see this one broken. We carved it from a block of alder, offered willingly by a living tree. Cypress is best for mask making, but alder is also good, and a very fine wood for boats and bridges. The Fiddleway has wooden bones of alder wood, in among the stone.”

  Rownie reached for the broken mask. Semele handed it to him. The face looked simple at first, unadorned and without expression—but then he saw a smile when he held it at one angle and a thoughtful frown when held another way. The eyes also changed, seeming to close at a downward tilt.

  “What’s it a mask of?” he asked.

  “This is the UnChanged Child,” Semele told him, “though it is changed now by breaking. By tradition this is the very first face a new maskmaker attempts, and the very last face to be mastered.”

  “But you didn’t start with this one,” Rownie said, remembering.

  “No,” said Semele. “I began with the River, and worked in stone. I am a fair bit older than most traditions are.”

  Rownie gave her back the UnChanged Child. “I’m sorry it’s broken,” he said.

  “This is no fault of yours,” she told him. “I mean that truly, yes.”

  “Thanks,” Rownie said, “but all of this might still be mine to fix. I think I can help find my brother, or at least get a little news about him.”

  Semele nodded. “Take good care of the fox. It is old, that one.”

  “I will,” Rownie promised, and felt sheepish about concealing the fox in his coat. “Wish me luck.”

  “Break your face,” Semele said, with sincerity and kindness. “That means luck,” she added. “I do not actually remember why it means this, but it does.” She gave another mournful look at the broken face in her hands.

  “Oh,” said Rownie. “Good, then.”

  Outside it rained in sudden spurts and starts. The sun peered out from behind clouds, as though shy. Then it hid itself again, and again the sky rained. All the ordinary traffic of the Fiddleway kept their heads down. Beasts and persons, both gearworked and not, seemed to see only their own feet in front of them. They paid no notice to the boy who emerged from an alleyway and climbed the stone steps of the Clock Tower.

  A single pigeon stood perched on the rusting chains. Rownie had hoped to find one there. It pecked at the chains with a little tap-tap noise. It looked confused. It looked as though it wondered where the curse bag had gone.

  “I took it,” Rownie told the bird. “I broke it. Tell Graba, if you have a little piece of Graba in your head. Tell her I broke the curse, and you can tell her something else besides.”

  The bird stretched both wings and scratched underneath one of them with its beak. It acted like it didn’t notice Rownie and could not be bothered to notice him.

  “It doesn’t have any of Graba,” said Vass, behind him. “It has a piece of me instead.”

  Rownie turned around. He stood like a giant and stayed where he was. It helped that he stood a few steps above Vass, on the stair. This brought them eye to eye.

  “You broke her curse?” she asked, marveling at him. “She is going to make a birdcage out of your skin and bones, and keep only the ugliest birds inside you, and she won’t ever clean out the cage, either.”

  Rownie ignored her smugness. “I have a message for Graba,” he said. “You can deliver it—in person, or with birds, or with whatever else you use to send messages.”

  Vass almost laughed at him. “Tell me your message, sir,” she said, bemused and still smug.

  Rownie stood like a giant. He stood like Rowan. He was not embarrassed. Vass could laugh just as long as she liked, and it would not matter to him. Not very much.

  “Tell her to meet me at the Southside Rail Station.” The station might be in Southside, but it felt like Northside. It followed different rules. In the station she might be out of her element—less terrifying, less strong.

  Vass saw that Rownie was serious, and she looked less bemused. “When?” she asked.

  “Now,” Rownie said. “I’m on my way now. I’ll meet her there.” He still didn’t know where Graba had moved her household, but he did not need to know. Graba could come to him instead.

  Vass watched Rownie carefully. Something shifted behind her eyes. She nodded and spoke with something a very little bit like respect. “I’ll pass your message on,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Rownie. He turned away and went down the steps.

  Vass called after him. “She hates t
o lose anything that she thinks is hers. You know that. She won’t let you get away from her again.”

  “She can try,” Rownie said, and he almost laughed. He remembered what it had felt like to cast a mask-charm at the Floating Market. You will not catch me, he had told the Grubs, and he had made it true. He still had the fox with him. He could still avoid being caught.

  Rownie crossed the bridge. He passed dueling fiddlers as he stepped into Southside and smelled Southside dust. He walked between the fiddlers, through the music of their duel. Neither one seemed to be winning.

  He passed members of the Guard as they marched. It was strange to see so many of them in Southside. Here they moved slowly, with many stops and adjustments of direction. It was common knowledge that the Guard hated Southside—all of Southside—with its curved, winding streets and unusual angles. They much preferred the precision of Northside avenues, over which they could always move quickly.

  Unlike the Guard, Rownie understood these winding streets. The soles of his feet spoke their language. He could move quickly in Southside.

  He passed pigeons, many pigeons. The birds watched him sideways, and he nodded to each of them.

  “The rail station,” he said. “Tell her I’ll meet her there.”

  The birds made hooting noises, and flapped their wings. Rownie thought that they heard him and understood him—but he couldn’t be sure of it, so he told the same thing to every new pigeon that he saw. The rail station. Tell her. Tell Graba.

  Rownie came to the old station gate, and slipped through the bars. He went in as though he knew where he was going, as though he had every right to haunt that place, as though he were something to be afraid of. He almost believed that these things were true.

  The Southside Rail Station was empty, save for pigeons, and for Rownie. Dusty, cloudy sunlight came through the glass panes of the ceiling. It slid down over the brass finish of abandoned railcars, and fell on the curved rust of wrought-iron benches. Pigeons swooped down from the dangling clocks and passed through the dusty light, circling, silent.