by Becket
Good studied the photograph too. She was surprised to see a girl who looked exactly like her, not the way she had been before she made the wish, but the way she was now, looking a little too much like these goblins. The girl in the photograph had a tall black crown, a long black dress, red eyes and lips, and she clearly had very green skin.
“My fellow goblins,” said the tall goblin beside her, “I believe we have finally found our long lost queen.”
Then all the goblins started applauding together and shouting, “Three cheers for Queen Lollipopalypse!”
“Pip pip hooray!” they shouted. “Pip pip hooray! Pip pip—”
“Wait,” Good said, stopping them. “My name isn’t Lollipopalypse. It’s Good.”
The goblins blinked at her in confusion for a moment. Then a short one wearing a large pot on his head spoke up. “Well, yes, your Pie-ness—”
“Highness!” another hissed at him.
“Yes of course,” he said irritably. “That’s what I meant. Your Highness, we know your name is good.”
“You do?” she asked in astonishment.
“Yes,” said the one beside him. “Lollipopalypse is the best name anyone could have. Me, I’m called Grub, which is okay, but it doesn’t quite strike fear in the hearts of my enemies. Not like Lollipopalypse.”
“No,” Good said. “You don’t understand. Good is my name.”
The goblins huddled together again and started whispering even more frantically than before. One poked his head out and said, “Are you saying that you’re a good queen because your name is Lollipopalypse, or that Lollipopalypse is a good name which makes you a bad queen?”
“No,” she said. “My name is good because Good is my name.”
Another poked his head out too and said, “So you’re a bad queen?”
“No, I’m not a bad queen—” she started to say, but stopped. She had come to a decision. “All right,” she said, “I am your queen and I command you to call me by the name of Good. I am a good queen, so call me Good.”
The goblins came out of their huddle and the stood before her once more. They all had confused expressions on their green faces.
“So,” the tallest one spoke again, “you are to be called Good—Good the Goblin Queen.”
Good could not think of anything else to say, but, “Yes, I am Good. I am your Goblin Queen.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Names of the Goblins
The seven goblins became very excited at this news. They had finally found the long lost goblin queen. They started dancing and singing and banging their pots and pans. And they began gabbing about all the wars they could get into now and how they would finally get their revenge on the Troll Kingdom in the north.
Good stopped them.
“I don’t want to go to war,” she said. “And I don’t want revenge on anyone.”
The goblins blinked at her for a second.
Then they all began laughing hysterically. “That’s a good one,” they said. “A minute back on the throne and she’s already making jokes.”
“It is no joke,” she said in a serious tone.
The goblins stopped talking, giving each other awkward glances and coughing uncomfortably.
“How will you learn to be a good queen if you don’t go to war?” one asked.
Good did not know how to answer him. All she could say was, “Why do you want to fight?”
The tall goblins said, “It’s who we are.”
“Can’t you change?” Good asked.
“Into what?” one asked.
“Into better goblins,” Good said.
“Better?” they all said strangely, as if the word was like a rock in their mouth.
Then one said, “I know! I think I understand. You want us to be better at taking over the underworld.”
The other goblins looked relieved. They liked that idea very much.
“No,” said Good. “Can’t you live in peace?”
“In pieces?” they asked, not sure what she meant.
“No,” she said. “Can’t you live without fighting anyone else?”
“Queen Lollipop—” the tall goblin started to say but corrected his words. “Queen Good,” he said instead with a slight shiver, “we can’t even live in peace together amongst ourselves. We’re always fighting.”
“But you’re—I’m mean, but we’re all goblins,” Good said. “Why can’t we live together like friendly goblins?”
“Well,” he replied slowly, looking uneasy, “goblins aren’t friendly.”
“Being unfriendly is the only thing we are good at,” said another goblin.
“We’re not all the same kind of goblin,” the tall one went on saying. He stood a little taller, a little prouder, and said, “Me. I’m a pure goblin.”
“But I’m not,” said the shortest one with the same amount of pride. “I’m a hobgoblin.”
“What’s the difference?” Good asked.
The goblin and the hobgoblin stared at each other, looking a little lost, not sure what they should say in reply.
Finally the hobgoblin said, “I think I am what I am because I hangout in hobs.”
“What’s a hob?” asked Good.
But the hobgoblin did not know what to say.
“I think you put them in shoes to make them smell better,” another goblin suggested.
“Are you a hobgoblin too?” Good asked him.
“No,” he said. “I’m a bed goblin.”
“And I’m a clock goblin,” said another who had a white beard and even more wrinkly skin, looking like the oldest one among them.
“I’m a bug goblin,” said a fifth who was a girl goblin like Good, although this bug goblin looked a little like a ladybug with two antennae sticking out of the top of her head and bright beautiful ladybug wings going down her back, each of them marked with seven spots.
“I’m a cobble goblin,” said a sixth who was gobbling down some candy.
Good looked at the seventh goblin, expecting him to say something, but he was looking down at his feet. His green cheeks were red with embarrassment.
“And what kind of goblin are you?” she asked him.
He shrugged.
“He doesn’t know,” said the cobble goblin.
“We just call him Bob,” said the bug goblin.
The seventh goblin nodded and dug in the snow with his toe.
“Then my first order of business as queen is to say that you are a new kind of goblin,” Good said.
He looked up at her with a question on his green face.
“I shall call you the bobgoblin,” she said with a smile.
All the other goblins were very excited to hear this and they started banging loudly on everyone else’s pots and pans.
CHAPTER NINE
Marching Toward the Goblin Kingdom
The seven goblins—the goblin, the hobgoblin, the bed goblin, the clock goblin, the cobble goblin, the bug goblin, and the bobgoblin—all lined up in a row and they commenced marching and singing their song.
The pots, the pots,
it’s the Pots and Pans Parade.
We prance, we dance
like ants in pants
in the Pots and Pans Parade!
SQUEAK! SQUEAK!
“Where are you going?” Good called after them.
The goblins all stopped singing to say together, “We are taking you, Queen Good, to the Goblin Kingdom!”
Then they turned and marched off into the distance.
Good looked at the broken Crinomatic still in her hands. She was not sure if following them was the best idea. It didn’t seem safe. And not making a safe decision was not like her. But then again, it had not been a safe decision to run away from home either.
Just then she heard noises coming from behind. She looked back and saw a troop of Secret Service agents rushing over a hill. They were talking to one another through walkie-talkies in their sleeves, even though they were standing right next to one another.
“Do you see her? Over,” one said into his sleeve.
“Not yet. Over,” the agent beside him said into his sleeve too
“She is around here someplace. Over.”
“Did you say she has a round fearsome face? Over.”
Good overheard them saying more about arresting the one who had wished on all those falling stars. She could barely believe everything that was happening. This had definitely become the strangest day in the history of strange days.
It seemed that the only way she would not go to jail would be to follow after the goblins. For a moment she wondered if there was another option. But even if there were, she would still have green skin. The Crinomatic was broken and she knew no other way to change back to the way she was. But did she want to go back to the life she had?
She heard the goblins singing loudly and without fear, banging on their pots and pans. Good was sure the Secret Service agents would arrest them too, and send them all to goblin jail, if there were such a place.
The agents were closing in around her on all sides. Good decided that she had to follow the goblins. It was the only way out. So she picked up the hem of her long black dress and ran after the goblins, still singing boldly about their Pots and Pans Parade.
CHAPTER TEN
Passage Through a Hollow Tree
Good did not know how far away the Goblin Kingdom was, but she guessed that it had to be far. She had never seen it before on any maps or globes. So she was very surprised when they walked over the next hill and went right up to a hollow tree.
The tall goblin knocked three times, then twelve, then two, and then he clapped his hands and stood on his head, and clucked like a chicken.
Magically a door opened on the tree. It was dark inside, but the goblins did not seem afraid of the dark. They went in and down stairs carved along the tree trunk.
The stairs inside the tree spiraled down, winding around and around, taking Good and the goblins far underground. The goblins went on banging and singing and marching while Good struggled to find the next stair, worried she might slip on the smooth wood. It was so dark in there she could barely see where she was going. She heard the goblins marching farther and farther ahead and she was afraid they might leave her behind. What would she do if she got lost down there?
The tunnel around her felt as if it was getting smaller. She had to duck and bunch her shoulders together. The stairs felt like they were getting crooked too! She had to touch the walls to keep her balance.
Soon she no longer heard the Pots and Pans Parade. And she was just starting to wonder what happened to them when—SPLASH!—she fell into a pool of water.
But the strange thing about this fall was that she did not actually fall. Perhaps this is because the stranger thing about the pool was that it was not flat on the ground but standing straight up, like a wall—a wall of water. And it was ice cold too!
Good started to swim through the water when she realized that she did not have to swim. She could walk. Sort of. It was more like bouncing. She bounced along underwater the way astronauts do on the moon. And she did not have to hold her breath. She could breathe. It was difficult to breathe in, but she breathed out a bucket of bubbles.
She was in the beautiful room of an underwater princess. There was a bed made of seaweed and a makeup desk made of corals. And there was a mermaid princess sitting in one corner of the room, blow-wetting her hair with a blow-wetter.
But taking a second look, Good noticed that the mermaid princess was as see-through as a green bottle and glowing with a soft green light. The sight of her reminded her of the elderly ghost who had given her the Crinomatic, Mr. Fuddlebee.
“The mermaid princess is a ghost,” Good tried to say as the sound of her voice came out in bubbles.
The ghost of the mermaid princess waved at Good. And Good was just about to wave back when she walked right into the mermaid’s water closet, only it wasn’t a water closet, but a dry closet. And it wasn’t a dry closet, but a long hallway filled with doors.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Down a Long Hallway
Good looked down the long hallway. Along both sides were many doors of all shapes and sizes. The floor was covered in black and white tiles. And everything looked crooked. The doors were wonky and the floor was wavy.
Far in the distance Good could see the goblins marching along and she could hear them banging their pots and pans and singing their song.
Quickly she ran after them. She dashed past one door after another. Some doorknobs shouted at her and some doorknockers snickered, but most were old and sleepy and snoring.
More than once she tripped and fell on the wavy floor. At this rate she might never catch up to the other goblins. She did not want to get lost in a place like this. There was no knowing where she might end up.
The last time she tripped and fell she lost them entirely. They were nowhere in sight. No sound could be heard of the Pots and Pans Parade. Good picked herself up and ran down the hallway as fast as her feet could go, occasionally falling, but always getting right back up and going on.
A few times she tried to open a door, thinking that they might have gone through one, but all the doors were locked.
She continued running for as long as she could, dashing down the long hall. But eventually she could not run another step. She sat down on one very wavy part of the floor that looked like a seat. She hoped to catch her breath and then go on. But instead she put her face in her hands and began to weep.
“I told you she should be called Your Cry-ness,” a familiar voice said a moment later.
“Yup,” another said in agreement. “She is most definitely a weeper, not a keeper.”
Surprised, Good looked up and saw seven goblin heads all lined up on top of one another, sticking out of one of the doors. They were looking at her, blinking, as if they expected her to say something.
“Did you forget the way, Your Highness?” asked the older clock goblin.
“Maybe she is trying to teach us a lesson about patience,” the bed goblin suggested.
“Patients?” asked the cobble goblin. “Do you mean like patients in a hospital?”
“No, not patients,” the hobgoblin snapped in a grouchy tone. “Patience, like me having the patience not to hit your pot with my spoon.”
The hobgoblin clearly did not have any patience because he hit the cobble goblin on the head with his spoon.
The pot clanged and the cobble goblin’s head shook like a bell beneath it.
The tall goblin sighed wearily and he waved everyone to follow him. “Come on already. Or we’ll be late.”
“Late for what?” the bug goblin asked.
“Dinner?” the cobble goblin said in a hopeful tone, putting one hand to his head and the other on his tummy, which had begun to grumble.
“Not late for dinner,” the tall goblin replied irritably. “Late meaning dead. There is a giant beast that roams this hall and she does not like goblins.”
The tall goblin then ducked back through the door and out of sight.
Five of the goblins followed him. But the short bobgoblin stepped out from the door and waddled over to Good. He grinned at her as he took one of her hands in both of his. He did not speak, but helped her get to her feet. He was so much shorter than her that, when she stood all the way up, he had to stand on tiptoe just to hold her hand. Then he turned around and waddled back through the door, leading Good.
The door closed gently behind them, locking with a click.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hall of Countless Doors
Good marched with the goblins. They went through several more rooms, and several more hallways, each one stranger than the last. It was as if they were traveling through the strangest mansion Good had ever imagined.
“Are we in the Goblin Kingdom?” she whispered to the bobgoblin.
He shook his head with an expression of fear on his face.
The tall goblin at the head of the line spoke up. “We are
in the Hall of Countless Doors.”
“I heard there were a million billion of them,” the bug goblin said.
“I might count them like sheep,” the bed goblin said through a long yawn.
“If any of that were true then we could not call it the Hall of Countless Doors,” said the clock goblin.
“This can’t be the only way to get to the Goblin Kingdom,” Good said.
“No,” the hobgoblin said, “but it’s the quickest.”
“Though not the safest,” the cobble goblin put in.
“Don’t worry,” the tall goblin said, “I have a map!”
He pulled a copper canister out from his belt. He pressed a button on the canister. A blue mist sprayed out and spread through the air like a cloud. Then the mist shaped into a map of the hall-way. Good could see that it was connected to several more hall-ways. They all looked like a maze. The tall goblin pointed to seven green dots and one red one.
“These seven dots are us,” he said, “and the red one is you, Queen Good.”
“What sort of map is this?” she asked.
“It is a Mist Map, of course,” the bed goblin said.
“Why is my dot red?” Good asked.
“Because you are the Goblin Queen,” all the goblins said at the same time.
Good thought this Hall of Countless Doors was very interesting, but she was getting tired of trying them and finding them all locked. She wanted to go through one. So she very politely asked, “How much farther until we get to the Goblin Kingdom?”
“Yes tell us,” the cobble goblin said impatiently to the tall one. “How much longer? My feet are tired from all this walking.”
“And my throat is tired from all this singing,” said the hobgoblin. “What does the map say?”