by Joel Ross
“Once I find one,” he said. “Yeah.”
“I would dearly love to visit the city. Ti-Lin-Su once lived there.” She gestured to the books on the bedside table. “She’s my favorite scholar. She’s the leading authority on zozology.”
“Zozology?”
“The study of nonhuman creatures.”
“That’s thrilling,” Ji said, pretending to yawn. “The thing is, I made a deal with Brace. If I kill the desert lotus flower, he’ll take me to the city.”
Roz gaped at him. “You’re going into the mausoleum?”
“Yeah.”
“Past the goblins?”
“Yeah.”
“When do we go?”
“What?” Ji gaped at her. “We what? What? We?”
Roz’s eyes brightened. “I’ve always wanted to see a goblin crypt.”
“Why?”
“The tunnels must be fascinating.”
“They’re holes in the ground!”
“Built by goblins.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s not a good thing.”
“Goblins are fascinating, too.”
Ji scoffed. “Have you seen them?”
“I didn’t say they were pretty,” Roz said. “Just fascinating.”
“No,” Ji said.
“‘No’ what?”
“No, you can’t come.”
Roz shot him a governess-y look. “The crypts are a maze of dark, twisting tunnels. Once you get past the goblin pen and inside the crypts, how will you find the mausoleum?”
“Um, you’ll tell me where to look,” Ji said. “That doesn’t mean you need to come with me.”
“Well, I do know a thing or two about goblins—”
Ji exhaled in relief. “Perfect!”
“However,” she continued, “if I don’t join you, I can’t help you. There’s no map, Ji. Still, I’m halfway certain that I might possibly find the lotus vines if I come along.”
“So you’re halfway certain that it’s almost possible?”
“Precisely,” she said, and fixed him with her clever gaze. “And Ji? You’re not the only one whose life is empty. You’re not the only one who dreams of better things.”
“Better things?” Ji swallowed the knot in his throat. “You mean like hibiscus tea with honey?”
“You know precisely what I mean,” she said.
And he did. She wanted more than her cramped, airless life. She wanted more than meek obedience. Roz was coming to the crypts.
7
THE TRICK TO sneaking away from work was simple: you didn’t sneak. You didn’t hide, you didn’t tiptoe. You did the opposite.
So at sunset on the next day, Ji marched into the kitchen, called friendly insults to a footman and a page, and headed for the “buffet.” Lower servants like him ate leftovers from the upper servants’ meals, which were leftovers from the nobles’ table.
He took a bite of pickled radish and told a kitchen maid, “Yuck. Spicy.”
She whacked his butt with a ladle. “Shut your teeth, boot boy.”
“Tastes like bootlaces,” he said, “with too much jalapeño.”
The kitchen maid swung her ladle again, but Ji darted past. He burst through the side door into the evening. As the maid shouted from inside, Ji grinned and ambled away. He felt taller outside the manor. It was as close to freedom as he got.
The autumn air smelled cool and flowery. The sunset glowed pink over the distant mountains, and a couple of the brighter moons already hung in the evening sky. A swarm of blue-bats, each the size of Ji’s thumb, bumbled past his face. He waved them away and followed the scent of manure to the stable yard.
When Ji slunk past the burro stalls, two of the tough little donkeys eyed him suspiciously. He showed them his palms to prove he meant no harm, and one brayed like a bugle with a stuffy nose.
Ji rushed onward, trotting around the stables until he spotted Sally. She was smashing what looked like a scarecrow with the flat edge of a shovel. He didn’t know why. Some kind of horse business, maybe. Horses were weird.
He frowned at the stable boys mucking out the stalls nearby, stepped behind a tree, and whispered Sally’s name. She didn’t hear him. He gave a low whistle, but she still didn’t hear. He thought about laughing, because she’d told him that one of the burros freaked out whenever it heard laughter. But a crazed burro didn’t sound like a great plan.
So he cupped his mouth. “Hoo! Hoo-hoo! Hooooo!”
“What are you doing?” Sally asked, from the other side of the tree.
“Ya!” Ji grabbed his chest to keep his heart from exploding. “You scared me!”
“I’m not the one making ghost noises.”
“They’re owl hoots!” Ji took a breath. “Come on, we’re meeting at the Folly.”
According to Roz, most noble haciendas had follies: scale models of ruined castles and citadels, about a quarter the size of the real things. The Folly at Primstone was a ruined pagoda, a six-sided tower with angled roofs. A cracked ramp rose to the front doors, and ivy climbed the crumbling walls, but on the inside, the pagoda contained an airy ballroom for costume parties and special occasions.
Smaller fake ruins dotted the parkland beyond the main Folly, built to look like battlements and towers and temples. The nobles used some for picnics, some for festivals, and some for romantic strolls.
But one of the ruins was different. One was part of the goblin pen.
When the baroness wanted to thrill her guests, she’d dress her goblins as mountain ogres and make them lurk in the towers and forts, even though goblins looked nothing like ogres. For one thing, goblins were only about Ji’s size, while Brace said ogres were shaggy beasts that walked on two legs, with curved horns and tusks. Though according to Roz, some were more like scarlet-skinned humans, with pointy ears that jingled with rings.
Still, even goblins playing dress-up were enough to make the guests shriek. And Ji couldn’t blame them. The sight of nonhuman eyes peering from the fake ruins gave him a chill every time he’d snuck away to see them. Usually, though, the goblins stayed in their pen inside a ruined temple near the bamboo garden, with their creepy faces and chisel teeth and wiggly belly-arms.
Ji shuddered as he followed the carriage path toward the Folly. “Maybe this is a bad idea.”
“Don’t be silly.” Sally propped her shovel on her shoulder. “It’s worse than bad.”
“Why did you bring a shovel?”
“Because I couldn’t find a battle-ax,” she said. “You know, in case of goblins.”
Ji groaned. “We’re so dead.”
“Are you scared?”
“Are you not scared?”
“Not enough to stop me,” she said.
“That’s the whole point of scared!” he told her. “To stop you from doing stupid things.”
“Not me!” She gave her shovel a twirl. “Getting scared just makes me extra determined.”
“We’re so dead,” Ji repeated.
“Stop worrying so much.”
“We’re so dead that skeletons look at us and think, wow, now that’s dead.”
Sally smiled in the light of the lanterns lining the path. “Where’s Roz?”
“She’s meeting us there,” he said. “In the bony graveyard of the extremely dead.”
“I can’t believe you let her come,” Sally said.
“Roz knows more than you and me combined. How else are we going to find the mausoleum?”
“We could take prisoners,” Sally suggested. “Like knights do in battles.”
“We’re not going to fight anyone, Sally. We probably won’t even see the goblins. Roz will get us in and out without a whisper.”
“I’ll never become a squire if I don’t fight anyone,” Sally grumbled.
They headed past the trout ponds, then crossed a stone bridge with three little arches. After the carriage path curved through a stand of hydrangeas, the Folly rose overhead, a craggy pagoda that looked like a relic of a forgotten
time.
Ji barely noticed it. Instead, his gaze snagged on a light splotch in the dusk: a pale-pink gown. Because Roz was sitting on the steps, reading a book in the fading light, dressed for a fancy ball.
“What is she wearing?” Sally asked.
“That’s her lucky dress.”
“She’s got a handbag!”
“That’s her favorite bag.”
“We’re not having green tea and sweet rolls! We’re crawling through underground crypts with hungry goblins trying to eat us!”
“At least you brought them a big spoon,” he said, glancing at Sally’s shovel.
“I wish it was a big knife.”
Ji stopped in front of Roz. “Hey, Roz.”
She didn’t look up from her book.
“Roz!”
She jerked. “Oh! Sorry! This is Ti-Lin-Su’s book about goblins. Well, mostly about them. There’s a little about hobgoblins. Did you know they’re small and furry, with foxlike tails? Or that bugbears migrate to snowcapped mountains? Oh! And ogre cubs aren’t boys or girls!”
“Of course not,” Sally said. “They’re ogres.”
“I mean they’re not male or female,” Roz said. “Not until they grow up. Then they choose which they want to be. And there’s a chapter about dragons, too.”
“I love dragons,” Sally said, her eyes glinting.
“You’re not going to slay a dragon,” Ji told her.
“I might.”
“Yeah? When?”
“When the time is right.”
Ji shot her a dubious look. “With your shovel?”
“Dragons are old magic,” Roz interrupted, leaning forward. “They’re not huge, like in the stories: they’re more like big water buffalo, except with tails longer than their bodies. And scales and claws and so on.”
“Sounds pretty huge to me,” Ji said.
“And they’re the subject of what Ti-Lin-Su calls her ‘outstanding question.’ Why do dragons hoard treasure?”
“’Cause it’s treasure?” Ji asked.
“Right,” Sally said. “They could buy all kinds of swords and castles and stuff.”
“They can’t spend it!” Roz said. “They’re dragons. So why collect it? Oh! And here’s a sketch of what’s either a sprite or an extremely glowy butterfly, with—”
“Roz!” Ji said, eyeing the sunset anxiously. “What did you learn about goblin tunnels?”
“Oh, right, yes. Goblins.” Roz flipped a few pages. “During the wars, when the survival of humankind was hanging by a thread . . .” She peered at Ji and Sally. “Do you know the history?”
“Of course we do,” Ji said, though he was fuzzy on the details.
“Not really,” Sally said. “You mean back when everyone had magic?”
Roz nodded. “Before the first Summer Queen collected all the human magic into herself.”
“What magic would you want?” Sally asked Ji. “A way to clean boots with a wave of your hand?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’d just want to stop aching all the time.”
“I’d want a sword that could cut through stone.”
“That’s too big,” he told her. “People only had little magics.”
“I’d want to be able to forget my favorite books,” Roz said. “So I could read them again for the first time.”
Ji gave a snort of laughter, but Sally said, “You know what I’d really want? To always know where Chibo was.”
Nobody spoke for a minute. Then Ji said, “So, um, what’s the history?”
“Many hundreds of years ago,” Roz said, smoothing her dress, “the ogre hordes rampaged down from the mountains while the goblins swarmed up from the south. They clawed and killed and feasted, and drove the entire human nation into Summer Valley. Half of us died during the final battle, before the first Summer Queen turned the tide and defeated them.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ji rubbed the back of his neck. “Get to the bone crypts.”
“Oh! Didn’t I say? During the war, human soldiers scouted the goblin burrows. Most were eaten, but a few returned. Goblins find humans delicious. We’re like candy to them.”
“Fascinating,” Ji said faintly.
“I know!” Roz riffled through the pages of her book. “There are a few words of Goblish in here, and the word for ‘human’ is the same as the word for ‘tasty’!”
“What’s ‘Goblish’?” Sally asked.
“Goblin language,” Roz told her. “Like ‘ka-shin’ means sister and ‘sut’ means rock and—oh, this one’s neat! ‘Kultultul’ means goblin.”
“‘Goblin’ means goblin,” Sally said.
“They call themselves Kultultul,” Roz explained. “Which also means the people.”
“They can’t be people,” Sally said. “We’re people.”
“Who cares?” Ji looked to Roz. “Forget history. Do you know how to get to the mausoleum or not?”
Roz nodded slowly. “Yes. Probably. I think so. I’m not sure. Maybe?”
“I’m glad that’s settled,” he said. “Let’s go.”
8
FROM HIS HIDING spot in the bamboo garden, Ji eyed the ruined temple inside the sturdy fence of the goblin pen. Torches flickered in the dusk, and his breath caught when he saw the gate wide open beside a row of wheelbarrows. If the fence wasn’t keeping the goblins in their pen, what was?
Then he saw motion near a rickety trough beside the temple. Two goblins wearing dingy collars stuffed food into their mouths with their spindly belly-arms, while a third hunched forward to join them. Watching goblins walk made Ji’s stomach twist. Their legs bent in unexpected places. As far as he was concerned, two was a perfectly good number of knees.
Sally peered at the open gate. “Why don’t they just leave?”
“And go where?” Roz asked. “They’re a hundred leagues from the goblin lands, and they don’t exactly blend in. If they escaped, they’d be caught in days.”
“Let’s distract them,” Ji whispered, “then sneak in.”
“That’s cheating,” Sally said.
“What do you think we should do?”
She wielded her shovel like a sword. “Vanquish them.”
“What?”
“Vanquish means beat.”
“I know what it means!” Ji said. “That’s not the point!”
“We should face them in open combat.” She nodded firmly. “That’s the only honorable way.”
“There are a hundred more of them inside the pen!”
“There are nine more,” Roz said. “I checked the estate books this afternoon. There are exactly twelve goblins at Primstone.”
“Even if there were only three,” Ji said, “we couldn’t chase them off.”
“It can’t hurt to try,” Sally said, with a jab of her shovel.
“Actually, that’s exactly what it could do,” Ji told her. “Especially if they eat us.”
“Better to lose with honor than win without.”
“No!” Ji said. “No, it’s not! Where do you get these doolally ideas?”
“That’s not doolally, that’s what all the squires think!”
“Then the next time you see all the squires, tell them I said they’re doolally.”
Sally lowered her shovel. “I hate sneaking around.”
“Sneaking around is going to save your brother’s life,” he reminded her. “We’ll sneak through the bone crypts and kill the flower. Then we’ll get to the city, sell our loot, and free Chibo. Done.”
“Fine,” Sally said. “But how are you going to distract the goblins? Ghost noises?”
“They were owl noises!” Ji rubbed his shoulder. “Maybe we should . . . I don’t know. Start a fire?”
Sally looked dubious. “A fire would attract too much attention.”
“Roz could throw rocks.”
“She does have a deadly arm,” Sally said. “She throws like a catapult wearing a beaded handbag.”
“Yeah, and then—” Ji stopped, as a pink shape drifted
through the dusk light. “Roz!”
She’d left the cover of the bamboo garden and was walking openly toward the goblins, her pale dress impossible to miss in the light of the flickering torches.
“See?” Sally said, trotting after her. “Even Roz knows we should charge.”
“She’s not charging,” Ji said. “She’s strolling.”
Then he swore under his breath and followed, his mind whirling with half-formed excuses. But what kind of excuse worked with a goblin?
Roz marched through the open gate into the pen. The three goblins at the trough turned, beady eyes narrowing and shoulder-arms pawing the air. Ji’s throat shriveled in fear. He wanted to run away, but instead he trotted closer to Roz.
“Good evening,” Roz said, stopping in front of the goblins. “My name is Rozario. I’m very pleased to meet you, and on such a lovely night! I do enjoy these autumn sunsets, don’t you?”
Three sets of belly-arms waved; then a one-eyed goblin wearing a copper collar shuffled closer to Roz.
“Ka-lo,” the goblin said in a gravelly voice. “Miss Ka-zario.”
“And, uh, ka-lo to you, too.” Roz curtsied, slightly unsteady. “W-what a nice home!”
“Not a home,” the goblin said. “A pen.”
“Oh!” Roz said, gulping. “Yes. I’m s-sorry.”
The other goblins hunched forward, and Sally stepped beside Roz, looking small and fierce. Ji wanted to keep his distance, but he slunk to Roz’s other side, suddenly wishing he had a shovel of his own.
“But underground, where you dig, is th-that more of a home?” Roz asked, her voice fake-bright. “I’m sure you burrow deep, all the way to the, um, secret heart of the earth, where only the bravest Kultultul dare to venture.”
The one-eyed goblin made a coughing noise, and three more goblins shambled from the archway in the fake temple, their collars glinting in the torchlight.
Sally shifted her grip on her shovel and Ji got ready to grab Roz and drag her to safety. Maybe he wasn’t good at battling evil, but he’d mastered the art of running away.
The one-eyed goblin didn’t attack, though. It ground its teeth and said, “Than-ka you, Miss Ka-zario. Our tunnels are deep. You are polite. Very good ka-manners.”
“Thank you,” she said.