Deepest, Darkest

by William Ritter

  Candlebeard’s eyes flicked meaningfully down toward his chin. From within his beard, the candle flame danced.

  Evie shook her head. “I’m usually good about names. Sorry. My head feels all funny.”

  Candlebeard nodded and gestured out at the mire, where the mists swirled and the trees seemed to bend and sway in the distance.

  “He’s saying it’s the mmmist that mmmucks with your head,” said Fable. The words felt all rubbery in her mouth and the Ms got stuck on the way out.

  “I don’t like it,” said Evie.

  Candlebeard glanced left and right, as if the mossy trees creeping out of the mire might be watching him, then leaned over to the edge of the island and pulled a few yellow weeds. They looked a little like dandelions with smaller dandelions growing out of their middles. Candlebeard plucked off a few blooms and handed one to each of the children.

  “Oh,” Evie said. “Um. That’s very nice. Thank you.”

  Candlebeard shook his head. He held up another flower and popped it into his mouth, chewed for several seconds, then swallowed it.

  Evie blinked.

  Candlebeard pointed to the flower in her hand, then at her mouth.

  “You want me to . . .”

  Candlebeard nodded.

  Evie lifted the flower to her lips and took a hesitant nibble. Its petals tasted faintly sweet at first, but as she chewed, the flavor turned powerfully bitter.

  Candlebeard gave her a satisfied smile.

  “I’m not sure what this is supposed to—” Evie stopped. “Oh.” She looked around. Had the world stopped tilting? The trees that faded off into the mire suddenly seemed to stand a little straighter. “This flower clears your head, doesn’t it?” she said.

  Cole and Fable exchanged a glance and then munched on their own flowers. In a moment, all three children were blinking and looking around as if awakening from a dream.

  “That’s brilliant,” said Evie. “Thank you, Candlebeard. I’m going to write a special note about this in my journal later.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” Cole said. “Thanks again, Candlebeard. We’ll be right back.”

  As the kids pushed their way through the foliage, a small clearing came into view. In the dead center of the island was a circle of stones. It looked a bit like a well, except that the stones were not stacked neatly like a human-built structure—they simply jutted out of the earth in a natural, uneven ring. Within the rocky halo was . . . nothing. The ground simply gave way to a deep tunnel that bored straight down into the earth. It sank far deeper than the surface of the mire all around them, and Cole had to wonder what kept the swampy waters from seeping in.

  “I guess this is the Oddmire Burrow.” Cole stepped forward first. He approached the circle slowly.

  “What is it?” whispered Fable. “What did we find?”

  Before Cole could answer, a rasping voice called out from in front of him.

  “Death.”

  Five

  “Otch! Yer na even tryin’ today!” Kull threw up his arms. “Where’s yer head at, lad?”

  Tinn sagged. The uneven spray of feathers that had been blossoming from his arms drooped. “I’m sorry, Kull. I’ll try harder. I think I just need to take a break.”

  They had been practicing transformations—usually Tinn’s favorite subject. Having gotten comfortable with imitating most humanoid forms, Tinn had been the one to suggest he should stretch his wings, so to speak, by adding some animal characteristics to his repertoire. Early attempts had been clumsy, but at least he had managed a few of the right shapes. Today, he looked like a lanky thirteen-year-old who had rolled around in a chicken coop.

  He slumped into a chair at the table, willing his arms back to their usual texture.

  Kull eyed him. “Hm. All right. Out with it.”

  “With what?”

  “Ya couldn’a focus on yer Goblish composition earlier, either. You kept mixing up yer dashes and yer hashes. And ya didn’a even touch yer brotblath during lunch—an’ I put extra flowers and moss in it for ya today.”

  “You also put a whole squirrel in it.”

  “Yer a growin’ boy. Growin’ boys need good protein iffin they don’t want ta be growin’ numpties who make all sortsa mistakes because their heads is miles away.”

  Tinn sighed and slumped down on the table with his head in his now-featherless arms.

  “All right, lad. Out with it. What’s on yer nogg?”

  Tinn took a deep breath. “Cole, I guess.”

  “Yer brother? What’s he done now?”

  “Nothing. It’s just . . .” Tinn’s stomach felt twisted.

  “Have ya talked ta him about yer Turas yet?” Kull asked.

  The Turas Bàis was a goblin coming-of-age ritual that Kull had brought up a few lessons ago. It was a dangerous journey every young goblin had to take before they could become an adult, and they had to take it alone.

  Tinn shook his head. “I’ve tried to bring that up a couple of times. There’s not an easy way to tell your family that you’re thinking about going on a huge trip without them for months. Especially when that trip is literally a death journey.”

  “Otch. I should never have told ya the translation. A Turas is na about dyin’—it’s about putting ta rest the part o’ you that’s already passed, lettin’ go o’ the corpse o’ the old you so the new you can stand tall on his own two feet. Technically, Goll the blacksmith came back with just the one foot ta stand on, but not every Turas is as exciting as Goll’s. Besides, he made himself a shiny new one in no time.” He sat down across from Tinn. “Every goblin takes a Turas, lad. When the time is right an’ the goblin is ready . . .”

  “I’ll find the right time,” said Tinn. “But that’s not what’s bothering me.” He slouched back against the worn wood of the chair. “We’ve been looking for our dad together—our human dad—Cole’s dad.”

  “Mm.” Kull nodded. “No luck, then?”

  Tinn shook his head. “No. We haven’t found a single real clue. Nobody has, not for years. We might never. Cole thinks he found one, but it’s just a sort of rock. The whole thing feels weird anyway.”

  Kull raised an eyebrow in question.

  “It feels weird looking for somebody who ran away because of what you are. I’m finally getting to enjoy being . . . me.”

  “Ah.” Kull winced and nodded again. “So why do ya keep looking?”

  “It’s really important to Cole. It’s all he talks about. He’s convinced that our dad’s out there somewhere. And if he is—well—then he owes Cole some answers. He owes both of us some answers.”

  “And what if they’re na the answers ya want to hear?”

  Tinn shook his head. “Cole deserves to know, one way or another.” He glanced down, and his voice became a mumble. “I deserve to know.”

  Kull’s brow furrowed. He had blotchy green skin, flopping leathery ears, and teeth like broken glass—but every once in a while when he looked at Tinn like that, the goblin’s face reminded Tinn of his mother. It was the eyes, all full of concern. Not that Tinn would ever tell his mother that. Kull’s eyes lowered as he spoke: “Just be careful, lad. Sometimes when ya dig up the past, ya find more bones than ya buried.”

  Tinn just stared down at the parchment littering the table, the wrinkly paper covered in hash marks and blotted ink from his Goblish writing lesson.

  At length, Kull slapped the table and stood. “Enough o’ this for today. Come on, lad. Nearly time for yer appointment with Chief Nudd. You know he likes ta hear about yer progress.”

  Tinn slid out of the chair and hurried to keep up with Kull as the goblin padded out the front of the cave and onto the gangplank that hung along the face of Hollowcliff.

  When they reached the chief’s cave, however, they found it guarded by a sentry in what Tinn was beginning to recognize as female goblin armor. (The difference was that female goblin fashion tended toward having slightly thicker leath
er and more rodent skulls.)

  “Hullo there, Gnubb.” Kull nodded to the goblin, who tipped her head in greeting. “Got us an appointment with the chief.”

  “Chief’s oot,” Gnubb said. “Hasn’a been back since last night.”

  “He’s out?” said Tinn. “But he never misses our meetings.”

  Gnubb shrugged. “High Chief has a lot o’ responsibilities. He canna put havin’ a blether with a wee child over whatever urgent matter come up.”

  “Hrm. Thass fine,” Kull said. He turned back to Tinn with a shrug. “Gives us time enough for a few more lessons! Oh, and I got just the one ta take yer mind off yer troubles.”

  “What’s our next lesson?” Tinn asked as Kull led him back down a series of rickety hanging bridges.

  “Secret sites.” Kull smiled. “Nothin’ ta get yer mind off of one mystery like buryin’ it in another one. Besides, time you learned a bit o’ goblin geography. After that, iffin we’ve still got time, we’ll try ta squeeze in a good sneakin’ lesson.”

  “I’m already good at sneaking,” said Tinn.

  “Yer good for a human. Rubbish for a goblin. I’ll teach ya ta proper sneak.”

  The salty air whistled over rocks and through the caverns all around them as they made their way into a narrow opening farther down the cliff.

  “How many caves are there in Hollowcliff?” Tinn asked as they wound through an unfamiliar tunnel.

  Kull shrugged. “We’re always carvin’ new ones, expandin’ old, sometimes poppin’ our heads up in another goblin’s bedroom on accident. Mistakes happen. Onward and upward. Or downward. Or a bit sideways. Ah. Here we are.”

  After a few craggy bends, the tunnel opened into a wide room with a low ceiling. On the walls hung elegant tapestries, framed canvases, and humble yellowed papers pinned with simple tacks. On all of them were maps. There were colorful maps and simple sketches, finely detailed maps, rough world maps, and maps of places Tinn suspected were not of this world at all. In the center was a round table decorated with yet another map, this one depicting a forest and a familiar coastline.

  “That’s the Wild Wood,” said Tinn.

  “Aye.” Kull nodded. He pulled a blank sheet of parchment and a charcoal pencil from a drawer. “Copy her down, then, lad,” he said. “Best ya can. Mind yer lines.”

  Tinn laid the paper on the table as he began to sketch a miniature version of the Wild Wood. “We must be . . . right here, on the cliffside,” he said as he scribbled. “And here’s the Oddmire running through the forest, and that’s got to be Endsborough over there.” There were no labels on the table map—not in Goblish or any other language—but symbols dotted the terrain.

  “That’s right,” said Kull. “What else d’ya see?”

  “Lakes, pixie rings. That looks like a satyr over there, and that one below it is definitely a wolf—I’m guessing that’s the Warg to the south. Does the little picture over there mean troll territory?”

  “Good! And the bit above it is yer wee Fable’s new common ground. Be sure ta add that in.” Toward the upper half of the map was a small clearing with one big tree in the center. The symbols of several factions were huddled together in the space. “Times change, but we keep the cartography up ta date.” Kull smiled proudly.

  “Maps at home just make the forest look like a bunch of trees right up until the ocean. This makes the whole Wild Wood look so . . . full.”

  Kull’s eyes glinted. “Aye. It is that. This lesson isn’a about the things ya know, though—it’s about lookin’ for secrets. Find yourself a secret.”

  Tinn scanned the map again. His eyes paused in the upper right corner. “Is that a castle peeking out of the bushes up there?”

  Kull clapped. “Good! Aye. It’s only ruins now—but it was grand in its time. Beautiful buttresses, fine brickwork, quality death traps. That’s a castle you’ll na find on any non-goblin maps. What else d’ya see?”

  Tinn looked again. “There’s a lot of islands I don’t recognize.”

  “Go on.”

  “What’s that one circled in red?”

  “Oooh.” Kull grinned broadly and rubbed his hands together. “Now that is a secret site! The Isle o’ Bones. One o’ the forbidden isles. Shrouded in mystery.”

  “It’s made of bones?”

  “Aye. Well. Some bones. Mostly dirt and rocks and broken garbage—but also bones! Lots of bones! At least twenty, maybe thirty percent more bones than the average island.”

  “Is it a graveyard?”

  “Like none you’ve ever seen. There are bones of goblins and humans and all manner o’ fair folk, all mixed up and discarded like broken toys. No one knows how they got there. The island itself wasn’a always there. The merfolk an’ the selkies say it just rose from the ocean floor, inch by inch. It reached the surface thirty or forty years ago, and it grows larger every year. No faction claims it. None visit it.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “Proper creepy. We goblins used ta sail out to it from time ta time, scavenging the surface lookin’ for useful relics. Then one day a couple years back, they found the remains of a goblin wearing a special ring—the signet of Chief Gwynn. Nudd’s father.”

  “It was his dad?”

  “It was his father’s advisor, Wenn. She’d been like an auntie to Nudd. She vanished years ago, when Nudd was still a young goblin. The old chief sent out search parties and tore the Wild Wood apart looking for her. I was young then, too, but I can still remember it.”

  “How did she wind up buried on a mysterious island?”

  Kull shrugged. “Therein lies the mystery. Bones is just bones—but it’s a little scarier not knowin’ how the people ya care about became bones. Nudd declared the island cursed and quarantined after that. We’re na allowed to go pokin’ about no more.”

  “Whoa,” said Tinn. “Goblin geography is way more interesting than human geography.”

  Kull looked pleased with himself. “Wanna see the relic room?”

  The dim chamber that he led Tinn to next was lined with broken tools and bits of clothing and armor. The only light came from shafts cut diagonally up to the surface, piercing the gloom every five or six feet with columns of dusty light. They walked between rows and rows of dead people’s property. There were no bones in the collection, but still the air felt heavy with the weight of lives lost. A dented shield, taller and heavier than Tinn, rested on one countertop, and beside it sat a pair of boots so small Tinn could have barely fit his pinky fingers into them.

  Tinn walked farther into the room. He recognized some items as common goblin tools, and others he could not identify at all. There were relics that looked human-made, too. A shovel with a broken handle, a pair of eyeglass frames, a dented red lunch box.

  Tinn stopped.

  The lunch box was dirty and rusted, but it looked exactly like the one Winston Bell had tucked in his locker at the Echo Point Mine. Tinn stepped closer. The box had something inscribed on the lid, too, just under the layers of dust. Tinn could feel his heart beating faster. He reached out a hand and wiped away the dirt. An icy jolt sizzled down his spine as he read the letters: J.B.

  Joseph Burton.

  Six

  “Death,” came the rasping voice again, and finally Cole’s searching eyes found a source. A spriggan no taller than Cole’s outstretched hand stood perched on the rocky opening to the tunnel. It was perfectly camouflaged, its armored skin the same slate gray as the stones around it and a cape of moss draped over its back. In one hand it held a barbed spear.

  A quiver of motion all around the mouth of the entryway told Cole that there were probably many more of the diminutive guardians watching him. He had only spotted this one because it wanted him to.

  “I need to talk to you,” said Cole.

  “I suspect”—the spriggan’s voice was cold and eerily calm—“that what you need is to continue breathing and to keep your blood inside your veins.”

  Co
le swallowed.

  “What you need,” Fable said, stepping forward to Cole’s side, “is to stop threatening my friends.”

  The spriggan eyed her for several seconds before responding. “We do not wish your companion’s death,” it said. “But we will deliver it. You stand on a threshold. To cross into this sacred territory is forbidden. Even for you, witch. Your mother understands this. She would know better. Now leave . . . or die.”

  As if on cue, clouds rolled in overhead, darkening the scene. The mists of the Oddmire seemed to be swirling around them more quickly, too, as if the mire itself were growing anxious.

  “I think,” Evie whispered behind them, “we should do what they say.”

  “We don’t want to enter your sacred grounds,” Cole called out. “I have something here that I don’t understand, but I think that you might. It’s important.” As he fumbled in his pocket for the stone, a muffled chittering arose around the cavern, and half a dozen pairs of steely eyes materialized as tiny heads rose to watch him closely.

  “Here,” Cole said, producing the artifact. He held it up for the nearest spriggan to see. “Can you tell me anything about this symbol? Please, I need to know.”

  The little guardian’s eyes widened, and it turned its stony face from the symbol to Cole and back to the symbol. The whole ring around the cave erupted into motion. At least twenty spriggans rose from the terrain, weapons drawn and muscles tense.

  “He dares,” hissed a voice toward the back of the group.

  “Kill them,” grunted another.

  The spriggan at the front held up a hand, and the chatter quieted. “You have brought an unholy thing to a sacred place,” it rasped. “Explain yourself.”

  Cole felt Fable’s hand on his shoulder. He took a deep breath. “All I know is that it has something to do with my father.”

  “Then your father is dead. Or worse. And so will you be unless you leave this place at once.”

  “No,” chirped a shrill voice from the swarm. “We cannot let them live. They will summon the darkling.”