by Jon Jacks
While experiencing her vision of Mary, she had unintentionally wandered away from the safety of the column. Her disappearance had obviously gone unnoticed by the others, the squall no doubt hiding her movements almost completely from their view.
And yet…the wolves appeared similarly unaware of her presence. She ambled close by them, and yet they displayed no signs that they had sensed her passing.
As on the night when she had freely wandered through the soldiers guarding the carriage, she seemed to possess no more substance than a moonbeam flitting by the wolves.
It seemed, she abruptly realised, for the best that she had left the empress and her column behind. She felt a pang of regret that she hadn’t persuaded her father’s men to leave with her, but it would have been impossible to dissuade them from completing their appointed task.
Besides, the wolves wouldn’t have let her men pass through so freely. She hoped the men wouldn’t come searching for her when they realised she had vanished from the column: she’d hate to be responsible for the deaths of any of them.
With luck, they would proclaim that she was her father’s daughter – and therefore she would be capable of taking care of herself.
The wolves were gathering thickly around the dark shadow of the column as it retreated into the ever thickening flurries of snow.
She prayed her father’s men would come out of all this safely.
*
Slinking silently through the crisp snow, their yellow eyes focused purely on the column, the wolves left Helen behind,
Her horse crunched placidly through the snow. Helen briefly wondered why her mount hadn’t bolted or at least been terrified by the presence of the wolves.
It was only a brief moment of reflection because she realised she knew the answer: she had used the powers of the darkness.
Once again, without meaning to, she had accessed the dark arts.
When she heard the laughing, she seriously considered that it had to be that darkness itself which was mocking her. It took her a while to recognise that the guffawing was far more like the sounds of a raucous celebration, and that it was emanating from beneath a nearby bush.
Just lying beyond the bush, there stood a small copse of larger trees, of more ivy-entangled bushes. And yet the sounds of revelry definitely seemed to be coming from the small bush, not the copse.
How could a party be taking place in such a confined area?
She rode a little closer towards the bush, bending low in her saddle as she partly moved some of the barren and blackened branches aside.
A small yet stoutly built man was crouching there, with his back towards Helen; and his bottom bared, because he had his trousers around his ankles.
‘Do you mind!’ the startled man snapped furiously, peering over his shoulder and frantically pulling the branches back into place around him.
Helen was possibly even more startled than the poor man.
Not because of the admittedly embarrassing situation she had caught him in.
But because she could have sworn he was actually a goblin: and goblins weren’t supposed to exist.
*
Chapter 20
Of course, Helen had heard of goblins.
She’d even listened to the addled, older women giving detailed descriptions of them; overly large nose and chin, beady black eyes, skin as ancient as parchment.
But goblins existed purely within the minds of these crazed, ancient women, or within the stories told to frighten children into less rowdy behaviour.
Even those who still maintained that goblins had once existed talked in terms of them vanishing centuries ago: the exceptions, again, being the befuddled women who had apparently lost their minds.
Helen slipped down off the back of her horse, slowly, cautiously drawing closer to the bush, wondering if she hadn’t simply imagined everything after all.
The goblin stepped out from underneath the bush, wiping his hands on a large ball of hastily gathered snow.
‘What’s the world coming to when you can’t go about your business withou–’
‘You don’t exist!’ Helen declared hopefully, wide-eyed in her exasperation.
The goblin bemusedly and fleetingly glanced down at himself.
‘I’m sure I do!’ he stated challengingly.
‘Why are you…laughing so much?’ Helen asked tentatively.
Although the noisy laughter had continued, and although it still appeared to be somehow coming from the goblin, it was also quite obvious that he was far more despondent and annoyed than amused.
‘I’m not,’ the goblin quite accurately pointed out, adding with surprising honesty, ‘In fact, most people accuse me of being a pretty damn miserable looking creature.’
Helen frowned, wondering how best to reply: she thought those who had told the goblin he looked depressed were both rude but truthful, while she had politely refrained from saying this.
Thankfully, she caught sight of the box hanging from the goblin’s shoulder; it was from here that all the laughter, the sounds of a wildly exuberant evening, were coming from.
She recalled something the empress had said to the Angel of Death, regarding a Box of Fools.
‘Is that…a Box of Fools?’ she enquired, pointing at the small wooden container.
The goblin glowered.
‘You know of the Box of Fools?’
‘I just heard about it in a story,’ Helen lied, unsure how else she should explain how she had heard of the box.
‘Does it contain people who have made a fool of themselves?’
‘You can’t go believing everything you hear in stories, you know!’ the goblin snorted huffily, nervously fingering a money pouch strung around his neck.
‘I don’t believe everything I hear!’ Helen insisted irately.
Then again, she thought, she hadn’t believed in goblins, and yet here she was talking to one.
Talking to a goblin who, now she came to notice it, was fidgeting nervously. His eyes flitted suspiciously from side to side, as if he couldn’t wait for her to leave.
Was he trying to hide something?
Was he hoping to draw her attention away from the rest of the copse lying behind him?
She peered over his shoulder, over towards the closely packed trees, what seemed to be their evergreen leaves actually being a thick web of parasitic ivy. The ivy’s wickerwork maze of chaotically intertwining stems was also just about completely covered in a thick blanket of snow, while the still densely swirling flakes cut vision down to little more than yards.
And yet there was something about that looming dark shape, something distinctly odd and yet indistinctly familiar.
She stepped closer, almost accidentally pushing the goblin aside as he tried to step in front of her and block her way.
‘Isn’t that…’ she asked uncertainly, narrowing her eyes in the hope of getting a clearer view of what she thought she was seeing, ‘isn’t that a…war elephant?’
*
Chapter 21
At first, Helen had thought the copse of trees had simply grown in an unusual way with, perhaps, the mass of overgrowing ivy warping and stunting their natural development.
But amongst it all, what she’d taken as the glitter of bright fruits of red, green, even blue, was now revealed to be the glow of muddied jewels. The glow of sliver, of shimmering greys and blues, wasn’t just the sheen of snow, but the shine of great metal sheets.
Here was a ridiculously wide leg, there another…and another.
There was the vast head, the elongated trunk, a huge ear.
And on its back, there rose the many levels of a towering castle.
As a whole, the elephant was truly gigantic, bigger even than she had imagined it to be when she had listened to the tale describing it.
Monstrous might be a better word than gigantic.
At some point it had either toppled slightly against the trees, or become tangled up in their innumerable branches.
/> ‘I thought we’d agreed not to believe everything we heard in stories!’ the goblin wailed miserably, attempting to block her path once again, even standing unnervingly close, as if threatening to push or pull her back.
‘I made no such agreement!’ an exasperated Helen pointed out.
‘But this isn’t fair!’ the goblin complained, stamping his foot hard on the snowy ground. ‘You just showing up like this, stealing the glory for discovering–’
‘I’m not expecting any reward for seeing it!’ Helen protested. ‘I’m just amazed that it’s here! I thought it was just a story!’
‘Well of course some of the things you hear about in stories are true!’
The goblin said it as if it were a statement of the obvious. Helen gave him a wry look, wondering if he realised how much this went against so much else he’d been saying.
The goblin appeared to blush, or at least look a little abashed.
‘Well, not everything!’ he said, flustered. He brightened as he turned towards and indicated the entangled elephant with a sweeping gesture. ‘But this, I knew this had to be true! I’ve been searching for this elephant almost since I first heard about it in the famous story!’
‘But I thought the story was talking about a city far from here wher–’
‘Not in the story I heard!’ the goblin interrupted irritably. ‘In the one I heard – the famous one! – it was brought over by the Romans to take on the massed chariots they faced here.’
‘Have you…have you been inside it?’
Helen looked towards the towering elephant once more, wondering what it could be like walking around inside it. She found herself becoming increasingly excited by the find. It was a mechanical creature from an ancient myth that not only turned out to be real, but had also turned up here, in her father’s kingdom.
‘It’s…it’s not a pretty sight,’ the goblin stammered fearfully, wringing his hands anxiously.
‘Really?’ Helen was surprised by this admission. ‘I would have thought it would be like something out of a dream exploring something so unbelievable; so magical!’
‘Yes, yes; the rooms are incredible!’ the goblin gushed enthusiastically, no longer worried about stolen glory but caught up instead in the excitement of revealing his discovery to an appreciative audience.
Abruptly, however, his face fell as his voice became instantly more anguished.
‘But…but you’ve got to understand…it had a crew…’
‘They were still in there?’ Helen gasped, horrified. ‘Dead?’
The goblin nodded miserably in reply.
The disease!
Helen was suddenly more terrified than ever.
Had the crew brought their disease with them?
*
Chapter 22
‘Wait.’
Helen reached out, grabbing the goblin by his shoulder to stop him drawing closer towards the war elephant.
‘It’s diseased, remember? The story?’
The goblin responded to her dire warning with nothing more than a puzzled pout.
‘Diseased?’
He chuckled.
‘In the story,’ Helen persisted. ‘The humbled man!’
The goblin narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.
‘Yes, yes: I’ve heard of the humbled man, of course. But he wasn’t diseased!’
‘Yes he was! The rags! The sweating!’
‘He was in a poor state, admittedly!’ The goblin continued to sound highly amused by Helen’s fears. ‘He might even had a disease of the mind: he was certainly a little crazed!’
‘A little crazed! Why would the Great Khan refuse to take the city simply because he’d met a crazed man?’
‘There was no “Great Khan” in the story I heard.’
‘Yet you’ve heard of the humbled man!’
‘Of course: he’d accumulated the wealth that made it possible to create the war ele– you’re not after the jewels, are you?’
His glares of suspicion and distrust had returned.
Helen shuck her head, grinned sickly in exasperation.
‘No, of course I’m not after the jewels! I’m after the truth: is this elephant diseased or not?’
‘Well, I’ve been in it–’
A terrified Helen immediately withdrew her hand from where it had still been casually resting on the goblin’s shoulder.
‘I’m not diseased!’ the goblin protested, highly affronted by her suggestion.
‘All right, all right: so what did you hear about this humbled man?’
‘Well, for a start, there was nothing really humble about him–’
‘Dressed in rags, heavily scarred skin…despite him having accumulated all this wealth you’ve mentioned.’
‘Yes, yes, yes: but it was no longer his, by the time the elephant was being built. Something, I don’t know what, brought him low: so he started seeing himself as being this holy man, dressing in rags on purpose, scarring his skin–’
‘Some holy men do that, don’t they?’
‘But if it’s all for show, all external, rather than from the heart; well, they’re not really lowering themselves, are they? They’re just saying “look at me: look how wonderful I am”!’
‘How can you be so sure it’s not all from the heart?’
‘Trust me on this, please: I know of these things!’
Helen nodded, smiled: he said it with such assurance, she recognised that some past experience must be informing his judgement.
Satisfied with her response, the goblin eagerly rubbed his hands.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘so just how humble do you see yourself as being, my young girl?’
Although taken about by the directness of his question, Helen felt she answered truthfully when she declared, ‘Why, I don’t see myself as being overly proud if tha–’
‘Good, good,’ the goblin grinned, rubbing his hands even more enthusiastically, ‘then you can help me bury the dead crew; come on!’
*
Burying the crew wasn’t as onerous as Helen had feared. They had been trapped inside the war elephant for so long that their bodies were now little more than uniformed skeletons.
They were seated in various positions around the many rooms and corridors of the majestic machine.
‘The elephant seems to have suddenly stopped working, making it collapse against these trees,’ the goblin explained.
He pointed out how the trapdoor had originally become firmly lodged against a huge branch he’d had to saw away, meaning it couldn’t be opened from inside.
‘The various portholes were too small to climb through, too well and strongly made to prise into bigger shapes.’
‘It had been built to keep people out: and ended up keeping them inside,’ Helen sighed, looking in awe at the glorious rooms that had become the crew’s prison.
The room the goblin showed her up to once they had finished interring the crew was relatively spartan, with nothing but a simple table and few chairs: but it was also surprisingly and uncharacteristically a chaotic mess of used but unwashed plates and goblets, along with a pile of wasted food.
‘Why would all this food– wait, it’s all recent food: fresh food.’
‘Ah, I eat here; all my leftovers.’
‘Leftovers?’
Helen was astonished. Even though the small room was a complete mess, it was obvious that the discarded food could once have graced a king’s table.
‘A man’s got to eat, hasn’t he?’ the goblin scowled, perplexed that she saw a problem with this.
Glancing at the food, Helen realised she was hungry; she’d planned, of course, on ensuring she ate through a mix of hunting and purchasing the odd bit of bread, but she’d had no chance to do either since leaving the column. Most of the food here was still surprisingly edible, with little of it past the point where it had begun rotting or otherwise spoiling.
She instinctively reached out for a grape.
‘What are you doing
?’ the goblin asked, more confused than ever.
‘Eating, of course,’ Helen replied, putting the sweetly tasting grape in her mouth. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she abruptly added, embarrassed by her rudeness, ‘I thought you’d brought me here to share out some of you–’
‘Of course I want to share my food!’ The goblin appeared shocked that she might think of him as being so mean he’d deny her any food. ‘But not that!’
He waved dismissively at the pile of food, scowling with disgust. With his other hand, he was lifting the necklace and its pouch over his head.
‘We’ve got all the fresh food we want in here!’
He grinned as he shook the pouch. It didn’t jangle, as if full of coins, but rather made a quiet shuffling sound, as if full of something more like gold dust.
‘But where are we going to buy–’
Helen halted half way through her protestation as she saw the goblin carefully open his pouch and even more carefully withdraw nothing more than the smallest grain of the brightly glittering dust.
‘Now, what do you fancy? Roast swan, maybe?’ the goblin grinned mischievously.
‘Is this magic?’
Helen glared dubiously at the small speck of dust the goblin was proudly holding between his fingers.
‘Well, yes,’ the goblin replied, staring back at her if she might just be a little crazy, ‘unless you fancy eating nothing but a grain of fairy dust!’
*
Chapter 23
‘But…it’s magic!’
Helen stared worriedly at the grain of dust. Then she scowled: then her eyes blazed.
‘Wait! You’ve just had us digging all those graves!’
With a furious wave of an arm, she indicated the area where they’d been digging outside.
‘Yet you could have used magic to save us all that effort!’
The goblin shied away a little, taken aback by her fury.
‘What?’ he said, eyes wide with shock. ‘And risk being overtaken by the darker realms!’
‘You’re going to use it now! Just to conjure up some food!’
‘Well, as I said; a man’s got to eat, hasn’t he? Don’t you want to eat?’
He waved the small speck before her as if it were the most delicious meal ever made.
‘Of course I want to eat!’ she snapped. ‘But we could have bought or hunted food: whereas using magic would have meant we didn’t get ourselves all filthy and exhausted!’