William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

“A Guard has earned the right to wear a sword,” the Captain continued, “through service and sacrifice. An actor cheapens that right by wearing a mask and swinging swords for show.”

No one laughed. One of the actors was playing a Guard. Wide wooden gears protruded from the actor’s mask where the eyes should be. The small glass gears of the Captain’s eyes rotated in short, ticking increments as he read.

“It is a great honor to be an alderman. An actor can siphon away this honor by wearing masks and robes to mimic the outward show of their office. Therefore, by order of the Lord Mayor of all Zombay, the business of plays will cease. Players are liars. Citizens may not be players and must not pretend to be other than they are.”

The rest of the Guard arrested each actor and led them away from the makeshift stage. Rowan still wore his mask, and the mask was grinning. Rownie couldn’t see what his brother’s face was doing underneath.

They marched Rowan to the door beneath the ticking glare of the Guard Captain, who still stood on the table. Rowan’s mask grinned up at the Captain. Then Rowan kicked one of the table legs. It broke. The Guard Captain fell forward with a clang and a crash.

Rowan jumped aside, dodged around flailing arms, and disappeared into the back rooms, where the kitchens were. Rownie could hear broken plates and angry yells after two of the Guard followed Rowan. The Captain got to his feet and shouted in his very loud voice. One of his copper boots was dented, and the foot stuck out at an odd angle.

“We’d better go,” said Greasy.

“Obviously,” said Vass.

Rownie stared at the kitchen doorway. He wanted to follow his brother. He wanted to know for sure and certain that Rowan had gotten safely away. But too much had happened, too quickly, and now the commotion was already over. He held Rowan’s coat tightly to him while he followed Vass and Greasy. They all slunk out and away from the alehouse.

Rownie had hoped that his brother would be waiting for them at Graba’s shack, even though he was too old and too tall to still sleep there. He couldn’t bunk with the rest of his troupe, not now that everyone had been arrested, and the shack would be a very good place to hide him from the Guard. The Guard always kept clear of Graba. But Rowan didn’t show up to hide in the shack. Days and weeks went by without any word.

He’s still hiding , Rownie told himself, over and again. Maybe he sailed away downstream to get clear of the Guard. But he’ll come back, and then we’ll sail away together and fight pirates, or else we’ll be pirates. He’ll come back.

Rownie wondered how his brother would find him now that he had run away from Graba’s household and was curled up in an abandoned railcar and listening for diggers in the tunnel.

He tried to remember the giant mask on his shoulders. He tried to imagine himself as a giant, towering and untouchable. He also tried to imagine himself Rowan-like, moving easily through the world and laughing along with everything in it. He wrapped Rowan’s coat more tightly around himself and curled up on the cushioned railcar seat. He felt very small.

Sleep was impossible. Then the rushing excitement of running and hiding drained away from him and left exhaustion behind. Somehow he slept.

He dreamed that Rowan still wore the vice mask he had been wearing at the alehouse. The mask grinned. That was what it did best.

Dream Rowan reached up and turned the mask inside out. It became a mask of Graba, with one eye squinting and the other eye wide. Then it was Graba who stood there, and no longer Rowan. She perched on the edge of the goblin stage. She reached behind her with one bird’s foot, a real bird’s foot covered with black and purple scales, like a guzzard’s. She pulled back the curtain. Behind the curtain was the River. It flooded through and covered the stage and covered the city.

Rownie woke up. He felt the cushioned chair underneath him, expecting to find the straw floor of Graba’s shack. He didn’t, and he didn’t know why—not until he gathered up all the pieces of yesterday and put them back together in his head. Then he remembered how alone he was.

Sunlight peered down through the tarnished glass of the arched ceiling, outside the railcar. It was morning. Pigeons roosted on the tops of the hanging clocks. They seemed to be ignoring him. He didn’t think they were Graba’s birds. He didn’t think so.

He crept out of the station and slipped through the bars of the rusted gate. A few scattered people were going about their morning business. He picked a direction and started walking.

Zombay was a different place to him now, and for the first time in his life Rownie felt lost in it.

ROWNIE WAS HUNGRY. This was usually true. Hunger was a constant background noise buzzing in the back of his head and the bottom of his stomach. But yesterday he had spent more effort than usual, running toward goblins and away from Grubs, and now he needed some of it back.

He let his legs take him in search of food. He found some outside the tin-roofed house of Mary Mullusk, a pale woman who thought that her family was trying to poison her. She rarely took more than one bite of anything before she threw it out her window. Rownie got there just in time to catch a green apple as it came sailing across the street.

“I wouldn’t eat that,” Miss Mullusk called to him. She sounded calm for someone who believed herself surrounded by poisoners. “It’s a tainted thing.”

Rownie bit into the apple, smiled, and shrugged. It tasted fine. It tasted perfect. She shook her head and left the window. He waited to see if she would toss away any other tainted things, but she didn’t.

It started to rain. Rownie tightened his coat and breathed in rain smells of dusty mud and wet stone. He tried to clear his head. He was still tired and still alone. It was worse than how he felt on days when Graba moved her shack without warning anyone first or telling them where she intended to go. Rownie knew where the shack was this time, but he couldn’t go back there. It was no longer home.

He missed Rowan. But he didn’t know where Rowan might be, and he didn’t know where to start looking.

The heavy rain faded to a drizzle. Each misty droplet seemed to hang perfectly still, as though someone had shouted “Stop!” at the rain, and the rain had listened. Rownie moved through the hovering drops.

He decided to start with the alehouse in Broken Wall, where he had last seen his brother, to find out if anyone there knew anything at all. This was what you were supposed to do when you lost something—go to the last place you remembered seeing it, even if it had been a couple of months ago. He also had another reason to find the alehouse. We play at the Broken Wall tomorrow , the old goblin had said. She had offered him welcome. Rownie could be a part of the goblin troupe. He could be a giant again. He could help them put on plays. Or he could slave away for thousands of years in goblinish underground cities, if that’s what they really wanted him for.

Broken Wall was the name of the alehouse, and also the name of the neighborhood. It was a part of Southside where most of the buildings had been pieced together with stone from the old city wall—or else carved into the larger, solid blocks of the old city wall. It was a long walk to get there, and it took Rownie most of the day. He didn’t hurry. He didn’t run. His legs were still sore, and he had only scrounged up a single apple. Hunger was still there, buzzing in the middle of him.