William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

Rownie glanced up at every face he passed, to see if anyone looked like his brother. He paid particular attention to people with beards, in case Rowan had painted or pasted on a fake beard to hide beneath. He looked at the barge crews on each deck, in case Rowan had signed up with a crew in order to escape Zombay and the Captain of the Guard. Rownie wondered if his brother would really set sail without him. He flinched away from the thought.

On the farthest edge of the upstream pier, just underneath the Fiddleway Bridge, a simple raft had been tethered. The goblin wagon floated there, lashed onto the raft.

Patch stood in front of the wagon, still wearing his half mask, with his arms folded in front of him. The goblin stared down a thin and scraggly looking man with a fishhook charm around his neck. The man was shouting, and an audience had gathered around the argument. Rownie slipped into their midst.

“This is my pier!” the man shouted in a scraggly sounding voice. “I put on my show here!”

Patch raised one eyebrow, high enough to appear on his forehead above the mask he wore (which had its own eyebrows). “Show?”

“Yes, show!” the man said, pointing at Patch with one finger as though trying to knock him over with it. “A respectable show, with no masks! I can swallow a fish for four pennies, and I’ll swallow any other sort of scuttling creature for five. Can you do that , goblin? Bet you can’t manage that.”

The man had a bucket with him. Small things scuttled around inside the bucket. Patch reached in, took a handful, and showed the crowd a bite-sized crab, a snail, and a wriggling bait fish. He tossed the crab in the air, and then the snail, and then the bait fish. He juggled them all. Then he added two juggling knives, and their blades flashed in the sunlight. He caught the crab and the snail and the fish in his mouth and swallowed all three while catching a knife in each hand.

The crowd cheered. Rownie clapped. The scraggly man took a step forward, furious—but then he eyed the knives Patch casually held. He stepped back, snatched up his bucket, and stormed away.

Patch took a bow. The wagon wall behind him came smoothly down and became the platform of a stage. He somersaulted backward, landed on the platform, and started up a new juggling act while the other goblins started to arrive. Semele and Essa brought their own collected audience members to the crowd, and then slipped backstage through the wagon door.

Rownie wondered how best to follow when Thomas arrived and came to stand beside him. The old goblin carried himself in such a way as to be nearly unnoticeable, even while wearing a mask, even underneath his huge black hat.

“You’ve unmasked yourself,” he said, his voice flat and unimpressed. “You have also neglected to bring an audience with you.”

“I brought Grubs with me,” Rownie whispered back. Thomas gave him a very blank look. “Children that Graba collects,” Rownie clarified. “She probably sent them.”

Thomas made a growling, grumbling noise in the back of his throat. “Excellent,” he said, though he clearly did not think that this was excellent. “Please tell Semele once you make your way backstage, which you must do with a certain amount of stealth. Get behind those crates over there, put your mask back on—you haven’t lost it, have you?—and then sneak underneath the stage. Knock three times on the wagon floor, and Nonny will let you in. You will assist her with backstage business for the rest of the show.”

This was disappointing. “I don’t get to be part of the play?” Rownie asked.

“You will certainly be part of the play,” Thomas told him, adjusting his hat. “The part that goes on backstage. It is not as though you’ve had time or opportunity to learn lines, or even learn how to read. Your apprenticeship has only just begun.”

“I can read,” Rownie said, quietly.

“Don’t worry,” said Thomas, “I do understand that reading is hardly a common skill—”

“I can read,” Rownie said again.

“—and not one we could possibly expect you to already know.”

“I can read!” Rownie shouted.

A tall sailor with several braids poked Rownie’s arm. “Shut it and watch the show,” she said. “The goblin’s juggling fire .”

“Ah,” Thomas whispered, taken aback. “I see. Excellent. One less thing to have to teach you. Now please stop shouting and get under the wagon without being seen.”

“Did you find out anything about Rowan?” Rownie asked.

“I have not,” said Thomas, “though I have made many discreet inquiries known to observant people. Now please hurry backstage. The proper play is about to begin.”

Rownie hurried. He hid behind crates, slipped his mask on, and then snuck underneath the stage. Hopefully, if anyone saw him sneaking, they would mistake him for a goblin. Maybe this was how goblins Changed. Maybe, if enough people already believed that a child was goblinish, then the goblinishness became real and true. Rownie reached under his mask see if his ears had become pointy. They had not. Only the fox ears were pointy.

He knocked three times on the wagon floor. A hatch opened. He climbed up and through.

BACKSTAGE WAS CHAOS DISTILLED into a very small space. Nonny did several things at once with ropes, levers, and various contraptions. Essa jumped up and down and hummed to herself for no particular reason that Rownie could see. Semele sat quietly in a corner with her eyes closed, but she still looked tensed and filled with potential force, like a coiled spring or a stone perched on top of a hill and preparing to start an avalanche.

Essa noticed Rownie. “You’re here!” she said. “Good, because we’re about to start. Patch just stopped juggling, and Thomas is out there giving the prologue for The Iron Emperor . I don’t know why we call it that—the Emperor doesn’t even show up until the last act, so it really isn’t a good name for the play. We should call it something else. Try to think of something, okay? But meanwhile you should stay out of sight and pull whatever ropes Nonny tells you to pull. Not that she’ll actually tell you anything. Pull whatever ropes Nonny points to. Okay, good. Break your face.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Rownie tried to ask her, but she had already slipped through the curtain and begun lamenting the woes of an ancient kingdom.

Rownie took off the hat and gloves, and set the fox mask aside. He approached Semele. He tried not to let the floorboards creak underneath him, but they creaked anyway.

“Some of Graba’s grandchildren are here,” he told her in a whisper. “On the docks. A few of them. Might not be in the audience yet, but they’ll probably find it.”

Semele’s pale mask turned to look at him. “Thank you, Rownie,” she said. “I will make the fourth wall stronger, then. This is certainly a tricky thing to be doing over water, but I will do it, yes.”

She began to chant to herself. Then Nonny tapped Rownie’s shoulder with her foot (her hands were both busy with a complicated crank and a set of bellows) and pointed her toes at a rope. Rownie pulled the rope.

The dragon puppet gnashed its teeth behind him.

Rownie dropped the rope, waved his hands in the air, and then stared down the dragon puppet to prove that he wasn’t afraid of it. The painted dragon eyes looked back at him.

Nonny glared. Wrong rope , the glare said. She pointed more forcefully with the tip of her toe. Rownie pulled the next rope and felt the wagon shift under his feet. Flat, painted walls and towers unfolded to either side of the stage. The platform became a city.