William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

ZOMBAY EMERGED FROM THE FOG.

Rownie stared. He had never left the city before. It had always surrounded him. He had never seen it from the outside. He had never arrived in Zombay, until now.

Lights burned through the fog-filled dark. Constellations of lanterns and candles shone in uncountable windows. Street lamps—rare in Southside but common in Northside—cast warm light across cold paving stones.

The Clock Tower glowed above all. A glass moon ticked across a stained-glass sky on each face, illuminated from behind with lanterns, serving as a lighthouse to any barges sailing beneath the Fiddleway Bridge at night.

Semele drove them into Southside, into the medley of buildings built up over each other. Houses jutted out at strange angles, tethered with iron chains or buttressed with driftwood logs hammered into the brick and plaster to keep them from toppling over sideways. The misshapen mess loomed over them.

Rownie breathed more easily. He took in a lungful of Southside dust. It was comforting. It was home. Still, he kept careful watch for Graba’s shack, knowing that it might be anywhere at all.

Gearwork hooves smacked the road at regular intervals. A few lonely street lamps lit either side of the lane.

“Are we near to Borrow Street?” Semele asked. “I am thinking that we are, but I would like to be sure.”

“We’re crossing it now,” Rownie said.

Semele jerked the reins to the left, and Horace made a precise left turn. The wagon nearly tipped over. Rownie grabbed the bench to keep from flying off, and almost flew off anyway when the wagon settled back onto all four wheels with a crunching sound. Essa and Thomas made angry noises inside.

“Thank you,” said Semele, unconcerned. “We have not far to go now, yes.”

Rownie examined the familiar streets and avenues around them, trying to guess at their destination. “Where are we headed?” he asked.

“Home,” said Semele. She drove through the entrance gate of the Fiddleway Bridge. “It is no small thing that we are showing you our home and inviting you to stay with us. It is not something that we very often do.”

They drove as far as the middle of the bridge, and then Semele tugged the reins and pulled the wagon to a short, sharp stop.

“I cannot hear any other feet or wheels, in either direction,” she said, “but please be taking a look around to see if there is someone nearby who might be watching us.”

Rownie looked. He saw only fog and the empty causeway. The windows of the shops and houses on either side of the bridge were all shuttered and dark. It was very late. The Fiddleway slept.

“I don’t see anyone else,” he reported.

“That is a good thing,” Semele said. She steered the mule and the wagon into a small alley on the upstream side. Then she made another turn, and pulled up in front of a featureless stone wall.

“Please open the stable doors, yes,” she told Rownie.

Rownie stared at the wall in front of them. “I don’t see any stable doors,” he said.

“I invite you to see them,” said Semele, and now he did. He couldn’t see how he had missed them the first time.

Rownie climbed down, unlatched the tall pair of doors, and pulled them open. Semele drove the wagon through, and Rownie shut both doors behind them. The orange coal-glow of the mule’s belly cast the only light inside. Rownie couldn’t see much more than stone walls and old straw.

Essa stumbled out through the back of the wagon. “Home,” she said. “Good. Somewhere there’s a bed that isn’t a hammock, and I’m going to find it.”

“Not so fast, not so fast,” Thomas called from inside. “We must return the masks to their places. The rest of the unloading can wait for tomorrow, but these should be properly cared for before anyone retreats to their own bed and blankets. Please show the boy where his own masks belong.”

Essa stumbled back into the wagon, grumbling, and came out again with an armful of masks. The fox was among them, and also the giant that Rownie had briefly worn on the wagon stage.

“Here,” Essa mumbled. “Take these two, and follow me.”

Rownie took the giant and the fox, carrying one in each hand. Essa held the princess mask, and the hero mask, and a few others besides. She also had the half mask that Patch had worn that morning, which seemed a very long time ago to Rownie—years and centuries ago. Much had happened since.

He followed Essa through a passageway to an iron staircase. The staircase led both up and down. “We’re going up!” Essa called behind her, from somewhere above.

“What’s down?” Rownie asked. They were on the Fiddleway, and Rownie didn’t think that a bridge could actually have a downstairs.

“Barracks,” said Essa, “all the way down the central pylon. People used to keep watch here for pirates and such, but now they don’t bother. Some bits of the bridge still have skinny little windows for shooting things out of.”

Rownie heard gearwork, turning and clanking against itself. He could almost hear Graba’s legs in the noise. He could almost see her in the dim shadows. He almost felt her talon-toes opening and closing nearby. He was angry at Graba for her curses and birds, for Patch falling down and farther down, and he was afraid of Graba, and he was angry for being afraid and upset with himself for having made Graba upset with him. He pushed all of those feelings into a small and heavy lump of clay inside his chest, and then he tried to ignore the lump.

The staircase led up into a vast, towering space. Gears and springs, weights and pendulums all filled the center of it, turning slowly and interlocking. Crates and a jumbled mess of cloth and carpentry covered the floor. Rownie saw open wardrobes full of costumes, a workbench with all manner of tools, and several bookshelves. This was just as astonishing as anything else—Rownie had never before seen so many books together.

Lanterns burned high overhead, illuminating huge circles of stained glass built into the four stone walls. Each circle showed a city skyline and a gray moon, half full. The sight was familiar, only now Rownie saw it from the inside out. He stared. His mouth was open. He didn’t notice.

He stood inside the Clock Tower.

“THIS WAY,” ESSA CALLED over her shoulder. “Try not to get bonked by any moving bits of clock as you go.” Rownie followed her, dazed.

It was then that he noticed the masks.

They covered both the upstream and the downstream walls. Rownie saw heroes and ladies, villains and charmers, nursemaids and gentry. He saw animal masks made of fur, feathers, and scaly lizard skins bristling with teeth. Most had been carved out of wood or shaped in plaster, but he also saw masks made of tin and polished copper, gleaming in the lantern light. He saw thin, translucent masks made of beetles’ wings and carapaces, and wild masks made of bright feathers. He saw long-nosed tricksters and ghoulish false faces. Hundreds and hundreds of masks hung from nails by lengths of string, and every one of them seemed to be watching Rownie as he watched them.

Essa led him to an open space and an empty nail on the wall. “Okay, the giant goes there,” she said.