William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

“The Mayor is not here,” Graba told Vass. “I would hurt him if he were here—and then he would never make good on his bright promises to you. This is my gift, and it will be my last one. To enjoy it, you should be running. The whole of this tunnel will fill up with floodwater, and very soon. The floods are coming. They are coming today.”

Graba leaned forward and squinted hard with her squinty eye. “You should tell his mayorship that even if the River wipes Southside as clean as an uncarved gravestone, I will still make sure and certain he never, ever rebuilds it to his liking. Southside is mine. Tell him I said so, now. I would tell him myself, but he is not here . I would hurt him very much if he were here. I would set beautiful curses on him.”

The Mayor sputtered in his outrage. Vass put the lit lantern in his hand. “Please start running, sir,” she said. “You aren’t here. You shouldn’t be here.” He sputtered further. Then he turned and ran away northward, into the dark of the tunnel.

Vass paused. She looked at Rownie. Rownie wasn’t sure what she meant by that look. Then Vass helped the Guard Captain to his feet, and the two of them followed the Mayor. All three vanished down the tunnel’s throat.

Rownie remained in the dark, with Graba. He tried to remember how to breathe.

GRABA SPOKE IN A VERY LOW CHANT. The brick and stone of the tunnel’s wall began to glow green, like the color of young burnbugs. In that green glow she looked down at Rownie as though examining a piece of market fruit for fungus and rot. She smelled familiar, a musty and feathery smell.

“You have a message for me, runt?” she asked. The air between them stretched as tight and tense as fiddle strings.

Rownie felt fear, bone-deep and burning. He did not run. He knew that there could be no running from Graba, with no hiding places in the tunnel and her long legs striding easily behind him. He showed Graba that he would not run, and he gave his message.

“I wanted your help to find Rowan,” he said, “but then I found him. He’s in the railcar. He didn’t move, and he didn’t know me when I shouted. He just stood there, all empty-looking, and I don’t know what’s wrong. Please help him. I’ll come back with you. I’ll be your grandchild again.”

He tried to stand like a giant.

Graba stood like Graba, and grunted. “You still smell like thieving and tin.”

“I haven’t Changed,” Rownie told her. “I’m not a goblin. I’m not a Changeling. I’ll come back.”

Graba reached up with one talon, took hold of the railcar, and ripped away the front of it. Metal shrieked against metal as she tore it apart. Rownie flinched. It was a painful thing to hear.

The three actors did not react to the sight or the sound of Graba’s coming. She nudged the two in fish masks aside with her foot, and then squinted at the third.

The Northside mask still dangled from Rowan’s neck. Graba plucked it from him, dropped it on the tunnel floor, and stepped on it. Rowan did not seem to notice. He stood very still, and looked away at nothing much.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rownie asked.

Graba tore open the front of Rowan’s shirt. A red scar, sharp and clean, ran down his chest. Rownie knew what that meant. He tried very hard not to know what that meant. The world changed shape around him, and this new shape was not what it was supposed to be. Graba scowled and spat.

“Puppet,” she said. “His mayorship thought he could talk to floods with puppets. He’s more a fool than he deserves to be, now.”

“Can you help?” Rownie asked. “Can you give him back what they took?”

“No,” said Graba. “And I won’t be taking you back, either. You might be mine again, but I no longer need you. No time now to teach you enough to be useful, and Graba knows better than playing with puppets. The River won’t dance on a puppeteer’s strings, so none of the floodings can now be avoided.”

She climbed up and over what was left of the railcar.

“Help him!” Rownie shouted after her. She had to be able to help him. She could reshape the world with her words. She was herself a force of nature. She was Graba.

“Run away, runt,” she called back. “Run back to Semele. Run away from the River. I’ll be carrying my home to higher ground, now, and herding most of Southside with me.” The squeak of her leg receded as she made her way back up the tunnel.

The curved brick walls still glowed from Graba’s chant. By their light Rownie picked his way through the wrecked railcar. He came to stand beside his brother, who did not notice him there.

“Rowan?”

Silence.

“It’s me.”

More silence filled the space around them. Rownie breathed cold silence into his lungs. He stood and stared at his brother, just stared, there in the tunnel underneath the River, under the place where they had always thrown pebbles. He searched Rowan’s face for any flickering sign of recognition or welcome. He couldn’t tell what he saw there. He didn’t know whether any slight movement of the eyes or mouth meant anything at all.

Rownie felt like he was the one who had been hollowed out.

Water dripped down from between the bricks in the curved ceiling. It dripped faster. A droplet struck the side of Rownie’s face. He forced himself to move. He took his brother’s hand and led him out of the railcar wreckage. Rowan followed easily, without resisting, without any will of his own.

Rownie went back for the other two, the ones in fish masks. He pushed them northward. “Go,” he said. “Start running. Don’t stop until you’re out of the tunnel, and after that find some stairs to climb.” They listened to him. He hoped they could both outrun the flood.

Rownie and Rowan went south. They edged around the side of the railcar, stepping over broken birds and broken glass. Air moved through the tunnel’s throat in a low moan. Rownie couldn’t tell what sorts of things it said.

They moved around the circumference of pits and holes where the dirt had caved in beside the tracks. The air around them smelled like wet, dead dogs and rotting fish. Rownie heard splashing from the largest pit. He didn’t look over the edge, but he did call down to whatever splashed there.

“The floods are coming,” he said to the pit and the ghouls and the diggers. “Take care. Floods are coming.” Maybe they heard him. Maybe every haunting thing dug itself to safety, out of the River’s reach—if any place could be out of the River’s reach.

Drips from the ceiling came more frequently now. Water seeped between bricks. Rivulets ran through the dirt under the track and grew wider. The dirt disappeared. The rails disappeared. There was only water, up to their ankles and then to their knees. The burnbug light from Graba’s chant began to fade.

Rownie and his brother trudged through the rising water. They moved slowly. Rownie didn’t think they could make it all the way back to Southside before the tunnel flooded entirely. He didn’t know what to do. He felt useless and helpless and small. He felt like he needed to be something other than himself, so he took out the fox mask and put it on.

In the fading, failing light, Rownie saw the tunnel around them through fox eyes.

He saw a door in the tunnel wall. He remembered what Essa had told him about the Clock Tower stairs: that the staircase went all the way through the central pylon, down and farther down.

“I know my way,” he said to Rowan, “and I can guess at yours.” He still couldn’t remember the rest of that speech, but he knew as much as he needed to. He pushed through the tunnel, moving as a fox might move, and pulling his brother behind him.