William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

The audience cheered, but it was a nervous cheer.

“This is not safe,” said an old man who stood beside Rownie. His spine was so gnarled and bent over that he had to turn his head sideways to see the stage. “Don’t believe it is, just because they’re goblins. No masks and no changes, none. Not safe.”

“That was wonderful!” said the goblin-hero. “But a magnificent lion is not such a small step away from a giant. Can you change into a python?”

The lion reached into its own mouth and turned the mask inside out. It was a snake now, and it shook slowly from side to side.

“Astonishing!” said the goblin-hero. “But a python is still such a large creature. You cannot have so much magic as to transform yourself into a small and humble housefly.”

Metal shutters closed over the stage lanterns. In the sudden dark, Rownie could dimly see the goblin take off his snake mask and toss something in the air.

The lanterns snapped open. A housefly puppet made of paper and gears began to buzz in circles over the stage. The goblin-hero cracked his whip. The housefly exploded in sparks.

“One less giant!” the hero shouted. The crowd clapped. Rownie cheered. “But I wonder if there might be any more?” He peered out into the crowd, and then jumped over the side of the stage. “Any giants over here?” he shouted from somewhere in the dark.

Meanwhile, the old goblin had withdrawn. A gruesome head peered out through the stage curtains, exactly where the dragon puppet had been before. The giant puppet winked at the crowd, one paper eyelid closing over a painted wooden eye.

The puppet spoke. “We must have a volunteer to play our next giant! The mask will fit a child best.”

The audience responded with a stunned silence. No one knew if this was a joke. No one knew if it was funny. Everyone knew that even goblinish legal loopholes could never allow an unChanged child to wear a mask.

Rownie expected to hear some sort of official person make an official refusal. He waited for members of the Guard to come forward and forbid any such thing. But there were no members of the Guard nearby. No one said anything at all.

“The child will be perfectly safe!” said the giant puppet. “You there! The tasty-looking one with a hat. Would you like to perform?” It licked its lips with a long puppet tongue, and the crowd finally laughed a nervous laugh. Someone—a father, uncle, or older brother—pulled the child with the hat away from the stage.

The giant puppet searched with its wooden eyes. “You!” it called out. “The one wearing a flower necklace. Play a giant for our story here, and I promise that you will absolutely not spend the next thousand years enslaved in underground caverns. We would never do any such thing.”

“No!” the girl shouted back.

“Very well, delectable child.” The puppet’s eyes moved. “Is there any one among you brave and foolish enough to stand on this stage and impersonate a person of my own great stature?”

Rownie waved his hand in the air. “I’ll do it!” He wasn’t afraid. He felt like he would be even less afraid if he could stand high up above everyone else. He wanted to command attention, like the old goblin had just done.

The crowd cheered him on, but cruelly, convinced that something awful would certainly happen to him onstage and that they would get to watch it happen. The goblins would take him, and then the Guard would come and take away the goblins. It would be an excellent spectacle to see.

The old man with the bent spine tried to hold Rownie back with one gnarly knuckled hand. “Stupid boy,” he said. “Stupid, stupid boy.” Other dissenting voices cried out from people unwilling to let a child take such a risk.

Rownie pulled away and tried to climb onto the stage, but he couldn’t quite manage it. The stage resisted.

“I offer a compromise!” said the giant puppet. “He may hold the end of an iron chain. The front row of the audience will hold the other end. You can yank him away to safety if the performers here look likely to bite him or curse him or possibly steal him away. Are we agreed? Is this protection enough?”

Some still shouted no, but the rest were louder:

“Let him try it!”

“He’ll be fine if he holds iron.”

“Stupid kack has it coming if he doesn’t!”

Rownie ignored them all. He focused on the giant puppet. The puppet looked down at him. He could see that its eyes were only wood, carved and painted, but he still kept eye contact with it.

“We are agreed,” the Giant said, and withdrew behind the curtain.

The goblin with the trim gray beard and the floppy black hat returned to the stage. He took off his hat and drew a length of chain from it. He spread the chain across the front of the stage and nodded to Rownie.

Guess they can touch iron , Rownie thought. Blotches is such a liar. He took one end of the chain. Other hands took the opposite end.

He pushed forward. He still couldn’t climb onto the stage. It wasn’t very high, but the air would not move aside for him.

The old goblin reached down. “Give me your other hand,” he said in a smaller version of the Giant’s booming voice.

Rownie reached up, took the goblin’s hand, and scrambled onto the stage. He stood, let go of the hand with the long, green fingers, and held the chain. He faced the curtain, away from the audience. Suddenly he didn’t want to turn around and see the crowd looking back at him. He didn’t feel set above everyone else, like he’d expected to. He felt at their mercy. He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry.

The old goblin watched him with gold-flecked eyes half closed, considering. “Tell me your name, brave and foolish boy.”

“Rownie,” said Rownie.

The goblin’s already wide eyes widened. “Rownie? A diminutive of Rowan, I believe. How very interesting.” He tipped his hat. “A pleasure. My own name is Thomas, and I have been the first actor of this troupe and of this city since before the walls and towers fell.” He picked up the discarded giant mask, setting it on Rownie’s shoulders. It was heavy. The paint on it smelled funny.

“Stand there,” the goblin whispered, pointing. “I will give you your lines from backstage.” He passed through the curtains. Rownie was alone in the center of the platform. He stood where he was supposed to stand, and turned around.

Faces watched him from the dark. Rownie could hear them murmuring and mumbling. He knew from the sound that some were worried, and others delighted, and all of them were sure that something awful was about to happen.

Rownie drew up his shoulders, pushed out his chest, and tried to be very tall. He was a giant. He was something awful. He was going to happen to somebody else.

The curtain whispered behind him. “What noise was that within my father’s house?”

Rownie roared. “What noise was that within my father’s house?”

“I smell trespassing blood,” the curtain went on. “Now show yourself.”

“I smell trespassing blood. Now show yourself!”

The goblin-hero jumped back onto the stage. “Hello!” he said. “I have heard boasting that giants can transform themselves into anything they please. I’ve come to see if that proud boast is true.”

“This truth will be the last you ever learn!” Rownie said, echoing the curtain behind him.

The goblin-hero laughed, but it was a frightened laugh. “It would be worth it. Can someone so tall transform into a small and unChanged boy?”

No lines or instructions came from behind the curtain.

Rownie took off the mask with one hand. He set it on the stage beside him, and then held out his arms as if to say Look at me! The chain clinked in his other hand.