Jean Rabe - Goblin Nation

“Grallik lives with Sully.” Direfang had forced the wizard upon the hobgoblins, wanting him closely watched and at the same wanting him kept safe.

“The house of Sully, though not done, is not undone,” Mudwort finished saying. “Did not see a goblin hurt. Not hurt bad. Just the buildings.” She puffed out a breath, blowing dirt around Direfang’s knees. “The storm was not so bad then, Direfang.”

He intended to ask her how she saw the storm wreak such havoc when she was apparently inside, dry in her bowl. But he saw her fingers were dirty, and when he looked especially close, he noticed indentations in the earth where her fingers had been digging. She’d used her magic to watch it all.

“No, the storm was not horrible. But the homes were.” He craned his neck this way and that, looking at the sturdy construction of Mudwort’s little house.

“Built bad, most of them were,” Mudwort agreed.

“But not this one.”

She grinned wide.

He didn’t say anything for a while, listening instead to the soft patter of the rain against the roof and the slap of goblin feet, as well as the muted curses of those who had lost their homes. A gust of wind brought a little rain inside, wetting his back. It added a fresh scent that he breathed deeply.

“But not this one,” he repeated. “In the before time, Mudwort”-that was what they had called the time previous to their capture and enslavement by the Dark Knights-“did your clan live in homes like this? In the foothills of Neraka by the river branch?” He knew a little of where she had come from before being captured by ogres and subsequently sold. But she was secretive and didn’t speak much of herself or her past.

She shook her head. “Lived in caves,” she said.

“Where did Mudwort see such a home as this and know how to build such a thing?”

Her eyes clouded.

“Where, Mudwort?”

She dropped her chin to her chest, so she didn’t have to look him in the eyes.

“Mudwort.”

“In the earth,” she said finally, blowing out another breath and stirring the dirt. A goblin ran by the entrance to her home, throwing mud up behind his feet. Another chased him, dangling a shrunken elf head from his hand: just younglings playing. “Looking through the earth. Saw a clan with homes like this, a clan from a long while ago. Decided this home should look the same as one of those from long ago.”

Direfang ran his fingers across the bowl floor. The earth was hard and smooth, as if it had been sculpted, though there was loose dirt in the very center, probably from Mudwort using her magic. The floor of her home reminded him of a food bowl he’d watched a potter in Steel Town craft and later paint.

“Mudwort was smart to build such a fine, dry home.”

Again the red-skinned goblin beamed with pride.

“All of the homes in this city should be so fine.”

Mudwort opened her mouth and shook her head. “Direfang-”

“All will be so fine and dry.” He crossed his arms as he thought it over, deciding. “Mudwort’s magic will make many, many bowls like this. And Mudwort and Sully will teach the clans how to build homes just like this.”

Mudwort glared at him. “No, this home is special, Direfang.”

“All the homes in this city will be special, Mudwort. Then the storms will be no bother.”

She sputtered and shook her head, raised a hand as if to make a gesture, then irritably drew it down on her lap.

“When the rain stops,” Direfang said, turning and crawling out of her home. His broad shoulders scraped against the narrow opening. “When the rain stops, Mudwort will start teaching.”

She slammed her fist against the earth the moment he was gone.

Mudwort spread out a piece of thatch that had blown off someone’s roof. She knelt on the edge of it, not wanting to get her knees in the mud left behind from the morning’s downpour. She liked the feel of the earth against her fingers, and soon she would be sticking her arms deep into it, but she didn’t want to dirty her legs and her tunic that hung practically to her ankles. Mudwort was particular about the few items of clothing she possessed.

She leaned forward and set her fingertips against the ground. It felt cool and she treasured the sensation for a moment, as it was pleasant and she was feeling annoyed. Annoyed, flustered, aggravated, verging on angry-she was all of those things, and more. It was not her fault that all the other goblins built shoddy homes. It was not her fault Direfang had selected such a forsaken place for their city rather than up against a mountain, where they could find caves and wouldn’t have to spend their days building and sweating and muddying and tearing their clothes. She should not be tasked with that; her home was finished, warm and fine and perfect, and she should not have to help the others build something as perfect as hers.

Direfang had clan leaders nearby, studying her home. She saw them when she craned her neck around a spindly willow birch, poking at the sides of her place and probably digging out some of her river clay mortar. She should have built her home far, far away, where Direfang would not have seen its fine construction. It would have saved her the work she was about to do.

She took a deep breath and let her fingers sink in. Happy was the dirt in that spot. Sated with water, worms crawled deeper into the ground, and she sensed that seeds were awakening near the surface. She would send her senses far away from there, from Direfang’s blown-down city; she’d find the goblins she spied in the long-ago times and search for the spear. Finding it was far more important than helping the clans build homes.

She’d wanted to come to the forest because of the spear, it’s true. When sending out her call for goblins, she’d accidentally discovered she could search through the earth not just in the present time, but through the past. Decades past, centuries probably, she discovered her counterpart, a young shaman who wore a great many necklaces and led her people out of the mountain caves and into the forest where food was plentiful. The shaman came across a great magical spear that was said to have been Chislev’s, Mudwort saw. Then Mudwort lost sight of the shaman and the spear, too many other things occupying her attention.

She should look for that spear that very minute.

But Direfang hovered nearby, watching, waiting, demanding that she help him build the city. She could almost hear his foot tapping anxiously, his mind racing.

Find the shaman in the past. More important, find the spear.

It had been during one of her mental forays through the earth, looking for the spear, that she’d first noticed the dwellings the long-ago goblins were building. They dug holes in the ground and smoothed the sides and cleared the weeds and rocks-a few of them using magic to make the task go faster. They used short logs for walls, as she had, weaving cattails and reeds to keep them together and make a dense roof, using clay from the river and dung from animals to mortar the logs tight. Each home was at the same time in the earth and above the earth.

Like Mudwort’s fine, fine home.

She closed her eyes and coaxed the earth to become as malleable as soft clay, and she began to mold it. When Direfang had watched her shape the ground after leaving Steel Town, he told her she was a sculptor … then he had to explain just what that meant, and about clay and mugs and small statues representing great heroes and worthless gods, all made by someone who could work clay with her fingers.

Only she used her mind.

Mudwort pictured the depressions the goblins in the past had made and the one she herself had formed for her own home. She imagined the dirt around her hollowing itself, and beneath the surface she cupped her hand.