Gillian Summers: The goblin's curse

“There are signs the old gods are returning, and Tavyn wants to be part of the old pantheon, but with a new edition-himself as a goblin god. Doing that takes magical power and a magical army.

Peascod’s jagged teeth chattered as if he were chilled from fever. Toshi patted the jester’s shoulder as if trying to comfort him. In fact, Peascod didn’t look well-pocked with sores, skin dry, lips cracked and bleeding. He’d looked like a normal, albeit down-on-his-luck person back in Northwoods, but now he was changing into a monster. Maybe using magic for evil was taking a toll on his body.

“It’s time Tavyn faced me, one-on-one.” Peascod turned to Toshi, who grinned a fixed smile at the jester. “This time I have an assistant.”

A thundering crash behind Peascod signaled that the goblins had smashed their way into the faire. The magical shield had broken. Keelie looked up in the sky, but she didn’t see the dragons. Exhaustion must have claimed them. The goblin horde marched down West Road, brandishing swords, spikes, and axes.

One giant goblin led the others. “Humans, surrender, and we’ll let you live,” he bellowed.

The other goblins roared in unison. It was a primal noise that rippled like a bad vibration through Keelie’s body.

She stepped to the edge of the lane, but her head throbbed as the trees all called to her at the same time. What will you do to protect us?

Mental overload. She inhaled to steady herself. Concentrate, she advised herself.

Focusing on the trees, she sent waves of comfort. Be brave. They aren’t here to hurt you.

Sir Davey had rallied the shopkeepers and performers, and they had formed a ragtag army that now faced their foe with Finch’s deadly weapons. Keelie was proud of them, but she knew they wouldn’t be able to vanquish the goblins. She wished Dad would hurry up with the reinforcements. Where was he?

The humans rushed at the goblins, who ran to meet them. The sound of screams and clanging metallic weapons filled the air.

Keelie turned to Peascod, who was flipping through the pages of the Compendium, ignoring the mayhem. Not a good thing-she had to get the book from him. She walked closer to the unstable jester.

“The book belongs to me, Peascod. Can’t you feel it? If you released it, the pages would fly into my arms.”

“It may want you, but I need it,” Peascod hissed. “I have a way to free myself from Tavyn. Why do you always interfere with my plans?”

Toshi nodded and pointed its wooden hand directly at her, then floated back to Peascod.

The poppet wasn’t just scary, it was irritating. Keelie noticed that a nearby candle shop had a bucket of warm dipping wax in the window; she wondered if she could grab Toshi out of the air and dunk it in wax.

Toshi stopped and turned slowly to look at her. Had it read her thoughts?

“Is it time, my friend?” Peascod asked Toshi.

It nodded, painted eyes still on Keelie.

Hrok’s branch, still in her grasp, began to twitch. She remembered Hrok’s advice. Keep the branch.

Light burst from the pages of the Compendium. Magic was about to be used.

Keelie had to distract Peascod. He already seemed to be having a hard time concentrating, so if she talked, maybe it would keep his attention focused on her.

“Maybe we can work together to stop Tavyn,” she suggested. The idea of cooperating with Peascod appalled Keelie, but she would do whatever it took to get the Compendium away from him.

“I have a better idea.” Peascod began reading in a strange language Keelie didn’t understand. She’d read elven words, and she knew they didn’t sound like this. Yet it still sounded familiar, sort of like the guttural language she’d heard spoken between the goblins.

The pull of magic began, enveloping her in skin-tingling waves.

Keelie didn’t know what to do. The goblins seemed to be winning the hand-to-hand combat against the faire folk. The dragons were flying overhead again, but they couldn’t blast the attacking goblins because they were too close to the humans.

The trees screamed in her mind, and she started to fall, weakened by the magical onslaught. She reached out and clung to one of the Galadriel’s Closet support beams.

Then, in the chaos of the fighting, Keelie saw a face she hadn’t seen since the Redwood Forest. Tavyn was striding purposefully toward her, ignoring the fighting all around him and looking more like the goblin on the tarot deck and less like an elf. He was carrying the pot with the goblin tree, which smirked at her.

Keep cool! Keelie knew she couldn’t show fear. “Done lurking in the woods?” she asked calmly.

“You are finished, Keliel Heartwood,” the little goblin tree said.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Keelie glowered at the traitor treeling. “You staged your own tree-napping.”

Tavyn extended a taloned hand toward Peascod. “The book, vermin.”

Peascod ignored the goblin-elf and continued to read from the Compendium. A high wind blustered through the faire and the sky darkened as if the sunset was on fast forward.

Tavyn cried out, growling commands to the armored goblins behind him. He got no response-his army was cowering as the sun split into two, then four, then again and again until it seemed as if many setting suns surrounded them. The pull of magic was stronger, too, and reminded Keelie of the magic at the rift.

Keelie held tightly to the aspen branch and closed her eyes against the disconcerting light. She sent out her tree sense, trying to anchor herself with the truth of the forest. Green, unchanging… and suddenly-gone.

The bell on the jester’s hat rang loudly, and its distorted jangle filled the entire faire with the weight of discontent and unhappiness.

Gravity started to pull sideways, and she felt as if every molecule of her body was being disassembled. Her last thought, before all the air was sucked out of her lungs and the world turned inside out, was that she would love to have that purple and blue dress with cap sleeves hanging in the window of Galadriel’s Closet.

Whoosh!

She was being transported somewhere, but much faster than in her whooshing travels with Herne or Dad. It was like being in a swirling vortex, or a spinning carnival ride on hyperdrive. Her shoulder banged painfully against a solid surface, and she opened her eyes a crack. She’d hit the door of Galadriel’s Closet.

She gripped the wood (oak, from Georgia) of the shop support tighter in an attempt to stay in the faire. Dresses and costumes from within the shop zoomed out of the windows and door as the increased pressure pulled them around Peascod, who seemed to be at the center of the vortex. Clanking armor sailed toward the conjuring jester, along with statues of dragons, wooden swords, and chickens from the nearby petting zoo. If an object wasn’t nailed down, it was making its way toward him. Hapless goblins flew through the air.

Opposite the deluged jester stood Tavyn, his feet squarely on the road, an arm across his face to protect it from the Renaissance Faire objects pummeling him on their way to Peascod. A turkey leg hit him on the forehead, and he let go of the goblin tree. It was sucked away as if by a giant vacuum cleaner, screaming, “Save me, Master!” before vanishing into the spinning tornado.

Tavyn didn’t even look in the little goblin tree’s direction.

Tarl the mud man held on to a post of the Wing-A-Ding shop while two goblins shielded their heads as pewter wine goblets and fairy wings from the shop assailed them. The shopkeepers and performers clutched counters and were flattened against walls, unable to stand. Dulcimers and flutes from the music shop whirled around the goblins; more turkey legs smacked them, and one goblin howled with fury as a Steak-on-a-Stake drove into his thigh and stuck there like a meat pincushion.