The Hollow Kingdom Read online

  It was in part Marak’s desire to work the Kingdom Spells that kept him bedridden for so long. Given only so much strength, he preferred to spend it on useful magic rather than on walking. Always practical, he embarked on a review of the King’s Chronicles as a way to use his convalescence. Kate spent hours every day reading to him in her stumbling goblin while the wolf and pup slept by the bed and little Matilda played on the floor beside them. The dwarves were already making her elaborate baby toys, but Til enjoyed playing with the wolves more than anything else. She pulled their fur and disturbed the King’s rest with her laughter until the servants came and took her away.

  As soon as he had the strength, Marak erased the Door Spell, judging that he had no right to withhold freedom from someone who had braved such dangers to free him. He asked only that Kate wait until their son’s birth before using her newfound liberty and that she confine her outside visits to the goblin lands. Before, Kate would have been wild at the long wait, but now she was resigned. She had seen enough horror outside to feel content in the goblin kingdom for some time. But she did go often to visit the front door. “I am the King’s Wife,” she would call. “Open up.” And the poor door would have to open. It didn’t try to argue with her anymore.

  “Thank you,” Kate would say, “but maybe another time.” And she would walk back to the palace again, leaving the door rattling back and forth in frustration.

  Emily was disappointed that Kate had forgotten her almond brittle, but the gift of the little monkey made up for everything. “I never had a pet who had a pet before,” she said wonderingly, watching her monkey cuddle the one-armed mouse. Emily had rather ordinary human looks, but when she went about in bright silks and satins, with her hair done up in ribbons, her hands, arms, and neck covered in jewelry and the monkey and mouse riding on her shoulders, she went as far as an average human could toward attaining a bizarre goblin presence. Certainly, Kate had misgivings when she saw her little sister thus and wondered what their father would say if he could see her.

  The wolf mother refused to be given away to anyone. She never left Kate’s side if she could help it, trotting behind as Kate went from place to place and lying down on her feet the minute she stopped. This achieved two important canine goals. First, Kate always knew that someone loved her devotedly, and second, every bright gown received a generous sprinkling of coarse gray hairs. The thin pup grew into a handsome beast in time. Having spent his early months at the side of the convalescing Marak’s bed, he formed a strong attachment to the goblin King and followed him everywhere. Kate, dipping into her educated past, tried to name the pair Helena and Constantine, but Marak persisted in calling his companion Dog, or, when they were both in the room together, Your Dog and My Dog. Kate decided rather disgustedly that this was to be expected from a husband who shared his own name with one hundred and sixty-seven of his predecessors.

  The goblin King was well by the time the Heir was born. As he had long ago predicted, the birth was a very hard one, and it took all his attentive magic to get Kate through it. “And very lucky you are, little elf, to be married to a goblin,” he told her firmly, “or you’d have gone the way of your mother, her grandmother, and the grandmother’s own mother, I expect.” Kate, pale and sweaty, didn’t open her eyes to acknowledge this smug remark. After the last twenty-four hours, she didn’t feel lucky to be married at all.

  “A new Marak!” announced Agatha, bringing over the goblin baby. Kate heard the old Marak give a cry of delight. She reminded herself decisively that she was ready for this moment. Nothing about the son she had had with her beloved husband could possibly upset her. Opening her eyes, the exhausted Kate took one look at her baby and promptly burst into tears.

  She didn’t cry because the baby, larger and longer than a human baby, was staring at her steadily with one green eye and one blue eye. His skin was more silvery than Marak’s, and his lips were considerably closer to a rosy color. She didn’t cry about the hair, lying in silky locks around his high forehead, although that was a bit of a disappointment. As the King had predicted, the baby had his mother’s golden hair, but marbled among the golden curls were soft locks of Marak’s own beige. No, it was the right hand, or rather, the lack of it that had the weary and somewhat hysterical Kate bawling into her pillow. From the shoulder to the elbow, the right arm was a chubby baby arm, but from the elbow down it was the forearm and paw of a tiny lion cub.

  Marak couldn’t have been more thrilled as he held his newborn son and watched him wave the fuzzy, speckled paw in the air. “What a King he’ll be!” he declared happily to his sobbing wife. He stroked the soft baby locks, stirring their golden and pale curls with a finger. “Kate,” he added with a puzzled frown, “I thought you hated my hair.”

  “I do hate your hair,” sniffed Kate indignantly. But then she remembered all the times she had seen him looking at her through those pale wisps or jerking out the ribbon and running his hands through the wild mane as he thought. “Oh, well,” she said with a tired giggle. “I suppose it made an impression.”

  “Just look at him,” insisted her husband joyfully, setting their son down on the bed beside her. “What a stunning boy he is, every inch a goblin King! What could you possibly be crying about?”

  “But, Marak,” Kate protested, “he has a paw!” She looked at it dubiously. She was somewhat calmer now that the shock was wearing off, but she still wasn’t happy about it.

  “And do you remember the last goblin King who had that paw?” demanded Marak. “Lionclaw, the greatest of all the Kings. Marak Lionclaw led the goblins to this kingdom and ended the migration. He was the greatest magician the goblins have ever had. The records say that he was the one who enchanted Hollow Lake to hold up the water. Just imagine,” he exclaimed, “what magic he’ll work with that right hand!” And as his tired wife wiped her eyes on her blanket, Marak played with the little paw, pressing it gently to make the sharp claws extend.

  “Look, Kate!” he hooted. “It’s just like a cat’s paw!” And Catspaw was the son’s name from that moment until the day he became Marak in his father’s place.

  Special thanks to my editor, Reka Simonsen, for her keen interest in developing good fantasy for children and for all her hard work on this book.

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  Copyright © 2003 by Clare B. Dunkle

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dunkle, Clare B.

  The hollow kingdom / Clare B. Dunkle.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In nineteenth-century England, a powerful sorcerer and King of the Goblins chooses Kate, the elder of two orphan girls recently arrived at their ancestral home, Hallow Hill, to be his bride and queen.

  [1. Goblins—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction. 4. Orphans—Fiction. 5. Coventry (England)—History—19th century—Fiction. 6. Great Britain—History—19th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D92115Hol 2003 [Fic]—dc21 2002038899

  ISBN: 978-1-4668-0383-1