Close Kin Read online

  “Til,” said the goblin dryly, “you’re a little girl yourself.” Til stopped crying to think about this.

  “Father?” asked Catspaw anxiously. “Can I be a pages-together, too?” Marak pulled on the little lion’s paw and drew his son close.

  “No, you won’t be a page, but you’ll have a tutor soon,” he promised, putting an arm around him. “You have to start learning how to be a King.”

  Til saw an immediate advantage to her new social position. “You don’t get to be a page,” she gloated to the little prince. “I get to be a page.”

  Catspaw rallied at once. “You don’t get to be a King,” he retorted.

  “I don’t want to,” sniffed Til. “They don’t let Kings have any fun.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” chuckled Marak, pushing her off his lap and standing up. “Come along now, Til. You can meet that little girl you hate.”

  Til inspired the pages with awe, and she pointed out at every opportunity to Catspaw that she had now outgrown his company. Catspaw was jealous over Til’s new career and too young to understand why his aunt Emily had left. Everything was changing around the goblin prince, but he was still doing the same things.

  One day, he stayed with Agatha while his mother taught class. Marak’s former nurse had finally given up keeping order on the pages’ floor. She was too old to chase after a crowd of children. Catspaw was unhappy and out of sorts, and Agatha was no help. Usually the dwarf woman was lively and full of fun, but today he could hardly get her to move. She watched him throwing his ball and retrieving it with a stern look on her face.

  “Stop making so much noise, Marak,” she commanded. Agatha was the only person in the kingdom who called the prince by his formal name. “You tell your father that you’re old enough to have a tutor now.”

  This interested Catspaw. He rolled the ball to her feet and followed it.

  “Father says soon,” he told her seriously. “I’ll learn magic and history and writing and cooking and all sorts of king stuff.”

  Agatha leaned her head back on her chair. “Kings don’t learn how to cook,” she said wearily.

  “Why not?” asked Catspaw, bouncing the ball around her chair. He was making her head hurt.

  “Marak, tell your father you need a tutor,” she repeated firmly. “Your nurse is tired.”

  “Nana’s not tired,” he said, thinking of his woolly nurse. Nana knew he missed Til. She had had a pillow fight with him just that morning.

  “Your nurse is tired,” said Agatha, closing her eyes. “Come here, young Marak. It’s time for your nap.”

  Catspaw stopped and goggled at her. He was too old for naps. No worse injustice can be perpetrated on a child than to force a nap on him after he has grown out of them.

  “Agatha!” he shrilled reproachfully. “I don’t take naps.”

  The dwarf woman opened her eyes again. They snapped at him commandingly. Catspaw had known that she’d been Father’s nurse, and he’d always wondered how such a little woman could make such a big man behave. Now he understood.

  “Marak, come here,” she ordered him sharply, and Catspaw put down his ball and came. “Climb up, then,” she said, pulling him into her arms. The young prince sat in the dwarf woman’s lap and looked at her. He twined his arms around her neck. It finally dawned on him that she was the one who was tired. This struck him as a huge joke.

  “You’re not my nurse, Agatha.” He giggled. “Nana’s my nurse.”

  Those eyes snapped and sparkled at him fiercely. “I have always been your nurse, Marak!” Then she softened at the hurt look on his face.

  “Now, dear, take your nap,” she muttered, tucking his head onto her shoulder and his legs across her lap. Catspaw blinked at the side of her face in surprise. He didn’t know what to do. But there was nothing to do. Til wouldn’t play with him anymore, and his aunt Emily was gone. He closed his eyes. Agatha held him and looked off into the distance, feeling him relax into sleep. Then she closed her own eyes with a sigh.

  And that is how the goblin King found them when he came to fetch his son, the young and the old nestled together in each other’s arms. Marak knelt by the chair for a long time, just looking at them. They were resting so quietly, their faces so peaceful. But only one of them was asleep.

  Chapter Five

  “It’s such a creepy place,” remarked Emily, peering up at the tall trees. “I never knew that a lovely thing could be frightening.”

  “It’s full of memories.” The squirrel on her shoulder gave a tiny sigh. “Some of them are unhappy ones.”

  The forest was very, very old. Many of the trees were mossy and enormous. But, unlike a regular forest, this place had no broken, rotting trunks, fallen limbs, or blasted branches. Autumn had come, and trees unknown to Emily were covered with red and gold leaves, but a carpet of green turf and bracken covered the ground, and tiny flowers nodded at their feet. Birds sang quietly in the distance.

  “It isn’t natural,” said Emily suspiciously. “A forest can’t look like this.”

  “The elves built this forest, just as the dwarves built the goblin caves,” lectured the squirrel. “They made it as beautiful as they were. They worked with living things, not stone or brick, and their tools were spells. Many of those spells still hold force.”

  “Where are the spells against us?” muttered Emily. The place didn’t feel friendly.

  “The Border Spell used to keep your people out entirely, and only a handful of the most powerful goblins could get through. They crossed the border one at a time, vulnerable to patrolling elves. But that spell was the first thing to go, even before the last elf King’s death.”

  Day after day, Emily walked through the glorious wood, wading through clear streams and crossing short-cropped meadows. Ruby called these dancing fields. Deer grazed there even in the full light of day.

  Once, the young woman stopped short in surprise. “I thought I saw a sheep,” she said. “It ran between those trees.”

  “Sheep have always lived in these woods,” replied the teacher, and Emily didn’t ask why.

  One afternoon, they came to a deep fold in the hills. The trees in this narrow valley were widely spaced and colossal. One great pine towered two hundred feet into the air. It stood in a half-circle of old holly trees.

  “Em!” For once, the annoying squirrel’s voice was hushed and gentle. “Look at that! We’ve found the elf King’s winter camp. He used to hold court under that pine, and all the lords and ladies of the King’s Camp danced on the smooth lawn below it.”

  They stopped to have lunch, but neither could eat. The beautiful valley lay dreaming under a spell of its own. Without meaning to, they lingered. Emily napped, and the squirrel climbed to the very top of the huge pine. As twilight fell, Emily strolled about, investigating, while Ruby changed back into her regular form and sat under the holly trees, thinking her own thoughts.

  “I’ve found something!” Emily hurried through the trees. “Bones! They’ve been here a long time.”

  Ruby came with her and knelt down by the bones. They were white and delicate, half buried under moss. “It must be a child, the skull is so small.” The goblin woman looked around. “Probably it was wounded, and it dragged itself into the shelter of the trees to hide. No one found it, poor thing.”

  “Hide?” Emily was puzzled. Ruby gave her an irritated look.

  “You never did pay attention to your lessons,” she declared. “Don’t you remember anything? This was the scene of the last battle of the elf harrowing!”

  “Oh,” breathed the young woman. “I knew that. I just forgot. And it doesn’t look much like a battlefield, does it?”

  “How should a battlefield look after two hundred years?” demanded Ruby. She walked away from the graceful skeleton. Emily followed her, studying the charming scenery with new eyes. After the death of the last elf King, the goblins had waged war to capture all the elf brides they could. They called this war of plunder the elf harrowing.

/>   “How did the battle take place?” she wanted to know. “Was it quick? Did many people die?”

  “Lore-Master Webfoot probably asked you the same questions. Did you earn a perfect score on his tests?” But Emily knew when to keep silent, and the born teacher couldn’t resist the chance to teach.

  “It was the dead of winter, and bitterly cold,” she grudgingly began. “Almost every other elf camp was in ruins by that time, and the King’s Camp had lost contact with the survivors. They knew that the goblin King would come to attack the elf King’s winter camp, and they knew that their entire race was doomed.

  “Even though the elf King was dead, this camp had a formidable guard. The highest lords of the land had always lived in it: the Lords of Counsel, the Lords of Enchantment, the elf King’s Scholars, and his military commander. They were an aristocracy of magic, and from the oldest widows down to the small children, they swore to fight to the death. They did, too. Only a few babies survived.”

  Emily thought about this. It was hard to imagine a small child or an old woman fighting anyone.

  “What did they use as weapons?”

  “Magic, of course.”

  “But how? What did the battle look like?”

  Ruby considered the question. “It looked terrifying. They said that it was like walking into the middle of a storm cloud. Brilliant flashes of light were everywhere. No one could see. The lords and ladies—even the children—worked a single spell together, so that when one of them fell the rest made up for the loss. As a united force, they were stronger than the goblin King himself, and they killed hundreds of goblins. The King’s two lieutenants and most of the King’s Guard were among them.”

  “That means all those elf brides they had captured didn’t have husbands anymore.”

  The ugly woman studied the ground. “I suppose they didn’t,” she agreed reluctantly.

  “But I thought that was the point of the elf harrowing, to take brides. If you ask me, attacking this camp wasn’t very smart.”

  “No one asked you!” Ruby was stung by the criticism. “Marak Whiteye knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted the elf King’s library. He packed up the whole set of elvish spell books and chronicles and brought them back to the kingdom. Now we study the elf King’s books, and we know how to work their magic.”

  “That’s right!” exclaimed Emily in excitement. “I remember now. The elf King’s library was kept in caves because that’s where the elves lived during the winter. Those caves must be here somewhere, Ruby. Let’s go find them.”

  Deep twilight had fallen. Ruby lit a flickering orange flame and carried it in the palm of her hand. Emily preferred Seylin’s moon globes and said so, but the teacher gave her a nasty look. “If you don’t like goblin magic, use some of your own,” she said. And that ended the discussion.

  They scanned the rocky faces that hemmed in the narrow valley, but they found no cleft or opening. “Think like an elf,” mused Ruby. “They must have disguised it, but with what?”

  “With living things,” suggested Emily, and that turned out to be the case. A thick mat of vines hung down over one low cliff. Ruby brushed them aside and discovered that a narrow gap lay beyond. In another minute, they were inside a cave that could have held a crowd of hundreds.

  “This is the largest cave I’ve ever seen,” breathed Emily. Ruby gave a scornful laugh. “I know,” amended the young woman hastily, “that the goblin kingdom is much bigger. But the kingdom doesn’t look like a real cave.”

  “This,” remarked Ruby, “doesn’t look like a real cave, either.”

  She was right. It looked instead like the center of an enormous geode, with great crystal faces and formations studding the walls and ceiling. The sparkling dome caught the orange goblin light thousands of times, like the quick, winking dance of fireflies. Underfoot lay a coarse silvery sand, firm yet inviting to the foot. The grains of sand spread the light as well, glimmering like tiny diamonds.

  “They danced here while the storms howled outside,” said the goblin woman sadly.

  Emily looked around the splendid room that seemed so natural, yet so magical. She tried to imagine beautiful elves dancing and laughing and leading their carefree lives. The wind-rippled sand showed no tracks of animals or insects, not even the tiniest mouse or spider. Spells still kept this great cave pristine. They walked by a harp lying near the wall, its strings broken and tangled. The curving wooden frame reminded Emily of the bones they had seen. This harp was just as graceful, and just as dead.

  “That way lies an underground spring.” Ruby gestured toward another narrow opening. “Beyond it are the storerooms and the elf King’s library.”

  “The library? Let’s go see what they left behind!” said Emily eagerly, but the goblin woman stiffened.

  “Nothing was left behind,” she said in her most disapproving classroom voice. “The goblin King himself supervised the removal of the books.”

  Emily wouldn’t be dampened in her treasure-hunting zeal. “They’re bound to have forgotten something,” she declared. “Remember, they didn’t find that child’s body. Come on!”

  Ruby stopped where she was.

  “They weren’t hunting for bodies,” she said coldly. “The goblin King said that they had found everything they came for, and that is quite enough for me. It ought to be enough for you, but humans don’t know the meaning of ‘enough.’ The impertinence! Thinking that you know better than a King!”

  “Do you mean,” demanded Emily in complete astonishment, “that you’ve come to a place like this, and you aren’t even going to poke around at all? What on earth is the matter with you?”

  “That is just what I mean.” Ruby glared at her. “And what on earth is the matter with you?”

  “You goblins are so sanctimonious!”

  “You humans are absurd.”

  “Well, I’m going into those rooms!”

  “Then you can go alone.”

  Emily hesitated. “I need a light,” she stated with as much dignity as she could. “I’ll go without one if I have to, and I’ll fall into that underground spring and drown. But don’t worry; I’m sure Marak won’t mind.”

  Ruby grumbled for a few seconds. “Oh, if you must!” she snapped.

  A flickering flame appeared right in front of Emily’s eyes and defied her efforts to move it. The goblin woman turned on her heel and walked away.

  The narrow corridor beyond the cave was quite steep, and a sizable stream rushed down the middle of it, cascading melodiously from waterfall to waterfall. It was a lovely place, or would have been if it weren’t quite so dangerous. The watercourse took up almost the whole width of the passage, with the smallest rocky trails on either side. Emily was obliged at times to crawl along the slim ledges on her hands and knees while the spray of the pounding water flew around her and the goblin light made spots before her eyes. This was one place, she thought, where the legendary grace of the elves really would have come in handy.

  She came to a big round room. In the center stood a large hexagonal piece of furniture carved from the native rock. A six-sided pyramid formed its core, raised on a slender column about three feet from the floor of the cave and surrounded by a hexagonal ring of stone benches. Emily walked around it, wondering what it was for. Only when she sat down on one of the benches and turned to face the center did she understand. Each face of the pyramid formed a triangular writing desk, angled to bring the pages of a book comfortably close to the reader. A lip at the bottom kept the book from sliding to the floor. Six scholars could sit around the pyramid and study their books at the same time. This must have been the library!

  Emily jumped up and examined the room, her goblin light leading the way. Above the center of the pyramid gleamed a silver globe, but whether it was suspended from the ceiling or simply hung in space, she couldn’t determine. A faint light came from it, joining her flame to illuminate six long, narrow fissures that rose in a shallow spiral pattern, circling the walls. Emily puzzled over them,
running her finger down the slanting cavity of the nearest one. It could almost be a bookshelf, she decided, carved into the rock, if one didn’t mind that the books would not be level. The upper ones would lean against the lower ones, rising in their shallow curve. A scholar would need lots of strength to pull out the books closest to the floor—or the proper magic. But the angled curves of books would appear to float up the walls in a charming dance.

  Not so much as a scrap of parchment remained in any of the curving shelves. Emily was disappointed. She supposed that Ruby was right, and why shouldn’t she be? The goblin King himself had supervised their removal. Returning to the door, she stumbled over something. A cloth-covered bundle lay under one of the benches. Emily pulled away the bulky cloth and examined her find. It was a leather-bound book.

  Wrapping up her discovery, Emily hurried from the room. Once again, she had to creep down the dangerous passage by the cascading waterfall. She tried not to imagine herself swept away by the rushing water and drowned in some subterranean tunnel. Any other race would have cut steps into the rock, but, oh, no, not the elves. Everything had to be perfectly, unnaturally natural.

  Ruby had lit their supper fire near the semicircle of holly trees, facing the open vista beyond their narrow valley. Stars were just coming out in the evening sky. Emily walked up slowly, studying her treasure and trailing the heavy cloth. She couldn’t speak elvish, but goblins and elves shared a script of magical characters. Most nouns and verbs were represented by a symbol that looked and meant almost the same thing to an elf or a goblin, even though it didn’t sound the same in the two different languages.

  “What does the character ‘ugly’ mean to the elves?” she wanted to know. “I’m finding it everywhere.”

  “That’s the elvish word niddug. It means ‘goblins.’ Humph!” snorted Ruby, stirring up the fire. “We have words for them, too.” Then she turned around in surprise. “What do you have there?”