Suddenly, he at last moved, his arms clasping around the inner edges of the hatch.
But it wasn’t a helpful movement. It was an abrupt jerk, an abrupt swing forwards. One that caught her off balance.
One that jolted her from her own tentative foothold upon the branch.
As she fell forwards, she tried to cling on to the man’s swinging body for support; but his body sharply jerked again, perhaps in fear, perhaps to deliberately shrug her off.
With a useless flailing of her arms, she tumbled forwards off the branch.
And she plummeted ungainly and uncontrollably towards the ground lying far beneath her.
*
Chapter 27
The stars whirled around in the darkness lying before her. They sparkled, they shone.
They fell softly against her face.
But no: they weren’t stars.
They were flakes, snowflakes.
Uncountable numbers of them all swirling towards her. All rushing down towards her face as she stared dazedly up into the darkening sky.
Her face was mainly very cold, yet parts of it were intensely warm. And wet, very wet.
It was the huge, pink, slobbering tongue of her horse. He was tenderly licking her, his seemingly immense head bent down low towards her.
‘Little girl, little girl! Are you all right?’
She thought at first, of course, that it was the horse concernedly asking after her wellbeing.
But then it dawned on her that the voice came from somewhere deeper within the snow; somewhere far higher above her.
She saw the tree rising apparently endlessly up through the veiling snow. Saw the stunted form of the goblin hurriedly, dangerously, scrambling down through its branches and descending its trunk. He was approaching as quickly as he could without actually directly leaping to the ground.
All this time they’d been together, she thought, and they still hadn’t revealed their names to each other.
She remembered falling: couldn’t remember how she’d got here, lying on the floor amongst the snow.
Obvious really, she thought.
Higher up the tree, there was another man; the humbled man.
‘That’s right, you can see to me later,’ he was crying out, presumably to the rapidly descending goblin. ‘I’m not going anywhere farther for the moment at least!’
As the goblin rushed alongside the prone Helen, he pulled and pushed the horse aside, shooing it on its way.
‘Can you move?’ he asked, leaning over her, studying her face concernedly. ‘Is anything broken?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Helen replied, even as she said it realising that she actually meant she hoped not.
She was in agony, a pain in her head, along her back, in her legs. When she tried to move even a little, the pain was abruptly even worse, shooting around her body like many miniature arrows.
But she could lift her head – a little.
And she could move her arms, and slightly raise her back – although the torment was instantly multiplied, the shudders surging down the tops of her legs and into her upper torso.
‘I…I can’t move my legs,’ she said, recognising the awful truth. ‘My legs…my legs are broken, I think!’
*
Chapter 28
‘Yes, your legs are broken!’
The goblin had made a few, apparently expert checks of Helen’s body, carefully helping her flex her limbs, being careful not to raise her too high off the ground until he could thankfully declare ‘you’re back doesn’t seem to have suffered more than a few bruises.’
Helen’s legs, however, were particularly painful. And they weren’t responding accurately to her wishes to move them.
‘I’ll get some branches I can use as splints…’ the goblin said, glancing about him, his eyes searching the copse for anything that might serve as a support.
Of course, Helen didn’t relish the idea of hobbling round on wooden splints and crutches.
‘Your grains,’ she whispered hopefully, ‘just one grain…’
The goblin’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
‘Magic? Use magic?’ He said it as if Helen was asking him to perform the most disgusting action he could imagine. ‘But…the darkness…’
‘It’s only to help me walk!’ Helen persisted, frustrated by the goblin’s unhelpful intransigence. ‘How’s that going to–’
Her protestations came to an abrupt halt as she realised she was being hypocritical.
Hadn’t she avoided using her own skills at magic for fear of being drawn deeper into its darker clutches?
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, ‘it’s just that – what’s happened to your legs?’
The goblin had risen to his feet as she’d scolded him. He towered over Helen, and not just because he was standing while she was out flat on her back on the floor.
His legs were suddenly so much longer, and quite slender too.
Realising that her own legs suddenly felt free of pain, she glanced down at them.
They were odd: stumpy, far broader than she remembered them being.
And, stretching out from beneath the even shorter trousers, they were excessively hairy and lumpy too.
‘What have you done?’ she wailed. ‘You’ve swapped your legs for mine!’
*
Chapter 29
‘Me? I didn’t do this!’
The goblin glowered down at his new pair of legs with as much surprise and dismay as Helen had observed hers.
‘Wait!’ Helen wailed all the more, realising that he was standing on her legs, meaning they were no longer broken. ‘Surely these legs aren’t still–’
She sighed with relief as she found she could move her new, horrendously ugly legs. She thankfully rose at last to her feet, brushing of as much of the cold and wet snow she could, cringing as she caught sight once again of her bestial-like legs.
‘Magic! We can use it to change us back and–’
‘I managed to get down at last,’ the humbled man breathed with a guttural sneer as he virtually slithered down the tree towards them, his emaciated body still limp and apparently lacking a human’s regular muscles.
No, not magic, no more magic, Helen warned herself, seeing once again what it had done to this man: transforming him into an animal she would have no compunction in destroying if she felt it best to do so.
Besides, what had magic done for her but give her these legs of a goblin in the first place?
She had no idea how to use it accurately. She might even make things worse.
Presuming, of course, that it had been her and not the goblin who had created this unwanted transformation.
After all, the goblin no longer seemed interested in her plight. Rather, he was hungrily staring up towards the towering elephant.
‘I couldn’t reach both the hand and foot controls before, but…’
‘Don’t you even think about it!’ Helen sternly warned him. ‘Don’t go rushing off with my legs until–’
The goblin dismissed her worries with a wave of a hand.
‘Oh, it might all just return to normal at any moment,’ he said, with very little conviction in his voice. ‘And we might as well try and make the best of–’
‘You don’t think the goblin did this on purpose, do you?’
The humbled man was studying the goblin’s long legs suspiciously.
‘What? Why would I do tha–’
‘As you’ve just said: to use the controls!’ Helen blurted out, interrupting the goblin’s protestations of innocence.
‘It isn’t as if you’ve been entirely honest about your past now, have you?’ the man stated with a calm yet knowing nonchalance.
‘Yes, yes I have!’ the goblin insisted, his expression one of hurt now that even Helen was studying him distrustfully.
‘Then, of course,’ the man said, sitting down upon the ground as if the cold snow meant nothing to him, ‘you won’t mind me relating the tale of the B
ox of Fools?’
The goblin grimaced sourly: but nodded his assent.
*
Chapter 30
A Box of Fools and The Cunning Innkeeper
One night, at a well to do inn that lies high up on the fells, an ugly and thoroughly miserable goblin came in from the cold seeking a room for the night.
Everyone in the bar noticed that he was carrying a box, hanging from a shoulder strap and slung about his waist. Still, no one stilled their chatter, or cut short their laughter.
There was nothing unusual about a goblin carrying a box, of course. Goblins are well known for their attraction to the more minor magical artefacts. Indeed, it would only be thought suspicious if a goblin didn’t have some such device about his person.
Now, for such an unimportant – perhaps even secretly unwelcome – guest, the innkeeper would normally have asked one of his maids to show such a lowly creature up to his room: but he had noticed something about the goblin that intrigued him.
He couldn’t quite be sure, of course, but he was almost sure that he had caught a glimpse of a pouch suspended about the goblin’s neck, nestling neatly just beneath the little creature’s shirt.
A pouch of gold dust maybe?
The innkeeper’s mind raced excitedly.
Goblins, like fairies and elves, had access to secret supplies of gold, whether sourced from deep mines or panned from streams high in the hills.
And if not gold: then what about something far more precious by far?
What if it were a pouch of fairy dust?
If so, each speck would be worth a thousand pouches – no, a whole treasure fleet’s worth of gold.
Wasn’t it said that a single grain contained all the power and wealth a single man could accomplish in his lifetime? Now some, of course, can accomplish relatively little during their brief span of time: but many have the potential to achieve great riches. And so it was with specks of fairy dust: you could never be quite sure of its quality until you tried it.
The innkeeper showed the goblin up to his room, chatting to him amiably as they ascended the stairs, asking him politely when he’d like to arise for breakfast; and yet his eyes hardly ever left the bulge beneath the goblin’s shirt where the pouch lay hidden.
Did he, every now and again, catch a sparkling glow of blue, of red, of yellow, working its way between the threads of the shirt?
Surely this poorly educated goblin could be persuaded to relinquish at least one grain of fairy dust? Would he even be aware of its true value?
Naturally, the innkeeper hadn’t built up his thriving business through foolish or impetus actions; he bided his time, waiting for a more opportune moment to raise the matter of the pouch. And so he continued talking of terms of payment, of extras available. He wanted to put the goblin at ease, to even, perhaps, befriend him a little. He didn’t want the goblin to be at all wary of his true intentions.
The goblin seemed bored, even irritated by the man’s insistent chatter.
If he didn’t strike soon, the innkeeper realised, this miserable old goblin would dismiss him, and his chance of obtaining a grain of fairy dust would have vanished.
The goblin’s despondent face was completely at odds with the laughter seeping up through the floorboards from the bar below. In fact, the innkeeper realised, the laughter was far more raucous than he had thought while sitting amongst it.
It was the sound of the wildest, most drunken evening he had ever heard.
And even more remarkably, the laughter wasn’t coming from downstairs after all.
It was coming from the box hanging from the goblin’s shoulder.
*
The goblin noted the innkeeper’s frown of bewilderment.
Just as he’d noted that the innkeeper had never let his gaze wander for long from the glittering pouch of fairy dust.
He noted, too, that he was now staring curiously at the box rather than the pouch.
‘Thank you innkeeper,’ the goblin pronounced dismissively. ‘Now if you’ll just kindly leave me so I might–’
‘That laughter?’ The innkeeper stared at the goblin curiously, even a little warily. ‘Is…is it coming from the box?’
His eyes fell upon the box once more, his eyes wide with awe, with anxiety.
‘It’s just my Box of Fools,’ the goblin replied coolly. ‘Now if you’ll just let me–’
‘A Box of Fools?’
The innkeeper’s eyes were wider than ever.
What was the goblin implying?
That there were actually people trapped in there?
Fools who had somehow been fooled by the goblin into accepting their imprisonment in little more than a wooden box?
And yet if that were the case, why were they obviously having such an amazingly good time in there?
And for there to be so many people trapped in there: why, it must obviously be a far larger interior than one would guess going by the size of the box!
It had to be a magical box, of course!
It might contain countless rooms! Vast ballrooms, even. Perhaps even a whole town; a whole city!
‘Are you saying,’ the innkeeper continued hesitantly, ‘that there are actually people in there?’
The goblin nodded happily, smiling for the very first time, his whole demeanour that of someone who sees nothing wrong with this.
‘Now if you’ll kindly leave me so–’
But the innkeeper wasn’t going to be dismissed so easily. He was more intrigued than ever by this strange goblin and his otherworldly possessions.
‘But why have you entrapped those poor people in there?’ he asked.
The scowl returned to the miserable goblin’s face. He appeared affronted by the innkeeper’s accusation.
‘It was their wish to spend their life in there!’ he insisted vehemently.
Hearing the sounds of merriment coming from the box, the innkeeper wondered if this might indeed be true.
But maybe he had to be careful of this goblin: maybe this was all part of the goblin’s spiel, the way he’d entrapped all these other fools.
Maybe, if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up in there too!
‘To be trapped in there… they chose that?’ he said doubtfully.
‘Well, no, no: I didn’t say they chose it, did I? You said they chose it!’ the goblin pointed out, wagging a finger. ‘You see,’ he continued, reaching for the purse lying beneath his shirt and drawing it out, ‘they made a wager they would make a better owner of this than I would: and they lost!’
He jangled the purse, such that it shuffled softly, yet nevertheless glittered as entrancingly as if it contained a thousand stars.
‘It seems a strange wager to make,’ the innkeeper said cautiously, forcing himself to look away from the tantalising sparkling of the pouch, ‘for a bag of what – it seems to me – to be relatively little gold dust: if, indeed, that is the object of great worth it contains, which I assume it must.’
He congratulated himself on his canny reply, his feigned indifference.
He might yet trick this ignorant old goblin out of his prize!
‘Ah, but this is not any old money purse!’ the goblin pronounced gleefully. ‘It’s a purse of fairy dust!’
‘Oh, I had heard of such a thing,’ the innkeeper replied, maintaining a look of complete innocence upon his otherwise grizzled face, ‘but I’d also heard you would need a whole room of it to perform even the simplest of charms!’
‘Pah!’ the goblin spat dismissively. ‘More like the simplest grain could grant you a whole room full of gold: even a whole kingdom, should you wish for it!’
‘So…this wager: what was it?’
‘As I have already explained,’ the goblin said wearily, ‘they merely had to prove that the purse believed they would make a more suitable owner.’
‘And they would do this…how exactly?’
‘Why, by nothing more than being able to hold it for at least five minutes!’
Th
e goblin pursed his lips as he spoke, as if irritated that he’d had to waste his time stating the obvious. He shook the sparkling purse in his own hand, demonstrating how easy it was to hold.
But the innkeeper wasn’t such a fool that he would be so easily persuaded by the goblin’s easy handling of the pouch.
Maybe the purse was heavier than it looked.
Maybe it would glow red hot as soon as he touched it.
He had had many dealings with lawyers, with land surveyors, with other equally canny businessmen: you always had to be wary of the details of any deal you were making. The smallest word could commit you to something you hadn’t noticed in your initial elation at agreeing to the deal.
How much more wary had he to be when dealing with a goblin?
Especially when his ‘payment’ of his side of the deal might end up with him being entrapped within this Box of Fools forever.
‘What do you get out of it?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘I mean, I know that if I lose I end up in your box: but why? What purpose does it serve you?’
The goblin shrugged.
‘Well, I’m reassured that the purse wishes to stay with me, of course!’
The goblin’s reasoning seemed ridiculous circular to the wise innkeeper.
Maybe this goblin wasn’t as clever as he thought he was after all.
Maybe he was the fool, and he should be the one incarcerated in his Box of Fools.
‘Does the purse glow hot?’ he demanded of the goblin. ‘Does it get too heavy to hold?’
The goblin shook his head, chuckling merrily.
‘Of course not! That would be so unfair!’ he proclaimed.
‘Does it get too light to hold? Or too cold?’
‘Does it sting?’
‘Does it smell? ’
The innkeeper wracked his brains as he tried to think of all the many ways that the purse might make itself unwieldy.
‘Does it grow?’
‘Does it shrink away to nothing?’
‘Does it change into an insect?’
(Or some other small creature that can squirm or fly away.)
‘Does it change into an elephant? A scorpion?’
(Or some other dangerous creature.)
In each case, the goblin shook his head, smiling as if at the innkeeper’s foolishness for suspecting such a thing.