by Larry Mark
Chapter 5
Take this advice from someone who has learned from bitter experience: Never try to ride a duck.
I shan’t give a full account of the Battle of Dean’s Park Pond. Let us just say that the goblins didn’t win.
Ducks are vicious things. They peck and they hiss and they flap and they do not like being woken up late at night. You would think that a bird whose top speed is ‘waddle’, whose beak is blunt, and who has no teeth wouldn’t present much of a challenge to a full grown battle-goblin. That’s where you’re lucky to have what I did not. Someone to tell you differently.
I’m lying by the toy box again, perfectly motionless and waiting for Lord Thurgo’s return from school. I can see Oooof and Jabber out of the corner of my eye. Images of last night keep returning to me. Jabber squashed mercilessly into the mud beneath webbed feet. Oooof crying ‘Eeeek!’ as ducks pecked him from four different directions at the same time. The sights and sounds of that night will never leave me. I have an exceptional memory. That’s one of the reasons I don’t listen to plans. I remember everything perfectly and I don’t know how much storage space I have in my head. So best not to clutter it up with too much stuff, I say.
Memories of the park keep surfacing. We didn’t get anywhere near the island. The banner sunk in the shallows. Sir Terror-Knight vanished early on – I last saw him being pursued across the football pitches by at least four mallards... I try to think of something else.
My exceptional memory helps me remember the fact that I didn’t actually have to see Sir Terror-Knight’s badge last night to check the wording. I could just have used my excellent memory to remember what it looked like. I try to remember the words now but I’m drawing a blank. To get back to old memories that don’t want to be found it’s generally quicker if I walk backwards whilst chanting ‘remember, remember’ but I can get there more slowly if I just wiggle my toes. I start wiggling them and hope nobody notices.
Toe wiggling helps me find an old memory and paint it bit by bit across the back of my eyelids. I keep wiggling and every now and then I blink to see how far I’ve got... Nowhere! I can’t remember anything. And now I’ve forgotten what I’m trying to remember. Sometimes it’s like this – sometimes I really want to remember something and I get nothing. I wiggle faster. Blink quicker. Not a sausage!
“Right,” I say. “Nothing for it but to do it the hard way.” I sit up.
“Pixie!” thirteen other goblins point as one, all thirteen knobbly fingers aimed my way. They only move their pointing arms. It’s in the rules. Even though they can’t smile I know they’re overjoyed. We’ve been playing this game seven hours a day, seven days a week, for over a year, and nobody has ever been the pixie.
“Yes, yes, I’m the pixie. Hoorah,” I say and hurry out of the room.
When a goblin needs to do some serious thinking there’s only one place for it. I’m as quick as I can be, toes scrabbling at the carpet as I heave myself over the lip of the first step. I clamber up each in turn. By the time I reach the landing I’m ready to have another seven hour lie down. But I don’t. I look around. Queen Claire is out with Princess Pukey collecting Lord Thurgo from Overlord School. The bedroom doors are shut. The toilet door is open just a few inches. I ignore them, take a deep breath, and throw myself through the railings at the top stair.
“Remember! Remember! REM-” I scream. Then I scream, “Urrrgh!” But a loud crunching sound drowns me out. The sound of me hitting the floor.
Now if a human was stupid enough to try this they would have to be scraped up and put into the bin. Goblins however are made of tougher stuff. We were fashioned beneath the pounding hammers of Old Town Hong Kong. A ten-foot drop onto our faces just shakes us around a bit, and with any luck when everything settles back into place the memory I want will be right at the top!
“I remember!” I shout in joy... and pain.
I remember the shape, the almost-circle of the badge. Then the coloured-in outline in blue crayon. I remember that there were letters... just not what those letters were.
Slowly, and groaning at each step, I haul myself back up the stairs to the landing.
“Weeeeee!” I shout with little enthusiasm as I plummet to the ground below.
I heave myself to my feet. “I remember...” The red letters. Why just the red ones? What kind of sense does that make?
“C n l t O r o o l g ”
Not much sense by the look of it... On my next drop the green letters add themselves in.
“C un il t t e O er Lo of Sl ug ”
“Arrggggh!” I say. Then I say something that would have made my mother say “KEVIN! Wash your mouth out!” Probably. If I had a mother.
It takes me an age to pull myself to the top of the stairs once more, moaning and groaning with each step.
“woo” I say as I fall.
“Thud.” I don’t say that as I land, only later when I can speak again.
And finally the blue letters join the rest and by blinking I can see the whole of the message on Sir Terror-Knight’s badge, written now in multi-colours across the back of my eyelids.
“Council to the Over-Lord of Slough.”
Hmmm. This means nothing to me. It’s that not-being-able-to-read problem. Still... all I need now is to remember everything else I’ve ever seen written down and compare them! This is going to involve a lot of climbing and falling... and I’ve already made a dent in the floor. I sit for a moment at the bottom of the stairs and wriggle my toes. They’re about the only part of me that doesn’t hurt.
The toe wriggling summons up the wording on the side of the black car.
“Slough Council.”
I put that next to the badge message: “Council to the Over-Lord of Slough.”
Since I’ve been told what the words on Sir Terror-Knight’s badge mean, and it begins in “council” and ends in “Slough” figuring out what the words on the SUV mean should be as easy as one plus one... I lie there for a while trying to figure it out. Eventually I hear car doors slamming outside. High Queen Claire! I hobble back to the living room as fast as I can.
“Pixie!” They all shout.
“Lord Thurgo’s back!” I say as I lie down (well fall down really – I’m too bruised to bend).
“Lie still, minions!” Captain Bort barks.
“Pssst,” I hiss to Gobber beside me. “Pssst!” I’m still thinking about all those words.
“What?” he mutters from the side of his mouth.
“What’s one plus one?”
Overheard by a goblin (stuffed in Lord Thurgo’s schoolbag):
Lord Thurgo: I bet it starts raining before we get to school.
Prince Stupid: Don’t care. I’ve got my mac.
