The Goblin's Puzzle

by Andrew Chilton

  It was another trick, but it was a good one. Mennofar’s vow didn’t compel him to say anything at all. There was a simple enough solution to that. “Then, for my second vow, I want you to answer every question I put to you,” said the boy.

  “No,” said Mennofar. “That also goes too far. I would be willing to take a vow to answer a single yes-or-no question each day.”

  “That’s it? One yes-or-no question a day?” said the boy.

  Mennofar smiled. “Whose rules are these?” he asked. “Anyway, giving everything away all at once spoils the fun.”

  There had to be a trick to that, too. “How long do I get? The rest of my life?” he asked.

  “Or until the third vow is made,” said Mennofar.

  It was the best he was going to do. “I’ll take it,” said the boy.

  “Boy who rescued me, I, Mennofar the Goblin, vow that I shall answer one yes-or-no question a day until the third vow is made or until you are dead,” said Mennofar. “Whichever comes first.”

  That brought the boy up short. “Until you are dead” might mean the same thing as “for the rest of your life,” but they did not sound the same at all. Specifically, the first sounded like it might happen a lot sooner than the second.

  “And as I am feeling generous, you can even save them up from day to day,” said Mennofar. “Now, what would you like to know more than anything else?”

  The boy considered his first question. There were so many things worth knowing. The most important was how to prove his innocence. The problem with a question like that was that he was not really innocent. He may not have killed Tibor, but he had done nothing to stop it. And he had run away.

  The boy pushed from his mind the image of dead Tibor with his eye pointing slackly down. Perhaps buried treasure was the way to go. Of course, how to get there with just yes-or-no questions was not exactly obvious. As he thought about these problems, he rubbed his father’s ring between his fingers. The first question was going to be very important. He knew he should think hard and pick it carefully. But he didn’t. Instead, he just blurted out, “Am I truly and justly a slave?”

  He had no idea where this question came from. In The Tales, people were always discovering secrets about their birth or destiny, but there was usually some clue. There was no reason to believe he wasn’t truly a slave. It was a silly thing to ask.

  But it was too late. That was his question for the day.

  Mennofar nodded. He closed his eyes and looked within for a long moment. As he did, his skin turned an emerald green so brilliant he almost glowed. “A most excellent question,” he said, with a smile that exposed his hundreds of pointy teeth. “The answer is no.”

  “I’m not a slave! I’m not a slave!” yelled the boy at the hills. He jumped into the air and danced around in circles and whooped for joy. He threw Mennofar into the air and caught him. Then he hugged the spluttering goblin to his chest.

  Mennofar wriggled out of the boy’s grasp. “That will be quite enough of that.” He dusted himself off.

  “But this is wonderful news,” said the boy. All his worries disappeared like mist on a summer morning. The Ninety-Nine Duties flew out of his head. He’d never been able to remember more than a dozen at a time, anyway. The terrible image of dead Tibor lying on the ground vanished. He could even admit, if only to himself, that he had never really liked Tibor. Best of all, the clutching feeling around his heart was gone. He had not defied the will of the gods.

  He closed his eyes and pictured the Three Sisters as they sat around their stone bowl. One would draw the boy’s stone, keeping it in her closed hand. So that all would know the draw was fair, she would not get the one eye the Sisters all shared until after she had drawn. Then the gnarled old hand would open, and the smooth, worn stone would declare his true fate.

  Of course, he had no idea what that fate might be. But once he discovered it, he could tell Casimir. Then he and his former master would be friends. They would have a laugh at the big misunderstanding, whatever it turned out to be.

  Unless Casimir had known all along. Then he should be punished. The boy did not know the punishment for falsely enslaving people, but it was probably something horrible like being boiled in vinegar or made to pay a large fine.

  But Casimir could not have known. Anyone could see that Casimir was a proper gentleman. Surely he would only buy and sell proper slaves.

  “You don’t think Casimir knew, do you?” asked the boy. “When the time comes, I’ll need to know whether to have him fined.”

  “I have already answered today’s question, impatient one,” said Mennofar. “And if you want to punish Casimir, you will need to avoid dying for want of food first.”

  So the boy tore the left sleeve off his suit and turned it into a slingshot. An afternoon’s practice ended with the boy putting stone to target every time. That night’s hunt was another matter. Although there were plenty of bats, hitting a moving bat at night was very different from hitting a still target during the day. Shortly before the sun came up, he returned to camp empty-handed and hungry.

  “No luck,” he told Mennofar.

  “I would like to tell you that you are sure to do better tomorrow,” said Mennofar.

  “Really?” said the boy.

  “That is what I would like to tell you,” said Mennofar. “But as I have vowed to never lie to you, I cannot.”

  “I am ready to ask my next question,” said the boy. In The Tales, the hero often had to figure out who he really was and then prove it. There was always some clue, like a birthmark or a special object. The boy pulled his father’s ring out from under his shirt. “Does this explain who I am?”

  Mennofar studied the ring for a moment. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated. After a moment, his skin turned emerald. He smiled and said, “Yes.”

  The boy looked down at the cracked and bent piece of metal. Once he discovered his fate, the ring would be his proof. And someone had tried to destroy it. Some villain was trying to cheat him of an important fate, a great destiny. The boy knew it was a great destiny because someone had taken it. In The Tales, no one ever went to the trouble of stealing the son of a shepherd or a shopkeeper. When a child was stolen away and sold into slavery, it was always to cheat him of an important birthright.

  These schemes never worked out in the end. The child always grew up to be a hero who would have to solve a puzzle and defeat three monsters, each more fearsome than the last, before taking terrible vengeance on the traitor. Only then could he finally return to reclaim his birthright. Now that the boy knew he was such a hero, all he had to do was overcome every obstacle that lay in his path and prove that he was worthy of his birthright. Then he would be restored to the life he was supposed to have, the one the gods had chosen for him.

  He still did not thank the Sisters for his fate before he went to sleep. That would have to wait until he discovered what it was.

  That night, he dreamed he sat on a throne in his palace, slaves fanning him and bringing him tray after tray of iced cakes. All the beautiful ladies of the court gazed on him adoringly, and all the gentlemen envied him. It was a wonderful dream, but as is often the case with dreams, when he tried to bring the details into focus, they slipped away from him.

  —

  It was already midday when he woke. Through the afternoon, he trudged west, carrying Mennofar farther from Nikola and his caravan. He hunted again that evening and had no more luck than the first night. When he returned to camp, he woke Mennofar.

  “I am ready to make my first guess,” said the boy. “Am I a prince who was stolen away and sold into slavery by a jealous uncle who wished to inherit the throne in my place?”

  Mennofar stretched and yawned. “A fine question. A classic taken from The Tales,” said Mennofar.

  “The Tale of the Magister and the Orphan,” said the boy.

  Mennofar smiled broadly, exposing his many pointy teeth. “The answer is no.”

  The boy nodded. He was disappointed, o
f course, but he could hardly expect to guess the right answer on his first try.

  On the third night, he finally managed to bring down a bat. The boy carried his trophy back to camp. As they had no fire, they had to eat it raw. Three days with no food proved sauce enough to let the boy choke it down. Mennofar, the boy could not help noticing, wolfed his share down with gusto.

  Once the boy had gotten down as much as he could stand, he lay back and let his unhappy stomach go to work. As he lay there, he thought about what to ask Mennofar next. The Tale of the Magister and the Orphan seemed like the closest fit. The Tale of the Old Woman and the Young Girl had some similarities, but the young girl knew she was a princess. She just couldn’t tell anyone because she was under a spell.

  The trouble was that Mennofar was so very tricky. Even if the boy got the general story right, Mennofar would latch on to any little difference to answer no. The boy sat up and said, “Mennofar, am I a prince who was stolen away and sold into slavery by a man who had the same father as my father, but a different mother, who would then be my father’s half brother instead of his brother, or my half uncle instead of my uncle, so that he, my half uncle, might inherit the throne in my place?”

  “Your mind is truly a wonder to behold,” said Mennofar. “I mean that metaphorically, of course. I am sure that literally it is gray and spongy like everyone else’s.” He smiled. “And the answer is no.”

  The boy’s heart sank. He was sure this was going to be the right question. For just a few moments, everything seemed to be falling into place. He had, after all, finally hit a bat. Then he had worked out how Mennofar might have been using a picky, hairsplitting technicality to keep his birthright from him. When he’d thought it up, it had seemed so perfect that it had to be right. Now that he knew it was wrong, the whole task seemed impossible. The boy sighed heavily.

  Mennofar patted the boy on the back. “I think you need a little help,” said Mennofar.

  “You’re going to give me a clue?” said the boy.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mennofar. “I will, however, tell you something helpful. Just this once. Don’t go thinking I’ll do it again.”

  “I won’t,” said the boy.

  Mennofar closed his eyes and sat very still. After a long moment, his skin slowly grew brighter until it was a vivid emerald green. Then he said, “It will be very hard to prove you are not a slave. You will almost certainly fail and probably die, but in the unlikely event you do manage it, you will do so in the city of Farnham.”

  “Where is that?” asked the boy.

  “It is in the Kingdom of West Stanhope,” said Mennofar, opening his eyes. And as the boy’s next question was obvious, he added, “The Kingdom of West Stanhope is very far away, so it is going to be quite a trek. Which is just as well since that will give you time to work on your little puzzle.”

  In fact, West Stanhope was very, very far away. Some might even have said very, very, very far away. It lay along the south side of the Spine, just as High Albemarle did, but it lay as far to the west as High Albemarle did to the east.

  For a long time, the boy had to carry Mennofar, and even when Mennofar was well enough to walk on his own, his little legs could not carry him very quickly over the broken ground and hilly country. Nights were spent hunting bats. And even when the boy grew skilled at knocking them out of the sky, every night’s hunt cost them a half day’s march. The trip was long. It was slow, it was tedious, and he had to sleep in the open on the cold, stony ground.

  Along the way, the boy ruled out a great many possibilities. Not only was he not a prince who had been sold into slavery by a jealous uncle or half uncle, but he also had not been sold by a usurping cousin or half cousin. He also ruled out being spirited away by a scheming stepmother who wanted a son of her own on the throne. Then it occurred to him that his story might be more like The Tale of the Colored Coat. When he followed that line, it turned out that he was not stolen away by tinkers. Or travelers. Or elves or sprites or brownies or fey folk or any of a dozen other magical races that stole babies and left changelings behind. And he might not even be a prince. He could be the son of a duke, the heir of a baron or the scion of an earldom stolen by gnomes. To his intense frustration, he found that he could combine the possibilities into dozens, even hundreds, of scenarios.

  When they finally came down from the foothills of the Spine, they still had to skirt the northern edge of the Little Dismal and cross some of West Stanhope’s dreariest moors. Only then did they finally come to a town. Exhausted, they snuck into the first barn they saw and bunked down in the haystack for a long rest.

  It was the best night’s sleep the boy had ever enjoyed, right up until he was stabbed in the arm.

  The King ordered all his knights and all his men-at-arms to go after the dragon. This was not so many as Oswald might have hoped for, since the shortage of knights was affecting the royal household as well. The King also decreed that a proclamation be read in each town and village, at every market and inn, and at all the crossroads in the kingdom: whoever rescued the Princess would have any boon within the King’s power to grant.

  The King assured Oswald that both their daughters would be home soon, but Oswald was not so sure. All the way back to Middlebury, he fretted that Plain Alice would be overlooked in the rush to rescue the Princess. Still, he had done all he could. Knights had ridden out, and a great reward was on offer. The prospect of a sack of gold, a title of nobility or even the hand of a princess was a powerful motivator. He could only hope that it would inspire the right kind of young hero, one who would rescue Plain Alice, too.

  It was late in the evening when he finally arrived home. He fell into bed and slept deeply. In the morning, he went out to the barn to feed the animals. First he slopped the pigs. Then he went to fork some hay for Old Bess.

  But when he jabbed the pitchfork into the haystack, it yelped in pain and spat forth a shrieking boy. Oswald was startled but not surprised. He found someone bunking down in his haystack a couple of times a year. Usually it was some blacksmith’s apprentice who had run away. “Go on, then,” said Oswald. He waved the pitchfork at the boy. “Shove off, or I’ll stab you.”

  “You already stabbed me,” said the boy. Though the boy had his hand on the wound, it still bled.

  “That was an accident. I didn’t know you were there,” said Oswald. Then, to sound more menacing, he added, “Now go back to your master’s hearth, or I’ll stab you properly. I’m not getting in trouble for sheltering some renegade apprentice.”

  “I’m not a renegade apprentice,” protested the boy.

  Oswald peered a little more closely. The boy’s skin was olive brown, and his tangle of hair was black as ink. He also had an accent. He rasped his hard consonants and rolled his r’s a bit.

  The boy was not from one of the Stanhopes, nor from Clontarf, either. Oswald had met people as dark as this boy, but they all came from lands that were very far away. Then, too, the boy was dressed in the tattered remains of a foreign suit of some quality, one that was much too large for the boy.

  There was a story here, of that Oswald was sure, but Oswald was in the middle of a story of his own. He wanted no part of the boy’s. “It doesn’t matter where you came from,” said Oswald. “You’ll have to go.”

  “We’ll go. We’ll go,” said the boy.

  Oswald spun to face the haystack. “We? Do you have a girl in there with you?” he said. “Come out, lass, or you’ll taste the fork as well.”

  “That would pain me greatly.” A goblin emerged from the haystack. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Mennofar the Goblin, and this is my traveling companion,” said Mennofar.

  Oswald goggled. In his circle, Oswald was considered a well-traveled man. He had been to foreign lands and seen a few rare and exotic things in his day. He had never, in all that time, met a man who even claimed to have seen a goblin. Yet here one was. “I am Oswald the Sage, of Middlebury,” said Oswald. He kept the pitchfork pointed at the goblin, j
ust in case. “What’s your friend’s name?” he said, nodding toward the boy.

  Mennofar looked over at the boy, and the boy muttered, “Haven’t got one.”

  Oswald glanced at the boy suspiciously. When he did, he saw that the boy’s arm was still bleeding freely. “You really did get stuck there, didn’t you?” said Oswald.

  “I’m fine,” said the boy. He turned a little so the injury was facing away from Oswald.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t want that going foul,” said Oswald. He set down the pitchfork and went to have a look. The wound was not too serious, but it was narrow and deep, the kind most likely to foul. “This should really be cleaned and dressed. Come to the house, and I’ll see to it.”

  He looked down at the boy. His flesh was thin over his bones. He had not eaten well in some time. Oswald wondered if poor Alice was hungry, too. “And breakfast,” he said. “I won’t send you away hungry.”

  “A proper breakfast?” said the boy. “With eggs and bacon and toast and all?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Oswald. At least, if he had any bacon.

  “It has been a while since he has had a meal he actually likes,” said Mennofar.

  A short while later, Oswald was loading eggs, bacon and toast slathered in butter onto the boy’s plate. The boy paused just long enough to thank Oswald and then fell upon it like a wolf. It was his third helping.

  “Have you had nothing to eat at all?” asked Oswald.

  “We’ve eaten,” said the boy between bites. “Bats, mostly. Rats when we could find them.”

  “Bats?” said Oswald. He made a face.

  “Rest assured, sir, they are quite delicious once one has acquired the taste,” said Mennofar.

  The boy shrugged. “He likes them,” he said.

  “But you ate them?” asked Oswald.

  “A few hungry days and there’s a lot that’ll go down,” said the boy.

  Oswald nodded. “Mennofar, I am told that goblins know all,” he said. “My daughter has been kidnapped. Forgive the imposition, but can you tell me where she is?”