Grizelda

by Margaret Taylor

  She threw herself against the wall and closed her eyes, tried to control her gasping. There were plenty of shadows here. More than enough. She tried to concentrate on them, but every time she felt on the brink of success, an image of slimy webbed hands filled her head. She couldn’t do it. She could never do it when she was under pressure.

  Something tugged at the hem of her skirt and her eyes snapped open.

  Goblins. They were ringed in a semicircle around her. Their bony bodies writhed as they fought each other to touch her with their webbed hands, screaming gibberish in some goblinish tongue. She screamed and threw her arms up over her head.

  No, not gibberish. Slowly it dawned on her, hunched over on the floor, that the goblins were speaking perfectly normal Corvanian.

  “What do you think you’re doing here? This is goblin territory!”

  “Yeah! There are laws about this!”

  “Go back where you came from, Ogreling!”

  “Wait!” A voice with an air of command cut across the rest. The hubbub died down. Grizelda, however, was not keen on getting up and seeing this goblin, so she stayed hunched where she was. She listened as deliberate, squashy footsteps advanced towards her.

  “No, let’s not send her home. I have a better idea.”

  A cold hand seized her by the chin and pulled her up.

  She shuddered in disgust and shoved the hand away from her. She opened her eyes. A goblin was standing in front of her, as slitty-eyed and squashed-faced as the others. He grinned.

  “The dictators aren’t so high and mighty now, are they?”

  She stood there, breathing hard, watching him. Like a trapped rabbit, waiting for the goblin’s next move. It wasn’t long in coming: his hand came down a second time.

  “Hello, what’s this?” He reached out and easily snapped a spool off her sleeve.

  “That’s mine,” was what she tried to say, but it didn’t come out very intelligibly.

  “What?” The space where his eyebrows would have been raised, the picture of pious concern. There was a bubble of laughter behind him.

  She swallowed. “That’s mine.”

  The goblin held the spool up to the furnace-light and inspected it. “I knew it! Goblin made! That spool belongs to us, girl.” He stood back, spread his arms wide. “Why don’t we take them all back?”

  A savage cheer went up and the semicircle of goblins rushed at her. Over the uproar she almost didn’t hear the new, furious voice at the back of the tunnel.

  “What the hell’s going on, Nelin?”

  For a long while, Grizelda did not dare to look. She kept her arms up to protect her face while the cheer ebbed away and a disappointed muttering took its place. Still she waited, but the blows she anticipated from the goblin mob did not come. Slowly, she raised her head.

  Two goblins had come jogging up the tunnel. The one in front was approaching a sprint as he came towards their semicircle. The goblins did not part way for him but forced him to push his way through. He spared just a glance at Grizelda, then turned all his attention to their ringleader.

  The posture of the goblin who had been taunting her oozed contempt – the folded arms, the sly smirk, the studiously casual way he dropped all his weight to one side. “Oh. You’re not about to do something rash, Mechanic Lenk, are you?” he told the newcomer.

  “I said, what the hell’s going on here?” The question came out as a growl.

  The other goblin retreated a bit and deigned to answer his question. “There’s an ogre what’s trespassing on our tunnels. I’m dealing with her.”

  This mechanic rounded on the one he’d called Nelin with the fury of a whirlwind. “The police are going to be here in about two minutes. What I want to know is why you took it upon yourself to do God knows what to this ogre girl so bad that one of your guys here–“ He pointed to his companion, who was staying out of this. “–went and ran for help.”

  They stood there, nose-to-nose, for several tense seconds, sizing each other up. At last Nelin snorted.

  “You’re not going to do anything about it. You haven’t got it in you.”

  “Do you want to mess with me, Nelin? Do you really want to mess with me?”

  “No. You’re the one who doesn’t want to mess. But all right. You clean up in here and I’ll take her to the government building.” He made for Grizelda’s wrist.

  The Mechanic’s hand shot out to catch Nelin’s arm. “I’ll take her.”

  There was another silent staring contest. Finally Nelin twisted his hand away. “All right. You take her.”

  The Mechanic seized Grizelda by the wrist and, putting up no more resistance than a yelp, she followed him. He as good as dragged her out of the crowd of goblins, who gave her some disturbingly open-toothed leers as she passed.

  Once he was clear of them, he set off at a furious pace that even she, with her longer legs, found it hard to keep up with. That mechanic, she thought, must be about half her height, but there was a lot of power contained in that wiry frame. He had her in a grip like a vice that she could not have gotten free of to save her life. The coldness of that hand – surprisingly, it wasn’t slimy– made her want to recoil. She couldn’t.

  All the while the Mechanic kept his face to the front with a furious intensity. He muttered to himself over and over, “This is not in my job description. This is so not in my job description…”

  They made their uncomfortably brisk walk down and down the tunnel. Grizelda was so absorbed in just keeping on her feet that she couldn’t properly take in anything around her as it flew past. Tunnels and more tunnels. A city – electric lights – crowds. Avenues like chasms rising up on either side of her, grotesque buildings as twisted as the goblins chipped out of the stone itself.

  Everywhere they went the goblins on the street raised up a shout and came running.

  The Mechanic quickened his pace – Grizelda wouldn’t have thought it possible before – but it was no good. Every direction they went they were chased down. Grizelda found the Mechanic and herself surrounded by a crowd, elbowing each other to get at her and shouting a thousand questions. The Mechanic abruptly changed direction, dragging Grizelda along, and ducked into a side alley.

  They had a few moments’ peace in the alley, but the crowd re-formed around them as soon as they got to the other side.

  They were on the edge of a broad, paved city square. Over the heads of the growing crowd Grizelda could see that it was by far the nicest part of town they had yet been to. The stones were broad and even. There was air here. On the far side was a low, officious-looking building that must have been the goblins’ government. The Mechanic looked at Grizelda and Grizelda looked back. Something flashed between them – without speaking, they agreed on what to do next. On cue they crossed the square at a dead run, diverting their course only enough to get around the statue in the middle.

  The Mechanic shoved Grizelda in the door first, then bundled in after her. He slammed it behind them and leaned back, eyes closed.

  Compared to the shouts of the crowd, the loud clacking that surrounded them now was a wonderful relief. They were in a clean, well-lit room filled with rows and rows of typewriters. In the back there were doors that looked like they led to offices. Goblins bustled back and forth carrying armfuls of paper.

  Grizelda and the Mechanic’s peace was short-lived. At the slam of the door, the clerks and the paper-carriers jumped and looked up. All the typewriters were abandoned, all the papers set down as everyone present crowded around to pepper the two of them with questions.

  “Mechanic! What’s going on out in the square?”

  “What’s that ogre doing here?”

  “How did she get here?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said, trying to push past them. “Let me talk to Chairman Grendel.”

  “He’s in a meeting.”

  “Well, get a hold of him anyway!”

  One of the clerks took hold of her none too gently. “You need to come with me
.”

  “But–” She looked behind her, at the goblin mechanic who was now in the middle of a heated argument with a couple of the clerks. She was not too willing to part with the only goblin so far who had not tried to kill her.

  “You need to come with me,” he said with a dangerously more insistent tone. Reluctantly, she followed him.

  The clerk took her into an office, where he handed her off to another goblin who started grilling her about the circumstances of her sudden appearance. The questions came hard and fast: How did she come to be underground? Was she a spy? Did she have any connection to the steel-merchants? Grizelda had to think hard to figure out what she was going to say. Somehow telling these goblins that she was wanted by the Corvanian government didn’t seem like a good idea. So she made up a story about getting lost after wandering down a storm drain to see what it was like. She left out the part about the ratriders, not sure if it would get her into even more trouble.

  The goblin official didn’t seem too convinced. When she got to the part about the gang of workers that were about to beat her to a pulp, he didn’t seem too sympathetic, either.

  “It’s not my province,” he told a messenger who was waiting for them. “Send her to the Foreman of Ogre Relations.”

  Off they went again, down a hall that led deeper into the building. As far as Grizelda could see, there was nothing back here but offices. What could they have so many of them for? Every door they passed, a goblin peeped out to get a look at her.

  The Foreman of Ogre Relations stood up the moment she arrived at his office.

  “How’d that get here?”

  “I don’t know,” said the messenger. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  Grizelda raised her hand. “Sir, I got lost–”

  “Well, she can’t stay here,” the foreman interrupted. “Somebody get the Chairman!”

  “He’s in a meeting.”

  “Then send her to the Chief of Police! Get her out of my office!”

  The messenger took her to the Chief of Police next, who informed them that she ought to go to the Foreman of Ogre Relations.

  In the end they made her wait in a spare room while they decided what to do with her.

  There was no furniture in the room, so Grizelda sat down on the floor and folded her legs up under her. It was bare save for an electric light and a lonely broom leaning in the corner. She didn’t have much else to do now but reflect on what sort of a pickle she was in. She had been dragged out of her home by the police and as good as condemned to death, rescued by strange little people and just as quickly jilted by them, and now she found herself mired in goblin bureaucracy. She admitted to herself she had little idea what was going on.

  “She’s gone!”

  Warden Mant looked up from his work. He’d dismissed Calding less than half an hour ago, and just as he was looking forward to settling down to get something done, now this. The man who’d just burst into his office was nobody important, as far as he knew. Just a gendarme. It sounded important, whatever the fellow was talking about, but he wasn’t making much sense.

  Mant set down his papers. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Lieutenant Calding just told me to – no matter – I was just down in the cells and the prisoner in 403 is gone! The lock’s hanging open!”

  Mant leapt from his seat. “A prisoner’s gone?”

  “I’ll show you!”

  Mant rushed out of his office after the guard, his work left in a flurry that fell, for the most part, onto the floor. His secretary looked up with a little noise, then frowned and kept on writing.

  Chapter 5

  Grizelda had not been sitting very long when the door burst open and a young goblin in a police-looking uniform came into the room. He didn’t spare any time for greeting.

  “You’re to go on trial! Hurry!” Impatient with her efforts to get up, he grabbed on her wrist and pulled.

  “What?” She already found herself out of the closet and running down the hall. She extracted herself from the police officer’s grip and fell in beside him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “They just decided you’re to go on trial! You’re already supposed to be there!”

  “What do you mean, on trial?”

  They ran out of the government building and into the public square. On trial? She’d just escaped from one prison and now she was going to go on trial? She gritted her teeth when she thought of how the ratriders had abandoned her. They’d meant to lead her into the middle of the goblins. Now what?

  The goblins didn’t take as much notice of her this time when she went outside – something bigger was happening. The entire population of the goblin city, it seemed, was in the square. They were going so slowly that at first she thought they were not moving. But they were: slowly but surely all the goblins were filing through an arched doorway in the side of the cavern, high and carved with goblinish script. In that river of goblins, nobody would have noticed two small figures standing on the banks.

  The police officer pulled Grizelda in the other direction. “You go in the back way.”

  He led her into a much smaller tunnel off to the side of the large, carved one. Inside it was dark. She felt the floor slope upward under her feet. The low murmur of thousands of voices seemed to be coming from somewhere very far off. Then she realized it was coming through the wall. Only a few feet of stone separated her from thousands of goblins.

  What was she on trial for? Sorcery? What were they going to do to her?

  The officer turned back to her and all at once slapped a hand to his head.

  “Aw, gee, I forgot the cuffs!”

  He grabbed her wrists distractedly, looked up the ramp, then back at her wrists. He sighed. “Just keep your hands behind your back. Don’t touch anything. You walk in front of me, not too fast, not too slow. Now go! You’ve on!”

  The ramp was so narrow they had a brief struggle to get Grizelda in front. She looked back to the officer for assurance; he gave her a gentle nudge. For what seemed like the umpteenth time that day, she told herself to have courage. What could they do to her, really? A lot. She tried not to think about that as she clasped her hands behind her back, lifted her chin, and marched up the ramp.

  She winced as a bright light splashed down on her. Her march turned into a blind fumble. She couldn’t make out much more than the dim outline of the ramp below her feet, but she kept going. A murmur went up all around her, above and below.

  All at once the ramp beneath her turned into empty space. She’d been about to make another step but she checked it, reeling frantically. She stepped backwards a few paces just to get away from that ledge.

  Slowly, the light-dazzle faded, and she could make out the rows and rows of faces, all around her. She was standing on a platform in the center of a giant sphere. They must have carved it straight out of the rock, she realized. It was as big as a stadium, with risers below her and balconies above, and every one of those seats was filled with a goblin watching her. Oh, God. She swallowed. She felt terribly exposed up there on a platform in the middle of empty space, all the worse because it was without railings.

  She remembered she was supposed to be on trial and put her head back down. Still, she couldn’t help sneaking horrified sidelong glances now and then at all those green upturned faces.

  “How kind–” A raised voice struggled to be heard over the excitement of the crowd. Grizelda looked where the voice was coming from. There was an important-looking balcony set apart from the rest of the seats where eight goblins sat at a table, quills and glasses of water set before them.

  The goblin in the middle stood. “Citizens! Comrades!” he repeated, but it had no effect on the crowd.

  So this was the Chairman Grendel? He didn’t look nearly as terrible as Grizelda had imagined. Or that great, for that matter. He was a diminished goblin, bespectacled and borne down with age. There was something about him that spoke of a great tiredness.

  H
e banged a book down hard against the table. Finally the crowd quieted down.

  “As I was saying, how kind of you to finally show up. Let’s get started, shall we?” He cleared his throat. “Members of the Goblin Union, you are here on grave business. A trespasser has been found on our land. Her presence here goes against all our most ancient laws. For it, she must stand trial.”

  So it was trespassing. She’d heard the goblins were clannish. And they had strange customs. Who knew what sort of a punishment they gave for trespassing?

  “Presiding over this trial will be Foreman Shad of Mining, Sections A-F…”

  The goblin at the far left of the table stood up.

  “Foreman Denco of Manufacturing … Foreman Badambal of Culture … Foreman Ranshin of Ogre Relations…”

  The Chairman named all seven of his foremen in turn, until they were all standing at the table behind him.

  The Chairman had been speaking to the audience, but now he turned around to address his foremen. “In your decision, preserve the interests of the worker and the goblin way of life. This court is now in session.”

  On cue, all the goblins in the room let out a shout, a sort of a cross between huagh! and hoy! that took Grizelda by surprise. She winced. It wasn’t raucous at all; every throat was synchronized so the noise reverberated around the hall like a thunderclap.

  “Would the prisoner like to make a statement?”

  The question came on Grizelda so suddenly that she didn’t know what to say. A dozen ideas occurred to her, but every one of them seemed likely to get her into worse trouble. She stared back at the Chairman, tongue-tied, acutely aware that every person in the room expected an answer. The uncomfortable silence dragged on. Just as she was beginning to panic, the foreman on the Chairman’s right leaned over and whispered something to him. The Chairman nodded.

  “Foreman Rogdo would like to ask the prisoner some questions.”