by Becket
“I will go,” he said to her. “You are our queen. You are the only one we listen to. You tell everyone what to do while I go in and rescue him.”
Good thought about this. Finally after giving up her doubts she said, “All right. You go and we will make sure the string does not break.”
The cobble goblin tied all his string together so that it made one long length of rope. Then the tall goblin tied it around his waist and went in after the hobgoblin.
Outside, the other goblins held on to the string, one very close to the entrance, and the others behind. Good was making sure everything went smoothly. “Don’t let the string touch that broken glass or else it will cut and we’ll lose them. Let’s not make the string too tight or else it might break. That’s it. Keep going. Keep going. They are almost out.”
In another few minutes the tall goblin came out carrying over his shoulder the hobgoblin, who had passed out from looking at a frightening reflection of himself.
“I was a human,” he said when they revived him the next moment with smelling salts, “a horrible human.”
“It’s all right now,” the cobble goblin said. “You’re not a human. You just fainted.”
The hobgoblin glared at him, stood up, and started swinging his sword wildly.
“I didn’t faint,” he shouted. “I just got so tired of waiting for you all nincompoops that I took a little nap.”
“I like that idea,” the bed goblin said through a yawn before curling up on the ground like a cat.
“We don’t have time to nap,” the tall goblin said, pointing to the place where they had last seen the gremlins. “We have to get the next clue. We have to figure out who let the gremlins into our kingdom.”
“That’s right,” Good said in agreement. “Everybody ready to keep going?”
They all nodded their heads, including the bed goblin, even though he was also nodding off to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Dragon Duster
Good the Goblin Queen and the seven goblins moved across the countryside on a dragon duster. It was a wonderful flying machine that looked like a cross between an old crop duster and a large mechanical dragonfly. They stood on the dragon duster’s back as it flew very low to the ground. The wind was whipping wildly through Good’s hair. It was the clock goblin who had recalled the dragon duster field nearby. All goblins flew on them to go great distances in a short amount of time. Flying on this one now would catch them up to the gremlins quickly.
Good had a wonderful view of the Goblin Kingdom. The goblins pointed to sights and spoke lovingly about them with nostalgia twinkling in their large dark eyes.
“Look,” the cobble goblin said, pointing to a tall tower in the distance. “That’s the Tower of the Terrible Troll. He lived in it when he took over our land many centuries ago. Now it’s an ice cream shop. It makes the best flavors you’ve ever had. My favorite is peppermint peanut butter.”
“Look,” the tall goblin said, pointing to a statue in the distance on the other side. “There’s the Jefferson Memorial.”
“Oh, I know what that is,” Good said, thinking of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C., but when she looked she saw nothing like the place she knew about. This one had a goblin carved in stone standing in the middle of a fire pit and holding above his head what appeared to be a sword in one hand and a writing pen in the other.
“That’s the Memorial to Jefferson Brute,” the tall goblin said. “He wrote the song of the Pots and Pans Parade and then he slew anyone who made fun of it.”
Good did not know what to say, except, “He sounds like someone you might admire.”
The tall goblin sighed dreamily. “He’s my hero.”
It did not take too long before they caught up with the gremlins. Good saw now that these little creatures were as small as dolls. They were also dark green and slimy like swamp frogs. They had long pointed ears, black eyes, wide mouths, and many rows of teeth. They were moving fast as they ran and bounded over a field of hollow trees.
“I think that’s them,” the bug goblin remarked.
“Of course it’s them,” the hobgoblin snapped. “Let’s launch some big rockets at them.”
“We don’t have any big rockets,” the tall goblin said. “Besides, we need to capture them alive. We need them to tell us who the mastermind is.”
“Mastermind?” asked Good.
“That’s right,” the clock goblin put in. “The only thing gremlins know how to make is mischief and chaos. They don’t know how to make plans. It’s not in their nature.”
“We need them to tell us who planned for them and the giant to invade our home,” the tall goblin said.
“Couldn’t we hurt them a lot before we did that?” the hobgoblin asked, sounding a little disappointed.
“This is a wonderful plan,” Good said cheerfully. “And you have found another clue!”
“Another clue?” they all asked in surprise, looking all around for another big footprint or anything else that might look clueish.
“The other clue is not on the ground, but is grounded in logic,” she said.
“Logic,” the bug goblin asked in confusion. “Is that like magic?”
Good smiled kindly. “Not quite,” she said. “It is remembering facts, comparing them, and understanding the connection between them. You know that giants and gremlins do not make great plans; that’s fact one. You also know that other creatures are quite good at making plans; that’s fact two. So you add fact one to fact two and you have your answer.”
“And what is it?” the goblins asked eagerly.
“You’ve already come up with it,” she told them. “It’s the second clue. Someone else—someone who is not a giant and not a gremlin—made the plan to invade the Goblin Kingdom.”
The others nodded to one another. “Yes,” they said, “that is a very good clue.”
“I don’t know,” the hobgoblin said with a huff. “It sounds like magic to me.”
The gremlins led them straight into Goblin City.
Good thought it was one of the most marvelous cities she had ever visited. The buildings were giant machines made of moving parts like the inside of clocks and engines. But black smoke was rising out of every chimney on every building. It made the city look brown and smell like coal. And ash was falling down from the sky like snow.
Good thought that she might be able to make this a cleaner place. “Perhaps the City could be powered by steam instead,” she said to herself.
Goblin citizens of Goblin City saw the gremlins swarming over the buildings and they all panicked at the same time! The goblins were not fighters. Most were bakers and bankers and business-goblins. They would rather fight the flu than fight a gremlin. So they ran in fright at the first sight of all those pointy little teeth.
The gremlins ran through the streets, cackling wildly, until they came to the Goblin City Library. Then they went in.
Good and the goblins landed the dragon duster before the library’s front steps.
“Why are they going in there?” the bed goblin asked. “Gremlins would rather eat books than read them.”
“I know how they feel,” the hobgoblin said under his breath.
“This must be another part of the plan!” the cobble goblin answered, snapping his fingers.
“And another clue,” the clock goblin put in.
“Whoever planned this terrible invasion must want them in the library,” the tall goblin said.
Good leaped off the dragon duster. “Come on,” she told the others. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”
Then she ran inside the Goblin City Library. The other goblins followed her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Unsafe Safe
The Goblin City Library was not like any normal library that Good had ever been in. The bookshelves were on spinning gears and the librarian was a robot shaped like a jukebox. To borrow a book you had to put in a token, press a button, and watch the gears swivel
around high overhead as it brought your book.
The gremlins appeared to have put in about a hundred tokens and pressed all the librarian’s buttons at the same time because, when Good and the goblins entered, the bookshelves were spinning madly and books were being thrown in all directions.
“Watch out!” Good shouted as a few books came flying toward them like meteors.
The goblins scattered as books one after another came hurtling toward them. A book on outer space struck the bug goblin in the face. A book on roosters struck the bed goblin in the foot. A book on the Diet of Worms flew straight at the cobble goblin who raised his hands and screamed. Several books on addition and subtraction struck the tall goblin and the clock goblin with pages of word problems. A book on ghosts would have struck the hobgoblin in the forehead, but it was ghostly too and it passed right through him. “Ha-ha!” he said triumphantly. And a book on flowers almost hit the bobgoblin, but he held on to Good who was hiding behind a pillar, and it barely missed him.
Good saw that the gremlins had moved up to the next level. There was a spiral staircase nearby, so she came out of hiding and ran up it.
“This way,” she said to the others.
The goblins followed her up the stairs and onto the second floor. They crouched behind an iron railing and watched the gremlins. Those little monsters were gathered at the back wall where there was a large round door—like the door on a grand safe at a bank.
“What are they doing?” whispered Good.
“They’re at the Unsafe Safe,” the clock goblin said.
“Why are they there?”
“They must be looking for a book that is too dangerous for the library,” the bug goblin said.
“What sort of books might that be?” asked Good.
“No one really knows,” the tall goblin told her.
“But there are rumors,” the bug goblin said. “I’ve heard that there is a book titled Derrick Deadmire’s Book of Dark Magic and Other Smart Ways to Entertain Friends.”
“And I’ve heard,” the cobble goblin added with a shudder, “there’s a book titled A Million Recipes for Vegetables.”
“And I’ve heard,” the bed goblin said, “there’s a book titled How to Be an Evil Lord in Nine Easy Steps.”
These titles frightened the goblins and made them tremble all over.
“But there is another rumor,” the clock goblin now put in, “that there are no books in it, no books at all.”
“What is the point of having a room in a library that does not have any books?” Good inquired.
“That’s because it might not be a room.”
“What else could it be?”
“A Doorackle Alleyway.”
Good had never heard of this before. “What is a Doorackle Alleyway?”
“Do you recall that hallway we went through earlier?” the clock goblin asked.
“The one with all the doors?” said Good.
“That’s right. It was a prototype of the Doorackle Alleyway.”
“Prototype?” the hobgoblin said with the snicker. “Sounds like some kind of dinosaur.”
“In a way it is,” the clock goblin said, not paying any attention to his laughter. “It is an early version of what a Doorackle Alleyway is today.”
“And what is a Doorackle Alleyway today?”
“We went through the Hall of Countless Doors,” the tall goblin said jumping in. “But a Doorackle Alleyway is a door with countless halls.”
“It’s a quicker way to travel,” the cobble goblin said.
Good looked at the Unsafe Safe on the other side of the library. The gremlins were kicking it and hitting it with crowbars and hammers, trying to pry it open.
“If that is a Doorackle Alleyway,” Good said, “then it must lead to somewhere.”
“There is an old story,” the tall goblin said, “that it could lead to the Necropolis.”
“What’s the Necropolis?” asked Good.
“The City of the Dead,” the goblins said together.
“It’s run by a bunch of nasty vampires,” the bed goblin said with a shudder.
“There is something I don’t understand,” the cobble goblin said. “Gremlins do not like Necropolis Vampires one bit—”
“—one bite you might say,” the hobgoblin said with another snicker.
“Stop interrupting,” the cobble goblin snapped, not liking the rudeness of the hobgoblin. “As I was saying, gremlins would never set one foot inside the City of the Dead. Not while the Necropolis Vampires are in charge.”
“That must be another clue,” Good said.
The goblins looked at her. “Oh tell us what it is!” they all said eagerly.
“We know that someone is giving the gremlins orders,” she began. “And we know that they would never go to the City of the Dead. So if it does lead there, then it is very likely that the one who planned the invasion of the Goblin Kingdom is someone coming from the Necropolis.”
The seven goblins thought about this.
“But there is only one person who would have the password for this specific Doorackle Alleyway,” the tall goblin said. “It’s the Queen of the Necropolis.”
And sure enough he was right.
The gremlins finally managed to open the Unsafe Safe. Everyone now saw that it was not a vault, but a long hallway made of gears and pendulums.
“It is a Doorackle Alleyway!” said Good.
Now they saw that someone was standing behind the Door. It was an old woman with a crown on her head made of spoons and a long royal gown made of patches. She was so thin that her fingers looked like bones as they clutched a scepter made of scraps and wires. She looked mean and crinkly. She came out and she glared at the gremlins.
“It’s about time!” she snapped in a cruel voice.
“Is that the Queen of the Necropolis Vampires?” asked Good.
The other goblins nodded with fear glinting in their wide, frightened eyes. The bobgoblin wrapped his arms around Good’s leg and gripped her tightly.
In a hushed voice, full of fear and awe, the cobble goblin said, “It’s Old Queen Crinkle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Old Queen Crinkle
The gremlins huddled around Old Queen Crinkle, Queen of the Vampires of the City of the Dead. They cheered and shrieked for joy in their strange little voices. There were so many of them and the appearance of the Vampire Queen was such a surprise that the goblins were dumbstruck. All they could do was stare and blink on occasion.
The hobgoblin was the first to move.
“She’s not going to get away with this!” he shouted. “Come on everyone! Let’s go get—”
But no one heard what he wanted to get because Old Queen Crinkle had heard him shouting and she used a magic spell that turned him into a block of ice!
She threw more magic spells in the direction of the goblins and they landed all around the hobgoblin, striking the floor and books as the goblins dove to safety behind the bookshelves.
The gremlins came chasing after them, bouncing like a swarm of frogs over books and shelves, with their mouths snapping and their claws clawing, and their little wicked cackles filling the library. It sounded awful! They swarmed around the goblins so that all of them stood in a group with their backs to the frozen hobgoblin.
The gremlins then took out daggers and arrows and forks and letter openers and anything sharp they could find.
The goblins took up thick books and held them like shields to defend themselves.
Good could only watch helplessly as the gremlins surrounded them. She did not know what to do and she was about to give up hope, but then she heard a voice. It was very small and faint, but it was saying to her, “Open me… Open me…”
The small voice was coming from a small book. The bobgoblin had been by her side the whole time and he was now holding the book in his hands, offering it to her with a kind smile. The gremlins had thrown it at them and she had not thought much of it. But now she took it from the
bobgoblin and thanked him for it although she did not know why he was giving it to her. He smiled broader and nodded as she read the title.
It certainly seemed like an interesting title, but she did not know how it could help her. But then she heard the small voice again, calling her from inside the book. “Open me… Open me…”
Good did as it said and she opened it to the first page. She loved reading the first sentences of books. She did not like it when books began with dialogue because she never knew who was talking. But she loved it when the first words said everything she wanted to know about beginning a new adventure. And this book certainly said everything she wanted to know in the first words, which read: Good was a very good girl, but no one understood her, not even her mom and dad.
“Is this story about me?” she asked herself. Then she flipped to the end of the book, but the pages were blank. So she flipped back to the middle, right where the blank pages ended and the writing began. The more she read the more words filled the page. In fact what she just read were those exact same words: The more she read the more words filled the page.
“What sort of book is this?” she asked.
The tall goblin beside her was holding a book titled Great Feats of Goblin Feet. He was using it as a shield against a few gremlins who were trying to poke him with fish forks. He looked over her shoulder and read the title.
“That’s a writography,” he said. “It writes the story of whoever is holding the book.”
“Can’t I skip ahead to see what comes next?” she asked.
“Writographies don’t normally let that happen,” the clock goblin said as he shielded himself with a book titled The Tinkerer: A Mouse’s Tail against a gremlin who was trying to stick him with a very sharp pencil. “However,” he added, “they have been known to let the reader read ahead only in the most desperate situations, like on your deathbed or when caught in a trap. Once it did it for a friend who was trapped at a high school dance. You can’t get more desperate than that!”
