The Unseen World of Poppy Malone: A Gaggle of Goblins

by Suzanne Harper

  She had taken only four steps when she spotted the goblin. It was not the one she had seen before; she was sure of it. For one thing, this goblin was even smaller, smaller than a hollyhock (she could tell, because he happened to be standing right next to a hollyhock plant). He also seemed less self-assured. He was fidgeting a bit, rocking from one foot to the other and nervously rubbing his fingers together. In fact, that was the only reason she had noticed him. He was wearing green clothing that blended into the leaves; if he had stayed perfectly still, she probably wouldn’t have spotted him.

  He squinted at her parents with a look of extreme concentration. He was so focused, in fact, that Poppy thought she might have a chance to creep up on him without him noticing, and maybe even grab him.

  Holding her breath, she slid one foot forward, then another. As she inched her way slowly to the edge of the porch, she saw him reach toward a faucet on the side of the house. . . .

  The next thing she knew, all of the lawn sprinklers were turned on full force.

  “Aaggh!” Mrs. Malone shrieked, and shot into the air as a jet of water hit her in the back of her knees.

  Mr. Malone turned around and got a blast of cold water in the face. He leaped back, slipped, and began windmilling his arms wildly to regain his balance.

  It didn’t work. He crashed to the ground.

  Poppy was distracted for only a moment, but it was long enough. When she looked back, the goblin was gone.

  Rolly trotted around the corner of the house just as Mrs. Malone helped her husband get to his feet.

  “Rolly!” Mr. Malone limped over to the porch, supported by his wife. He had one hand pressed to his back and was bending over in a funny way. “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

  Rolly looked blankly at his father. “But I didn’t—”

  “Do it,” his father finished for him. “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Now, Emerson, there’s no reason to be sarcastic,” said Mrs. Malone automatically, although even she gave her youngest a reproving look. “Rolly, dear, you really shouldn’t play with the sprinklers.”

  Rolly’s lower lip jutted out. “But I didn’t—”

  “No? Then how did you get all that mud on your clothes?” Mr. Malone exclaimed, just like a prosecuting attorney springing a trap.

  “What?” Rolly looked down at himself. His sneakers were caked with mud. His shorts looked as though he’d spent a fair amount of time sitting in a puddle. And his shirt was streaked with dirt where he had obviously wiped his hands. He looked back up at his father, puzzled. “I don’t know.”

  “No, no, of course you don’t,” said Mr. Malone as he began hobbling gingerly toward the front door. “Amazing how baseballs crash through windows and worms appear in soup and sprinklers turn on all by themselves and you never know anything about it. It’s always a complete mystery to you, isn’t it?”

  “Really, Emerson, you’re going to hurt poor Rolly’s feelings,” Mrs. Malone protested.

  “You know, Lucille, we really should try hypnotic regression to see if he’s lived past lives,” Mr. Malone went on, ignoring her as he stiffly climbed the porch steps. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he was lurking about at the fall of Jericho and the destruction of Atlantis! I’ll bet he was on hand when the Library at Alexandria burned and barbarians stormed the gates of Rome! And I am furthermore quite sure that if some poor soul managed to rise up from the ruins to ask what had just happened”—having reached the porch, he turned to glare down at Rolly—“I’m sure he said, ‘I don’t know!’”

  They all stood silent for a moment. Even Rolly looked impressed by this impassioned speech.

  “But Dad,” Poppy began, thinking of a small goblin hand reaching for the faucet.

  He stopped mid-hobble and glared over his shoulder. “What?”

  She hesitated. “Let me open the door for you.”

  Thanks to Rolly, the Malones knew many interesting things. They knew that an inflatable swimming pool holds enough water to flood a neighbor’s prize-winning vegetable garden, that a ceiling fan can hit a baseball hard enough to break a double-paned window, and that no amount of air freshener can ever completely mask the odor after a small pan of ammonia is left on top of a radiator. They had learned that microwaving plastic army men causes a choking smell that can make grown men cry; that adding an entire box of detergent to the washing machine creates enough suds to fill a laundry room two feet deep; and that a dead mouse can be stored in a freezer for up to five months. Although many people know that magnifying glasses can be used to set twigs and leaves on fire, the Malones could also reel off the response times of fire departments in six cities.

  Considering the results of Rolly’s other experiments, the Incident of the Water Sprinklers was a minor escapade. Nonetheless, he was in disgrace, although it wasn’t clear whether he knew it or, if he did, whether he cared.

  Mrs. Malone insisted that Rolly stay within eyesight at all times, and Mr. Malone clutched his back and shot him dark looks whenever they crossed paths, but Rolly was absorbed with his own thoughts and barely noticed. He didn’t seem to notice anything, in fact, until one morning, shortly after breakfast, when he trotted into the kitchen with larceny on his mind.

  He was going in search of teeth-achingly sweet chocolates called Choc-O-Bombs. Rolly was abnormally fond of this candy and was, in fact, the only Malone who would eat them. (The rest of the family used to enjoy Choc-O-Bombs as well. Then Will pointed out that the gooey cherry-vanilla filling looked like brains and that eating one made him feel like a zombie biting into a human skull. That had put everyone except Rolly off Choc-O-Bombs for life.)

  Mrs. Malone hid these treats high up in the pantry, but that presented no problem to Rolly, who had long ago learned the art of climbing pantry shelves. He had also learned to hide the distinctive red-and-gold Choc-O-Bomb wrappers in places where no one would find them. Any spot behind a curtain or under a couch worked well, since no one in the family dusted or swept, except on the rare occasions when Mrs. Malone came out of her preoccupied daze and declared that unless Something Was Done, their house would be condemned by the department of health.

  But instead of the nice, empty kitchen Rolly expected that morning, he found his older brother and sisters busily packing lunch bags with sandwiches, bags of chips, and (after some firm encouragement from their mother) apples and oranges.

  “What are you doing?” Rolly asked.

  “Nothing,” Will said in a voice so innocent that he ended up sounding decidedly shifty.

  “You are,” said Rolly. “You’re going somewhere. You’re going somewhere without me.”

  “No, we’re not,” said Franny.

  “I want to go, too.”

  “You can’t,” said Poppy, slathering peanut butter on a piece of bread. “We’re going to explore the woods. You’re too little. You wouldn’t like it.”

  “Yes, I would!” Rolly insisted.

  “You really wouldn’t,” Poppy said in a reasonable tone. “We’re going on a long, long, long walk. You’ll get tired.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You always get tired,” said Will. “And then we always have to come home early.”

  “Or you get in trouble, which means we get in trouble because we weren’t watching you,” Franny added.

  “Then stay here,” said Rolly. “Play with me.”

  “Later,” said Poppy. “When we get back.”

  Rolly sat down, sliding in his chair until only his eyes could be seen above the tabletop. “You always say you’ll play with me later and then you don’t.”

  Poppy glanced toward the window. Outside, the bright day beckoned with a high blue sky, sunshine, and, just on the other side of the road, the green mysterious darkness of the woods. “We will, really we will,” she said, her mind already leaping ahead to what adventures the day might hold. “Promise.”

  It was late afternoon when Poppy began to have the uncomfortable feeling that they w
ere being watched. They had spent hours in the woods, following faint trails through tangled undergrowth, searching for secret hiding spaces, and imagining what it would have been like to live there two hundred years ago.

  By lunchtime, Franny had fallen into a small creek, Will had found a triangular rock that was almost certainly an arrowhead, and Poppy had stumbled upon a wasps’ nest (luckily abandoned). They had spotted tracks in the mud and argued amiably for some time about what animal they belonged to. They had seen a snake slither across their path and disappear into the long grass, and had felt the shiver up the spine that even a harmless garter snake could cause. They had discovered a patch of blackberry bushes, so heavy with fruit that they all agreed that they were probably the first people ever to have discovered it. They picked blackberries, feeling like pioneers foraging on the land, eating them until their lips had turned purple.

  This took some time, and they found that the blackberries had taken the edge off their hunger, so it was late in the afternoon before they were ready to eat the lunches they’d prepared. They found a log to sit on and unwrapped their sandwiches. For a few moments, the only sounds were the leaves stirring in the wind, occasional bursts of birdsong, and the constant buzz of insects. Poppy realized that even the most ordinary food, like a peanut butter sandwich, tasted more interesting when eaten outside, a discovery that she made every summer with the same feeling of surprise.

  Once she’d finished eating, she sat for a few minutes listening to water trickling over rocks in the creek, her mind drifting pleasantly from one non-thought to another. Then, gradually, she became aware of a rustling in the bushes behind her. She opened her eyes and sat up a little straighter, willing herself not to turn around and look.

  The rustling stopped. Poppy froze and listened as hard as she could, but she didn’t hear another sound. Still, the back of her neck was prickling as if someone were staring at her.

  Slowly, she stood up, almost holding her breath. The sensation of being watched grew stronger.

  She turned around quickly, scanning the bushes. Nothing.

  She gave herself a slight shake. It’s a normal day in a normal park, she reminded herself. Stop imagining things. Do something normal.

  “Hey, Will.” She walked over to where he was lying on the grass, one arm flung over his face. “Let’s walk back to the creek and look for more animal tracks.”

  “Taking a nap,” he muttered. “Later.”

  Poppy rolled her eyes, but she knew better than to interrupt him when he was dozing off. “What about you, Franny?”

  But Franny was sitting in a patch of sunlight, tilting her face toward the sky with her eyes closed. “Not now,” she said. “I’m working on my fresh, natural glow.”

  “Your what?”

  Franny sighed a deep sigh, as if the bounds of her patience were being stretched beyond endurance. “I read about it in a magazine. Ten minutes of natural light a day will give your face a fresh, natural glow.” She opened one eye to give Poppy a defiant look. “It’s been scientifically proven.”

  Poppy doubted that, but decided not to argue. Fine, she thought. If they want to just sit around, let them. I’m going to . . . She looked around and saw a large, gnarled oak tree with thick, low branches.

  Ten minutes later, she was perched an exhilarating distance above the ground, with a panoramic view of the world and all its inhabitants.

  She settled her back against the trunk and looked around. Her view of the world, as it turned out, was mostly trees, and the only inhabitants appeared to be squirrels running up and down tree trunks and the occasional bird winging by. Far below to her right, she could see Will napping and Franny sunning herself. And far below to her left, she could see the trail wending its way toward home and a small, humanlike figure marching in her direction. . . .

  Poppy sat up suddenly, almost lost her balance, and grabbed the trunk to steady herself. She looked again, and saw that it was Rolly. He was trotting along, his head swiveling from one side of the trail to the other. He was searching for something. Or someone. Three someones, in fact.

  Quickly, she climbed down the tree. They should have realized that Rolly would give their mother the slip and follow them, she thought. They should have been smart enough to cover their tracks. Now it was too late.

  “I just saw Rolly coming this way,” she told Will and Franny. “He’s looking for us.”

  Franny opened her eyes, blinking in the sunlight. “Honestly.” Frowning, she took a ponytail holder from her pocket and pulled her hair back in one swift motion. “I don’t know anyone else who has a little brother who is such a pest.”

  “He just wants to hang out with us,” said Poppy, trying to be fair. “You can’t blame him for that, not really—”

  “I can and I do!” Franny cried. “We’ve told him a million times to stay at home and not bother us. For heaven’s sake. He’s practically a baby. Why doesn’t he find some friends his own age to play with?”

  This suggestion was ignored.

  “He’ll probably want to play hide-and-seek,” Will said gloomily. “And we’ll probably all end up with poison ivy. Everyone except Rolly, of course.” He kicked at a stone. “Has anyone else noticed how complicated our lives got after Rolly was born?”

  Franny’s face brightened. “I know!” she said. “Why don’t we hide so that he has to look for us? Maybe he’ll get tired of looking and go home.”

  “I don’t know,” said Poppy slowly. “What if he gets scared?”

  “Rolly? Scared?” scoffed Will. “Anyway, he’s always hiding from us. It’s only fair to turn the tables for once.”

  Poppy hesitated, but then she heard a low, tuneless humming. It was the sound Rolly made when he was completely focused on the task at hand.

  “He’s just around the bend,” said Will. “Quick! Hide!”

  There was such urgency in Will’s voice that Poppy, without thinking, ran toward the creek. She had noticed a large flat rock covered with moss when they had been looking for animal tracks earlier. It was shielded by a tree and several large bushes. It was a perfect hiding place.

  She pushed through the bushes and sat on the rock, trying to quiet her breathing so that she could hear Rolly’s approach. She heard crackling and rustling as Will and Franny found their own hiding places. And then all was quiet.

  Poppy sat as still as possible, her heart rate gradually slowing down to normal. After a minute or two, Rolly’s humming became louder. By peeking through the bushes, she could just catch a glimpse of him as he walked by on the trail.

  Suddenly, he stopped, as if he’d heard something. He turned in a circle, slowly, peering intensely at the undergrowth. She had the strange feeling that he could see through the bushes and the tree trunk and that he was looking right at her. . . .

  Her stomach clenched. She had always hated playing hide-and-seek when she was little; trying to avoid discovery made her so nervous that sometimes she would jump up just to end the game.

  But then Rolly glanced away, as if something else had caught his attention. After a moment, he kept going down the trail. Poppy let out a sigh of relief, only then realizing that she’d been holding her breath.

  She glanced at her watch. It was getting late. They should go home for supper soon. She’d give Rolly five minutes, and then she’d go after him. . . .

  ***

  But ten minutes later, there was still no sign of Rolly. Poppy had stood up, dusted off the seat of her shorts, and walked down the trail without the slightest sense of foreboding. Rolly hadn’t been walking fast; plus, his legs were short. It had only been ten minutes. She knew he couldn’t have gotten far.

  As she walked farther and farther, however, she started to get worried.

  He’ll be around the next bend, she told herself. Then she’d follow the curve, only to find the trail ahead empty.

  I’ll bet he’s sitting on a log up ahead, she thought. He’s probably getting tired by now. . . .

  But he wasn’t.


  When she looked at her watch and saw that she’d been searching for fifteen minutes, Poppy turned around and headed back down the trail, almost running. She hadn’t gone far before she encountered Franny and Will.

  “Where’s Rolly?” Franny asked. “We should go. It’s getting dark.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” said Poppy. “I saw him head in this direction. I was sitting by the creek when he walked past.” She checked her watch again. “He couldn’t have gotten very far, even if he was running, which he wasn’t, but I can’t find him.”

  “Maybe he turned around and headed home when he couldn’t find us,” Will suggested.

  Poppy gave him an exasperated look. “Will. Don’t you think I’d have seen him? He would have walked right past me.”

  “Do you think he’d leave the trail?” asked Franny. “If he did, he could be anywhere. . . .”

  For a moment, no one said anything.

  Then Franny added, “Mom and Dad are going to be really mad if it turns out we lost Rolly.”

  “He’s not lost,” Poppy snapped. “He never is. He must have realized we were hiding from him, and now he’s hiding from us. He’s just playing a trick on us. As usual.”

  “Okay, let’s split up and look for him,” said Will. “We’ll meet back here in fifteen minutes. If anyone finds Rolly before that, yell. Okay?”

  They all nodded, although Franny’s nod was reluctant. Poppy headed off the trail toward the creek, for no real reason except that she thought Rolly might have been attracted by the sound of the water. She pushed through bushes and stepped over logs, stopping every minute or so to call Rolly’s name. In the distance, she could hear Franny and Will crashing about and yelling for Rolly as well.

  Soon she had scratches on her arms and legs and her T-shirt was soaked with sweat, but even that couldn’t distract her from the cold ball of fear in her stomach. Partly to fill the silence and partly to fight her fear with anger, she began talking out loud.

  “I don’t know why I’m even trying to find you,” she said. “You’re nothing but a bother anyway. If it weren’t for you, my photo album wouldn’t have been ruined in that flood and my favorite pair of jeans wouldn’t have burned up in the dryer. And I’m sick and tired of always having to hunt you down, too. In fact, maybe we should just leave you out here to find your way home. Maybe that would teach you a lesson—oh!”