The Unseen World of Poppy Malone: A Gaggle of Goblins

by Suzanne Harper

  “You’re right, Poppy,” said Will sarcastically. “Mom and Dad are wasting their time looking for vampires and ghosts. We, on the other hand, know what we’re doing. We’re looking for goblins!”

  Poppy glared at him. “This is completely different,” she said before stalking down the trail.

  Even as she walked away, she knew why she was feeling so angry. It was reason number three: she was beginning to think that she might actually be wrong.

  They had now spent two hours in the woods. Poppy had counted sixteen new mosquito bites. Franny had flicked off three spiders and now kept brushing anxiously at her hair every ten seconds. Even Will, who normally didn’t mind bugs or dirt or getting sweaty, was beginning to look frayed around the edges.

  Worse, they had found no trace of goblins. In fact, they hadn’t found any clues at all.

  Poppy hated to admit it, but she was beginning to suspect that she had missed something major, some incredibly obvious clue, that she had been outsmarted by the goblins. Maybe they were spending all their time looking in the wrong places . . . they could spend days, months, years looking in all the wrong places. After all, there was (by definition) only one right place to look and millions of wrong places.

  Behind her, Franny suddenly let out a squeal and began batting at her head. “Oh, ugh, get it off me!”

  “What’s wrong now?” asked Will. He looked at her hair, finally pulling off a small leaf. He held it up in front of her face. “Oh, I see. You were attacked by a crazed leaf.” He tossed it on the ground. “No need to thank me.”

  Franny glared at him, then at Poppy. “I hate bugs, I hate spiders, I hate nature, I hate being outside, I hate being hot, I hate sweating, and I hate doing something that is completely stupid.”

  “You know what your problem is, Franny?” asked Will. “You’re always holding back. You need to learn to express yourself more.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Franny. “Let’s face it, Poppy’s got us worked up for nothing. I bet this whole thing is just one of Rolly’s tricks.”

  Poppy didn’t bother to respond to this. She knelt down and studied the ground.

  “What are you looking for?” Franny asked. “Why did you stop here?”

  “I’m searching for clues,” Poppy said absently.

  “Clues?” Franny scoffed. “What kind of clue could we possibly find in this wilderness? There’s nothing here but dirt and bugs and rocks and—”

  “And this.” Poppy delicately brushed a few leaves to the side of the trail. Gleaming up at them from the dirt was a crumpled piece of gold paper.

  “That’s a wrapper from a Choc-O-Bomb,” said Will, crouching beside her. “It must have fallen from Rolly’s pocket.”

  “So?” Franny stood with her arms folded. She still looked cross. “He could have dropped it the other day.”

  “Look, there’s another one!” Will pounced on a second wrapper a few feet away, half hidden under a mossy log. “Maybe he was dropping them to give us a way to follow him!”

  Franny stopped looking cross and began to look scared. “We really should get Mom and Dad,” she said.

  “Let’s just see if we can follow the trail a little farther,” said Poppy. “Look, there’s another one. . . .”

  Once they knew what they were looking for, it was easy to follow the trail of chocolate foil wrappers through the woods and right up to the base of a gnarled and massive oak tree that sat at the edge of the clearing.

  Franny called out, “Rolly? Can you hear me?” She took a deep breath and yelled even more loudly, “Roll-eeee!”

  Poppy’s hand clapped over Franny’s mouth.

  “Shh, be quiet; do you want to let everyone know we’re here?” Poppy hissed into her ear. “Let’s fan out, see if we can find any more clues. The trail can’t end here.”

  With a few more grumbles, Franny headed in one direction and Will in another. Poppy decided to climb the oak tree. From a higher vantage point, she reasoned, she might be able to spot something: a piece of clothing, a trampled section of grass, the glint of another chocolate wrapper. . . .

  She easily swung herself up to a low branch, then settled down with her back to the trunk. She could hear Will thrashing through bushes to her left and faint squeals from Franny (who had undoubtedly encountered another bug) to her right.

  From her perch, she could see a thin branch on a nearby tree quiver as a squirrel ran along it. Other than that, there was little movement. It was a hot, breathless day. The leaves were still; the only sound was the faint hum of an airplane flying far overhead.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a small disturbance in the still, silent day. Carefully, she slewed her eyes to one side.

  There. Trotting along the trail was a small goblin, wearing a pack on his back.

  She sat up a little straighter and glanced toward where she had last seen Franny and Will. They were nowhere in sight. In fact, she couldn’t even hear them anymore. And now the goblin had left the trail and was walking toward the big rock at the base of the oak tree.

  He lowered his pack to the ground with a heavy sigh. Then he knocked three times on the rock. Poppy heard a deep groaning sound, then an opening appeared in the ground. The goblin picked up his pack and climbed down through the hole.

  Before she even knew what she was doing, Poppy found that she had skinned down the tree and was on the ground. Two long strides took her to the rock.

  She hesitated, wondering if she should call out to Will and Franny.

  “I still don’t know what we’re doing out here. . . .” Franny’s voice was faint, but Poppy could hear the whining note clearly. “. . . I can’t believe Poppy believes in goblins. . . . I think she’s been hanging out with Mom and Dad too much. . . .”

  Poppy gritted her teeth. She would show Will and Franny that she wasn’t imagining things. She would prove to them that she knew what she was talking about. She knocked three times fast on the rock.

  The ground disappeared, and she plummeted into darkness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Poppy fell too fast to be afraid. She landed on the ground with a thump that knocked the wind out of her lungs and every thought she had out of her brain. For what seemed like a very long time, she simply lay still on the ground and tried to remember how to breathe.

  After a few seconds, she tried to yell for help, but only managed something that sounded like a breathy squeak. Above her head, she could hear Franny and Will yelling her name over and over like maniacs. Poppy felt a little pleased at the sound of panic in their voices, but this was overshadowed by the fact that they were making so much noise they couldn’t hear her trying to get their attention. She tried calling their names one or two more times, then decided to sit still and enjoy the ability to breathe for a while before trying again.

  She pulled her mini-flashlight from her pocket and flicked it on. As she waved the beam around, she saw that she was in a cave about the size of the kitchen at home. It smelled dank and damp, and she could feel a cool breeze that seemed to come from somewhere deep underground.

  She could see a faint area of lightness overhead and realized that was the hole she had fallen through. Her heart slowed down as she realized that she wasn’t hurt and that it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to get out—the rock wall seemed quite knobbly; she could probably find some footholds, enough to clamber up to the opening. Or, if worse came to worst, Will and Franny could go get a rope and pull her out.

  Will and Franny’s voices seemed to be drifting away.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “I’m down here!”

  “Poppy!” Will’s voice came closer. “Where are you?” Now he sounded as if he were right over her head.

  She tried to warn him. “Will, stop! There’s a—”

  But it was too late. Will crashed through the hole and landed next to her.

  “Oof,” he said. “Ow.”

  “—hole in the ground,” she finished, rather unnecessarily.

  “Yes,” he said. Even
in the gloom, she could see that he was lying on his back and staring pensively up at the roof of the cave. “I noticed.”

  “What are you two think you’re doing?” They both looked up to see Franny’s face framed in the opening. She looked hot, sweaty, and very annoyed.

  “First Poppy vanishes from sight and then Will decides to go charging through the bushes right after her,” she went on. “You’re both complete idiots, if you ask me.”

  “We’re fine, thanks,” Will said, glaring up at her.

  “Now I suppose I’ll have to go home and tell Mom and Dad, and they’ll probably have to call a rescue squad to get you out of there.” Franny started to straighten up. “Honestly, I don’t know what you two would do without—”

  Whatever she was about to say was lost as the ground near the edge of the hole gave way and Franny fell into the cave. Fortunately, her fall was broken, so she didn’t land on the ground as Poppy and Will had. Unfortunately, her fall was broken by Will.

  “Oof,” he said. “Get . . . off . . . me. . . .”

  Franny didn’t move. “This is just great,” she said, gazing bitterly at the small piece of blue sky she could see through the hole. “Just fantastic.”

  “Franny . . .” Will wheezed. His face was turning purple. “. . . off . . . me . . .”

  “Now we’re all trapped down here and there’s no way out and no one knows where we’ve gone,” she said in a musing voice. “Remind me. Whose brilliant plan was this?”

  “Watch . . . out,” Will managed to gasp. “Spiders!”

  “What? Where?” Franny jumped to her feet and began frantically brushing at her hair and clothes. “Are any of them on me?”

  Instead of answering, Will closed his eyes and took in a deep shuddering breath.

  “I think one crawled down my neck!” Franny pulled her shirt away from her body and shook it. “Will! Why didn’t you say something?”

  Will opened one eye enough to glare at her. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it was because I couldn’t talk because someone was sitting on me!” He raised himself on one elbow and looked around the cave. “What happened?”

  “I think that’s pretty obvious,” said Poppy. “We fell through a hole in the ground.”

  Will frowned. “I didn’t see any hole when we were in the clearing the other day—”

  “Of course not,” Poppy answered, feeling, in spite of her fear, a certain pride in having been proven right. “I saw a goblin on the trail, so I followed him. He knocked on the rock and the hole opened up, so I followed him and then I fell through the hole—”

  “I can’t believe it!” Franny thrust her hands through her hair. “I can’t believe we’re stuck down here because of your goblin fixation.”

  “It’s not a fixation—” Poppy began, but Franny turned her back on her and addressed Will.

  “What do you think?” she asked. “Could we climb out of here somehow?”

  Will stared at the hole in the cave ceiling, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Maybe,” he said. “If I stood on your shoulders, I might be able to pull myself up there—”

  Franny shot him a look. “Nice,” she said. “Why don’t I stand on your shoulders?”

  “Because you weigh more than me,” Will pointed out. “It only makes sense—”

  Franny wheeled around. “Are you saying that I’m fat?” she asked dangerously.

  “No, I’m just saying that there’s a good chance that my knees might buckle and that you would drop to the ground like a stone,” said Will.

  “I can’t believe you’re saying that I’m fat!” Franny’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe that my own brother—”

  “Franny! Will!” Poppy snapped. “You’re missing the point.”

  They both swung around to stare at her. “Forget about getting out of the cave! We have to rescue Rolly! He’s been captured by goblins!”

  “You keep saying that,” said Will. “And we keep not believing you.”

  Poppy took a breath and counted to ten. “Look,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Everything that’s happened to us makes perfect sense. It’s just like that book I was reading about the little people. There are all kinds of stories about people who followed a fairy through a door in the side of a hill and found themselves in another world—”

  Franny stopped pacing long enough to give Poppy an accusing look. “I thought you said you saw a goblin.”

  “That’s not the point! The point is that people have been telling stories for centuries about small creatures who live underground and only come out to make mischief for mortals,” said Poppy. “Doesn’t that sound like what’s been happening to us?”

  Will sighed and stared at the ground. Franny twirled a piece of hair around her finger and gazed up at the hole in the ceiling. Poppy stood still except for her tapping foot, mentally willing them to understand what she was saying, to accept what she had seen, to believe her.

  “You know what you’d be saying if you were reading about this case in the PSI newsletter,” Will said finally. “You’d lecture everybody about how all the things that have been going wrong at the house can be explained by natural causes, and about how people’s eyes play tricks on them all the time, and how everyone sees what they want to see—”

  “I would not!” said Poppy. She wasn’t sure if she was more hurt by the fact that Will didn’t believe her or by the fact that he said she was lecturing people when all she was really doing was reasonably pointing out certain logical flaws in their reasoning.

  “Yes, you would, Poppy, and you know it,” Franny joined in. “You’re always telling people that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So where’s your evidence?”

  Poppy didn’t answer. She was afraid that if she tried to speak, she might cry.

  Instead, she turned her back on Will and Franny and began shining her flashlight across the walls of the cave. As it flickered across the back of the cave, it revealed a dark opening. She stood still for a long moment, staring into the darkness.

  “That looks like a tunnel,” she said finally. “I wonder where it goes?”

  She didn’t have to turn around to know that Will and Franny were exchanging wary glances. She could hear it in Will’s voice when he said, “Don’t be crazy, Poppy. First, let’s figure out how to get out of here, then we’ll tell Mom and Dad what’s happened and let them find out where the tunnel goes. All right?”

  Poppy began digging through her backpack. “I’m pretty sure I put some reflective tape in here,” she said. “We can use that to make markers so we can find our way back out—”

  “Poppy, for heaven’s sake, you’re supposed to be the smart one!” Franny snapped. “What happens in every story about people who decide to explore a cave on a whim? They die, that’s what happens.”

  “We won’t go far,” Poppy promised. She moved closer to the tunnel. As she did so, her flashlight’s beam wandered across the dirt floor. It caught a dull gleam of tinfoil, wavered, and returned. Poppy reached down and picked up the candy wrapper and smoothed it open.

  Another Choc-O-Bomb.

  They stood in silence for what seemed like a long time. Poppy could hear the faint drip, drip, drip of water from somewhere deeper in the cave.

  Then Franny said, in a trembling voice, “There’s no way Rolly got down here on his own. He’s too little.”

  “Exactly! That’s what I’ve been telling you for the last three hours,” said Poppy, holding on to her temper with an effort. “The goblins took him.”

  “Or he fell down here just like we did,” Will pointed out.

  “Fine. Forget the goblins, if that makes you feel better,” Poppy said. “We still have to get him back.”

  “On our own?” asked Will.

  “In the dark?” asked Franny. “There might be spiders.” She shuddered. “Or bats.”

  “Both, probably,” said Poppy, rooting through her backpack again. “It is a cave. I brought an extra flashlight, just in
case.” She handed it to Will. “Here.”

  He took the flashlight in a halfhearted way. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea. Franny’s right. We should go get some help.”

  Poppy glared at him. “What if something happens to Rolly while we’re gone?”

  “What if something happens to us?” asked Will. “We don’t even know for sure that Rolly’s down here!”

  “The candy wrapper—” Poppy began.

  Will waved that aside. “Rolly’s not the only person who eats Choc-O-Bombs. Someone else could have dropped it.”

  “That’s right!” Franny said with relief. “Probably lots of people have explored this cave. It would be so stupid to get lost in this horrible cave just because you found some litter on the ground!”

  Poppy chose to ignore this. “You two can stay here if you want,” she said. “But I’m going after Rolly.”

  She started into the tunnel without even bothering to look back, her shoulders squared and her head held high. Maybe Will and Franny were too scared to go up against a gaggle of goblins, but she was made of sterner stuff. She wasn’t going to let her little brother be spirited away by some pint-sized cave dwellers. And after she’d rescued Rolly and they had both returned safely home, she would be proven right and they would all have to admit that they had been completely and totally wrong—

  “Poppy, wait!” said Will.

  He grabbed her shoulder, making her flashlight beam slide across the cave wall.

  “We don’t have time—” Poppy had started to say when the flashlight suddenly revealed a goblin sticking out his tongue at her.

  “Hey!” She jumped back, the flashlight beam jerked to one side, and the face disappeared again into darkness. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Franny asked.

  “The goblin!”

  Franny rolled her eyes. “If you’re trying to scare us, Poppy, it’s not working. And I personally think that’s a very childish thing to do, especially at a time like this—”

  Poppy wasn’t listening. Carefully, she swept her flashlight back and forth across the rocky surface until—there! With an effort, she steadied her hand, then nodded toward the wall.