Nine Goblins(30)

Sings-to-Trees snorted. “Sure. Pretty nature. Unicorns, griffins, hummingbirds, sylphs, those little dragon-butterfly things…the animals that don’t smell bad, and look pretty. But you get an eggbound cockatrice that needs its cloacal vents oiled three times a day for a week, and suddenly everybody has pressing engagements elsewhere.”

(“What’s a cloacal vent?” Mishkin asked Algol, who told him. Both twins turned a little grey and gazed at Sings-to-Trees with awed disgust.)

“And just try to get them to patch up a troll. Trolls are wonderful.” He was pacing now. Nessilka got the impression that this was a rant he’d been working on for a long time, and he didn’t often get a new audience. “They’d let you saw off their head without flinching. I love trolls. And they keep you in all the goat meat you can eat, too. But if one gets lost and goes wandering through some elf’s backyard, are they understanding? Noooo, it’s all ‘Call out the guards, there’s a rogue troll on the loose!’ Bah! Trolls are like kittens.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of Wiggles for emphasis, then paused.

“Which reminds me, let me get you some milk for that little guy.”

“So how did you learn to speak Glibber at all?” asked Murray, while Sings-to-Trees poured out a saucer of milk for the kitten and Murray made tea. All eight of the uninjured goblins had crowded around the long table in the kitchen. The wood was scarred from countless claws and the edges had a distinctly gnawed look.

“There used to be a lot of goblins here. Some were my friends. I used to treat their pigs.” He smiled. “Sometimes I’d treat them, too—I don’t know if the state of goblin medicine has advanced much in the last hundred years—”

“No, it’s still pretty much “amputate at the neck,” said Murray.

The elf nodded. “I was sorry when the tribe left. They were company, anyway. Most elves don’t come out this far. The humans aren’t bad, really. I help their animals sometimes. Somebody comes up from the town every couple of days with cheese or bread or some such.”

Algol, Murray, and Nessilka slid glances at each other, then quickly away. Murray looked at the ceiling and Algol looked at the floor. Nessilka ran a finger through a groove on the side of the table, which seemed to be a tooth mark from something with teeth the size of her thumb.

“Has anyone come up in the last few days?” she asked quietly.

The elf’s forehead twisted. “There was bread and cheese…no, that was a while ago. Now that you mention it, no. Nobody’s dropped off food for almost a week.”

Nessilka nodded slowly. “We were just at the village. Well, at a farmhouse. There’s nobody there.”

“You mean they left?”

“No…I mean, there’s nobody there. The wagon’s there, but no people. No animals. A meal left in mid-bite.” She shook her head. “We didn’t check the village, obviously, but we didn’t see anyone.”

The elf shook his head. “That’s odd. That’s really worrisome. Perhaps I should go look.”

Nessilka didn’t want to go anywhere near that farmhouse again, but—well—he had fixed Thumper and he did speak their language and he wasn’t turning them in. It would probably be better if he didn’t get a chance to go off alone and have second thoughts about that last bit, come to think of it.

“We’ll go with you, in the morning,” said Nessilka. Murray made a faint noise of protest and she silenced him with a glare. “We can at least show you where the abandoned farm was.”

“Thank you. You’re more than welcome to stay here for the night—your friend’s going to be on his back for at least three days, even as hard as goblin heads are. I want him in here, so I can check on him every few hours, but if you all don’t mind sleeping in the barn…”

“With real straw?” asked Mishkin.

“And a real roof?” asked Mushkin.

“All the straw and roof you want.”

The twins cheered.

“We should probably get dinner started, too.”

Nessilka raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you want to feed all eight of us? You’re helping Thumper already. I don’t want to eat you out of house and home.”

Sings-to-Trees laughed in what he probably thought was a maniacal fashion, but there was something so inherently harmless about him that it looked more like he was practicing a peculiar bird call. “Are you kidding? Finally, an excuse to get rid of all of that zucchini! I planted two plants this year, and now not even the trolls will come by for fear I’ll throw zucchini bread at them.” He started for the door.