Close Kin (19 page)

"You stay in there by the
fire," she ordered. "I'll be there in a minute.

"What's a
minute?" demanded the little boy.

It never ceased to amaze Emily that
the twins were so trusting
and affectionate
with the old gargoyle. They clung to the teacher like
burrs. No child in
the goblin kingdom would do such a thing. They all knew about Lore-Master Ruby.

"You'd
better do what she says," she warned Jack. "If you don't,
she'll
make your tongue a foot long, and it won't fit in your mouth anymore."

The
boy looked shocked at this, but Ruby just patted his head.

"That's
ridiculous," she told him calmly. "Run along now and wait for
me." Regaining his confidence, he dashed through the door. They heard a
loud splash as it closed.

Ruby
immediately turned and gave Emily a glare that could have
blistered
skin.
"How dare you!"
she hissed. "You're trying to
frighten those little children!"

"I am not," protested the
young woman, looking blank. "You work that spell all the time!"

"I wouldn't do
such a thing to a poor little orphan."

Emily jumped to her
feet, her patience at an end.

"You did it to me more times
than I could count! And I'm an orphan, too!"

"You!"
scoffed the ugly old teacher, turning to the door. "You've
never suffered a day in your life. You've never been a
thing like these
children."

Emily gritted her teeth as the door
slammed, her face on fire. Then she grabbed her cloak and marched from the
room.

Outside, snow was falling softly in a
quiet night. There was almost no wind at all. Richard had gone to the stable
yard to eat a
bag of nuts after Ruby had
pointed out the mess he was making with the shells. He looked up at Emily's
furious expression and cracked a
walnut with a rock.

"What are you and the lady
fighting about this time?" he asked cheerfully, holding out the nutmeat.

"She's not a lady," growled
Emily, taking it, "and I wish you'd stop calling her that."

"Sure she is," replied the
young goblin, "as you'd know if you'd
seen
as many of 'em as I have. There's women and ladies, let me tell
you, and
they're hardly the same thing. It's their respectability that
makes the difference. You can see it with half an
eye." He cracked a
nut between his teeth and spit out the shell.

Emily thought
about this as she took a nut from his bag. "My sis
ter's
a lady," she reflected. "I'm not," she added with a sigh.

"But you're fun," said
Richard generously, "and that's saying something. You're an enlightening
person to be around."

Emily smiled to herself. Although he
had had no schooling, Richard loved big words, and she enjoyed listening to the
creative uses he found for his ambitious vocabulary.

"Ruby
says I wasn't ever like you and the twins, that I never had a hard day. But
that's not true. I'm an orphan just like you are."
"Well, now, I
don't know that you could really call me an
orphan,"
objected the goblin, "since I never had a mum or dad to
lose. Mr. Simmons raised me, and a fine job he
did. He took care of
me right along."

"I thought you'd always been in
the streets," remarked Emily. "Did this Mr. Simmons take you into his
house?"

"Took me
into his van, was more like it," asserted the boy. "Trav
eled
with me the length and breadth of this isle. Showed me off in
every little hamlet along the way, at a copper a
peek or tuppence for
the family."

"You mean he turned you into a
sideshow?" demanded the astonished young woman.

"The one-and-only Devil
Boy," announced Richard with gusto,
smacking
open another nut. "The only authenticated Fiend from Hell ever to be kept
in captivity. With fangs, claws, and horns --
that's my ears -- and a
cow's tail sewed in my trousers. We'd park,
and
he'd drum up a crowd and then pull back the curtain, and I'd
be in a cage, clutching at the bars and snarling.
For the grand finale,
he'd launch
into a church hymn, and I'd screech and fall into a faint.
We did it right, let me tell you. He was a most
assiduous showman."

"But -- I mean -- was he kind to
you? You said he took care of you. Did he?"

"That he did," replied the
boy good-naturedly. "He made sure I
understood
my part. Kept me down to one meal a day, but it was all
for the good of
the act. 'Richard, my boy,' he'd say while he was tucking into a leg of mutton,
'me old heart bleeds to keep this from
you,
but no one ever paid their brass to see a well-fed Devil Boy. Skin
and
bones, that's what they come to see, and we got to give them
what they want.' He was laborious, was Mr.
Simmons, most labori
ous indeed."

"And he
made you sleep in a cage?" exclaimed Emily in disgust.
"'Course
not!" Richard laughed. "No, the cage was just for the
act. At night, he locked me up in a box so no one
could steal a peek
at me. Evenings, I'd sweep the van and tend the fire
while he'd take a pull at a bottle and tell tales about his missus that ran off
with a
fortune-teller. We were amiable
together, the two of us, and life was
benevolent."

"Then why'd you
leave?" Emily wanted to know.

"I didn't.
The lads broke in and stole my box on a bet. When
they
got back to their place and let me out, they fell on the ground
laughing. They made me the lucky-touch of the
gang. It was the lads
that taught me
to pick pockets, to lift the nose-wipes and wallets and
such. Didn't we
have some jolly times! Didn't we just! But two of
their best were pulled and tucked up proper. Put in lavender -
hanged,"
he added at Emily's baffled expression.

"The lads said I'd turned their
luck, and they drove me away.
That's the
lowest I ever was. I thought I might as well do myself in.
But that's
when I found my family, and I've been in charge of 'em ever since. Though it's
nice to see the lady taking such good care of 'em now," he confided.
"It's hard work raising a family."

Emily thought
about being a child on the streets and looking
after two hungry babies. Ruby had spoken the truth. Emily
had
never been what they were.

"I suppose I should let her take
you home, where you'll all be
safe,"
she admitted. "It is the unselfish thing to do. But I just hate to
give
up like this."

Richard nodded wisely. He'd heard all
about Seylin, elf-hunter and erstwhile member of the King's Guard.

"You're wanting to follow your
soldier," he said. "I don't blame you a bit."

Emily
sighed. "I just wish I knew what Marak wanted me to do."
"I wouldn't let a king's ideas make up your
mind," counseled the
boy. "You do what you think
best, and I'll back you against anybody.
Kings
never would have cared for me, let me tell you. If they'd caught
me,
they'd have made me dance at the end of a rope."

He held up a nut
and tried out the newly learned Fire Spell on it.
When
it burst into flames, he dropped it into the snow.

"What's he
like, anyway, the ugly people's King?" he asked with
pensive
curiosity.

Even Emily's glib tongue and fertile
imagination balked at the impossible task of describing Marak.

"He's a good King," she
mused, trying to think of what to say.
"He's
fair, and he hardly ever stays angry very long. He's married to
my
sister," she added parenthetically. Richard's pale golden eyes almost
popped out of his head.

"A King and your sister!"
he exclaimed. "That makes you royalty, doesn't it!"

Emily grinned.
"You could say that my life has been pretty benevolent,
"
she replied.

The argument
continued the next day in the carriage. They
weren't very far from the goblin kingdom now, and the
weather was
awful. Ruby
kept the carriage as tightly sealed as possible, but it was
still very cold. She stayed in her regular form so that
she could hold
the twins close and
keep them warm.

"We'll be home tomorrow if we
travel through the night," she pointed out. "Em, I expect you to do
the right thing for these little ones.

"But she wants
to follow her soldier," protested Richard.

"Stop encouraging her," the
teacher ordered him firmly. "The
King
commanded us goblins not to interfere in Seylin's work, so I'll
thank
you to be a good goblin and not interfere."

"I've got nothing against kings
-- live and let live, that's my plan -- but I've never let their orders worry
me."

"You wait until Marak gets his
hands on you," declared Ruby. "You'll be singing a different tune
then."

The goblin boy turned pale at these
words and stared despon
dently at his boots.
"I've said I'll back her, and I'll back her," was all
he would
answer. "No king has a hand on me yet."

Emily didn't
speak. She thought about the elf girl's book in their
pack
and Marak Whiteye's betrayal of his mother's dreams, about
their unexpected discovery in London and Ruby's
growing fond
ness for the little
humans. The quest hadn't been a failure. They had
found some valuable things. But they hadn't found
what Emily
really wanted.

"Marak knew I was hunting for
Seylin when he let me out," she said slowly. "He told me I would find
what he wanted me to find."

"And you
haven't found one hint about where Seylin is,"
observed
Ruby. "Not in this whole long time."

"That's true," agreed
Emily, her heart sinking. "Maybe Marak doesn't want me to find him. But
you don't know, Ruby. Maybe he does. He could have just made me stay in the
kingdom."

"How long
are you going to drag us around while you try to
make
up your mind? I hardly call that responsible behavior."

The carriage
stopped. They were changing horses. Emily leaned
forward and lifted the leather flap over the window to
peek at the vil
lage outside.

"You're right, Ruby," she
said, amazed to hear herself say the words. The old goblin was amazed to hear
them, too.

"So you
think I'm right," she remarked suspiciously. "Right
about
what?"

"That it
would be irresponsible to drag you around. I know
Marak wouldn't want that. And I think -- or, rather, I know
-- that
it's about time I did
something Marak wanted. He's been like a
father
to me, and I can't say that I've done much in return."

"Then you'll come back to the
kingdom," declared Ruby triumphantly.

Emily hesitated.

"I'm just going to do one more
thing," she said. "I'll ask in this
town
about Seylin, and if I don't learn anything, I'll give up. It
won't take
any time. We're stopped for a few minutes anyway."

"I'm
coming with you," asserted the teacher. "I'm not falling for
one
of your tricks."

Emily stood on
the frozen ruts of the little road, struggling against
tears. A man passed them, leading their tired team to the
stable. "
Ask him," whispered the squirrel
on her shoulder.

"No, not
him," she answered. "I'll just go a little farther." I don't
know
why, she thought. This is completely hopeless. Seylin, why didn't I listen when
you came to talk to me? How could I just send you away?

The door of the
inn opened, and a girl came out. She was
warmly
dressed, and her fair hair was held neatly in a large blue
bow. She looks happy, thought Emily forlornly.
She looks like I used
to look. As the girl passed by, she glanced over
and gave Emily a friendly smile.