In a Glass Grimmly (11 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Goblin Market

O
nce upon a time, a boy and a girl and a frog stood at the peak of a mountain, looking out over a great valley. Two broad roads wound from the distance into the bowl of the valley, forming a crossroads right at its center. All around the crossroads, and spreading out over what must have been a hundred acres, was something that hit the two children like a punch to all their senses at once. If you can imagine what a punch to your senses might feel like.

Once they got over the shock of it, they recognized it for what it was. It was a market. The most fantastic market that has ever been. Fragrances rose to their nostrils and beckoned them. Sweet music floated on the air and called to them. Bright flags and fabrics flapped gently in the suddenly warm wind.

Jack and Jill threw themselves down the scree slope, slipping and laughing and sliding on their bottoms, until they reached the foot of the mountain. They began to cross the flat floor of the valley. Soon they came to a stone buried in the earth. Inscribed upon the stone were words. They read:

Come in, come in, we’ll make you a buyer.

Jack and Jill, not knowing what to make of it, walked on. After a few yards they came to another stone. This one said:

We have everything anyone’s ever desired.

They looked up at the market. It seemed bigger than it had just a moment ago. It smelled better, too.

Ten feet on, they came to another stone. It read:

You’ll feel like you’re floating higher and higher.

The market looked even bigger now. They walked on and came to another stone.

When you finally get what you’ve always desired,

They glanced up again, and the market had burgeoned out to the horizon, its poles and flags piercing the sky. Soon, they came to yet another stone:

Your life seems to sink into deepening mire—

Jack and Jill were pretty sure they knew what “mire” was going to rhyme with. Sure enough, the next stone said,

Why do you let it? Take what you desire!

They weren’t far from the edge of the market now. It thrummed before them like the great ocean itself, beckoning them, calling them.

They plunged in.

Jack and Jill found themselves in the midst of the most magnificent market you can possibly imagine.

Go ahead, try to imagine the most magnificent market you possibly can.

Have you?

All right. Not good enough. Not even close.

First of all, was the market you were imagining filled with
goblins
?

Oh, it was?

Okay.

But did it have stalls selling gemstones and gold ingots the size of your head?

Did it have stacks of coins, bronze and silver and gold, crazily stretching far above the merchant men?

Were there carpets that levitated, tapestries that danced, and silks that appeared and disappeared depending on the angle of the light?

Was there food of every shape and size and smell and taste and color, from buttery star-shaped cakes to spits of meat that dripped golden oil?

Was there a mechanical menagerie, where tigers and peacocks and crocodiles, all made from gears and pistons but covered in real fur or feathers or skin moved around and growled and squawked and grunted?

Did the market you imagined have all that?

It did?

Oh.

Fine.

Well, what do you need me for? Go ahead and imagine the rest of the chapter yourself.

So Jack and Jill walked through this magnificent market, marveling at the gemstones and the gold, the dancing tapestries, the succulent food, the mechanical beasts.

But mostly, they marveled at the goblins.

The goblins, you see, were all grown men, and yet none was taller than either Jack or Jill. They had deep black eyes with no whites at all. And lank black hair. But their skin was the strangest thing about them. It was a pale green—not so green that you would confuse it with key lime pie; nor so pale that you’d think they were just seasick. About halfway in between key lime pie and seasick. That was the color of the goblins’ skin.

Now if you’ve ever read books with goblins, or seen movies with goblins, or even played video games with goblins, you will want to tell me that I am wrong, and that goblins, in fact, do not look at all as I have described them. You will want to tell me that goblins have hunched backs, red eyes, pointy ears and chins, sharp teeth, and skin that is very very very green.

You must know that this image you have of goblins is a terrible lie. It was first circulated by a powerful and ubiquitous crayon company who shall here remain nameless, when they discovered that, try as they might, they could not make a shade of green that matched the tone of a goblin’s skin. They made it too light, and the goblins looked seasick; they made it too dark, and they looked like slices of key lime pie. “Goblin green?” they said. “Impossible!” So they started telling kids that, really, that bright green that already came in the box was just the right color, and, as an added bonus, the bright red was the perfect color for the eyes. And you know what? All the kids believed them. I bet you did, too.

Well, now you know better. Pale green skin. And, as I said, deep black eyes, with no whites at all, and lank black hair that they treat in all different kinds of ways—side part, ponytail, comb-over to hide balding, and so on. Their faces were all different, but every one looked like a man of about fifty or fifty-five—some fat, some thin, but all tired, overworked.

And hungry. For something.

Jack and Jill moved deeper and deeper into the Goblin Market. It seemed to go on forever. The children walked as if in a daze, their eyes passing limply over wonders too wonderful even to describe. As they walked, the eyes of the goblins followed them. From behind signs, from under awnings, from within brightly colored pavilions, the goblins watched the two human children, their dark eyes following them, step by innocent step.

Suddenly, Jack heard a clanging sound. It rose from a ramp that seemed to lead down into the earth. At the very same moment, Jill heard a chanting, pulsing cry:

Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy! Come buy!

The calls came from a section of the market filled with fruits stalls. Tables were stacked high with pyramids of big black grapes, domes of blood oranges, tangles of ruby cherries. Behind or beside each table, goblins called out their song:

Apples and quinces! Melons and raspberries!

All ripe together

In summer weather!

Jill’s mouth began to water. “Jack!” she cried. “We have to go to the fruit market!”

But Jack was already wandering in the direction of the ramp that led down into the earth.

Jill didn’t notice. She started toward the fruit sellers. They called out, their goblin voices straining:

Grapes fresh from the vine,

Pomegranates full and fine!

Jill entered the fruit stalls. The goblin men watched her from beneath heavy brows. Their tables were loaded with sweet smelling fruit. Jill passed her hand over glossy apples and delicately fingered puckered raspberries. The goblin men smiled at her from their dark, hungry eyes. Their calls became louder, more insistent:

Figs to fill your mouth,

Citrons from the South,

Sweet to tongue and sound to eye!

Come buy!

Come buy!

The goblin men watched Jill’s hand trail across their fruits. They whispered to one another, pointed, smiled.

Suddenly, a goblin called out: “Hello, my pretty!”

Then another said, “Good day, my lovely!”

“Hello there, beauty.”

“Darling girl, have a peach! Eat my peaches!”

“Or my pears, sweet one!”

“Red cherries for a beautiful girl!”

Young Jill looked up at the strange, leering men. Her heart beat an uncertain pattern in her chest.

“My lovely!”

“Pretty one!”

“Come eat my fruits!”

“Eat mine!”

“Eat mine!”

And then one goblin slid out from behind his stall, an apple in his hand. Jill stopped. He came toward her, closer and closer, until his body was brushing against hers, and his face was inches from her own. She could smell him. She felt strange.

“A lovely apple for a lovely girl?” he asked. And he raised its red flesh to her nose. Jill closed her eyes and drew the scent in. It was rich and tempting.

“Sweet, isn’t it?” he asked.

Her eyes still shut, Jill nodded.

The goblin said, “Take a bite.”

Jill opened her eyes. She saw the old goblin face, his skin so close to hers, his dark eyes drinking her in. And in those eyes, she saw her own reflection. She suddenly thought of other reflections she had seen—in her mother’s mirror, in the sea.

Something felt wrong.

“No,” she said, and she pushed the apple away.

But more goblins had come out from behind their stalls. They were moving closer and closer, watching the fruit seller and Jill. They began crowding in on her, with their heat and their smell. Soon they were pressing in upon her, jostling her, pushing her, holding her.

“Pretty girl! Eat my fruit!”

“No, mine!”

“Mine, my beauty! Mine!”

She felt confused. They were saying nice things, and yet . . .

“My lovely one!”

“My darling!”

“Eat! Eat!”

They licked their dry lips with muscular tongues and pushed in closer to Jill, and closer.

“Stop!” she cried suddenly. “Get away!” The goblins’ sweat clouded Jill’s nostrils. She could feel their thick, rough hands on her hair. “Get away from me!”

But they would not. They pressed closer and closer and closer.

“Jack!” Jill cried. “JACK!”

Jack stood in front of one of the dark entrances that led underground. He heard his name. He turned. A mountain of goblins seethed in the center of what appeared to be a fruit market.

“JACK!”

He squinted his eyes and took a step toward it.

“JACK!”

He saw one of Jill’s thin hands appear above the goblins’ heads.

He began to run.

Inside the scrum of goblins, Jill pushed and kicked and shouted.

“Pretty girl!” they cried.

“Beautiful one!”

“Come with us!”

“Be with us!”

“NO!” she shouted. “GET AWAY!” She turned her head this way and that as the goblins tried to push peaches and pears and plums past her lips. “JACK!” she screamed.

And just as she did, a muscular goblin with a vicious face shoved an apple into her mouth. She tried to tear her face away, but as she moved, her teeth pierced the apple’s flesh.

And Jill collapsed.

Jack pushed at the backs of the thronging goblins frantically, trying to shove his way to his cousin. But the goblins were surprisingly strong. An arm thrust Jack backward. He pushed into the scrum of goblins again. “Jill!” he shouted. “JILL!”

And then he saw Jill, lifted up by a dozen goblin arms, being borne aloft and carried away. She looked dead.

“JILL!” he cried. He tried to follow her. But he could not penetrate the iron cord of goblin arms. Jack watched, helplessly, as Jill was swept into one of the dark openings in the earth, and out of sight.

“We’ve got to follow her!” the frog screamed. “We’ve got to save her!”

The dust of the ground mingled with the acrid-sweet smells of the fruit market.

“I know,” said Jack. He squinted against the bright sun. “I know.”

Jack stood on a ramp that descended into the ground. He looked out over the rest of the Goblin Market—an underground market.

Stalls and huts of clanging metal stretched into the dark distance under a towering ceiling of black stone. The frog shoved his fingers in his ears against the incessant
clang clang clang
of the smithy stalls. The underground market was even more teeming with life and strangeness than its counterpart aboveground. A thousand stalls stretched out into the distance, and among them wove goblins with baskets and bags of goods. Beyond the market, far, far in the distance, were taller buildings.

There was no sign of Jill, or of the band of goblins that had carried her away. They had disappeared like the smoke of a forge into a low-hanging fog.

But Jack had to start somewhere. He descended into the darkness, asking goblins as he went, “Have you seen a girl? A human girl? Being carried by goblins? Have you seen her? Has anyone seen her?”

No one had.

Jack wandered on and on and on, past stalls with metal trinkets, axes of glowing iron, tiny daggers no bigger than Jack’s pinkie. And swords. Wonderful, deadly, beautiful swords.

Jack saw a two-handed broadsword that hung in front of one of the shops. It had a long thick blade and a rounded tip. He wondered how much it cost. Not that he had any money. But still, he was curious. He examined its cross-guard, and found, dangling from it, a thread of leather with a small piece of parchment at the end.
One Hand
, the parchment read.

“Jack,” said the frog, “come on. We need to find Jill.”

Jack let go of the cryptic message and backed away from the stall.

Just a few steps farther along, he saw another sword, with gold filigree all the way up the blade, and he thought,
No,
that’s
the one for me
. This sword had no parchment attached to it. So Jack said to the crook-backed goblin who stood nearby, conversing with another weapon-smith, “How much for this sword?”

“One hand,” said the goblin, as if this was obvious, and turned back to his conversation. Jack considered asking for an explanation. But he could not think of any possible explanation of the price “one hand” that would make him able to afford it.

“Jack!” cried the frog. “Come on!”

“Right,” said Jack. “Sorry. I was just—” But he stopped there, for hanging from a rack of daggers was a tiny dirk—a thin, steeply graded blade on a guardless handle. It was gorgeous.

A wooden, hand-painted plaque hung above the rack of daggers. It read, A
LL DAGGERS,
O
NE
H
AND.
Jack stood before the sign.

The frog was about to shout at Jack again, but a goblin with a sallow, thin face and a little paunch of a belly asked Jack if he liked what he saw.

“I do,” said Jack. “But I don’t understand. What does this mean, ‘One Hand’?”

“What do you think?” said the goblin, his long goblin fingers tapping his sagging paunch.

“I don’t know,” Jack replied.

“Sure you do,” the goblin said. Jack, alarmed and confused, turned and moved on.

The frog was pleading now: “Jack, we have to find Jill.”

Jack shook himself as if he’d been asleep. What was wrong with him? He felt as if a fog were before his eyes. Jill had been stolen!
Come on!
he thought.
Wake up! Go find her!

And then he saw a small clearing among the weapon-smiths. In the center of the clearing, on a stone altar, was a sword lying on a blanket of crushed velvet. Its blade was about the length of Jack’s arm. Its handle was iron wrapped in leather. Its cross-guard was simplicity itself, and its pommel was just an iron ball. It was neither long nor short, bright nor dull, new nor old.

And yet there was something about the sword that was different from the others that Jack had seen. There seemed to be nothing special about it, Jack thought, except that it looked exactly as he had always believed a sword should look. In fact, he suspected that he recognized it from somewhere.

Jack walked up to it. He circled the table. He reached for it. It seemed to leap into his hand, like metal filings to a magnet. Jack admired it. Then he recognized it.

It looked just like the sword he wielded in his dreams.

“It likes you,” said a goblin who was suddenly standing by his shoulder. “That is a good sign.”

Jack held it, and it felt like an extension of his arm. “It’s perfect,” Jack said.

“Jack!” hissed the frog.

“That’s right,” said the goblin. “It is the sword you’ve always dreamed of. Go ahead,” he smiled. “Give it a try.”

Jack nodded and stepped back from the table. He whipped the sword through the air. The wind seemed to sing with its passing. All the goblins at all the stalls nearby stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Jack. He swung it again. The goblins’ black eyes silently followed the motion of the sword.

The frog pushed his head out of Jack’s pocket. “Jack, can you hear me?”

Jack did not reply.

“What do you want to be, my boy?” the goblin asked.

And without hesitation, without even realizing he was saying it, Jack said, “I want to be respected.”

“With that sword, you will be feared by all,” the goblin assured him.

Jack thrust the sword again. “I want to be admired,” Jack said, more forcefully this time.

“You will be!” said the goblin. “You will be!”

“Jack?” cried the frog.

Jack spun with the sword and cut the air. He was shouting.
“I want everyone to like me!”

“Oh, they will! They will!” cried the goblin. “Everyone will like you!” And then he added, “And it will only cost your hand.”

Jack saw himself stabbing a boy who looked quite a lot like Marie—when the sword point dipped. He let it come to rest on the ground. Slowly, he turned to the goblin. “What does that mean?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

“Not a single gold piece. Not a single copper. Nothing but your hand.” Then the goblin added, “Your left one, of course! Not your sword hand!” And he smiled, like he was doing Jack a favor.