Buttsack watched as she turned to the next page, her face blank.
In the meantime, Maggie Holt has formally relinquished all goblin bondage and bindings. Any promises that goblins made to remain hands-off or leave certain individuals alone are now undone, the goblins freed. Two goblins were bound in or near the Holt household, and I was sure to pass on instructions for our little game. They’ll be gathering their fellows, I imagine, before they bid you hello and celebrating their liberation.
On to this game I mentioned. I had to be clever with my wording, but goblins are stupid little things, by and large. I had to offer something to ensure they would give you distance while you read, so I simply distributed the clothes in Maggie Holt’s dresser and laundry hamper to the goblins as a means of guiding them to their target. They’re to find their fellows and spread the word and scraps of clothing. They’ll be able to find the person who wore those clothes, by scent or the ties that bind. They were a little muddled by the fact that different parts of the same threads pointed in two different directions, but they do tend to be stupid little creatures, don’t they?
They’ll be after both of us, it seems. Not to worry! I suspect I’m rather more elusive than you are, and the threads will largely lose their tie to me once I’ve left. In short, you need not concern yourself with my welfare. As for you, dear girl, rest assured, the prize we agreed on for winning this little game here is limited only to bragging rights. I’m hardly a barbarian or blackguard in this.
As to the nature of the game itself, it is exceedingly simple. If their quarry is able to walk, hold pen or parcel, speak or see by sunrise, the goblins lose. If none of those things are possible, bragging rights abound for these little pests and buggers!
How interesting, don’t you think? I know the goblins seemed eager, and I wouldn’t have you getting bored in my absence. Rest assured, I didn’t want you to feel like it’s a priority to see me before I take my leave from this little town.
I do believe you are at the door downstairs, and I do believe there are a small few of Maggie Holt’s goblins that must be personally sprung from their more secure confinement before I catch my train. I’ll cut myself off here.
I must be away! I leave it to you to decide whether to curse me for the length of this thing or to forgive me for the brevity of it. I do know the reading of it postpones the contest.
With care,
Maggie H.
“He signed the name with a heart over the ‘i’,” she commented, staring at the page. “What the hell is wrong with him?”
“Doesn’t matter,” a voice whispered from her right. Not one she’d heard before. “You’re done reading, and-”
“It matters,” she said.
She wanted to continue speaking, but she went too fast, and her voice caught. Three or four thoughts were snapping together all at once. The hints. Stated twice.
In the search for the hints, she found the answer.
Her hand trembled enough to make the page shake.
“Yeah?” Buttsack asked.
“Yeah,” she managed. “That goblin is wrong, he’s lying, because this does matter, and I’m not done reading. I’m commenting on the reading.”
“Commenting?” Buttsack asked.
She turned back to the first page, and she started reading again. “There’s a lot to read in the midst of this. Details to be picked out, clues that might inform…” she stumbled, trying to scan the page and speak at the same time, “…inform my strategies against him. For example, I can read each sentence here and try to divine if he was lying, if I can call him forsworn.”
“Who’s him?” the high, ragged voice asked.
“Nevermind.”
Right here, this was the trick.
She took a step forward, eyes still on the page. She could tell that Buttsack hadn’t moved out of her way. “You promised not to interfere with the reading.”
“You’re walking, not reading,” Buttsack growled.
“I’m doing both. Will you move out of my way or will you be forsworn?”
He didn’t respond.
She kept walking, even though the position of the page blocked her view of the goblin. The smell of him was thick in the cold air.
If she happened to trip over him, there might even be a solution in that. The question was, how fast could she name him forsworn, demand he obey her and sic him on the other, smaller goblins?
Was it faster than another goblin would reflexively respond to her weakness and attack her?
Her hands were cold, and the edges of the paper crumpled a bit as her grip grew tighter. If she lost hold of the page, she was dead.
She walked past the spot where he stood. He’d shifted position, perching atop a snowbank, where the snowplow had driven the snow high.
“Hey Scuzz,” Buttsack said.
“What?”
“This isn’t going to work. She’s going to walk to sanctuary.”
“Maybe a cloud will pass over the moon?”
“Useless fuckspittle. We can do better than maybes.”
She continued walking. Her eyes scanning the words. Continued dragging sounds told her that the goblin with the tools was following behind her. Slow but steady, matching her pace.
“Arsedrip!” Buttsack shouted, loud enough to startle her. “Up there, go!”
“Which, the sigh-”
“Don’t say it, you pustule! You’ll clue her in! Both!”
They were plotting.
“Go,” Buttsack ordered. “Figure it out or I will fucking eat your genitals raw and regurgitate them into birdy mouths and-”
“You’ll feed the birds to cats and the cats to dogs and so on, until my genitals are shit nine times over,” Arsedrip said, “Am I on the right track?”
Keep reading, don’t get distracted. He grabbed my gremlins. The fucker…
“If you get it, you better go!”
Arsedrip ran past her, forward, further up the street.
“Cumnugget, you- yeah, just like that! Nice and thick! You aren’t completely retarded!”
She couldn’t read and run at the same time. If she tried and failed, then one of the goblins could call her on it, and this would go from bad to worse.
Just as ‘Maggie’ had said, she couldn’t give chase now.
No, she wouldn’t call him that. Padraic was still his name, and thinking or speaking the name would maybe help hammer at the trickery and put cracks in it.
Couldn’t hurt, and she wasn’t quite willing to forfeit her old name in that sense, either.
Padraic had arranged this. He had putting her in a situation where she couldn’t chase him. Where she was sufficiently distracted, pinned down in Jacob’s Bell, unable to leave out of concern that he would return, or that her fathers would fall prey to the goblins.
They weren’t quite innocent of Other things, but they did have protections.
She had to wonder if it was enough.
A distant crash and the sound of metal creaking marked goblin activity a block away.
She forced herself to return to the reading. Her eyes fell on the line, ‘It seems you just can’t win.’