Close Kin (9 page)

"I don't want to stay with
another little girl," she whimpered. "I hate little girls!"

"Til," said the goblin
dryly, "you're a little girl yourself." Til stopped crying to think
about this.

"Father?"
asked Catspaw anxiously. "Can I be a pages-together,
too?"
Marak pulled on the little lion's paw and drew his son close.

"No, you won't be a page, but
you'll have a tutor soon," he promised, putting an arm around him.
"You have to start learning how to be a King."

Til saw an
immediate advantage to her new social position. "You
don't
get to be a page," she gloated to the little prince. "I get to be a
page.

Catspaw rallied
at once. "You don't get to be a King," he
retorted.

"I
don't want to," sniffed Til. "They don't let Kings have any
fun."

"Oh, I don't
know about that," chuckled Marak, pushing her
off
his lap and standing up. "Come along now, Til. You can meet that little
girl you hate."

∗ ∗ ∗

Til
inspired the pages with awe, and she pointed out at every oppor
tunity
to Catspaw that she had now outgrown his company.
Catspaw
was jealous over Til's new career and too young to understand why his aunt
Emily had left. Everything was changing around
the goblin prince, but he was still
doing the same things.

One day, he stayed with Agatha while
his mother taught class. Marak's former nurse had finally given up keeping
order on the pages' floor. She was too old to chase after a crowd of children.
Catspaw was unhappy and out of sorts, and Agatha was no help. Usually the dwarf
woman was lively and full of fun, but today he could hardly get her to move.
She watched him throwing his ball and retrieving it with a stern look on her
face.

"Stop making so much noise,
Marak," she commanded. Agatha
was the
only person in the kingdom who called the prince by his for.,
mal name.
"You tell your father that you're old enough to have a tutor now.

This interested Catspaw, He rolled
the ball to her feet and followed it.

"Father says soon," he told
her seriously. "I'll learn magic and history and writing and cooking and
all sorts of king stuff."

Agatha leaned her head back on her
chair. "Kings don't learn how to cook," she said wearily.

"Why
not?" asked Catspaw, bouncing the ball around her chair.
He
was making her head hurt.

"Marak, tell your father you
need a tutor," she repeated firmly. "Your nurse is tired."

"Nana's not tired," he
said, thinking of his woolly nurse. Nana knew he missed Til. She had had a
pillow fight with him just that morning.

"Your nurse
is tired," said Agatha, closing her eyes. "Come
here,
young Marak. It's time for your nap."

Catspaw stopped and goggled at her.
He was too old for naps.
No worse injustice
can be perpetrated on a child than to force a nap
on him after he has
grown out of them.

"Agatha!"
he shrilled reproachfully. "I don't take naps."

The dwarf woman opened her eyes
again. They snapped at him commandingly. Catspaw had known that she'd been
Father's nurse,
and he'd always wondered how such a little woman could
make
such
a big man behave. Now he understood.

"Marak, come here," she
ordered him sharply, and Catspaw put
down his
ball and came. "Climb up, then," she said, pulling him
into
her arms. The young prince sat in the dwarf woman's lap and
looked at her. He twined his arms around her neck.
It finally dawned
on him that she was
the one who was tired. This struck him as a
huge joke.

"You're not
my nurse, Agatha." He giggled. "Nana's my
nurse."

Those eyes
snapped and sparkled at him fiercely. "I have always
been your nurse, Marak!" Then she softened at the hurt
look on
his face.

"Now,
dear, take your nap," she muttered, tucking his head onto
her shoulder and his legs across her lap. Catspaw blinked
at the side
of her face in surprise. He didn't
know what to do. But there
was
nothing to do. Til wouldn't play with him
anymore, and his aunt
Emily was gone. He
closed his eyes. Agatha held him and looked off
into the distance,
feeling him relax into sleep. Then she closed her own eyes with a sigh.

"And that is how the goblin King
found them when he came to fetch his son, the young and the old nestled
together in each other's
arms. Marak knelt
by the chair for a long time, just looking at them. They were resting so
quietly, their faces so peaceful. But only one of
them was asleep.

"It's such a
creepy place," remarked Emily, peering up at the tall trees. "I never
knew that a lovely thing could be frightening."

"It's full
of memories." The squirrel on her shoulder gave a tiny
sigh.
"Some of them are unhappy ones."

The forest was
very, very old. Many of the trees were mossy and enormous. But, unlike a
regular forest, this place had no broken, rot
ting
trunks, fallen limbs, or blasted branches. Autumn had come,
and trees unknown to Emily were covered with red
and gold leaves,
but a carpet of
green turf and bracken covered the ground, and tiny
flowers nodded at
their feet. Birds sang quietly in the distance.

"It isn't natural," said
Emily suspiciously. "A forest can't look like this."

"The elves built this forest,
just as the dwarves built the goblin
caves,"
lectured the squirrel. "They made it as beautiful as they were.
They
worked with living things, not stone or brick, and their tools were spells.
Many of those spells still hold force."

"Where are the spells against
us?" muttered Emily. The place didn't feel friendly.

"The Border
Spell used to keep your people out entirely, and only
a
handful of the most powerful goblins could get through. They
crossed the border one at a time, vulnerable to
patrolling elves. But
that spell was the first thing to go, even before
the last elf King's death."

Day after day,
Emily walked through the glorious wood, wading
through
clear streams and crossing short-cropped meadows. Ruby called these dancing
fields. Deer grazed there even in the full light of day.

Once, the young woman stopped short
in surprise. "I thought I saw a sheep," she said. "It ran
between those trees."

"Sheep have always lived in
these woods," replied the teacher, and Emily didn't ask why.

One afternoon,
they came to a deep fold in the hills. The trees in
this
narrow valley were widely spaced and colossal. One great pine towered two
hundred feet into the air. It stood in a half-circle of old holly trees.

"Em!" For once, the
annoying squirrel's voice was hushed and gentle. "Look at that! We've
found the elf King's winter camp. He
used
to hold court under that pine, and all the lords and ladies of the
King's
Camp danced on the smooth lawn below it."

They stopped to
have lunch, but neither could eat. The beautiful
valley
lay dreaming under a spell of its own. Without meaning to,
they lingered. Emily napped, and the squirrel
climbed to the very top
of the huge pine. As twilight fell, Emily
strolled about, investigating, while Ruby changed back into her regular form
and sat under the holly trees, thinking her own thoughts.

"I've found
something!" Emily hurried through the trees.
"Bones!
They've been here a long time."

Ruby came with her and knelt down by
the bones. They were white and delicate, half buried under moss. "It must
be a child, the skull is so small." The goblin woman looked around.
"Probably it was wounded, and it dragged itself into the shelter of the
trees to hide. No one found it, poor thing."

"Hide?"
Emily was puzzled. Ruby gave her an irritated look.
"You never did
pay attention to your lessons," she declared.

"Don't you
remember anything? This was the scene of the last battle
of
the elf harrowing!"

"Oh," breathed the young
woman. "I knew that. I just forgot. And it doesn't look much like a
battlefield, does it?"

"How should a battlefield look
after two hundred years?"
demanded
Ruby. She walked away from the graceful skeleton. Emily
followed her,
studying the charming scenery with new eyes. After the death of the last elf
King, the goblins had waged war to capture all the elf brides they could. They
called this war of plunder the elf harrowing.

"How did the battle take
place?" she wanted to know. "Was it quick? Did many people die?"

"Lore-Master Webfoot probably
asked you the same questions.
Did you earn
a perfect score on his tests?" But Emily knew when to
keep silent, and the born teacher couldn't resist
the chance to teach.

"It was the dead of winter, and
bitterly cold," she grudgingly began. "Almost every other elf camp
was in ruins by that time, and
the King's
Camp had lost contact with the survivors. They knew
that the goblin King would come to attack the elf
King's winter
camp, and they knew that their entire race was doomed.

"Even
though the elf King was dead, this camp had a formidable guard. The highest
lords of the land had always lived in it: the Lords
of
Counsel, the Lords of Enchantment, the elf King's Scholars, and his military
commander. They were an aristocracy of magic, and from the oldest widows down
to the small children, they swore to fight to the death. They did, too. Only a
few babies survived."

Emily thought
about this. It was hard to imagine a small child or
an
old woman fighting anyone.

"What
did they use as weapons?"

"Magic,
of course."

"But
how? What did the battle look like?"

Ruby considered the
question. "It looked terrifying. They said that it was like walking into
the middle of a storm cloud. Brilliant flashes of light were everywhere. No one
could see. The lords and ladies -- even the children -- worked a single spell
together, so that
when one of them fell the
rest made up for the loss. As a united force,
they were stronger than
the goblin King himself, and they killed hundreds of goblins. The King's two
lieutenants and most of the King's Guard were among them."

"That means all those elf brides
they had captured didn't have husbands anymore."

The ugly woman
studied the ground. "I suppose they didn't,"
she
agreed reluctantly.

"But I thought that was the
point of the elf harrowing, to take brides. If you ask me, attacking this camp
wasn't very smart."

"No one asked you!" Ruby
was stung by the criticism. "Marak
Whiteye
knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted the elf King's library. He packed up
the whole set of elvish spell books and chron
icles and brought them back
to the kingdom. Now we study the elf King's books, and we know how to work
their magic."

"That's
right!" exclaimed Emily in excitement. "I remember
now.
The elf King's library was kept in caves because that's where the elves lived
during the winter. Those caves must be here some, where, Ruby. Let's go find
them."

Deep twilight had fallen. Ruby lit a
flickering orange flame and carried it in the palm of her hand. Emily preferred
Seylin's moon globes and said so, but the teacher gave her a nasty look.
"If you don't like goblin magic, use some of your own," she said. And
that ended the discussion.

They scanned the
rocky faces that hemmed in the narrow valley, but they found no cleft or
opening. "Think like an elf," mused Ruby.
"They
must have disguised it, but with what?"