With arms entwined like the links of an iron chain, Knut and I made our way through the hoard of dancing goblins and past the roaring fire. I held my head up high and set my jaw sternly. I wanted to look fierce and frightening, like a hell goddess befitting my attire and demonic subjects, but I could not wipe the excited smile from my face. I could feel so many goblin eyes on me, especially from some of the man-sized ones, who gawked and whispered among themselves between fits of religious euphoria. There were women among them. Goblins in elaborate gowns of a multitude of colors, their clawed hands decorated with jewels and ugly faces painted. They stared the most.
"They're jealous of you," Knut whispered into my ear. "To be chosen as a Bride is the highest honor a goblin woman can attain. They are made to be queens and they strive their whole lives to be chosen, but you beat them all."
"It feels good to be the one envied for once," I admitted in a whisper. A shiver rolled down my spine as I realized with horrified wonder how much I was enjoying myself. The attention. The pampering. The envious glares and approving cheers. I ate it up like sugared almonds. He noticed. Of course, he did. He knew me in ways I couldn't fathom. Knut's thin mouth formed his grin of victory and a deep chuckle echoed through his chest.
We ascended to the king's golden throne where King Frode sat waiting, dressed in a cape of deep purple silk. He bounced up and down in his throne excitedly, more alive than I had yet to see him, as he reveled in the goblins' reverent chants. "I can't believe the coronation's finally here! It's so exciting!" King Frode clapped his bony hands merrily with a giggle as chilling as a whistling winter wind.
"Well, if you hadn't brought Kai into existence, we wouldn't have had to wait for this pipsqueak to grow up." Knut snickered at his younger brother as he took the final steps up to the platform on which Frode's throne sat. Kai's nostrils flared and his cheeks flushed with color. I thought he looked every bit like the child Knut thought of him as.
Freya's dark lips pulled down into a deep frown. "We waited thirteen human years for your little Mouse to grow breasts." She said dryly, glaring at me. The gloves, it seemed, were off now that it was blatantly apparent that Knut wasn't joking about me.
Fair enough. I was not in the mood to play nice anyway. My eyes flitted up and down her thin frame appraisingly. "Perhaps we should put it off a little longer then. Maybe you'll grow some yourself." I cooed with the slightly rancid sweetness of an overly ripened fruit.
Knut and his father threw their heads back in matching cackles. "Matilda, you are absolutely disgusting! Dare I say, more so than when I first met you." King Frode smiled wolfishly at me. "Almost hanging agrees with you." His bright eyes burned from the deep shadows cast by his bushy eyebrows, reflecting light like a nocturnal predator's. That's right, as old and harmless as he seems, he is still a monster. I thought with a shiver. This was not his first coronation. He won his seat through the murders of his siblings and father. Then, if Freya was to be believed, he successfully protected it. Twice. He'd already defeated two different sets of children. Knut and Kai had other brothers, perhaps as strong or stronger than they. And this decrepit creature smiling at me now killed them all. His own children.
"Hatred agrees with me," I said, meeting those glittering, dangerous eyes.
"I swear you could almost pass for a goblin woman." He cackled. He tapped his thin lips thoughtfully with a claw as those bright eyes settled on my chest. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my lip from curling in disgust.
"King Frode, My Lord, please do not even say that in jest." Freya sighed with clear annoyance. "This girl has not received any training whatsoever. She's uneducated and unfamiliar with our culture. She can't even speak goblin, let alone conduct negotiations with the Faerie Courts. The fact that Knut thinks she can be queen is an insult to all she-goblins."
Kai's eyes locked with Knut's. Fiery red faced off against fathomless dark depths as they dared each other silently to flinch beneath the other's gaze. "Father, her children would be half-bloods. Are you certain Knut didn't choose a human bride to better his chances of eternal kinghood?"
"It does seem like something he would do." Frode chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. His bright eyes slid towards his eldest son, eager to see how he would react.
Knut smiled and Kai blinked. "If that were the case, I'd be helping you to cheat nature as well. Are you that certain that Matilda and I are going to win tomorrow?" Knut made a series of disgusted noises in his throat. "Since when has education been a deciding factor when choosing a goblin queen? Brides are supposed to be chosen for their ferocity and cunning, not the number of books they've read. Knowledge isn't something that a child can inherit. Viciousness is. You, dear little brother, have lost sight of that. You've let your emotions cloud your judgment and have chosen poorly. A mistake that will prove deadly for you both."
"He could say the same of you!" Freya jumped to Kai's defense. She squeezed his arm ever so tightly. "You see one orphan's soul turn black, and all sense leaves your head! You haven't even entertained the thought of a goblin wife! How can Kai be the one that has chosen poorly when you're not even sure she can conceive goblin children? Tomorrow's coronation will be a farce! Kai will destroy you! Then I'll show everyone what a fool their king's favorite son truly was when I beat his precious human in the trials!" She bared her sharp teeth at me. "The first thing I'll do once I'm queen is throw this rat in the nearest bog!"
I repressed a knowing smirk. Her weakness was apparent. Now to find a knife to stick into that soft spot.
"I did consider a goblin but found them all wanting," Knut said evenly, blinking his eyes slowly as if he were drowsy or bored. His black eyes bounced back and forth from Freya to Kai. "You've forgotten what it means to be a goblin and your stupidity has rubbed off on my brother. Poisoned him beyond saving. What hope he had of killing me, you stripped away. I am doing him a favor, Freya. If he, by some miracle, defeats me, Matilda will still be queen and Kai will have a proper co-ruler rather than one of our father's defective creations. A goblin, playing at being human, cannot possibly defeat the likes of this she-devil of mine. She will help to lead us all out of our servitude not spend her days practicing her curtsy."
Freya's painted face twisted with disgust. "You would have us go back to crawling about dank caves and attacking all passers-by. There's nothing wrong with the goblin people becoming more civilized." Freya continued her tirade, while Kai stood by silently, watching Knut as I watched them.
"Being the Faerie Courts' attack dogs makes us civilized?" Knut scoffed.
"That's enough, children." Frode laughed deeply. Sharp teeth peeked from whiskered lips. Despite his age, he wasn't missing a single fang. He took one of each son's hands, his body acting as a bridge between them. "Let's leave some of that for tomorrow, aye? We have much to celebrate tonight." Easing himself onto his feet, Frode took a deep breath and screeched at the top of his lungs. My hands automatically went to cover my ears, but Knut held my arm fast and eyed me down with clear disapproval.
"Bare it." He growled under his breath at me. For once, his mouth was set in a determined scowl and not that impish grin.
The sound was inhuman yet not entirely bestial. This was a scream of nature. The cracking of a splintering tree. The roar of raging winds. The rumble of moving earth. The other goblins went dead silent and eerily still. Their eyes were aglow in the flickering firelight as they all, every one, turned their gazes to their king's face. I was reminded of my time at the Hollow when the crowd had watched one of their own die and for a moment, whatever human-like intelligence they had was stripped away and nothing, but the blood thirst remained. "The eve of the coronation is finally upon us. It is a time of rebirth as much as it is death." His voice crackled in the same way the fire did. He raised his sons' arms and made them link their hands together by their pinkies. "Only the strongest of you can take my place. If neither proves worthy, my reign shall continue on until a better child is born to me. Which of you has deemed himself strongest? Which of you has the will to rule all goblin-kind, the wisdom to help it grow and the viciousness to protect it?"
"I do." Knut and Kai replied at the same moment. Slowly, Knut's usual smirk crept back onto his face. Kai continued scowling. Freya admired Kai with a sort of reverence, her ugly face glowing with pride. She has a long, slender throat. I thought as I watched her every subtle movement, every telltale gesture. A neck like a goose. Easy to wring. Easy to cut.
"We shall see." Frode grinned and his eyes glowed brighter within their hollows as he effortlessly pulled his sons' hands apart, breaking the link of our continuous chain. "Tomorrow, two of us shall leave this world. Only one will remain. So, let us drink and fill our bellies in preparation for our ascensions." He clapped his hands and in a rush of frenzied movements, the little goblins produced a long table of stone before us and chairs to sit on. The table was soon loaded with every food I could imagine. Roasted chicken and a whole cooked pig with an apple in its mouth. Cheese and bread fresh from the oven. Fruits. Carrots and potatoes. Other sweet-smelling things I couldn't name. King Frode sat in the middle of the table, facing out towards the fire while Kai and Freya sat at his right side and Knut, and I sat at his left.
My hands flew to work, piling food onto my plate. I wanted to taste every single thing I saw. Even if that meant I'd have to empty my belly half-way through just to make room. "You no longer fear being trapped in my world?" Knut whispered as he brought a golden goblet to his lips.
The food in my mouth turned to ash. I reached for my own goblet and took a sip of the goblin wine. The taste was sweet and rich with an almost metallic quality at the end. As the liquid slipped down my throat, a delicious warmth spread over me, beginning in my mouth and spreading downward through my core and limbs until my entire body seemed to hum.
Knut had to pull the goblet from my hands. I would have emptied it in a single gulp if he had let me. "Don't drink too much, too fast. I want your head clear for the show." He said, moving the goblet to his side and out of the reach of my pining fingers.
"Show?" I blinked against the fuzziness slipping into my vision. Just a few gulps and I already felt good and drunk. He nodded his head towards the fire.
Most of the crowd had dispersed and were watching the fire from the shadows. Now only a single goblin remained by the fire. A goblin woman in a white, glittering gown and shawl stood in front of the fire's dancing flames. At first glance, she could well pass for a middle-aged human woman. Her skin had that soft, pink human skin, laugh lines around her mouth and small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. It was her eyes that gave away her goblin-ness. There was no white to them, only an expanse of swirling purples, blues and crimson, pinpoints of white were sprinkled throughout like stars in a night sky. Slowly she began walking circles round and round the fire. From her billowing sleeve, she pulled fistfuls of some sort of powder that she threw into the flames, sending sparks flying up into the air.
I touched Knut's hand to get his attention and whispered to him, "Who's she?" my words only slightly slurring.
He stared down at our joined hands for a long moment and licked his lips before he answered. "The Storyteller." He tipped his goblet at his mouth again, smiling against the precious metal. "She's a goblin that tells stories."
I rolled my eyes. "I know what a storyteller is."
"Then be quiet and listen while she does her job." He held my goblet between us and snatched it back when I reached for it. "Be a good girl and I'll give this back afterward. Then you can get drunk to your heart's content. Hell, I'll get drunk right along with you." He wiggled his eyebrows. "That should be fun." He set my goblet back and pushed it even further out of my reach.
"It's not as if I can understand a word she's going to say. I can't make any sense out of your gibberish." I tore at some mutton with my teeth to hide my pouting.
"You don't need to." He said, his eyes glittering in the firelight. "Just watch."
The Storyteller made another turn around the fire. Her ninth. She disappeared around the fire's tall flames then suddenly leaped right into it with a terrible shriek. At the touch of the flames, she exploded into a billow of smoke that swirled with the same churning colors as her eyes, The smoke cloud billowed up and roiled above us in the void.
I grabbed at Knut's hand, shook it and squeezed it until I knew it must hurt, trying to get his attention, but his eyes remained focused on the smoke and did not waver in the slightest.
Slowly, the colors faded to snow white and dark forms appeared within the cloud like shadows on a wall. I saw a single tree with gnarled, twisted branches, surrounded by nothing, alone in a blank void.
A voice, a woman's, strong and clear, sounded. "A long, long, long time ago, when the world breathed its first breath, The Hollow was alone in its forest." At first, I looked around for the speaker, but then I realized that the voice was not coming from some outside source, but from within me. The voice echoed through my chest like my heartbeat, shaking my ribs with its force.
"From its trunk, the first of our kind sprung forth." In the cloud, we watched as the lone tree's trunk split open and several forms crawled out of it like maggots from a festered wound. "The nine. The first to leave the Hollow were the four fairies. The Kings and Queens of dawn and night. They squabbled, detesting each other on sight. Soon they unfurled their wings and flew away to claim realms all their own in opposite corners of the world." We saw four beings with bird-like wings shove at each other before they took off into the sky and vanished.
"The next to emerge were the elf king and his wife. Together, hand in hand, they danced into the green, green wood and disappeared from sight." Even as silhouettes, the two were beautiful. They twirled around and around in each other's arms, their long hair twisting in the air with their elegant movements until they danced out of view.
"Then a human pair, a man and woman too, bolted from the Hollow's womb, screaming in fierce fright as if the Hollow might swallow them up once more." My ancestors ran from the thing that birthed them in desperation, their feet flying across the ground without a bit of hesitation. Their arms were wrapped around their private bits, hiding their nakedness in shame.
"The very last to crawl from the Hollow's wound was a twisted, ugly thing. He stumbled into the empty forest and found himself alone." A goblin's hunched, elongated form scrambled across the ground around and around the Hollow's trunk, its head twisting and tilting as it searched for something...or someone. "His siblings had gone. Flown away and scattered to the winds. He had no companion. No wife. No mate. Only him."
The scene shifted and the goblin sat at the base of the Hollow while the other couples ran about. "For many long years, he waited, watching from afar as his siblings built their kingdoms and made their children, spreading life over the world, where there had been none before." The faeries flew through the skies on their pretty wings, their numbers almost blotting out the sky. The elves crept through thick forests, their arrows finding their marks in the breasts of great beasts. Humans toiled in their fields and ran after their many, many children.
"He sat alone, never leaving his birthplace, hoping that perhaps someday, the Hollow would give birth once more and give him a companion to help him build his kingdom." Another shift in time and scenery. The goblin was inside the Hollow, digging something out of the dirt. "Then, one day, he found a seed within the Hollow's remains and ate it." The goblin held up a large seed as big as a man's palm and shoved it into his mouth. It passed down his throat, bulging out the muscles and skin as it went. "That seed made him into something more than mortal. Other goblins, like him, sprung from his mind, formed by simple thought." The goblin writhed around in pain while little shadows burst from his brow. The shadows eased the goblin's suffering and bowed to him. Slowly a familiar glowing smile spread across the goblin's darkened face. One more shadow sprang from his head. This one, clearly a woman.
"He made himself a wife, who soon bore him five sons." The female goblin's form split into six. "As they grew up, they grew jealous of their father's power and plotted his demise." We were shown a mirrored vision of the very room we were in. The five shadowy figures huddled together, their clawed hands covering their plotting mouths while feet away, their father sat on his high throne, much like Frode had been when I first arrived at the feast. One of the sons reached into himself and withdrew a weapon.
Next, we saw those men looming over their father's bed, sticking him over and over again. "With a simple dagger, the sons killed him as he slept and cut the seed from their father's belly. But who would devour it?" The sons held up the seed, each with a hand on it, trying to pull it into their mouths before their brothers could. "The sons battled among themselves over the seed, killing each other until only the strongest of them remained."
We saw that battle, saw the sons stab each other in the back, bash each other's heads in, one even ate his brothers' corpses. That was the one who actually won. The cannibal took the seed and dropped it into his mouth like a very large grape and from him spewed a torrent of devilish creatures, so many the entire room filled with dark figures. Shadows upon shadows. "He and only he could don his father's crown."
The old king's blood seeped into the soil and from him grew another tree. Dark and twisted just like the Hollow itself. "And so, we continue the cycle once more. Tomorrow, a son will prove himself worthy of his father's crown or the King will prove he is still strong enough to bear its weight." The cloud whooshed downward into the flames, turning to sparks and then reshaping The Storyteller's form. The goblin woman stepped out of the fire with small, bare feet. She smiled widely, her lips closed over sharp teeth, and curtsied to her king, master and creator.
King Frode clapped his hands in delight and his sons, Freya and I followed suit. I with a little less enthusiasm than the others.
The Storyteller rejoined the crowd as drums began to boom. Their low sound shook my chest just as the voice had, rattling my bones and making my heart race. "Was...was all that true?" I asked, Knut, swallowing the bile in my throat. I couldn't shake the horrors I'd seen, watching those five brothers butcher one another. I had imagined Knut and Kai's duel would be something like the fight I'd seen at the Hollow during my visit, but it wasn't a duel between gentlemen. No. It wasn't even war. It was simply murder.
Knut shrugged. "It's what we believe. I mean, do you know for certain how you were created?"
"I've never been very religious. It's hard to be a good Christian when you steal every day of your life. It's sort of frowned upon."
The fire lit up his face, forming shadows in the hollows around his eyes and in his sunken cheeks, making his face look all the more like a skull. "That part about the king's abilities, however, I know to be fact." He waved his hand over the expanse of goblin bodies, writhing to the rhythm of the drums. "Out of all the goblins you see around you, my father, brother and I are the only ones that can call themselves truly goblins." He took his knife and made a small knick in his thumb. "We're the only ones that bleed." His dark blood dripped from his thumb and splashed against the stone table. "The rest are figments of my father's imagination, given life. Each made to fulfill a certain task. Even Freya. She, as well as most goblin women, are made for the sole purpose of birthing princes." He sucked his thumb until it quit bleeding.
I looked out at all those small, grinning faces, at the ugly women in their opulent gowns and hulking warriors in their rough leather. "None of them are really alive." I breathed.
"No. they're alive, just not...fully. They don't feel pain and only the women have any real gender. They have no will. A goblin that was made to mop the floor will do just that until he dies in some horrible accident, or my father grows bored of him. He won't suddenly decide to open a bakery or take up the sword. He'll mop floors and bloody well like it." Knut's face drew nearer to me, his eyes locked with mine. Full of youthful pride and arrogance. "Our crown is not some golden trinket worn atop our brow. It is the seed that gives us power. The seed that makes us gods." He placed my goblet before me and wrapped my fingers around it. "And tomorrow you'll join me in my newfound godhood, won't you my lovely?"
"I suppose I will." I answered, side eying him. With his face lit by the fire, I got the sense that Knut was younger than his human disguise had made me assume. "How old are you, Knut?" I asked. "I thought you were an old man since you appeared to me as one, but your father seems to look at both you and your brother as children and Freya told me you were only twenty-four. Is that really true? It doesn't seem right to me."
"Well, practically everyone seems like a child to you when you're pushing five centuries, but I am actually quite young. As a prince, I am not fully in tune with my magic yet. That disguise I wore to meet you in is simply easier to maintain."
"How old is quite young?" I prodded, plucking a strand of hair from his scalp. "Young men don't usually have grey hair."
"I'm afraid that's my natural hair color. It grew from my scalp that way when I was just a wee goblin babe. I actually only just turned twenty-four." His smirk grew as he reveled in my shock. "Did you think I was some old lecher?"
"You might not be old, but you're a lecher all the same, Knut." I teased, laughing against the metal of my goblet as he laughed, his entire face brightening and changing with the joy of it. Now that I was sitting there among them, listening to them joke and chatter and prod at each other, I could see that they were truly very young. Kai and Knut were around mine and my brothers' ages relatively and they had similar crass senses of humor.
I was surprised at how at home I felt at their dinner table.
I drank and drank and drank some more. The goblet never seemed to go empty. I could feel my blood pulsing through my body with every heartbeat. My vision blurred and filled with flickering light and writhing shadows. The next thing I knew, I was dancing out among the goblin horde. My body moved on its own accord, my mind lost in the drink, while my flesh was enslaved by the music. I was aware only of the noise and dancing and hands moving over me, holding me steady, a body pressed against my own.
I winced as my eyes fluttered open. Even the dim light of the dying fire in my room's hearth hurt my head. Knut lay dozing next to me, under the covers with me, his arm looped around my waist, holding me against him. I kicked him off the bed, sending him tumbling to the floor. "What did you do!" I screamed at him as he dragged himself to his feet. I raked my hands through my knotted hair. Frightened tears filled my eyes. "What was in that wine!"
"Stop screaming. My head's about to pop." Knut pulled himself back onto the bed, too drunk to stand on his own. "There's no need to panic. The wine's made with Faerie fruit. Remember what I told you earlier about them? The wine's almost as strong and we both had a little too much."
"You're horrible!" I sobbed. My whole body was trembling. "You're no better than that horrible man at the brothel!" I tried to kick him again, but he caught my leg and rolled us until he hovered over me. My cheeks turned bright red. The blanket had fallen away from his body. He was only wearing his breaches. The rest of his clothes were strewn over a chair. My own shoes were thrown on opposite sides of the room.
He held my hands down at the sides of my head in a weak hold. His eyes stayed on my face and didn't roam. "Stop panicking, Matilda. You're okay. I didn't do anything to you. We were both tired and drunk. I brought you here to sleep it off."
"Where are your clothes then, Rat?" I hissed. I shifted my knee enough that I was able to jab it into his belly.
Gasping and moaning, he released me and flopped onto the bed beside me. "I didn't do anything! I was hot and all those layers are impossible to sleep in. I was just making myself comfortable. That's all, I promise. All we did was sleep. I swear it." He slapped his hands together as if he were about to say grace. "Mercy, goddess, mercy. I beg you."
The title soothed my anger enough that I granted his pleads and decided not to cleave his balls off. "You should've made yourself more comfortable in your own room." I huffed, retrieving my slippers from their opposite corners. The rest of my clothing other than my shoes was still in place and nothing hurt. Maybe I was still drunk because he seemed sincere, but I was still unsettled. I'd never been that close to a man other than my brothers when we were young. My face warmed at the thought of Knut curled against me, holding me as if I were already his wife.
"Have you met me? You really think I'm going to pass up the opportunity to sleep next to my future wife?" He laughed at the obscene gesture I shot him. "Joking. The palace is a dangerous place for a bride the night before a coronation. Goblin women are competitive by nature. It's best I stick close." He got up and started pulling his shirt and stockings back on. "That was fun, wasn't it? The feast, I mean, well, this was fun too. I enjoy arguing with you. Goblin women don't really do that." Noticing the tension that had settled in my body, the impish glee drained from his face and his ears drooped slightly. "I'm sorry, Mouse. This was stupid of me. I should've known I'd scare you."
I sat down at the edge of the bed absently pulling pins from my hair, letting curls fall around my face. "Knut, goblin women are created to be queens...wouldn't it make more sense for you to marry one of them?"
"You still don't understand?" Knut sat back down beside me. His long fingers lifted and dropped the dangling ruby shard against my chest until it followed the tempo of my beating heart. "It's because I love you." His eyes snapped to mine. There was no humor in his voice. He almost sounded serious. "I've known women like Freya all my life and they all bore me to tears. They aren't just made queens. They're molded into them as well. They're taught from the beginning how to beat the challenges of their future tests, how to act, how to speak. You became the perfect goblin queen all on your own. Your life twisted and molded you into one. I saw the cruelty of the world take a pure, sweet girl, dash her across the stones and reforge her into something better. A vicious, beautiful thing that no she-goblin could ever match."
"It sounds to me like you love the idea of me more than anything."
"What does it matter so long as you get to be the queen you deserve and were meant to be?" Dropping the ruby shard one final time, he stood over me. "Did you watch my brother and Freya carefully? Do you know how we'll defeat them tomorrow?"
I pulled a pin from my hair and watched it twirl between my fingers. "I think I've figured out your plan. I'll give you your clear shot at Kai, just wait for my signal." A smile stretched across my face. "You'll know it when you see it."