“I am Pocket of Dog Snogging, all-licensed fool and onetime king of Britain.”
“Fool? Like the Puck?” said Gritch.
“Yes, like the Puck,” said Cobweb. “So mind your bloody manners, you scuttling dung beetle, or you’ll feel the fool’s wrath.”
We walked for a bit, the forest faded away to rocky scrubland, the foothills to mountains that rose like jagged fangs against the night. I carved a new stick for Jones from a green branch as we walked, Cobweb watching as if I were performing alchemy rather than whittling.
“So, love,” I whispered to Cobweb. “Not looking for a warm welcome back to the palace, then?”
Before she could answer, Gritch sidled up to me and said, “Suck your dick for silver?” with all the subtlety of a fishmonger calling out freshly caught cod.
“No, piss off,” said I.
“Fine,” he said. And he scuttled across the column and came up on Cobweb’s side. “Suck your dick for silver?”
“I don’t have any silver,” said Cobweb.
“Fine,” said Gritch. As we made our way up the mountain, he went to each member of our troop, offering the same service to each for the same price, pausing next to Peaseblossom, who appeared to be haggling.
“She knows she doesn’t have a dick, right?” I asked Cobweb.
“Doesn’t have any silver neither. Pease is simple as sand, but she’s the mongrel’s dongles at bargaining.”
When Gritch got to Bottom, the weaver looked at Gritch’s saw-toothed maw and audibly yelped with dismay before declining, as his only silver had been the button on his waistcoat. Gritch sulked and fell in beside me again.
“Gritch, mate, do you have any idea what you are offering?”
“I am told that if you say that to mortals, sometimes they will give you silver.”
“But you asked the fairies. Females.”
“They can have silver,” he reasoned.
“Quite right,” said I. “Carry on.”
Chapter 13
In the Night Palace
The palace rose into the night sky like a great pointed crown, nine ridiculously tall, angular towers constructed, it seemed, of the same smooth, black glass plates that armored the goblins. No man nor creature of forest had constructed this edifice, for there was no sign of joints nor mortar, nor even the mark of a stonecutter. It was a castle made by a demented jeweler, from pieces of polished night, which reflected every star in spectral brilliance and shone streaks of moonlight down its sides as if painted in molten silver.
Gritch led us through a gate of polished stone, down a tunnel, and out into an open courtyard, or bailey, as wide as some of the old Roman amphitheaters I’d seen in Tuscany and Provence. The interior was lit only by dim lamps up the high walls and the odd torch carried here and there by ambling goblins. The goblins and fairies had no problem seeing by the dim light, but Bottom and I were nearly tripping over ourselves until Gritch retrieved a torch from a rack by a brazier glowing with coals and lit it from the same. He held it high so we mortals could see our way.
A goblin carrying a sword with a silver earring somewhat smaller than Gritch’s approached him and the two exchanged what seemed to me to be low grunts and growls.
Nick Bottom stepped up behind me and whispered, “He’s telling the other to tell Oberon we are here, sent by Titania.” Bottom pointed to his long ears by way of explanation.
The soldier goblin hurried off, no doubt to deliver his message, and Gritch said, “Gathering is soon. Shadow king will bring down the moon. He will see you after the moon.”
There was a raised stage at the far side of the courtyard, and goblins were beginning to gather below it, spraying out from gates at the base of each of the towers that made up the crown of the palace.
“Where is their market?” I asked Cobweb. “Where are the horses? The oxen? How do they feed a walled city without farms?”
“They eat things from under the ground,” she said. “Farm things under the ground.”
“And do they turn into gophers during the day?”
“No, they hide under the ground,” she said, ignoring my snark. “They can go about in the day, but only for a short time, wearing a cloak. They can’t see well and the sun burns them.”
“So, one might shoot the wrong mortal simply because the daylight was too bright?”
She shrugged, nodded toward a set of steps that led to a platform just below the stage. Two goblins with crossed halberds guarded the stairs and made way as they saw Gritch coming. A silver earring carried a lot of authority in the castle, evidently, for beyond that, nothing distinguished Gritch from the other armed goblins.
As we passed by the guard he whispered, “Suck your dick for silver?” to Moth.
“Fancy a frolic?” she replied. Cobweb and Peaseblossom laughed and the goblin growled at them.
Once on the platform, the lower stage, our heads were level with the upper stage, but we were a man’s height above the groundlings, which is how I thought of the goblins who were filling the courtyard. There was some sort of caste system at play here; the warriors carried all manner of weapons, were heavier of limb, and were perhaps a head taller than another group with spindlier arms and thick claws on their large toes. Workers, I suppose? If they were of different sexes, I could not tell, for there was no evidence of a difference in attire or body shape. They were a sea of shining black, like boiling pitch or swarming ants, perhaps. The flash of a weapon or the occasional silver ring in the ear was the only thing that distinguished one from another. Then just below the stage I spotted a flash among the black, on a warrior carrying a crossbow and a short quiver of bolts slung from a belt at his waist. On his right arm he wore a silver armlet cast with the image of the head of a Gorgon. I turned to Gritch to demand he bring the goblin to us, but before I could speak, trumpets sounded from balconies near the ceiling of the chamber, and all the goblins dropped to their knees in a single motion.
“Trumpets?” I said to Cobweb. “How are they playing trumpets? They don’t even have bloody lips.”
“Oi, Gritch,” said Cobweb, “you got goblins with lips?”
Gritch looked confused, and I had no doubt that if he’d had eyebrows, he would have raised one quizzically. “Lips?” he asked.
Cobweb blew a raspberry at him to illustrate her question, just as the doors at the back of the stage swung open and Oberon walked out. The hall trembled and went quiet except for the dying echo of the horns.
Oberon looked like a man built of night sky. He was black, head to toe, but spotted everywhere but his face with silver and gold stars that shone their own light—I could see it playing in patterns on the doors behind him. He wore a cape made of night, too, that billowed out behind him, although I could feel no wind. His face was black, like the goblins’, but he had handsome human features, like an Egyptian statue carved from onyx. Atop his head he wore a tall, nine-pointed
black crown, the model for, or modeled from, the very palace in which we stood. He wore wicked silver claws on his fingertips that looked as if they would draw blood with even a delicate touch.
He raised his arms straight over his head and the trumpets blew again. There was an earth-trembling sound of machinery, like a dozen heavy mill wheels being turned at once, and as Oberon brought his arms down to cruciform, the ceiling of the great hall opened. Every goblin eye turned skyward as the arches of the ceiling pulled back into the towers, revealing a shining moon above.
Gasps of awe and ecstasy filled the hall as thousands of yellow eyes in a sea of black were illuminated by the full summer moon. I looked around. Even the fairies were on their knees, staring in wonder. Oberon and I were the only ones standing and not looking up. I looked at him, he at me.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said I. “He didn’t create the bloody moon, you nitwits, he just opened a fucking window. You could have seen the same moon by walking outside.”
There were a few cries of distress around the arena, as if I’d interrupted someone’s especially somber moon wank, but most of the goblins were drooling at the moon like starved men at an apple.
Oberon floated, or seemed to float, to the edge of the stage and looked down on us. Gritch’s feet began to make frantic scratching motions, like a dog having his belly rubbed, his heavy talons scoring the stone. If he’d been on soft earth he’d have dug his way under it and I realized that was exactly what his body was trying to do. Cobweb, Moth, and Peaseblossom were curled into tight balls, hoping not to be noticed, I guessed. I could see Cobweb trembling and I bent and patted her back before approaching Oberon, who seemed somewhat nonplussed that I was not overwhelmed with his sparkly fucking grandeur.