Chapter 50
PANDORA’S DIARY
Times I’ve been more scared: Never
Relief that Leo was with me: Infinite
The brownies fanned across the forest floor, and Leo shoved through a prickly hedge to the half-rotten front door of Albert’s house. His now-rotten and shrunken house. And Diary, I just stood there, praying that Leo’s faith in me wasn’t a mistake. What if I couldn’t find a way? What then?
I couldn’t take another step. I couldn’t do this.
Except when I turned to Leo, he said, “Secret handshake before we go in?”
“Jerk,” I said, unable to hide my smile.
That was all I needed to hear. Because after he burst through the door, I followed him inside.
The shack was empty except for decaying furniture, a compost floor, and moss-covered walls.
Broken windows surrounded us, and the roof was gone completely.
Instead, a hundred interlaced vines dangled above us, holding a mass of rotten leaves that bulged like a commercial fisherman’s net full of writhing fish.
“No Albert,” I said, and the brownies mimed their agreement as they entered.
“And no manuscript,” Leo said, when he’d finished peering around the shack. “It’s close, but I can’t get a fix on the direction, I’m not sure which—”
“Help me, pleasssse.” A raspy voice spoke from all around us. “Help me, free me…”
“Dames!” I snapped, my pulse jumping.
“Down,” the voice rasped. “Cut me…”
Leo moved next to me, holding his oar like a club. “What do you want? Who are you?”
“Pleassse,” the voice repeated. “Cut. Down. Albert…”
“What about Albert?” I asked the emptiness.
“Trapped,” the voice said, and the net of vines shuddered above us.
The mass of filth shifted. It oozed and trembled and a face emerged at the bottom of the bulging net, a horrible face that looked half tormented man, half decaying plant matter.
I gasped, “Leo!”
He yanked me aside before a cascade of filth dripped on me and said, “Albert?”
“Albert?” I repeated, recognizing the face beyond the grime. “Holy Dames, how long—okay! We’re getting you down. Jera, cut the vines! Leo, help me catch him.”
A minute later, the bulging net fell to the floor and Leo peeled Albert from the sticky, rotting mass.
Albert clung to Leo’s forearm and wept. “She’s… not human. Anymore. She wants to destroy the manuscript. To trap her goblins and vines on Beane. Forever.”
“Who?” Leo asked.
“She brought the manuscript,” Albert gasped, his eyes wild. “Then she waited—not she! No longer she. They. They waited. All this time.”
I knelt in front of him. “Albert, look at me.”
“Pandora!” His gaze rested on me for a moment, then darted madly around the shack. “Pandora took them by surprise! Pandora saved us by getting her gift.”
“Take a breath, Albert, one deep breath,” Leo told him, his voice gentle.
“We’re dead! All dead unless you stop her. Stop them. They want Beane. To claim Beane Isle as a breeding ground. Nothing will remain.”
“Albert!” I interrupted him mid-rant. “Who is ‘she’?”
“Not she,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering closed. “They.”
“Don’t fall asleep yet,” Leo told him. “Just tell us who—
I shivered as vicious giggles sounded from outside. Leaves rustled from all around the shack, and the pixies and brownies cowered closer to us at the sound of growling and yipping.
I whispered, “Goblins?”
“Goblins,” Leo murmured back.
Something went bang on the wall beside me. I jumped as a hole punched through the rotten wood, and a brownie in a poodle suit hurtled through and slammed into the opposite wall. Two more bangs sounded as the goblins tossed two more brownies through the walls and into the shack.
It was like they didn’t see the open door—or the windows. Or maybe they just didn’t care, they wanted to have fun with the brownies. And with us.
A heartbeat later, dozens of goblin claws started tearing at the holes, widening them.
Pointy teeth tore chunks off the walls, revealing a mob of goblins crawling over each other for the chance at the shack.
The pixies fluttered in panic as one goblin squeezed through a hole then yowled at us, jaws unhinged to reveal way too many teeth.
Leo slammed the goblin with his wooden oar.
On the bright side, he hit that creepy little creature so hard that he sent it flying.
On the dimmer side, he hit that creepy little creature so hard that he sent it flying through the corroded wall. Opening an even bigger hole.
He said, “Oops.”
I said, “Run!”
“Go, go, I’m right behind you!”
The pixies whirled around me as I fled through the door. I only paused twice. Once to swing my skillet with all my strength against a goblin that sprang at me, and once to check on Leo.
I caught a glimpse of the goblins swarming the shack while Leo crouched inside. He was trying to lift Albert while yelling at the brownies and gnomes to run away. Instead, brownies stood guard with mops and brooms while Jera directed the gnomes, who yanked levers on their weird umbrella catapult.
I screamed Leo’s name and his head jerked toward me.
His gaze narrowed, and for an instant I didn’t realize why.
Then I saw the goblins scrambling toward me.
Five or six of them were chasing me from the shack.
I braced myself to skillet them, even though I knew there were too many.
Hell, three goblins had been too many for my parents plus Sheila.
Still, I planted my feet as Leo sprinted from the shack, pounding toward me from behind the goblins.
When the one in front leaped at my face, Violet and another pixie zoomed in from either side and boxed its ears.
It flung past me and splashed into a puddle and the next one snapped at my nose.
I smashed its teeth with my skillet, then kicked a skinny one, but the one after that head-butted me in the stomach and I toppled backward, wheezing.
I heard Leo roar in fury and lay into the remaining goblins from behind with the swing of his oar. He sounded vicious. And Diary, I will admit only here that it warmed my heart and fulfilled all my rescued-by-an-ancient-gladiator fantasies.
By the time I caught my breath, Leo was stomping on the final goblin. His muscles flexing, his gorgeous face furious. Then he rushed toward me, but I kept looking toward the shack behind him. Because another wave of goblins was coming.
He squared his shoulders. “Find her, Pan. Find them, whoever they are. I’ll hold the goblins off while you—”
“No fucking way,” I said, and grabbed his wrist.
I started to drag him away, but we only made it five steps before a series of pops cut through the chittering behind us.
When I glanced backward, Jera’s weird gnome contraption was rotating wildly inside the now-demolished shack.
The umbrella/catapult spun into a blur… then spewed dozens of ribbons of mosquito netting, which burst from the contraption like confetti from a cannon.
The ribbons of netting wrapped everything they touched.
Branches and bracken, brownies and vines, pixies and gnomes and Albert.
But mostly, goblins. Clumps of goblins were bound into tight rolls—and after a moment, everything within a fifty-foot radius of the shack was caught in the net. Including the gnomes themselves.
Still, they’d basically frozen everything else in place. Almost everything else. A handful of goblins escaped the unfurling mosquito netting, and screeched as they rampaged toward me and Leo.
So yeah, we kept running. I could only hope that Jera’s net held, and Albert and the trapped folk were safe for now.
We pushed through the decaying remains of plants as the goblins hooted and yipped behind us. Pale vines lashed at us, and only Violet’s nimbus of pixie dust kept them away, because the other pixies were too busy darting around my head in a panic. Mittens even lost one of her mittens.
Vicious giggles sounded behind us. My lungs hurt from gasping and my legs ached from running and Dames this skillet was heavy—but I spotted a faint trail through the treacherous woods that seemed to lead to a clearing.
“This way!” I called. “There’s a way out!”
I heard Leo smack another goblin as I raced along the path, grateful for the solid ground underfoot.
Then we burst into the clearing. Without a thousand branches overhead, I could see the evening sky.
A full moon shone between the clouds and I found myself in a roughly circular clearing ringed by vines that had woven together like a fence.
“Maybe this isn’t a way out,” I said, as Leo panted to a halt beside me.
“Was that a house?” Leo pointed his oar at the huge mound of vegetation in front of us, glossy and green-black in the moonlight. “Who lived there?”
“I don’t know, but—listen—the goblins are hanging back. Why would they stop?”
“No idea.” Leo wiped sweat from his face. “Maybe they’re allergic to moonlight.”
When I stepped forward, my feet scuffed against the crinkly lumps of paper covering the ground. “More books.”
“We’re close to the manuscript. Very close.”
Violet gasped and pointed at the oversized iron birdcages ringing the clearing.
Each one was about my height, and packed with folk.
A single cage stood empty, with the door opened wide, but pixies, gnomes, and brownies were trapped inside the others.
Crammed inside, wings lowered and shoulders slumped, looking frail and sickly.
“Dames,” Leo said, then frowned. “There’s animals in there, too. The lost pets.”
“The goblins must’ve taken them. We have to—” A familiar glimmer caught my eye, and I spun toward a nearby cage. “Daffodil!”
Through the bars of a cage to my right I found Daffodil, lying motionless. Oh, Dames, was she dead?
“No, no, no!” I took a step to free her—to free all of them.
That was when goblins began to enter the clearing, making a different sound than before, a rumbling growl.
I spun around, expecting an attack, but instead the goblins were merging into each other.
With every few steps, a handful of goblins oozed together like melting gummy bears.
Finally, the whole horde of them solidified into only two goblins.
Each one was larger than me and Leo combined, they smelled of sulfur and mothballs, and saliva dripped from their rows of shark teeth.
“So that’s new,” I squeaked.
“Hobgoblins,” Leo explained.
“Since when is that a thing? They weren’t in the manuscript!”
“I guess this is what happens to them in the dark,” Leo said, tightening the grip on his oar. “They’re not allergic to moonlight. They turn into hobgoblins.”
The hobgoblins opened their fanged mouths, and howled.
Spittle flew and the stink almost knocked me out.
They barked and stomped and gestured from the pixies hovering near me toward the open birdcage.
Ordering them to fly inside. They roared again, clearly trying to terrify the pixies into obedience.
“What do you think?” I snarled at them. “The pixies are just going to lock themselves up?”
When the hobgoblins growled louder, Violet darted into my shirt to hide—but the rest of the pixies fled into the open cage exactly as the hobgoblins wanted.
“No, you weren’t supposed to—” I let out a huff. “Fine, we’re still going to rescue you, we just need to kill a couple of hobgoblins first.”
The hobgoblins marched toward me and Leo, crushing mangled books under their scaly feet.
“And Leo has a really good plan,” I told them.
“Yeah, we escape over the vine fence,” he said.
“What?” I asked. “We’re not going to kill them?”
“With what, my special book powers? Unless you have fae memories of slaying hobgoblins, our only choice is to get you out of here.” He moved toward the edge of the clearing. “C’mere, I’ll give you a boost.”
I started toward the fence made of vines—and they sprouted like Jack’s beanstalk. In three seconds they grew from six feet tall to twelve. Impossible to climb.
“So we’re trapped here with a couple of swole hobgoblins,” I said, raising my skillet. “It could be worse.”
Then the mound we thought had once been a house began to shake. The mass of leaves and vines and branches trembled, parted, and opened like a monstrous bud into spiny flower petals. A sticky greenhouse warmth washed over me, followed by a sickly sweet odor.
Leo laid his wooden oar over his shoulder. “Maybe you shouldn’t have said that.”