#mordack

No, Mordon’s guard duty consisted of standing a little distance ahead of the goblin king’s castle and looking as important as he could. He didn’t even get a spear. He just had to stand there. He took it as seriously as he could, but he felt himself curling back down into his crouch when his friends came by. His friends had gotten to be in the fairy tale prison. The fun job. They were energized, excited by being so close to the stories.

Maybe it wasn’t all that surprising when they started hitting him. Maybe one of them half-remembered some mistake Mordon had made earlier, or maybe they didn’t like how Mordon was standing, or maybe they just (he thought this extra quietly) didn’t like Mordon. With one thing or another, they found it was more fun to start thumping him. It turned into a game, like most things with the goblins did. One would hit him, and he would turn to face them, and then one would thump him from behind, and he would whirl, but he couldn’t fight back because then they’d really be angry, and if they got angry….

Mordon felt hot tears racing down his cheeks beneath his helmet, but he fiercely blinked them back. It was just another night in the kingdom. It was just how it was.

But then, a shadow loomed against the wall, flinging all of them into sharp darkness.

The shadow was huge, curved, deadly.

Dragon.

The goblins around Mordon screamed and fled, scrambling away, vanishing down tunnels. But Mordon stood frozen. A little voice in the back of his head wondered how a dragon of that size would fit in this place, how it would come all the way here without being seen or heard by anyone else.

And then he saw the truth standing across the gaping hole the goblins called a moat. Not a dragon. Or at least, not the full sized one the shadow might have led them to think. It was just a baby dragon. A tiny little useless thing. Held in front of a light to cast a shadow to frighten people who weren’t willing to look beyond first glance. And the person holding the baby dragon to the light was…

The king.

The king was here.

The king was out of his locked room.

The fairy tale king and his shiny hat had come out of the darkness, and the king had tricked the others, just like the king in the story had done to the pied piper. Mordon wasn’t sure what to do, and he felt the panic rising in his chest. His friends were gone, and the king was standing across the moat looking…yes, looking directly at Mordon.

Should he run, too? Should he get help? The king was dangerous, deceptive, clever. What help could his friends even give him? Would they hit him and call him a liar about the baby dragon? They would probably just claim all the success if they did catch the king, wouldn’t mention that Mordon was the only one who had (bravely? stupidly?) stood there.

But…but the king knew the stories…and….

Mordon raised a hand in wary greeting, out of some reflexive desperate instinct more than anything, and the king, after a long, thoughtful pause, did the same. A gentle hand, raised to greet him, to acknowledge him. Mordon hesitated a moment longer, but then the king smiled at him, just a little bit.

Mordon hadn’t ever been smiled at before. Just bared teeth and growls and insults and usually a kick or several. This felt…nicer. Nice enough that he wanted another smile. He made a decision—good or bad, he didn’t know, but it was his choice, at least. He raised a finger to the king, telling him to wait (imagine, Mordon, asking a king to wait!), and scampered off to find the drawbridge crank.

As the king crossed the bridge, Mordon thought again about running away, but…this felt too important.

And he wanted another one of those smiles.

So he crouched, fidgeting, at the edge of the castle entrance, and then the king was next to him and his shiny hat was still glittering in the light, and Mordon secretly thought that the king’s crown was better than the goblin king’s crown. Just a little bit.

“Hi…I’m Graham,” the king said. He looked apprehensive, but he stayed, he waited. And that was strange and unexpected and foolish and fascinating.

Mordon cautiously replied, “I am…Mordon.”

The king—Graham—startled, stepping back a pace. “You…speak my language?”

“Mmhmm.” He could read it, too, a bit. He’d taught himself as best he could, hoping that if he could read from the books of fairy tales (always written in the language of humans), and translated it for his friends, they might like him more. Like they liked the goblin king, who had books upon books and held reading parties where he would read out the stories and the goblins would act them for him. Somehow, the ability to read didn’t make Mordon more popular. It was only magical when the goblin king read the stories.

The king was looking at him intently. Mordon crouched lower, more like his goblin friends would want. “You’re pretty big for a goblin,” the king mumbled, apparently to himself instead of to Mordon.

But Mordon was used to not being spoken to. “You…want to see Goblin King?” he asked. Why else would the king—no, Graham—be here?

“Yes. How can I find him?”

Mordon twisted his long fingers together in terrified thought—but he had gone this far, and the king hadn’t hurt him. And maybe the human king had something important he had to tell the goblin king. That was in the stories, too. Kings with daughters they needed marrying, or kingdoms to give away, or other important things that were too big for Mordon. So, probably, he would be doing the right thing by the book by showing Graham where to go.

You couldn’t go against the story, after all.

“Follow me,” Mordon said, and loped off into the darkness, taking twists and turns down the warren of tunnels that made up the goblin’s inner court. Graham hesitated for a mere moment before stumbling after him, made clumsy by darkness.

~*~*~

The goblin was not what Graham had expected.

For the first time, Graham could see him unobstructed by shadows and distance. For the first time, he could stand next to him. For the first time, he thought that if Mordon stopped crouching, he would be of a height with Graham. Perhaps taller. For the first time, Graham’s thoughts started to tell of something all together too distressing—he shoved the idea away. How tall was Acorn, after all? How tall had Achaka—no, stop that, don’t you dare think about that.

They walked in silence through the roughly hewn corridors, taking turns that Graham, had he been on his own, probably wouldn’t have even noticed. They slipped from shadow to shadow, Mordon just as keen to avoid company as Graham.

This, Graham thought, is the worst idea. I’m following a goblin I met three minutes ago to face some unknown enemy on his territory just so I can try to, what, talk him into letting me go?

Still.

Mordon, despite being a goblin, didn’t seem like the others (and not just because of the height). Hadn’t mocked Graham. Hadn’t threatened him with any violence (yet).

Graham was curious, and Graham was desperate, and Graham was willing to play along. Mordon might be leading him into a trap, or he might not be, but after watching the other goblins abuse him, Graham felt a stubborn need give the goblin a chance.

This is definitely the worst idea.

“Like your hat,” Mordon said, softly.

“Um, thank you,” Graham said, surprised.

Mordon stiffened. Apparently he hadn’t meant to speak it out loud.

“I have another hat,” Graham said. “No, I suppose it’s had another hat.” He paused, leaning against the wall. The nerves and the exhaustion and a nagging ache in the back of his throat were all catching up with him, biting into him. Not a good time, Graham. “I don’t know that I’ll ever see it again,” he continued, trying to hide his breathlessness with an airy nonchalance. Trying not to show weakness, like he could distract Mordon with conversation until he felt like could walk again without feeling as though his knees were going to give out.

Mordon was staring. At least, Graham thought he was. The helmet made it hard to be sure. He braced himself, certain he was going to be tackled, that this was it, that he had made the wrong choice— “You…sad about other hat?” Mordon asked.

Oh. Graham nodded, rubbing at his throat absently, relief making him feel like his knees really were about to give out. “Yeah, I am. It was special to me. It had a big red feather in it. My mom gave it to me before I went to go become a knight.”

“Mom gave it.” Mordon seemed to be thinking hard about that. It took a long time for him to connect what he wanted to say. “Goblins…don’t have those. Goblins are big family. All the same.” They stood in awkward silence for a moment, but Mordon didn’t seem to want to let the idea go. “What else does hat have? Like mine?” He gestured to his helmet.

Graham smiled wryly at that, which Mordon seemed to like since the goblin straightened up another fraction of an inch and stepped a little closer to hear the answer: “No, not like your helmet. It’s blue, and I guess it’s a bit tattered. It’s made of cloth, not stone like yours. Do you ever take yours off?”

“Goblins hate Mordon’s face.”

“Do they now?” Graham bit his lip. “Why is that? Where are you from?”

“Grew up here. Goblins are family.”

Not a helpful answer. Could he ask Mordon to take off his helmet? Or would that cause some sort of etiquette meltdown? Mordon had been helpful so far, but Graham was still fully aware of the consequences of upsetting him—he didn’t carry a spear, but it wouldn’t be hard for him to bring Graham down with the weight of that stone armor, and he could have other things with him, like a dagger or something. Best to keep quiet.

But Mordon was still thinking. “Where hat gone? Could we get it?”

“One of your…friends took it away, when I first came. I haven’t seen it since. It could be anywhere.”

“Or could be here.”

Graham perked up a little. “Why would you think that?”

“Guards from then, come here lots.”

Graham thought about that for a moment, but then decided against it. Looking for his hat was just too ridiculous a risk, no matter how much he wanted it back. That would land him back in his not-so-cozy pit of a cell, maybe this time with a few extra restrictions tied in place. “That’s okay,” he told Mordon. “It’s not important.”

“It is,” Mordon said, a little stubbornly. “You want. We could…”

“No, it’s fine. Maybe after I get a chance to talk to the king, we can think about it. But right now, you’re with me. Let’s get out of here.”

~*~*~

Mordon couldn’t stop glancing over his shoulder as they walked, and every time excitement flickered through his heart, not unlike the jolting feeling of accidentally touching hot metal. This was better than playing. This was real. He was walking with the king. And the king wasn’t wearing a tattered costume and carrying badly painted props: the king was real.

And Mordon wasn’t playing a villain. For the first time since he could remember, someone wanted him. The king had even said so. “You’re with me.” That meant something. It had to. Words spoken mattered. He practically floated down the cave, hardly thinking about where they were going but thinking about costumes and plays and heroes and monsters and—

His helmet suddenly felt like it was too tight, and his armor felt like it was rubbing even worse than ever before, pinching his elbows. Graham was only still with him because Graham didn’t know about monsters. Didn’t know about what was under Mordon’s helmet. If he knew, he’d hate Mordon. Like the goblins did. He’d want to leave, like the goblins did.