Part 16 (1/2)

Can they make me marry him? Jill thought frantically. They can't, right?

The casket was opened. The goblin-suitor reached in.

He withdrew a small piece of parchment.

He held it before his blindfolded face, his expression contorted with grotesque excitement. Jill stared at him and felt sick.

The goblin tore off his blindfold and examined the paper.

”No!” he screamed, and the two goblin guards standing behind him rammed their spears straight through his body with a horrible crunching, slicing sound. The spear points came out, red and covered in viscera, on the other side. The goblin collapsed-quite dead-on the floor.

I'm sorry. I forgot to warn you that was coming. I was too caught up in telling the story. Anyway, it's all over now.

Jill, seeing the dead goblin, felt a mix of horror and relief that she found very confusing.

Four goblins ran out from who-knew-where and picked up the corpse and scrubbed the floor clean. All remnants of the hapless suitor were removed, and the line continued as it had before.

A few more admirers came and went. And then, another goblin threw himself on the ground and proclaimed his undying love for Jill.

Jill started in alarm and tried frantically to rip herself from the throne, to save either herself from marriage or the goblin from death.

But the two goblin soldiers came forward and questioned him, and then the four goblins came out with the casket.

Again the goblin drew a piece of parchment from the great chest.

Again, he held it before his blindfolded face as he quivered with excitement.

And again, he removed his blindfold, examined the paper, screamed in agony, and the two spears were rammed through his back. Blood spurted out of his chest as if from a fountain, spraying the casket and the two guards and then, once he had collapsed, dribbling slowly out of his body and running among the cobblestones.

Sorry, sorry! Totally forgot! Last time! Promise!

The four goblins on cleanup duty came forth and scrubbed the floor with red rags, and a minute later, the line was moving again.

Jill felt sick to her stomach.

Goblin after goblin told Jill of her celestial, supernatural, otherworldly beauty. They stared into her face and simpered lovingly at her.

She found it revolting.

And every third or fourth goblin declared his undying love for her, was presented with the casket, and was summarily killed.

After the fifteenth goblin had been stabbed through his back, Jill began to have serious doubts about the fairness of the test. It seemed to her that if there were two slips of parchment in the casket, one saying ”Death!” and the other ”The Lady!”, she would be married to half the goblins in the room by now.

Three goblins in a row all declared their undying love for Jill, and all of them died on the points of spears. The last one convulsed on the floor, screaming in pain, as blood bubbled up out of his body like a hot spring and flowed all over the floor in crimson waves, eventually lapping up against the throne's legs like water against rocks on a beach.

Jeez! My bad! Sorry!

Jill stared. How is it possible, she wondered, that not a single goblin drew ”The Lady”? But she did not have long to consider this, for suddenly, standing before her, was Jack.

He looked, somehow, different.

Her eyes traveled from his messy black hair to his eyes-which seemed harder, more resolute, than she'd ever seen them before-to his set mouth, his quivering chin, his shoulders-were they broader, now?-down his thin arms and past his elbows and his wrists and to his hands . . .

She stopped.

Confused? Well, allow me to go back to Jack's story for a moment.

It was just a short while before that Jack had been standing with the dream-sword raised above his head, and his left hand outstretched on a bed of velvet.

”Don't do it,” the frog whispered frantically. ”Jack, you will be sorry. So, so sorry.”

Jack thought of Marie, laughing at him. He thought of his father. It'll prove that you're a man. He held his breath.

The blade began to sing.

This is where we left off, right?

Just checking.

The sword of Jack's dreams clattered to the floor.

The frog wept silently.

Neither the goblin-salesman nor the apothecary moved.

Jack looked at them, and then at the sword, and then at his hand.

He felt different. Very different.

He flexed his right hand.