“Do you think I’m pretty?” continued Irina, studying her face in the glass. She looked the same as yesterday, but yesterday she had been ugly, and today she was pretty. She looked anxiously at Emily. Or maybe not?
“You’re pretty,” said Emily dryly. “But you’re no genius.”
“What’s a genius?” asked Irina curiously. “Oh, wait. Thaydar’ll know.” Emily hadn’t foreseen this development, and she didn’t think Thaydar would be very pleasant about her remark.
“I just meant,” she hurried to add, “that you’re not terribly bright.” She smiled a friendly, apologetic smile, and Irina smiled warmly back.
“Oh, I know that.” She giggled. “Everybody tells me that. But I don’t see what the fuss is all about.”
Marak had stressed to the potential bridegrooms that they be the only ones to give their captives food. “Elf women take food from the hands of their husbands,” he had warned. “If you let anyone else give their meals to them, it’ll cause confusion.” Irina didn’t know the first thing about this, but she was only too happy to eat what Thaydar gave her. She gulped it down with relish under the loving gaze of her fiancé.
Sable understood exactly what it meant when Tinsel gave her food, and there was no way the silver goblin could induce her to eat it. Taking it would mean agreeing that he had the right to give it to her. It would mean agreeing to marriage. She wouldn’t take it—she mustn’t—but to turn down food freely given was a special torture for the starving woman. Her eyes wandered to it every now and then. She could even smell it a little.
“That’s all right,” he said kindly, laying the piece of bread in her lap. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to, but I really think you ought to keep your strength up.” And he began on his own dinner.
Keep her strength up. Of course! If Sable had the chance to escape, she would need the strength this bread would give her. Dilemma solved, she snatched the bread and began rapidly devouring it.
“Sable!” exclaimed Tinsel in alarm, plucking the bread out of her hands. “Sable, that’s no way to eat!”
She stared in shattered disappointment. He’d taken the food away from her. It was true that Thorn did this whenever she was incautious enough to let him, but she hadn’t realized that this goblin would do it. Such a huge piece, too. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.
“You could make yourself really ill by bolting your food like that,” observed Tinsel. “Here, eat this slowly.” He tore off a bite-sized piece and handed it to her. She gazed at it dully. So tiny. The tiny piece vanished in a twinkling.
“You didn’t chew that at all!” accused the goblin in dismay. “Chew this slowly,” he said, holding out another piece, “and I promise I’ll give you more.”
Sable took the piece and gave it a couple of hasty chews to comply with his demand. He sighed and gave her more.
“Take your time,” he said persuasively. “There’s no need to hurry.” But Sable thought there was. What if he changed his mind? She ate the next piece as rapidly as she thought he would allow, her eyes on the large amount that still remained. She had forgotten that she was supposed to refuse his food.
The party was distributed in three tents, with three people to a tent, and Sable and Tinsel were in a tent with the stripe-faced Katoo. She was glad at first that he was on the other side of her own goblin because his gruesome appearance still frightened her a little, but when Tinsel settled down beside her and spread his cloak over the two of them, Sable became very upset. Sharing food, sharing a tent, and sharing a cloak were all the signs of marriage in her simple world. She never should have taken his bread. Now this goblin thought that she was his wife. Tinsel sat up to rummage in his pack, and Sable shoved away the cloak.
“Here, let me see your hand,” he said, but Sable ignored him. When she didn’t respond, he pulled her hand out of the folds of her dress and rubbed cream on it. In a few seconds, the needle pricks, the knife scratches, the cooking burns, and the other scrapes and scars simply melted away. Sable stared in fascination as the skin became soft and smooth.
“How about the other hand?” he asked, and this time she held it out to him, watching as he worked in the cream. She turned her healed hands and rubbed them against each other. They had never felt like that in her memory.
Tinsel put the salve back into his pack and tucked the cloak around them once more. “Sleep well,” he told her, closing his eyes, but Sable couldn’t sleep. She had known the rules of her world even when she broke them, and she had known what would happen if the goblins ever came. Now they were dragging her away, but nothing was what she expected. Perhaps their confusing her like this was all just a part of the torture, but it didn’t really matter. In the end, life held only two choices for her. She would either find some way to escape before she came to the goblin caves, or she would die having the monster child of her new goblin husband.
How could she escape? Now would be the best time, when they all were sleeping. If she had a knife, she could cut the side of the tent next to her and slip off into the whiteness of the day. She wasn’t afraid of the daylight, she had been thrown out into it so often. One could go surprisingly far on feel alone. If they had more snow during the day, her tracks would be gone by nightfall, and they wouldn’t even know which way to search.
She lay for ages listening to the goblins’ steady breathing and watching the light brighten through the weave of the tent. Even under the thick canvas, the daylight made her squint. Over and over, she ran her hand along the wall of the tent beside her, pushing the seam with her fingers. If only I had a knife, she thought. If only my hand were a knife.
Suddenly the cloth parted under her fingers, and a bright beam of light stabbed in. Sable shut her eyes tightly and held her breath. Slowly she ran her fingers along the tent wall close to the floor, and the thick, heavy cloth ripped beneath them. Very, very carefully, she made a hole that was wide enough to slip through. Then she stopped to listen. Not a sound but the goblins’ breathing. Sable slid out from under the warm cloak and crawled into the daylight.
She paused outside the tent, trying to remember her surroundings. Tears streamed from her closed eyes because of the painful brightness. Crawling away between the tents, she moved as quietly as an elf knew how.
Then her hand stuck fast. It wouldn’t move forward in the snow. She couldn’t imagine what was wrong, and she couldn’t open her eyes to see. Frantically, she slid it around, trying to find and feel the obstacle, but nothing was there to stop it. Just when she was about to give up, it freed itself as mysteriously as it had been caught, and she could move ahead once more.
Terribly excited, Sable crawled downhill, feeling for the thin trunks of the young trees. She didn’t know how far the thicket extended, but she would search for a small cave or a patch of fir woods to hide in. She inched along over the uneven ground for a few minutes, and then her hand stuck fast again.
“We need to go back,” said a quiet voice. It was her goblin husband.
Sable sat down and bowed her head, crushed with disappointment. “You followed me,” she said.
“I had to,” he answered, coming to her side. “We’re leashed together with magic. You can’t go more than ten feet away. The spell is like a rope that ties our hands together.”
Sable rubbed her hand, remembering the pull on it. Now she understood.
“How did you cut the tent?” he asked curiously, but she wouldn’t answer him. Tinsel put his arms around her, but she was stiff and unresponsive. He felt terrible for her. The poor elf woman hated him, and he couldn’t do anything to make her stop.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I’m sorry we came and caught you. I’d let you escape, but I don’t have the powder that breaks the spell. They probably knew not to give it to me. I can’t steal it for you because that would be working against the King, but if there were any way I could do it, I would. I know how much you hate this. I know you want to be with your own people.”
With her own people!
Sable sat up with a jolt. That was what would happen if she escaped! Thorn would hunt for her, and he would find her, too. Now that the scars were gone, he would marry her, and she would die bringing his child into the world. Sable imagined for the briefest space of time what that would mean after all the insults, all the cruelty, and all the hatred that had passed between them. No torture and no goblin spells could ever be as horrible as having to be Thorn’s wife.
“No!” she gasped, huddled in the goblin’s arms. “I don’t want my own people.”
“You don’t?” he echoed, surprised. He could feel that something had changed. “Sable, if you’ll come with me, you won’t be sorry,” he promised. “I know you don’t like us, but I’ll be a good husband to you. Come back and get some sleep.”
“All right,” she answered. But there was nothing else she could say. Life held only one choice for her after all.
Sable woke up screaming from one of her nightmares. She felt arms around her and heard kind words in her ear. For a few seconds, she thought that she was back with Thorn and all the intervening years had been the nightmare. That evening, she ate her husband’s food without protest and responded when he spoke to her, but she didn’t have much to say. She watched the monster warily, trying to see what things made him angry so that she would know what to avoid. If Thorn had taught her one thing, it was to stay out of a man’s way. Life with a goblin husband would be hard enough, but it would be unbearable if he started yelling.
As they broke camp and started off, Tinsel puzzled over this new development. He found his bride’s suspicious glances and careful answers even stranger than her open hostility. Yesterday she had treated him as an enemy, and he could respect and understand that. Tonight he couldn’t guess what she thought he was.
“Why don’t you want to go back to your own people?” he asked as they walked along.
“Because of Thorn,” she said in a low voice. “He hates me, but he’ll marry me anyway.”
“Thorn was the rabbit-lover?” asked the silver goblin. “And you were supposed to marry him, weren’t you?”
Sable nodded, unsure how much to tell him.
“When I cut my face, he didn’t want to feed me anymore,” she answered, “but Rowan said the band needed me. They agreed that as long as he fed me my share it didn’t matter how he did it. But he hated to feed me, hated it every night. The things he did weren’t so bad. It was how he looked at me.”
Tinsel thought about what it would be like to live with someone who despised you.
“I couldn’t do that to you,” he told her. “I wouldn’t ever treat you like that. And you won’t die having a child, either. The goblin King can get you through it.”
Sable shivered at the thought of a goblin King playing midwife.
“I’m an elf, not a goblin,” she pointed out. “He doesn’t know about elves.”
“The goblin King’s Wife is an elf,” said Tinsel, “and he helped her through their son’s birth. It couldn’t have been too bad because she was at a banquet two days after he was born.”
“Another elf?” asked Sable in surprise. “An elf I don’t know? Have you seen her?”
“I see her every day,” said Tinsel. “Her son’s almost six now.”
Sable fell silent, confused. He must be lying. Unwilling to argue with him, she listened to him make promises and explanations without comment. The young goblin kept up the one-sided conversation for a while, but then he, too, fell silent. He considered his captive bride, with her history of neglect and abuse. She was so guarded and distrustful, she would never see him as a friend.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “The King’s going to have to find someone else to marry you.”
Sable stopped and stared at him, taken aback. She thought they were already married.
“I made you angry,” she guessed. “I broke a goblin rule.”
“No, I’m not angry,” he replied. “That’s not it at all. Sable, you’re beautiful and brave and smart, and I’d like the chance to make you happy. But marriage isn’t going to make you happy. How can I marry you, knowing how you feel about it?”
“It’s not your fault if I die,” she said slowly. “It’s just a woman’s life.”
“That’s not true,” said Tinsel. “If I marry you knowing it will kill you, of course it’s my fault if you die, and if I marry you knowing you’ll be miserable, it’s my fault if you’re miserable. I know you won’t die, but I also know you don’t believe that. I can’t marry you and make you miserable.”
Sable was struck by this argument. It was what she had told Thorn all those years ago. If you loved me, you wouldn’t want me to die, she had said. Now, why hadn’t Thorn understood that?
“But you said I’ll just have to marry someone else,” she pointed out unhappily.
“I know,” he told her, “but that’s not my decision. Marak has to decide those things; that’s why he’s the King.”
She thought about what this would mean for her. She would still die, and she wouldn’t even have this quiet goblin’s kindness anymore. Maybe it would be one of those others—loud, twisted, with strange eyes. Maybe it would be somebody cruel. Maybe she would live a life like the one she had had before, only this time she would have to die anyway. Tinsel looked at her face, even more distressed now, and he guessed what she was thinking.
“Marak will let you marry anyone you choose,” he said. “You’re terribly important. You’re almost the only elf bride we have.”
Sable thought about this for some time as they walked along in silence.
“Then I’ll tell him I want to marry you.”
The big silver goblin was completely baffled. “Why would you do that?” he demanded.
She looked up at him anxiously.
“Will that make you angry?” she asked.
“No, it won’t make me angry,” insisted Tinsel, waving a hand in the air. “But you’ve been nothing but unhappy the whole time you’ve been with me. Why on earth would you want to marry me?”
No one asked Sable why she might want to do things. Even during their happiest days, Thorn hadn’t been interested in hearing her point of view, and during the last several years, no one had asked her anything at all. She couldn’t explain that he had understood her argument to Thorn. She couldn’t really explain about his sympathy and consideration, either, that it was the first time a man had wanted to hear what she had to say.
“You’re kind,” she said.
“We’re all kind, compared to what you’re used to,” he replied gloomily. “You’re with a better class of people now.”
“And you don’t want to marry me,” she continued sincerely. “I wouldn’t want to marry someone who wanted to marry me.”
Tinsel glanced down at her serious face, truly and deeply puzzled. “You want to marry me because I don’t want to marry you,” he echoed. She nodded. He fell to work on that mystery, and a thoughtful silence descended once more.
“Will he make you?” she asked after a few minutes, and he shot her an inquiring look. “Will the goblin King make you marry me?” she asked with concern.
“Oh, probably,” mused Tinsel.
Sable gave a little sigh of relief.
“Then I’ll tell him I won’t marry anyone else.”
Tinsel shook his head. “I don’t see how forcing me to marry you solves any of your problems,” he observed. “You’re still miserable because you don’t want to be married in the first place, and now I’m miserable because I don’t want to be married to someone miserable.”
Sable thought about this and felt uncertain once again.
“But I’ll try to be a good wife,” she told him. She wasn’t quite sure what that entailed. Apparently, she wasn’t supposed to cook for him or sew his clothes, and she didn’t know how to hunt.
“That’s not really the problem,” explained Tinsel. “You’d still think I was trying to kill you, and you couldn’t help hating me for it. Remember that look in the elf man’s eyes that y
ou didn’t want to see?” She nodded. “Well, I don’t want to see it, either.”
A light dawned in Sable’s mind. She had been afraid that he would get angry and hate her, and it turned out that he was afraid she would hate him. She didn’t just need his kindness, he needed her kindness, too. Sable was staggered at the thought. She had never had that kind of power before. Thorn had never given her the least indication that he cared about what she thought of him.
“But what if you don’t see it?” she asked him. “If I don’t get angry at you? If I try to be kind, too?”
Tinsel stopped walking. He studied her for a long minute.
“If that’s what you want, Sable,” he said, and he smiled.
Sable didn’t know what to do. Maybe it was all a trick. Maybe, when they got to the caves, this goblin would hand her over to be tortured. But he didn’t look as if he would, and he had been a good husband so far. He had fed her and kept her warm and talked to her, and he had cared about how she felt.
She rubbed her healed hands together, thinking about this. Then she looked up and managed a smile in return.
“We’ll have a happy year,” she whispered. “I promise.”
Chapter Fourteen
Camp that morning was surprisingly uneventful. They had made good time during the long winter night and would be home before midnight the next day. Richard cheerfully ran errands for anyone who asked, and the goblin men made a fuss over him. He had assisted in unloading Dinner, who had been a packhorse for the night, and now he was bringing a pot of water to Brindle.
“Light that fire for me,” directed the man, and a roaring flame shot up. “Wait! Not so much force next time!”
Richard sat down by the fire to tend it, and Brindle began sorting through their supplies.
“You have a good bit of magic,” he observed to Richard. “If you’re Mandrake’s boy, and Marak thinks you are, you come by it naturally. Mandrake was the best illusionist among the Guard in his day. You’d walk right by him and think he was a rock or a tree. Then he’d trip you and get a good laugh at the stupid look on your face.”