Nine Goblins Read Free Page A

would be pure magic, a
reaffirmation of everything good and noble in the world. But there
was gunk from the hind end of a unicorn plastered clear up the side
of his face, delicate hoof prints turning purple across his
ribcage, and he felt about a thousand years old.
    He got painfully to his feet—his knees had
moved through the on-fire stage and now felt as if tiny wolverines
were chewing under the kneecaps—and staggered outside to the pump.
He tried to grab the pump handle, and for an awful minute his hand
wouldn’t close on it.
    Well, no surprise there. His right arm, which
had been the one inside the unicorn, was red and white and bruising
magnificently where contractions had smacked his bicep repeatedly
against the mare’s pelvic bones, and there was unicorn crap and
amniotic fluid and bits of straw all over him.
    Sings-to-Trees slumped against the pump
handle, moaned, and managed to grab it with his left hand. By
dropping most of his weight on it, with all the grace of a sack of
potatoes, he got enough water out to sluice the worst of the muck
from him. It was icy cold, but he didn’t really care.
    There was soap somewhere. He found it. It
didn’t lather very well, but he made at least a symbolic effort
before giving up.
    He ducked his head back in the barn and
glanced over at the mother and child, who were arranged in a
beautifully domestic scene, as tranquil as the dawn. White hide
glowed in the muted lamplight of the barn. You’d never know she’d
spent hours in labor. That was unicorns for you.
    Pausing only to make sure that the afterbirth
had passed with no difficulties—he considered patting the foal, but
the mare, ingrate that she was, stamped a hoof at him and lowered
her horn warningly—Sings-to-Trees limped out of the barn.
    The moon glared down like a bar of soap in a
bucket of cold sky. The path up to the house was packed earth,
washed blue and black in the moonlight, and approximately a
thousand miles long. Several ages of the earth passed while he
toiled up to the house, punctuated by the bright jangle of pain
from his knees.
    A coyote with one eye and a ragged ear was
stretched out across the porch rug. When the elf was close enough,
it lifted its head, pricked up the good ear, and came down to meet
him. A cold nose touched his hand, and the tail made a careless
motion that was certainly not a wag—Fleabane had a certain amount
of dignity, despite his name—but might conceivably be mistaken for
one. Sings-to-Trees wound a cold hand in the coarse hair behind the
coyote’s ears and rubbed affectionately. They walked the last few
yards up to the house together, and then Fleabane flopped back down
on the rug and Sings-to-Trees went inside.
    There were animals to be fed yet—a bat
hanging upside down in the closet who was thankfully past needing
ground mealworms shoved down its throat, an orphaned raccoon who
was just starting on solid foods and needed warm milk with a little
bread, and of course the gargoyle. He dumped a handful of dried
mealworms on the closet floor, heard a grumpy chitter in response,
and left the bat to its own devices.
    There was cold chicken left, and he divided
it up carefully, a quarter for a sandwich, and three quarters for
the gargoyle. He built up the fire, and set milk to warm by the
hearth. The warmth was wonderful, if painful on his cold hands. He
started to sink down into the rug in front of the fireplace, caught
himself, and lurched to his feet. He didn’t dare stop moving. If he
sat down to rest, he wasn’t going to get back up in a hurry.
    The back door opened with a wooden groan. He
took three steps forward, turned and hucked the battered remains of
the chicken onto the roof.
    A stony chuckling came down to him, followed
by the crunch of chicken bones. Satisfied, Sings-to-Trees went back
inside to feed the raccoon.
    He must have made tea at some point, because
when he woke up, there was a stone cold mug of it next to his elbow
and a half-eaten sandwich