Before they left, Tryle tried to clean himself up as best as he could. And by cleaning up, that meant dunking his head in the river and scrubbing out the scorch marks on his tunic as best he could.
Being presentable at the council meeting was the furthest thing from Tryle’s mind. He simply didn’t want to give away that one of his experiments had gone wrong yet again, nor that he could’ve started a forest fire so close to the village.
When he was finished, Tryle followed Opal into the woods until the sounds of rushing water faded behind them.
Most goblin villages were built near sources of freshwater for cooking, cleaning, consumption, and the like. But through a network of false trails, ground blinds, and leafy, camouflaged walls, they were hidden deep enough in the forest that any non-magical denizen of the Woodlands would find it difficult to penetrate their territory. Only members of the village knew the secret entrances and bramble-filled passageways leading back to their home.
By the time they reached the village, Tryle’s stomach was grumbling loudly. He wished he could grab a fried turnip-and-plum cake to munch on, but Opal told him he was to go straight to the meeting once she brought him back. He’d wasted enough time recovering from his experiment mishap by the river.
“You’ll tell me all about it, right?” said Opal.
“ ‘Course I will. Though it must be boring for you to hear about yet another cattle raid.”
Opal shrugged. “More exciting than picking berries for nine hours straight. Anyway, I’d better get going. Before I left, my aunt Enis was complaining about the ingrown toenail she’s had for the last week, so I gotta take her to see the herbalist. She wasn’t very happy that I was out with the foraging party for so long.”
“Why doesn’t she go see Gurnal herself?”
“She doesn’t trust him to take her seriously. Last time she came to him with constipation, he told her to stop eating all those potato pigeon pies she’s always stuffing her face with. Infuriating, really. But you’ve gotta be off. I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah, see you.”
They parted ways in front of the village gates. The palisade wall was made out of twelve-foot-tall shaved, pointed tree limbs running about two miles around the entire village.
Opal wave at the lone, bored-looking sentry at the top of the gate, who pulled at a piece of rope lying beside his feet in the watchtower box. It activated a rope-pulley system running behind the gates, swinging open a pair of short, stubby doors.
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Tryle watched the doors jerkily snap close behind her, then set off along the outer wall. Eventually, he came upon a rock-laid path going into a nondescript bunch of gnarled elm trees.
He walked through the shaded path and came out to a sprawling, mid-sized field that the goblins called Divvy’s Glade. In the center of the field was a cluster of multi-colored trees. From the outside, it looked like an upside-down bowl of greenish-brown foliage, shot through with the distinctive violet stripes of magical Aught Hazel Tree leaves.
Green long grass and pink thistles scratched against Tryle’s knees as he trekked across the field. Though the rule was not strictly enforced, Divvy’s Glade was generally off-limits to most of the village, and Tryle could not recall when he had last set foot here.
Local goblin folklore told of this grove as having been blessed long ago by fairies, and Tryle’s village still grinded the Aught Hazelnuts into a paste to treat minor stomach illnesses and venomous stings from insects like the jumping scorpion.
The grove held an almost sacred status among the goblins, not only as the meeting point for the discussion of important business, but also its semi-magical allure.
Questions swirled in Tryle’s mind. This was only the second war council he’d been required to attend, and due to the aftermath of that particular raid, he’d been made exempt from participating in all future scavenging operations.
So why were they inviting him to this one?
At the edge of the grove, Tryle ducked under a small archway formed by the curving trunks of two oak trees. He followed a short tunnel-like passage covered by interlocking tree branches. The air grew steadily cooler as he ventured further in, and the sound of the wind was muffled by the leafy ceiling above his head.
Soon, he heard voices coming down the tunnel towards him. He came out into a tall, wide enclosure shaped into a shallow amphitheater. The sky was completely covered by a thick layer of long branches and many layers of leaves. A semicircle of tiered rows were carved into the soil, lined with flat rocks covered by curly cushions of dark green moss.
Nearly every seat in the amphitheater was occupied. Heads turned when Tryle appeared.
The talking slowly died down. Yellow eyes narrowed and pointy ears flattened against scaly heads.
There was a flicker of motion from one of the bottom rows — Tryle’s friend Anok waved at him with a half-hearted grin. His leg was bound up in a rough cast made out of toughened bark, moss, and tan-colored gypsum. He was the one face looking even remotely friendly, but his expression was more nervous than glad.
“Ah-hah, and here is Bodkin.”
The high, reedy voice came from the oval stage facing the bottom of the amphitheater rows. There sat two older goblins in ornately carved chairs. The one who had spoken, Elder Paz, was an old, wispy goblin with white hair growing out the back of his head and equally snowy tufts sticking out his ears. He smiled gently at Tryle and gestured for him to take a seat.
The other goblin looked much less delighted to see him. This was Chief Jrunta, the head of their village. He scowled at Tryle over a large warty nose, his ruddy complexion turning his face a deeper shade of purple in the shade of the grove.
“I believe we can now get started,” said Paz, over the low grumbling now breaking out at Tryle’s entrance. “If everyone could settle down now…”
“Finally,” somebody in the upper rows muttered.