As he ran across the fields, Tryle quickly did the math in his head.

Moving at an average trotting rate, Gumbo would be within running distance in the forest, even with his head-start. Among the trees, he would be harder to spot. But his speed would also be affected by the terrain. Tryle assumed Gumbo would bull ahead like he always did, thinking only to get as far away from Tryle and the cottage as he could, even if it meant climbing the side of a small mountain to do it.

Tryle came to a stop at the crumbling rock wall on the wood’s edge. Hard footbeats drummed behind him, and Henna came to a halt next to him. She was not the least out of breath.

“Oh dear, where did he go?”

Tryle pointed straight ahead. “I didn’t see him after he went into the woods. Probably up the hillside. He can’t have gotten far.”

“Wait here.” Henna jumped over the rock wall. Tryle moved further into the shade and caught glimpses of Henna sprinting up the slope like a gazelle, her blue smock flapping around her ankles. She powered up the hillside and disappeared from sight.

In seemingly no time at all, she bounded back down. Her white apron was flecked with soil. What had taken Tryle and the raid team nearly half an hour to navigate had taken her only minutes.

“Bad news, Bodkin. I saw no sign of your little friend.”

“K’al-soon!” Tryle rubbed his forehead hard. “Where could he have gone?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, dear. But I know if he don’t find him before nightfall, there’s no telling what’ll be munching on him for a midnight snack.”

Tryle shook his head. “We grew up in the Woodlands. Gumbo should know how to avoid most dangers. ”

Abruptly, his mind flashed to the haunting pair of glowing eyes he’d seen floating among the treetops on the night of the raid.

“Uh-oh. Umm…”

“What is it?”

Tryle glanced around. “I don’t know, I don’t — I can’t —”

He stopped himself and took a deep breath. He needed to calm down. He leaned against the rock wall and reined in his frustration. Ten seconds passed. Fifteen.

Then it came to him. His thoughts cleared like clouds parting on a sunny day. He should’ve given Gumbo more credit. He wouldn’t have gone straight up the ridge. With the cunning of a wounded animal, Gumbo must have veered off the most obvious route up and instead ran parallel to the tree line. Of course, he would have to scale the rocky hills sooner or later, but in the meantime, Tryle and Henna had lost valuable time.

Tryle quickly explained his realization to Henna. She frowned, glancing up and down the border of the woods.

“I see what you’re saying, dearie, but which way did he go? We have two choices. Right or left. ”

They were taking a gamble. Henna could probably catch up to Gumbo with no problem, but only if she picked the right direction along the tree line. One out of two choices. A flip of a coin. Fifty-fifty.

Tryle glanced up at the sun, which was starting to take its inexorable descent to the horizon. “You could go west, and I’ll go east. If you don’t spot him after a few miles…”

“I’ll high-tail it over to your end.” Henna put a hand on Tryle’s shoulder. “Likewise, Bodkin. Backtrack if you come across nothing.”

They split up. Tryle jogged quickly down the tree line, dodging trees and hopping over roots. He tried to remember the tracking lessons he had been taught as a youngster goblin, but like most of the hunting information the village instructor had tried to force down his throat, the knowledge had slipped through his brain and fallen out like sand through a sieve.

Tryle wished Anok was with him; he was much better at tracking than Tryle was. He could tell if that broken twig over there was significant, or if it was just left by the subtle tread of a fox.

Afraid of missing any clues, Tryle began comparing the clumsy traces of his own passage through the woods as he blundered along.

Pretty soon, Henna rejoined him, having had no luck on her end. They searched high and low for two more hours, checking inside hollow logs and digging through cherry bushes for any sign of Gumbo’s trail. Occasionally, Henna jogged deeper into the woods to widen their coverage, but each time returned with nothing.

Tryle got the feeling Henna knew they would never make up ground. But she said nothing, resolutely forging on. For all his lack of subtlety, it seemed Gumbo had successfully evaded them.

Fifty-fifty. Tryle had chosen wrong.

Finally, as the afternoon turned into early evening, Tryle called it quits. They trudged back to the cottage to the piping babble of cricket chirps.

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Tryle sat at the dining table in silence while Henna began to heat up a pot of chicken broth. It bubbled quietly, the savory aroma of garlic and green onions filling the room.

After a while, Henna said, “How is your head feeling?”

“Fine.” Tryle absently patted the place where the sizable lump had been. Under his hair, it had long scabbed over and reduced in size. Recently, Henna had inspected the spot and had declared the bruising was finally receding.

“Oh, that’s good.” Henna stirred the pot, knocked the ladle against the pot to clear off the droplets. She turned to face Tryle, drying her hands on her apron. “Bodkin, I know you’re worried about your little friend, but —”

“He’s not my friend!” burst out Tryle.

“You sound quite concerned about someone who’s not your friend.”

“He’s from my village. We’re goblins. We’re supposed to look after each other. That’s what he said, at least. How’s he gonna forage with two broken arms? How’s he gonna even walk properly? We should’ve caught up to him. It’s impossible that we didn’t.”

Conflicting emotions warred within him. On the one hand, Tryle could care less about Gumbo’s safety. He himself had his own pack, his own supplies. His life wasn’t the one in danger. On the other, he felt a strange responsibility towards the other goblin that he would never admit. As irritating as Gumbo was, as toxic and difficult as Tryle knew him to be, he represented a familiarity Tryle never knew he’d depended on until now.

And he resented it.

“I can’t make any promises that Gumbo will survive the night in his condition,” said Henna consolingly. “But if he makes up his grumpy little head to do the wise thing, he’ll march right back here.”

“No, he won’t. He’s too obstinate for that. Dumber than a bucket of cockroach brains, that one.”

“We can try to search again tomorrow morning. Gumbo must need to rest.”

“We could try.”

Henna tilted her head, her poofy white hair shifting like tumbled cotton balls. She sat down across from him.

“What’s really chewing at you, Bodkin?”

Tryle didn’t answer for a long moment. Then he said, “I need to leave for my home soon.”

“I understand. We’ll need to stock you up with provisions for the journey, but you could be ready to leave by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. ”

Tryle said nothing.

“Is this not what you wanted?”

Tryle looked down at the tabletop. “I need to go back to Lundy village, but I don’t necessarily want to. But I feel like I need to want to. Does that make any sense?”

“Why don’t you want to go back?”

“For the same reason Gumbo was so hooked on ‘escaping’. His words, not mine. He belches fire for fun and kicks rocks over cliffs and tattoos crustaceans under his armpits because he doesn’t know better, just like the rest of them. I don’t.”

“Because of your appearance? I couldn’t get a good look at what all your compatriots looked like during their late-night field trip, but I did notice Gumbo’s was a rather proud shade of gray.”

Tryle pointed at his blackish-gray hair, the same shade as ashen embers. “This? This is fairly unusual, but not a deal-breaker. No, they just don’t like me because they’re a bunch of backward, ignorant, close-minded buffoons that can’t appreciate the pursuit of knowledge for its potential to improve our society and better our lives.”

“It sounds like the feeling is rather mutual.”

Tryle thought about Opal and his mother. Anok, too. “They’re not all bad. But most of them.”

“Bad enough to not come back for you and Gumbo?”

“Now that he’s gone, they have very little reason to rescue oddball Bodkin from the clutches of an evil human granny. Good riddance to the genetic defect interested in pushing the boundaries of magical science.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Do you know what they did when I made a buoyancy coat?”

“What’s a buoyancy coat?”

“It allows you to float in water without having to change the position of your body. You could simply jump in and not move, and it would still hold you up.”

“Oh, yes — I’ve heard of those. But the most durable ones are sustained with magic, aren’t they?”

“Mine were meant to be disposable, and used for only a short time. It took me months to figure out how to make it, to vulcanize the inner sap of the Elder Gum Tree into a material capable of keeping not only itself but another goblin afloat. I tested it out on Anok — he’s one of the few level-headed ones in the village — because he’s pretty skinny. And when he told everyone else how well it worked, everybody got excited. Or pretended to. What they really wanted was for me to fit their story, for one of my inventions to fail again. ‘If it works on one goblin, it should work on any of them’, they said. So they get one of the watchtower guards to try it on, and you could guess what happened.”

“He sunk?”

“Worse. They dropped him into the most tumultuous part of the Great River and the coat kept him above the water just long enough for the current to carry him into the rocks. Utter disaster, of course, because that’s not who the coat was designed for! But if I didn’t let them try, they’d say I wasted all my time on a random gadget that doesn’t even work!”

“What happened to the goblin testing the coat?”

“Oh, him? Tumba was fine. Made of eighty percent lipids, he is. The gut alone could probably keep him above water if he sucked in enough air. But the point is: how am I sure Lundy village doesn’t want me around? Because of stuff like that. Years of lived experience.”

“Hmmm. For the record, I think you’re right, but not for the same reasons. There is a good chance they have not come to you and Gumbo’s aid because they believe you’re dead. I kicked their behinds pretty soundly, if I do say so myself.”

“Goblin tradition takes proper burial of fallen warriors seriously.”

“Is your tribe very traditional?”

Tryle thought about it. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d put them around a seven. Maybe seven-point-five. I’ll add the point-five for their blanket hostility to any kind of social progress.”

“Perhaps you’re judging them too harshly, Bodkin.”

“Doesn’t change the final outcome. You said it yourself, they haven’t shown themselves for over half a month now. They’re not coming back, and it doesn’t matter why. Either way, I’m not worth the risk for them.”

Faces swam in Tryle’s mind’s-eye: first his mother’s, and then Opal’s, but he pushed them aside.

“Then why do you want to return to them?”

“Where else am I supposed to go? Your cottage is the farthest I’ve been from home, and technically we’re not even completely out of the Woodlands. I don’t belong in Lundy village, never mind the human world. I don’t belong anywhere.”

“I don’t want to say anything to stall you from rejoining your tribe. But there is one thing that might interest you. I have a feeling my grandchildren should be arriving in the next few days. If you’re so inclined, I think you would have a lot to talk about with my granddaughter.”

“The one studying at the university of magic?”

“The very one. She might have a thing or two to say about where you could belong. Or at least provide insight on your own studies. Of all the young minds I have met, you are most similar to her. I can’t say I fully understand the questions you seek, but I do think she could provide some answers. ”

Tryle looked out the dark windows, showing blackness except for a thin slice of moon peeking out behind the clouds.