Chapter 152

How About a Goblin Idea?

Barnacle-eyes

Chance of mutiny: 18%

I couldn’t believe I got to see Hawkin and Abigail! I mean, I knew I would see them again, but I couldn’t believe it was happening! Humans were much taller than I remembered. I just had to invite them aboard my new Hand-O’War. I showed them all the flowers, and had them meet Roll-belly, Hang-nails, Pluck-hair, and any other goblin along the way to the prow. And it was a long, long way to walk! Abigail dropped off some of her Aggravated Wild Growth ales and some Furnace attribute ales. Most of my goblins were busy trying to lasso the giant fireflies. Lots of fun, that was; tried it myself.

“Ta da!” I said, showing them the new prow. And “Ta da!” I said, later showing them the new stern. The new spacious deckhouse deserved its own “Ta da!” as well. Thrush was inside sleeping on his back. Boggo and Ella were rising and falling on his belly and playing their adventure game. One of them was stuffing their mouth with cheese, and cracked dreambons lay before them, half hidden in Thrush’s fur. On every one of Thrush’s exhales, his fur waved like grass in a strong wind.

“ Well if it isn’t the human!” said Boggo as Hawkin and Abigail followed me in.

Hawkin waved at the sloop bestie. “Hey, Boggo. What have you been…oh, wow, Ella. You look so—”

“Thanks for asking, buddy!” said Boggo. “We’ve been swell. So anyway, Thrush here just couldn’t help from having one more mouthful of cheese. And you know just how much he can pack in there.” Thrush ripped a snore, and then Boggo continued. “Might be a while.”

I slammed the door shut. Abigail laid out a bunch of human food on the table. Gabby ran around my feet, stood on tiptoe, and blindly reached for food on the edge of the table.

After knocking down some apples and scooping them up, Gabby said, “Oh, please thank you!”

While we ate and drank, I went on and on about our adventures at sea. The only time I stopped to catch my breath was when I slurped up a fresh batch of goblinspuck. It was so good, it even had Slime-tooth’s name on it.

“Does it feel nice to be back?” said Abigail after I ended my tale with us eating and drinking in the new spacious deckhouse.

“Um, yes no.”

“Yes, it’s good to be back? Or no, you’d rather be out at sea?”

“I feel bad. Like my heart has a rock in it, and it’s taking a lot out of me just to stand up straight. I miss my old family, but I love my new family. It’s a hard feeling…have you ever felt a feeling that was hard?”

“Well, I—”

“But there’s more, and that's the hardest part. I’ve been hearing rumors.”

Boggo wiped his lips and said, “We’ve been hearing whispering all over your ship, Admiral. Your goblins aren't happy that we’re so close to Gloom-glower’s massive fleet.”

“How many did we count from the crow’s nest?” said Ella, pulling runny cheese from a bowl with her paw like it was honey.

“He’s got three to five hundred goblins per ship,” said Boggo. “And more than a thousand ships.”

I could hear pain in my own voice when I said, “Some of my goblins think that I’m boiling goblins alive and poisoning them and feeding them to Thrush. I can see the way they look at me, and they are not friendly looks. They’re suspicious looks.”

“When I visited Slime-tooth, I heard a lot of goblins talking about Gone-hand,’ said Abigail. “Something about how history might repeat itself soon, but with Gloom-glower at the helm.”

“What? How could that ever happen under a goblin king?”

Gloom-glower was having a hard time managing mutiny? How? That seemed impossible. He had all the experience! He had all the ships and all the goblins. If he was having trouble, and I was still a new Admiral, how could I ever hope to manage mutiny? …What would I do if my new family didn’t like me as Admiral anymore?

“Uh, who’s Gone-hand?” said Boggo.

“From what I heard, the hugest mutiny since freebooters set sail for the sea was against Gone-hand. It was led by Gloom-glower, and the whole fleet split into two. Slime-tooth told me that things got really bad for him when he served under Gone-hand. So the first chance he got, he defected to Gloom-glower’s fleet.”

“When did you start hearing the rumors about you, Barnacle-eyes?” said Abigail.

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“Yesterday? Or the day before that?”

“No,” said Gabby. “It was two days before yesterday’s tomorrow.”

“Gloom-glower’s gotta be shifting the blame,” said Abigail.

“Who’s he blaming this time?” I said.

“You.”

“Me? But I’m over here.”

“You may be a distant target, but you’re not out of reach. Why wouldn’t he use you if he thinks it can suppress a mutiny?”

“That sounds just like the bastard,” said Hawkin.

Oh, no! “What am I going to do?” I said. “Gloom-glower is a goblin king. And he’s been one for a while. If he can’t deal with his chance of mutiny, what hope do I have?”

Everything seemed too much out of my hands just then. I felt powerless to the way of things. I hadn’t felt like that since working under Gloom-glower. I sighed really big, and it came out raspy.

“Have you had to deal with mutiny before?” said Hawkin.

“Every day. Sometimes it gets super high and I really have to work on it like it’s a stubborn nail that keeps going in crooked!”

“How do you deal with it?”

“Depends. If goblins are hungry, I gotta feed them. If they are sleepy, I gotta give them napping spots. If they are overworked, I gotta anchor. If they don’t feel useful, I gotta use them.”

“You’ve worked with Gloom-glower before. How does he treat his goblins when they're not happy?”

I looked at the door of the deckhouse for a moment, then my gaze seemed to wander through it as if it wasn’t there at all. Instances of my life on Gloom-glower’s fleet flashed before my eyes: Goblins being thrown overboard because they picked the wrong nose; Gloom-glower snatching food from our hands because he said he already saw us eat last week; Goblins being tied in bundles as figureheads; cramming next to other goblins when I had a chance to sleep; losing friends to stabs in the backs and promotion-stealings; shivering madly in winter and huddling as close as we could to each other having our own breaths as the only source of heat…

“Well that’s different,” I said, hopping off the chair and planting my feet back on the floor. “You have to be happy being unhappy if you work for Gloom-glower. Otherwise you get tied up as a figurehead. If you’re hungry, you can’t say anything about it. If you’re thirsty, you gotta deal with it. Especially if you want a chance at a promotion. And let’s face it. Promotions are the best.”

“Gabby, have you worked for Gloom-glower before?” said Hawkin.

“No. Please, no thank you.”

“Who’s ship would you rather be on?”

“Barnacle-eyes’s ship, of course!”

“Why’s that?”

“She treats me good. I get promotions, and food, and sometimes I get to sleep a lot.”

Hawkin smiled. “You see, Barnacle-eyes? You actually take care of your crew, whereas Gloom-glower treats his goblins horribly. If Gloom-glower is really dealing with mutiny, he’s resorting to rumors and tricks to shift the focus away from him. And how do you deal with mutiny? By trying your hardest to actually fix the problem, rather than cover it up. Who do you think has the better chance to overcome a mutiny? You, or Gloom-glower? Don’t forget that you’re an amazing goblin—the best goblin I ever met, and the best goblin leader, too.”

I puckered my lips and chewed the inside of my cheek while I thought. I returned to my chair and swung my legs. My heels banged the bottom of the chair. I glanced at Abigail as she turned and cocked her head.

“Is that a statue of Slime-tooth?” she said.

Gabby prostrated herself. “Oh, mighty Slime-tooth, please thank you.”

“That’s a long story,” said Boggo.

Abigail’s eyes changed when she looked at me. I could only call them heavy. That’s how I felt they changed. “Barnacle-eyes,” she said, and she said that like it was heavy too. “Have you seen Slime-tooth on Home Camp?”

“Once. He was rolled up in blankets and sleeping really deep.”

“He’s not doing well.”

Abigail's next words, and the words after that—all her words—were really hard to hear. They were so heavy that I could taste them. I swallowed them and they fell hard on my heart. She told me everything about Slime-tooth. By the end of it, though she spoke gently, I was sobbing. Gabby was on my lap sobbing into my chest and clutching the collar of my dress.

“He has to get out of there!” I said.

Hawkin’s voice was heavy too. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about. Slime-tooth refused our help, and we’ve done the best we could to give him sustenance, rest, and recovery. It’s very important for Slime-tooth that goblins solve goblin problems. So we’re going to help you get Slime-tooth off of Gloom-glower’s ship.”

Gabby gasped and looked up at me with huge glossed eyes. “You’re gonna poach him! Admiral, you can’t tell anyone you’re actually poaching goblins!”

“Can we all keep a secret?” said Hawkin. “Gabby?”

“I can, please thank you very much.”

Everyone else nodded, and Thrush snored.

“What do you say, Admiral? Would you like it to be a goblin idea to rescue Slime-tooth?”

I scraped my tears from beneath my eyes. “Yes!”

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. What if we put a halt to our production of spit beer until we get Slime-tooth back?”

“Goblins are not going to be happy about that…” said Boggo.

“I’ll tell Gloom-glower there’s a problem,” said Hawkin. “I have a broken auger, and I can’t move grain. Only Slime-tooth has the expertise to fix it, so I’ll need to borrow him for a bit. If Gloom-glower wants his beer supply back, he’ll send Slime-tooth over. Then Slime-tooth will disappear, and we’ll dump a double batch delivery on Gloom-glower to smooth things over.”

“I don’t want Slime-tooth to disappear!” I said. “He’s a like-a-father goblin to me. We need a plan where Slime-tooth doesn’t disappear, Hawkin!”

“Okay, let me put it another way. We’ll hide him until you sail off again, or he can hide on your ship. Gloom-glower just needs to think that Slime-tooth disappeared so he doesn’t go looking for him. We could say that Thrush accidentally mistook him for…”

“Cheese?” said Ella around a mouthful of it.

“Uh, yeah…something like that,” said Hawkin.

“What if this plan doesn’t work?” said Gabby.

“We’ll work together and find another way. What do you say, Barnacle-eyes? Is this plan goblin enough?”

“Goblin enough for me!” I said. “But there’s just one problem. I don’t think Gloom-glower’s gonna buy that you need a goblin to fix an auger. It doesn’t have the right ring to it. You gotta come up with something else that’s broken, something that only a goblin could truly fix.”