Chapter 172

Last Soup before Sailing Out

Chance of Mutiny: 0%

Most of the food Hawkin and Abigail gave us went toward our stock of supplies. Because of that, our lunch was a simple scrounge-soup. We hung a pot over a cooking fire. Lots of seaweed went in, clam shells went in, and a few tomatoes from Hawkin and Abigail’s garden on the ethereal plane went in.

I ladled out a slurp’s worth of soup for Slime-tooth. “It’s not much, but what do you think?”

“Fine,” he said. “But let’s make it finer! Grab a bailing bucket.”

I picked the best bailing bucket. The staves were all even. It was completely dry. The hoops weren’t warped or rusted all that bad. Even Slime-tooth gave it a good nod.

“Gather round, all you snots!” he said.

While I went deep into thought, Slime-tooth kicked things off with a “Ptooey!” He passed the bailing bucket around, and one by one the goblins went, “Ptooey!” We had to make do with what we had, especially since Thrush was still sleeping. “Ptooey!” No more cheese. No more smoked meat. My goblins didn’t seem to mind too much. “Ptooey!” We all knew food came and went. It was the way of things. “Ptooey!”As long as there was food, we couldn’t complain. We could only be surprised when it was good. I swished, I swashed, I gargled, and then I gave a hefty “Ptooey!”

The bucket was returned to Slime-tooth. He tilted it and watched the foamy ptooey ooze from one side to the other.

“There’s not much of us, but we don’t need a whole lot,” he said. “We just need each other.”

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The ptooey went into the soup and goblin took turn churning, churning, churning. Churning, churning—

“Give it a taste,” said Slime-tooth as we all rolled our shoulders and massaged our arms.

I plunked the ladle into the pot and pulled out a good few slurp’s worth.

“Oh, well that’s…that’s…Oh, wow!” I said. “Everyone grab a bucket!”

It was a race to the water where hundreds of bailing buckets still bobbed at sea. We could only fetch so many before we got tired of the task. In a few days, we’ll have recovered all of them.

We especially didn’t want to do that when it was feasting time. I ladled soup into everyone's bucket. And once again, we all gathered around Slime-tooth to hear his handynotes. …Hawkin said they were anecdotes, but they seemed more handy than that.

Slime-tooth couldn’t keep up with the goblins. He lost energy so fast, that it felt like I was watching him deflate before my very eyes. He seemed content to fall asleep to that chitter and blowing noses of goblins.

I couldn’t wait to hear all that noise on the sloop at sea again. And wow, I couldn’t believe my Chance of Mutiny was still at 0%! It had never been 0% for that long. Please stay that way. Please forever stay that way!

I wanted my before-family and after-family to stay like this too. Even though I would have to work so much harder than before to get my fleet back, it wouldn’t be worth it without happy goblins.

Soon finger claws were scraping the bottom of the buckets for last moistnesses of soup. Conversation was in a lull.

“Is Slime–tooth okay?” said Soft-song.

We all turned to Slime-tooth. He lay frozen stiff. I squinted hard to make out any rise and fall of his chest, but I couldn’t make out any movement. We must have all been looking for the same thing, because we rushed to him at the same time. We said his name, we shook him, we slapped him, and we lifted him. By the time he finally came to, I was shaking and my heart was pounding.

“Oh! I had a wonderful dream!” said Slime-tooth. He looked at each one of us. “And it was just like this. And we were sailing, too!”

“We’ll be sailing soon. We’re going straight to Laven-smack-vitch. I want you to meet the goblins at Green-fin! Maybe you can meet my human butler too! His name is Smith, and he’s annoying, and he follows me everywhere. There’s a thing I want to show you in the city; oh, and then there’s this and that too; and you’ll have to see that other thing, of course; but that’s next to this other thing, so we’ll have to go there first before the other this and that stuff.”