Chapter 62

New Players

Boggo

I had to agree with Ella. The mood of the goblins was much better. I felt less like a walking, roasted pheasant, and more like a companion to the goblins. I prayed that their eyes never turned hungry on me, like they had the past few weeks, ever again.

“See anything?” said Ella.

I shaded my eyes from the sun with one hand and peered through the haze. There was nothing but sea for miles and miles and miles.

“There!” said Ella.

I squinted hard to make out a small blur of orange in the distance. It looked too small to be land and much too big to be anything else but an island. Haze did tricky things, so we could only report it as Barnacle-eyes had asked us to.

I took in a huge breath and felt my ribs ache. I fell to my knees.

Ella scrambled across the roof of our crow’s nest. “Careful not to push yourself,” she said.

“I have to perform my duty.”

“Let’s call out together. That way we have strength in our voice and you don’t need to hurt yourself.”

On the count of three, Ella hollered while I called, “Maybe-land ho!”

Boots clapped on deck. Goblins followed Barnacle-eyes to the prow. She put her monoscope to her eye. After returning the monoscope to her inventory, she withdrew her sea map and ran for the deckhouse.

Belut stepped out from the giant foliage of browning trumpet flowers. “Little Boggo! We’re close!”

We gave him a blue and yellow thumbs up before resuming our midday duties. We leapt from mast to rig to line to mast. We dislodged stuck lines and used spit beer on pulleys for lubricant. Spare lines let us swing from topgallant sail to flying jib, and from center mast to foremast and mizzenmast. Ella, weeks prior, had the brilliant idea of building a suspended rope bridge between the masts which we skittered along daily. It allowed us a quick return to the crow’s nest.

Enough of our fur had blended together in the crow’s nest that the floor was green. Just when the day was at its brightest, we sat down to discuss our game. I whittled the figurine of a laughing beetle wearing a backpack while we went over our new rules.

“Each game should be a grand adventure,” said Ella.

“And it’s up to the player if they want to be cautious or not,” I said.

Bluebirds squawked by. They sprawled out and perched on vines and rigging and flower petals as thick as canvas. A pair of metallic red dragonflies perched on the threshold of the crow’s nest. Their wings bounced before they flew off.

“Hear me out,” said Ella. “If a character is an animal and they enter a new area, they have a chance to start in random places in that area.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“What if they enter a kitchen and there’s a boiling pot of potatoes on the stove?”

“I played a game with Bailey one day. A big monkey was lobbing bananas at us, and he used scatter dice to determine what direction the bananas went.”

“Scatter dice. So when an animal based character enters a new space, there’s a chance that they scatter all over the room?”

“Wouldn’t that be fun! An extra bit of adventure. They don’t have to go inside the pot of potatoes, silly.”

“I think we should try it,” I said.

“You don’t think it’ll be fun?”

“I do! I think we should try it—actually try it. Let’s get Barnacle-eyes and some of her goblins to play.”

“We don’t have scatter dice…”

I spent the next hour carving arrows on the sides of a pair of wooden cubes. When we passed by the island of red clay and tall grass, we sat on the threshold to watch.

“There’s movement in the grass!” said Ella.

It wasn’t the wind—wind moved great swaths of grass at a time. It was something else that pushed blades over as it moved beneath. Several lines of movement raced toward a shipwreck on the coast of the island.

“Maybe-monster-ho?” said Ella.

“Maybe.”

We climbed atop the crow’s nest, took simultaneous deep breaths, and hollered, “Maybe-monster-ho!”

Goblins began to emerge from the grasses. They gawked at the fleet which was ladened with giant flora and cavorting goblins. Masts were lowered. Sea anchors were dropped. Soft-song and Pinky-chew were sent out on the jolly boat to the island. They brought with them a giant peeled onion. It sat on their boat as luminous as one of Thrush’s orb portals. Stranded goblins devoured that onion with enthusiasm. Double-tears ran down their cheeks—they’d been weeping as soon as they saw Captain Soft-song and Commodore Pinky-chew, and they cried even harder after the onion was cleaved into. Much of the rest of the day was spent bringing those goblins aboard and salvaging all materials from the shipwreck.

By nightfall, Barnacle-eyes informed the crew that we would anchor for the night.

Ella and I leapt from rig to rig like flying squirrels. With our help, the galleon’s sails were lowered the fastest among all ships, even with a dozen more sails!

“Boggo, look!”

Aboard the sloops, goblins were picking up a few tricks from us. They leapt from rig to rig in flailing cartwheels of spindly limbs. They swung from line to line. A goblin occasionally fell and landed amid giant flowers and vines. …Abigail’s Aggravated Wild Growth attribute ale had turned each sloop into a wonderland of colossal plants. The fleet as a whole looked like one floating island. And each raised bed had bestie tunnel systems!

We used those tunnels at dusk when the goblins began setting up rods for night fishing. While new crew mates were being introduced and assigned work, Ella and I sought Barnacle-eyes. She was napping in the bowl of an arching onion leaf blade.

“The besties!” she said.

“Aye aye, Admiral!” Ella said. “Come play our game with us.”

“A game? A game—what kind of game?”

“It’s called…” I said.

“We don’t have a name for it,” said Ella. “Come play with us.”

“To the deckhouse,” said Barnacle-eyes. She was up and off, sprinting toward the deckhouse in the next moment.

“We’ll be right there,” Ella called. “Let’s round up some more players.”

Ella grabbed me by the hand. I was pulled through tunnels in the raised beds until we emerged between huge bulbs of garlic. We found Slow-think staring down a puffed up bluebird. Slow-think broke eye contact with the bird. The bird flew off.

“Would you like to play a game with us?” said Ella.

I wrung my hands as we explained the game. As soon as we mentioned that the Admiral was also playing, Slow-think leapt up and skipped over to the deckhouse.

We traveled along vines as thick as trees and sprawling leaves almost as wide as human blankets. I screeched to a halt when a mean green dragonfly held its ground in the middle of our path.

“Shoo!” said Ella. She waved the dragonfly away.

Just over the next hurdle of vines, we found Rumble-gut picking her nose in the shadows of plants.

Legs trembling, I went right up to her and stammered. “Would you like to play a game with us?”

Another player bolted to the deckhouse.

“Just a couple more,” Ella said.

“Let’s get Remember-not!”

“Yes, let’s not forget her!”