Chapter 66

Alone Among Eleven Thousand

Slime-tooth

Not a bad place to sleep. Not a bad place at all. The wall kept my back straight. The barrels wedged me in. Much better than waking up in a slosh of water and choking on grime.

Oh, my voice worked again! “Help!”

Rest was good. Like Old-gums used to say, Rest when you can, sleep when you can, and pretend to be awake when you can’t. Oh Old-gums…

“Help!”

Hours and hours of crying for help had done nothing before. Why would it help again? There was nothing for it but to heave and heave-ho again.

I grunted against the mountain of barrels. I heaved. My knees pushed against the staves. Some toes did too! My shoulder bravely smashed against a barrel hoop. Grimacing didn’t help, so I instead put my energy into grunting.

The ship rolled. Finally! The barrels tumbled away. I sucked breath after breath and wobbled to my feet. Oof! Better not straighten my legs all the way. Wouldn’t want that knee pain to return again. Best to keep legs bent. Oof! Better stay hunched. Best not to tighten the knot in my spine.

Things were much better since Barnacle-eyes’ human friends came to see me. Their beer didn’t taste all the best–not like what Barnacle-eyes could brew up–but they sure made pain go away. Helped me see, too! And talk about a full belly!

Seeing wasn’t surprising until you saw what you couldn’t see! For a time there I couldn’t see anything.

“That’s what you get when your head gets pinched between moving barrels! You get blind for a while!”

There were no snots around to laugh with me. Oof! It hurt to laugh. Best not to breathe too deeply. Didn’t too much like it when my lungs rattled.

Oh my eyes stung from ptooey, sea water, and sweat. A hard blink helped refresh the view–except for the cloud that lingered in one eye. That never cleared.

-But oh to see things again! No wonder I couldn’t grasp things, clutch rims, grab jambs, pull corks, and pick nose. My fingers had all gotten confused in the beatings and smashings between barrels. They pointed every which way.

So many barrels… And where was I in all my work? I was counting, right? No, I had been testing sick batches. That’s what I’d been doing! I slapped a barrel head.

Something banged against the top deck. What used to be a familiar constant sound was now foreign to me. Splashing footsteps echoed down the halls. The cargo hatch! That must have been what slammed. That meant I had a visitor, and since I wasn’t allowed visitors until I caught up to all my work, that visitor must be none other than…

Gloom-glower’s guard emerged from the shadows. The king wasn’t ever too far behind.

“Slimey, Slimey, Slime-tooth,” said Knuckle-chin. “We hope you’ve caught up today.”

“You’d better have,” said Grip-throat. “No snot likes to see another snot tied up with the corpse figureheads. You’ve been up there enough.”

“I can’t catch up with my work if I keep getting tied up there.”

“Tell that to Gloom-glower,” said Knuckle-chin.

“...At least it’s not a blistering summer sun,” I said.

Knuckle-chin kicked a barrel. “Empty? What about this one? Empty! And this one? Empty, empty!”

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Big splashing footsteps marched through the corridor. Gloom-glower’s mumbling reached us like a skipping stone. Knuckle-chin kicked a particularly wet barrel that had been sitting in water for days on end. His boot smashed through a stave. Ptooey oozed out like shy honey.

Knuckle-chin gasped. He turned to the dark corridor. His ears perked as Gloom-glower’s footsteps drew nearer. He turned to me and his eyes were round as a rabbit’s. “Please don’t tell him I did that! Please don’t! He’s been in a foul mood lately! He’s gonna make a corpse figurehead out of me now!”

Gloom-glower arrived. “Slimey, Slimey! Tell me that you’re up to date on your work, but no lying! Wait; what happened here?”

Oh, Knuckle-chin. Good thing I was used to hard work and harder punishments. Fear was a long ago thing; I didn’t fear much anymore. Hard to fear when I’ve been so busy hurting so much. Oh, Knuckle-chin. Goblins didn’t deserve to suffer. No, no, no they didn’t. Not a single one.

“That was my fault,” I said.

“Let me get this straight,” said Gloom-glower. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Instead of doing what you’re supposed to do, you’re doing what you’re not supposed to do. Show me your hands. Aha! Your blisters have only just begun to heal. You must love looking down at the sea from the prow.”

There was always a reason. Stumble-falls got to be brought down off the figurehead earlier last time after I bumped into Gloom-glower which made the king livid. There was no room, so I had taken his place up there. Stumble-falls still had scars on his wrists from the rope.

Then there was Wrinkly-elbow. He ate more fish than he was allotted–the wrong goblin’s fish. If I hadn’t stepped on Gloom-glower’s toes, Wrinkly-elbow would have had another day tied to the prow.

There weren’t enough goblins on the ptooey sloop to bail quick enough to keep water out. The wood of the barrels suffered because of that. They rotted from the outside. I lost so many black barrels. Some deliveries of ptooey were awful. Several barrels had been destroyed during transportation at the last delivery, all because of soggy staves. Gloom-glower didn’t want to hear excuses. He would have tied fellow goblin Bert to the prow for dropping the barrels in the first place if I hadn’t spoken up and said it was me who had dropped it—no matter the fact that I wasn’t even present during delivery. I was stuck without company in the depths of the ptooey sloop at the time.

After that, I did my best to take the place of any goblin who didn’t deserve to be tied as a figurehead. I never went looking to get tied, but I tried to help my little goblins from that suffering when I could. I never received thanks from Sly-eyes who got caught stealing a tankard from Stub-toes. I took the tankard right out of Sly-eyes’ hands when Gloom-glower confronted him—no matter that the king saw me take the tankard! It was easier to punish those who confessed first. Evidence was always thereafter disregarded.

But Sly-eyes didn’t need to thank me. If I could save another snot from suffering, this body could take it. Until the day I die—hopefully around lots of little goblins carousing.

The good it would do me to hear their laughter... Even if they made fun of me! As long as somebody talked to me. I just wanted to hear goblin voices. My body could take suffering, but I was so…lonely.

“You never, never learn,” said Gloom-glower. “Make him a two day figurehead, snots.”

“Yes, King Gloom-glower,” said his guard.

Gloom-glower walked off. Goblins pulled me by the arms after him. They strode; I limped.

“Make sure no one talks to him this time!” said Gloom-glower.

“Gloom-glower!” I said.

“What do you want?”

“Who else is tied up there today?”

“Pock-scar and Meat-fist.”

“You got the wrong goblins. It was me. I did it.”

“You’re the one that called me a weasel? And you rammed my ship?”

“Yes, my king.”

I was marched out on deck. A sun I hadn’t seen in weeks blinded me. I gazed upon floorboard after floorboard as we marched to the prow. Gloom-glower commanded goblins to form green ladders and to hang over the taffrail.

“And release Pock-scar and Meat-fist,” he said. “Have them meet me aboard my ship for a warm meal and beer-and-grounds to compensate for being falsely convicted. Put Slime-tooth down there and give him an extra half day.”

Pock-scar and Meat-fist were freed. They looked numb to me, and they wearily followed Gloom-glower across deck. I tried not to think too much while my kin carried me down and tied me to the mass of dead and dying goblins that formed a bulbous mass of green limbs and faces. Wet and salted rope fibers scraped my neck, my chest, my belly, my thighs, my forehead, and my legs. The sun glinted off the crashing sea below. When it’s bright in the sky, it’s brighter on the sea.

“What did you do?” said a goblin.

“Shh,” said another. “That’s Slime-tooth. Not supposed to talk to him.”

“Please,” I said. “I would love someone to talk to.”

Instead, hours passed. Oh I wish I hadn’t declined Hawkin and Abigail’s help. I wish I had taken them up on the offer to bring me ashore. …But what about all the other goblins? Who was going to help them? What about Barnacle-eyes? She needed ptooey. No, I had goblins to look after. I could not abandon post. No matter what.

“Yuck,” a goblin whispered. “Old Slime-tooth is crying.”

“Don’t talk to him; don’t talk about him,” croaked another.

I wiggled an arm free and reached into my vest. Barnacle-eyes’ letter was still there. At least I had that for the next two days.