“No, but why don’t we stand on our heads, and use our feet to write?” The goblin king asked. He sipped his hot chocolate as the humans considered the question. They were in the middle of the parade, ranks of musicians to either side as they cruised down the streets.

Normally, of course, one would have to be wary of confetti and garbage in a parade of this size, but though it was full of wild events there was no mess. (At least, none that the goblins didn’t clean up, sweeping whatever garbage they came across - litter, party remnants, stray demonic cultivators - into who knows where.) Consequently it was an easy walk, the revellers’ cavalcade interrupted only by strange, multihued beasts with velvet fuzz, or towering octopi which swung from spontaneously generated foliage.

“Evolution, of course,” Anna replied brightly. She had finished the skewers, and gotten her hands on some cake. The goblin harrumphed.

“Nonsense. Just think of how much fitter you’d be - speaking in an evolutionary sense - if you could write with your feet and walk with your head. Why, you’d have twice the arms you have now, and could do twice the writing. No, it’s mere convention that prevents you from hopping about on your head.”

Claireholm nodded, only half listening. He was still flicking his baton about - unnecessarily, some might say, since even if his classical musicians had been inclined to listen to him they couldn’t play the instruments anyways (the latter were blatting merrily away, presently delivering a stirring rendition of Fucik’s Entry of the Gladiators) - but he was motioning less to the beat and more to the tune of his own heart, so we can forgive him the frivolity.

“Whyever would you want to do that - then it would look like the trees were growing from the clouds, their roots reaching up into the earth…” Anna started, and paused. A weird look came into her eyes.

“Why are you doing that?” The goblin king asked a moment later, as she started to stand on her head.

“Oh, just getting a new perspective on things.”

***

Down the street, the university was ablaze, a hundred Midsummer's Eve bonfires burning as the goblins merrily roasted marshmallows in the flaming remnants of the student council office.

“H-how could you!” The student council president cried, watching as the roof caved in and bounced off the goblins below.

“How could I? Well, first I piled up brushwood, placing the larger logs around a collection of easily burnable fire starters. Then, I took my flint…”

“No, she means why?” The treasurer cried, from down on the ground. He had protested vociferously against the goblins staging their impromptu celebrations on campus, and in the merit of his attempt the goblins had permitted him to take part (as a bench).

“Because it's Saint John's Eve, of course.” Skuttleskutch the goblin replied, tone slightly irked, as if this should be obvious. His marshmallow burst into flame, and he blew it out before crunching down on the sweet and crispy shell.

“B-but I don’t understand. If you wanted to rebel-”

A glint appeared in the goblin’s eyes. “Oh, is that what you think we're doing?”

***

The streets were quiet. This was not because the parade had stopped, for it was still ongoing, and gaining in strength. Rather, it was because all those who would join it here had; and the rest were hiding to weather out the storm.

The parade had pressed on, to spread the good news to those quarters which yet toiled in drudgery, and only two still walked down the street of the market district.

These were the mayor, good-naturedly strolling along, and the elder of the Ell Company, still trying to drag him back to his office and to political manoeuvring. The latter was becoming angrier and more snappish, for he had received a most distressing missive.

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“Three companies! Three companies have fallen to this feathered menace bearing the banner of Mother Goose, and yet you continue to claim your hands are tied. Who cares if it is or is not goblins; clearly, something foul is afoot.”

Mayor Rella tutted, admiring the fantastical streets. Magic and mayhem had made of them a wonderland, slopes of concrete shaping themselves into strange patterns as all manner of objects clacked and warbled where all was dead previously.

“Mmm. The reports claim goblins are afoot, and yet goblins don’t exist, so the reports must be wrong. And so why would I accept them when they say corporations have been destroyed? Consistency, my dear elder, is the hallmark of integrity, and as mayor if I have nothing else I should have that.”

The elder growled. He could kill the man and give the orders himself, but though the city administrators may fear him individually that didn't mean they would all of them listen to him if he demanded the city's full capacity, nor that he could wield its forces properly. And they would need everything the city had, used as best it could be, if they intended to win this.

“We are far and away past such things as ‘consistency’ and ‘integrity,’ Charles, for all such illusions had any merit at all. Call out the guard - every last one of them - and have them restore order to the streets.”

They walked through a garden, growing in the middle of the street in winter. Sunflowers reached up past their heads, creepers coiled around their feet, and beetles clicked quietly in the foliage. Mayor Rella leaned over, bringing a blue, many-petalled flower closer, and admired it with a melancholic smile.

“Restore order? Perhaps we should - only the Lord knows how we’ve gone so long without it.”

A black, furry thing with a long snoot peeped out of the foliage, saw the two men, and fled.

They neared the end of the street, the sound of laughter and music coming from the distance. The melancholic smile remained on the mayor’s face, but his brow deepened in contemplation.

“Yes, consistency is the hallmark of integrity, but so is honesty - to know nothing but the truth, tell nothing but the truth, and do nothing but the truth… and as mayor, it’s been too long that I’ve had nothing, not even integrity.”

At the edge of the garden he circled one heel to face the elder, the melancholic smile fading to be replaced by a look of pure resolve.

“I’m sorry, elder, but I cannot call out the guard, for to have them quash the goblins would not be to bring order but to allow a chaos that has gone too long unchecked to continue its reign. The goblins may bring mayhem; but I am certain that though they may turn the earth upside down, it is only so we may find it rightside up again.”

The elder’s eyes bulged out of his head, and spittle flew from his cheeks as he raged.

“You think you have the right to defy us? To tell us what you will or won’t do? We put you in power, and we can take you out of it!”

Mayor Rella examined the heavens, his serene expression matching a serene heart for the first time in decades.

“Hmmm. But can you, though? It's the dawn of a wonderful new day.”

“It is the middle of the afternoon,” cried the elder, totally missing the point.

And the elder would have said more, but just then he was hurled off his feet.

This was not caused by the goblins - at least, not directly. Sure, he was hit in the chest by one, but that was because the wee little thing was boinging around after having been jettisoned from the earth.

The cause of his being jettisoned did not help the poor elder, for that was an earthquake, and one such as had not been felt in the City of Tombstones for a generation.

The earth heaved, vomiting up its depths into the city. Mayor Rella couldn't blame it - if he'd had hundreds of demonic cultivators in his bowels, he'd want to hurl too.

They flew through the air, shrieking in fear, and it came behind them.

Its horns dwarfed the tallest of the city's skyscrapers, the rest of its massive torso only barely visible as it moved under the shattered streets, clouds of mephitic gas thankfully obscuring its passage.

It carried a sack on one shoulder whose squirming contents betrayed its occupants, and in its other hand a birch rod, immense in length and breadth, with which it was violently beating the demonic cultivators it had not yet caught.

The edge of the top of a red eye flicked over to where Mayor Rella stood. The mayor froze shivering, but his fear was unnecessary: it was fixating, not on him, but on the elder.

A hundred hairy, shadowy arms emerged from nowhere and, grabbing the shrieking elder, dragged him towards the sack.

Mayor Rella stood still, the undulating waves of earth causing him to rise up and down, but they were no worse than the rocking of a boat that puts one to sleep.

He continued to examine the heavens, until the street was quiet once more. After a while he pulled out an umbrella.

“Do you know,” he said to the now empty street, “it's strange, but I think it may rain.”