The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen - Delia Sherman [30]
The path ended at a muddy island. It wasn’t much of an island: scrub brush and rocks and some tufts of marsh grass. I was going to have to go back and look for another path.
As I turned, I slipped on a patch of green and sank ankle-deep in black ooze.
I grabbed two tufts of marsh grass and hauled myself out of the mud, which released my feet with a slurping pop and a stinky sigh. Liquid mud seeped down inside my sneakers, where I could feel it squelching slimily between my toes. I sat down on roundish gray rock and started to pick at my wet laces.
The rock screamed and bucked, throwing me backwards into a very prickly bush.
I yelped and flailed and wiggled out of the bush, coming face to grainy, gray face with a marsh goblin.
“You sat on me!” it gibbered. “Your posterior, on my head! Was that nice? And then”—it cranked up the volume—“ you destroyed my house!”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I thought you were a rock.”
The goblin put its hands over its bat-wing ears, curled its head over its webbed feet, and howled. Even now that I knew it was a goblin, it still looked like a rock to me, dark gray and knobbly, encrusted with lichen and veined with black. Except that rocks don’t howl.
“I’m sorry about your house,” I shouted. “It was an accident. Really.” The goblin’s accident, not mine, but I didn’t need diplomacy lessons to know I shouldn’t say so. “I meant no harm. I was clumsy. I’m really sorry.”
The goblin shut up midhowl, uncurled, and pointed a long, curved claw at me. “You’re a mortal,” it said accusingly.
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard of you. You’re the Park changeling. Which means that drowning you or picking out your eyes isn’t an option.” It sighed unhappily.
“The Lady wouldn’t like it. I said I was sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t enough. You have to earn my forgiveness. Let me think.” Its claw rasped against its scaly head. “All right. I’ll forget about you sitting on my head and turning my house into kindling—if you do me a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” I asked cautiously.
“You promise you’ll do it?”
“I promise I’ll think about it.”
The goblin gave me what it probably thought was a friendly smile. “It should be easy for a hero like you. All you have to do is make a nymph give me her green glass beads, and we’ll call it even. Otherwise, you owe me a new house. Or maybe an eye. I’m sure the Lady wouldn’t object if I took just one.”
I blinked. “Green glass beads?”
The goblin pulled its next sigh from the bottom of its webbed feet. “The green glass beads. Round, luminous, smooth. On a silver ring. They’re beautiful. Gorgeous. Magical. They’re better than stars or water, better than voices of winds that sing. They’re better than—”
“Sliced bread,” I interrupted. “I get it. And the nymph who has them won’t give them to you.”
“No.” The goblin’s voice was mournful.
Things were looking up. Even in the middle of a swamp, I was on firm ground, fairy-tale ground, playing by rules I understood. “I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully. “Getting green glass beads from a nymph who doesn’t want to give them up sounds like a very difficult task, maybe even an officially impossible one. You have to give me something just as valuable in return. That’s the rule. I’ll get you the beads in exchange for your forgiveness and answers to three questions. And that’s my final offer.”
The goblin sighed some more and chewed its claws.
“Oh, all right,” it said irritably. “What’s the first question?”
“Have you seen a mirror, about yea big?” I made a cereal-bowl sized circle with my fingers. “It shows you things—if you know how to ask.”
The goblin rolled on the ground in another fit of howling. “You’re mocking me!” it wailed. “You’re in league with the nymph! You know about the mirror!”
“I don’t know much,” I admitted. “So what’s the connection between the mirror and the glass beads?”
The goblin sat up. “There isn’t one. That’s the problem. When she gave me the mirror, I saw the beads in it, all round and cool and green as grapes. Then