A lifetime of abuse leaves very deep scars. It takes Sable years to change the habits that she built up to protect herself from Thorn's hateful treatment. This is a process that requires the support of all those around her, and Tinsel in particular has to help his wife gain the confidence to take risks.
"Kate told me you were upset that I loaned your father's
book to Seylin," Tinsel told her as they sat by their little fish
pond. Sable immediately climbed to her feet and walked a few feet away.
She stood with her back to him, running her fingers over the green cloth
hangings.
"She shouldn't have told you!" she exclaimed.
"It's all right that she told me," Tinsel said, watching
her. "I just wish you had done it."
"But you would have been angry with me," she murmured with
her head down.
"No, I'm not," he assured her, as he had many times
before. "Sable, it's all right to tell me things." But
she just shook her head. "Why wouldn't it be all right to
tell me?"
"Because I'm angry at you this time," she admitted in
a burst of rare candor, "so you have to be angry at me."
Tinsel watched his beautiful wife nervously pick apart the greenery. "I
don't have to be angry just because you are," he pointed out,
"but let's say that I am. Let's say that I'm very
angry. What's the worst thing that can happen?"
The elf woman continued to unravel the hangings. He waited for a minute,
but she didn't answer him. "What are you afraid of?"
he asked again. "I can't hit you, you know that. Marak would
kill me."
"You could stop feeding me," she challenged, looking at him
out of the corner of her eye. "You give me my food."
"You know that's not really true," Tinsel replied. "It
isn't like it used to be in your camp; any goblin you ask will give
you food. There's bread on the table right now, and you know that
it's your food as just as much as mine."
Sable did know that, but she didn't let herself think of it. As
much as the bread meant to her, she never touched it without his permission.
"You'd be angry if I ate it," she insisted, turning
away.
"Sable," remarked her husband, "you're not being
fair. You know I wouldn't punish you with food like Thorn did."
He was right: she wasn't being fair. Slowly, she walked over to
the basket of bread. "But you give it to me," she protested.
"I do that because you want me to," he answered. "I
don't have to give it to you." He watched as she sat down
and took the basket into her hands. She stared at it, but she didn't
touch the bread.
"One day I will be angry with you," he said. "That's
just how marriage is. One day we'll both be so angry that we can't
even speak to each other. But do you think even then that I'll want
you to go hungry?"
His wife thought about that, taking a roll from the basket and weighing
it in her hand. She knew he was right. He wasn't Thorn. But still,
she hesitated.
"Do you think I should eat it?" she asked anxiously, but Tinsel
wasn't fooled.
"I'm not going to tell you to do it," he answered. "It's
your decision."
Sable ate the roll, turned away from him so that he couldn't watch
her, and her mouth was so dry, she almost choked. After she finished the
whole thing, Tinsel came to kneel down in front of her.
"You see?" he told her quietly. "Even if I get angry,
nothing bad will happen."
"But, Tinsel, you might hate me," whispered Sable, and her
eyes filled with tears. He put his arms around her, and she hugged him
tightly.
"You know I couldn't hate you," he said. "No matter
what happened."
"I didn't like it," she told him with her head on his
shoulder. "It didn't taste as good as the rolls you give me."
"I like giving you your food," he said, holding her. "I
like making you happy. But I'm your husband, not your jailor. I
don't want you to be a slave. Now, what did you want to tell me
about your book?"
Sable wiped her eyes.
"It's my book," she answered gravely, holding his hand
to give her confidence. "It's not anybody else's, and
I like to keep it with me. I don't like it that you lent it without
asking me. I don't mind if Seylin looks at it, but I don't
want him to take it away."
Tinsel smiled at her solemn face. "Then let's go get it back,"
he proposed.
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MARAK IS PLEASED WITH THE RESULTS
OF HIS ELF QUEST
When it comes to dealing with others, Marak never stops thinking
like a goblin King. In this short scene, he is reveling in the success
of his elf marriages.
"Just look at them," gloated the goblin King to Kate at the
banquet hall one evening, pointing out Tinsel and Sable. "They absolutely
adore each other. They've been married for eight months, and they
still can't take their eyes off each other."
Tinsel was choosing a cutlet for his wife, who insisted, elf-fashion,
in eating only the food he gave her. "Why don't you feed me?"
asked Kate, watching them. "I'm an elf, too."
"I did for a couple of days," admitted Marak, buttering his
bread. "I wasn't sure if it would matter. But you weren't
raised that way, so I stopped."
"I wish you'd kept it up," she said. "It's
so romantic."
"Being fed isn't romantic," scoffed Marak. "Tinsel's
romantic. Sable would eat sand if he gave it to her, she's so in
love with him. You watch, she'll have three children in spite of
her ghastly history, and I'll bet Irina has four. You'd hardly
know that girl was the same ragged thing that arrived eight months ago.
And Thaydar's turned into a raving lunatic over her. I had no idea
marriage would affect him like that."
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EMILY AND SEYLIN SETTLE DOWN TO
MARRIED LIFE
While Kate has learned a distaste for lying from the goblins,
Emily has a very different attitude about lying. But then, she and Kate
are different in almost every way.
No one was terribly surprised to find that Emily and Seylin were happy.
It was perfectly natural that the pair, inseparable as children, should
continue to be inseparable as adults. What did surprise everyone who knew
them was that the marriage could be so uneventful. Marak no longer found
Emily gesturing frantically at him while he was trying to hold court,
and Kate no longer found herself plucked aside by angry goblins to hear
about the horrible tricks that "that human" had played. Seylin's
Guard friends discovered that he had ceased to be temperamental and sensitive.
The old Seylin had wandered listlessly about the palace, discontented
with his life. The new one had far too much to do.
Catspaw loved learning with his new tutor, and whenever he got tired,
his aunt was right there to raise his spirits. One morning he was practicing
his goblin writing with Seylin when Emily walked through the room.
"Em, did you go visit Ruby yet?" asked her husband. "She
asked after you the last time she was here."
"Oh, I'd forgotten," remarked the young woman.
Catspaw kicked his feet against his chair and looked up from his lesson.
"That's a lie," he told her smugly. "I don't
know why humans lie when everyone can tell. I think it's stupid."
Emily grinned at him. "Not everyone can tell," she retorted.
"Just you and your father, along with a few other goblins. We humans
like to make up things. It's as close to magic as we can get."
"It's still stupid," scoffed the prince.
"I'll tell you what's stupid," countered Emily.
"It's how you looked when you were born. You looked like a
pink hippopotamus. Marak had to change you with magic."
"That's a lie, too," he announced with glee.
"And all the scholars wanted to name you Marak Funny-ears, but Kate
wouldn't let them."
"Another lie," giggled the delighted Catspaw.
"And Lore-Master Ruby looks just like a frog wearing your mother's
hair."
"That's the truth! You're telling the truth!"
The young prince laughed so hard that he slid off his chair and had an
attack of the hiccups.
"Em, please!" protested Seylin. "We're doing serious
work here."
"I'm perfectly serious," declared the irrepressible
Emily. "Come on, Catspaw, I'll show you how humans cure the
hiccups." And she led her little nephew away.
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THE GOBLIN KING PLANS A HOLIDAY
This episode shows Marak scheming again, but a goblin King has to scheme: the survival of an entire race depends upon his careful planning.
Kate came back from teaching the pages to find Marak poring over a letter.
"It's from my solicitors in London," he murmured in
response to her query.
"I didn't know you had solicitors," said the surprised
Kate, sitting down.
"Oh, of course," said the King. "In dealing with the
human world, I've found lawyers as indispensable as money. Thaydar
brought this letter back from his latest trip. They're about to
auction Hallow Hill because the inheritance squabbles of your relatives
have bankrupted the estate."
Kate frowned. "I still think I should have been allowed to testify.
The lawsuits would have fallen apart if they'd realized I was alive."
"I'd have loved to be there," hooted Marak. "'Why,
yes, Your Honor, I'm perfectly hale and fit, it's just that
I live under a lake now with my husband the goblin.' We'd
have had curiosity seekers swarming these hills like flies, as if the
sorcerer wasn't bad enough. It doesn't matter now, the whole
parcel of land is going to the highest bidder, and I plan to buy it."
"You're buying my land?" asked Kate indignantly.
Her husband smiled at her.
"Your land?" he echoed. "Didn't your
guardian teach you anything, you elvish interloper? You have no more claim
to it than I do. What does an elf want with mansions anyway?"
"Well, what do you want with it?" she wanted to know.
Marak set the letter down, looking thoughtful.
"For one thing, if I buy it, your aunt Celia can keep living in
the Lodge," he answered. "Anyone else will move her out, and
she has nowhere to go. She was your benefactor, and a goblin King doesn't
forget his friends. And for another thing, I need to control who winds
up in that mansion. The master of Hallow Hill has to be someone who won't
destroy the place for profit. The humans are filling up their land, and
they'll threaten mine soon if I don't stop them.
"I've been doing some thinking about the elf King's
forest lately," he continued. "The spells on the forest are
losing their power, and the trees are starting to fall. They wouldn't
have lasted this long if Grandfather hadn't put the Axe Spell on
them in his day. I'm thinking of doing the same thing."
"Why protect the elf lands when there are no more elves?"
asked Kate.
"There's still you," observed her husband. "How
would you feel if your forest was cut down? And the humans can do it in
just a generation. The elf King's forest has stood since the earliest
ages, barring the occasional fire, and there are huge trees in it whose
age is too old to guess. Countless elves have treasured it and protected
it with their spells. You might say it's the only thing they ever
built. They were my cousins, and it's their monument."
Kate was silent. It was hard for her to imagine a forest full of elves.
Even seeing Irina and Sable had done little to bring her heritage home
to her. Marak studied her face and guessed what she was thinking.
"Come with me and help me work the spells," he suggested.
"Catspaw can stay behind with his tutor, and you and I can have
a holiday. It'll take weeks to circle the forest's edge and
protect the trees. We'll walk the land every night and stay in a
tent just like elves."
"You'll stay in a tent?" laughed his wife.
"I'll hate it, of course," admitted Marak. "It's
in the goblin King's blood to hate tents, and I absolutely draw
the line at eating elf food, but other than that, we'll live like
elves for a while, and you can see what it was really like."
Kate's eyes shone. The moon and stars and whispering trees every
night for weeks. It sounded like her most hopeful ideas of heaven.
"I think that's a lovely plan," she answered, overjoyed.
"I can't wait to set out."
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