The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Fifty Eight: Truths

My feet moved on their own accord, tugging me along into the mass of goblin bodies. I passed through them like a ghost, urgently trying to reach the child that would one day become my dear husband. I wanted to see his face better. I wanted to hear the child him's voice. I wanted to touch his mousy gray hair. I wanted to look into both of his eyes, both of them, while I still could.

I wanted these things more than I wanted to breathe.

Yet, when I stood mere steps away from him, my reaching hand fell to my side. These were but figments, ghosts from a haunting past. I could not touch them, could not speak to them. They would not acknowledge me. All I could do was watch and listen.

"Are you paying attention, Knut?" His mother, Sebile I think her name was, shooed him from behind her skirts with some effort. The little Knut drug his feet, hesitant to come out of his hiding place.

I couldn't help but giggle at the sight. I would never have guessed that Knut was such a shy child. As a man, he certainly had no shame.

The child Knut was not what I would call cute either. His nose took up the majority of his small face, his ears were too large for his head and his eyes still sat in deep hollows that were so shadowed that they looked bruised. His gray hair was cut to his shoulders with messy bangs cut jaggedly across his forehead. Some of the strands were so short they stuck straight up on his head. I suspected that he'd cut it himself when his mother wasn't looking. He wore an ill-fitting suit with white stockings and a short dark purple cape that hung off one bony shoulder. The outfit was too large and bunched up in odd places. The sleeves were rolled up several times, yet I could barely see his fingers past their cuffs. I wondered if perhaps the outfit was a hand-me-down from one of those older brothers from one of Frode's earlier broods, princes that had proved unworthy of their father's crown and had been killed for their shortcomings.

Sebile knelt behind Knut, placing her gnarled hands on either shoulder. "Watch carefully. That will be you someday." She cooed with a soft voice dripping with pride. Her eyes were bright with ambition, her mouth stretched into a plotting grin full of crowded sharp teeth.

"Really, Mama?" Knut's reedy tone was as small as he was.

Sebile's eyes twinkled. The two of them could not have been more alike. "I know you will be. There is no doubt. No matter how many children we have, be it two or a hundred, you will defeat them all. I have known this since the moment you were born, Little One."

Knut's large eyes focused on old Frode as the souls of new goblins rose up from his head bathed in green mist and for a moment Knut's own eyes flickered green and a smile I knew quite well pulled at his cheeks.

Sebile noticed this. Her own smile grew until I thought her jaw might come unhinged. "You will make a marvelous goblin king, mark my words."

"She doesn't know that for certain," Athane spoke into my ear. "She worries he is too shy and docile to be king, but she hopes that these words will help him turn her lies into truths. Just now, she saw his ambition spark to life for the first time and she prays it will keep burning."

"Her lies must have worked. Shy and docile are two words I would never use to describe Knut." I said. My chest ached. I longed to give Little Knut a hug and perhaps thank the mother-in-law I would never know for helping her son become who he needed to be."

"His transformation was not entirely her doing." Athane chuckled darkly to herself.

Knut yawned and rubbed at his eyes with his too long sleeves. His mother cooed softly, "Come along, Knut." She scooped him up with ease despite her bent and crooked spine. "I think it's time for little princelings to crawl into their beds." She rubbed his back affectionately and Knut's eyelids began to droop, sleep already calling to him with its siren song.