The Magic Spectacles (16 page)

It wasn’t until they stopped running that John realized they had left the basket behind them along with his candle and candlestick. Polly still had her candle, but only a couple of inches of it were left. Besides that, they had the matches in John’s pocket. That was all – enough, maybe, for twenty more minutes, then darkness. John struck one of the matches, and they lit the piece of candle and looked at the tunnel around them.

Nothing had changed. They might as easily have been ten feet into the cave or ten miles. There was no going back after the basket, either – not now that they had stirred up the shadow thing beyond the second door. Maybe there was no going back at all.

But there was no going on, either – not far, not without light to see by.

John looked behind, back into shadows that were as deep and dark as the ocean at midnight. He strained to hear something, anything. The creature in the tunnel of creaking doors had seemed to be nothing but darkness and cobweb and dust, and it had been silent as death as it rushed toward them down the tunnel. If it was loose, they wouldn’t hear it come.

Was the air growing cooler now?

He looked at Polly, who had moved farther down the tunnel and stood now before another door. John didn’t care about the doors any longer. He wasn’t going to open another one without a very good reason. Doors and windows had been nothing but trouble for him, and the doors deep in the cave here seemed to hide nothing but Mr. Deener’s sad memories.

But then Polly held the candle flame near the door itself, and there, clearly smudged against the wood, was the smoky outline of the letter “D.”

Danny knew straight off what bowl of marbles it was. John had been right: the marbles in the fishbowl were not regular marbles at all; they were Mr. Deener’s lost marbles. That’s what the little man in the curiosity shop had been talking about. Along with the marbles in Mrs. Barlow’s flour sack, they made up the bits and pieces of Mr. Deener’s past, hardened into glass.

There was the sound of hushed, whispering voices in the cavern, just like the voices in Mrs. Barlow’s bag, and he could hear the click, click, click of the marbles knocking together in the bowl. They seemed almost to be boiling, as if they wanted to jump out of the bowl. Danny stepped down into the cavern and walked toward it, past heaps of treasure and fish bones. He ought to simply take the whole bowl. It was his, after all. He had paid for it with the moon penny. He would grab it and get out of there, leaving the rest of the treasure behind. He didn’t want stolen treasure.

But just as he reached for it a scuffling noise sounded beyond the cavern door. There was laughter and the low gobble of goblin voices. A key turned in the lock. The door swung wide open. Six goblins stood there, holding lighted torches. One of them was big – a head taller than Danny. His mouth hung open stupidly, and in the torchlight Danny could see that his teeth were sharp like an animal’s teeth.

The goblins saw him at the same time, and with a wild cry they rushed into the room, yapping and hooting. Danny held onto Ahab’s leash, and, forgetting about the marbles, the two of them ran straight across the top of the treasure, crunching and smashing, wading through piles of jewels. Danny ducked in among the high stone columns, dodging first behind one and then another.

The goblins crowded toward him. One snatched at his wrist, knocking the candlestick out of his hand, and another grabbed onto the cuff of his pants and tried to pull him over. He kicked his foot, and the goblin went sprawling. Ahab yanked hard on his leash, pulling it out of Danny’s hand. And then, barking and growling, he leaped into the middle of the goblins, snapping his teeth in their faces as they turned with a shout and ran back the way they’d come.

Danny whistled once, then turned and ran deeper into the cavern, back into the darkness. He couldn’t fight all the goblins, but he could outrun them. Ahab would follow him. He still had candles and matches in his pocket. …

Suddenly, right in front of him, the biggest of the goblins stepped out from behind a stone pillar. His hair was wild, and his eyes seemed to be spinning like tops. He wore what looked like Mr. Deener’s cast-off clothes, dirty and ripped, and he gnashed his teeth together as he reached out and clutched Danny’s jacket. Then, laughing out loud and slobbering, he began to drag Danny back out toward the torchlight and the treasure.

Just then Ahab ran out from among the stone columns. He snarled and jumped just as Danny twisted away, shrugging out of the jacket. The big goblin staggered backward when Ahab slammed into him. Ahab’s teeth closed on the goblin’s shirt, tearing a wide hole in it, and the goblin threw up his hands and hooted in fear, ducking sideways and trying to scuttle away, pushing at Ahab with his hands.

Danny whistled again, and at the same moment he turned and ran. Ahab followed behind him, turning around once to bark, and then coming along fast again. The shadows deepened. Danny stopped and searched in the darkness for Ahab’s leash, feeling around with his hands. He found it, and, slipping his hand through the loop, he ran as fast as he dared, letting Ahab lead him down the tunnel, away from the treasure room.

Almost at once there was a great lot of gobbling and wailing behind them and the stamping of goblin feet. They were coming. He could see the flicker of torchlight back along the tunnel. He couldn’t run any faster, not in the darkness. He trailed his right hand against the stone wall, squinting his eyes to see into the gloom.

The sounds behind him grew more distant. They were outrunning the goblins. Ahead of him a light sprang up, like a slash of yellow fire along the floor. Something was there, maybe blocking the tunnel. He tugged on the leash, and Ahab slowed down, growling and looking behind them into the darkness. Danny put out his hand. A door blocked the tunnel. There were no branching tunnels. This was it – the end.

He heard the sound of breaking waves – a distant hissing and booming. He could smell sea air leaking up through the sunlit crack beneath the door. Goblin noise filled the tunnel, and torchlight danced on the stone floor. Ahab’s fur stood up along his back. His back legs tensed, ready to spring. The six goblins appeared from around the bend in the tunnel. They let out a whoop and rushed howling toward Ahab, holding the burning torches out in front of them, champing their teeth and hissing.

Danny grasped the key and turned it. The door swung outward, and sunlight flooded the cavern, nearly blinding Danny as he jumped through the door with Ahab following. The two of them ran out onto a grassy hillside just as the goblins closed in behind them, clutching hands reaching out to haul the two of them back into the darkness.

John stood looking at the mark on the door, thinking about the little piece of candle that was left and the few paltry matches in his pocket, thinking about what might lie behind them down the tunnel and about the darkness that surely lay ahead.

Had Danny marked this door because he had opened it, and
knew
that it led home? Or had he chosen it for no good reason at all, just as Polly and John had chosen the door with the terrible shadow locked behind it? John put his hand on the key. Unlike most of the others doors, this one was well-used.
Something
was coming and going through it.

And right then he knew that it didn’t matter what lay beyond the door. It was enough that Danny had gone through it. His brother had met whatever danger lurked on the other side, and now John would too. He didn’t have any choice.

Cautiously he twisted the key in the lock. It turned with a loud
thunk
, just as the others had done. The door opened outward, and for a moment he and Polly waited, ready to slam it shut again. But this time there was no creaking and slamming. There was no music playing. There was only the faint smell of the ocean and the restless, distant sigh of breaking waves. A flickering light shone from within, out onto the tunnel floor.

He grasped the cold iron that sheathed the door and looked past it. Unbelieving, he blinked his eyes hard and opened the door wider. For there on the floor of the cavern, illuminated by the light of burning torches, lay a vast sea of treasure, piled into every sort of chest and box and bag,’ spilled out in multicolored pools. Polly looked past his shoulder, and he heard her catch her breath in surprise.

And then he saw the steaming kettle and beside it the fishbowl full of marbles.

So the marbles weren’t lost to them after all! John could get them back. He
would
get them back, and right now. He stepped into the room, past the half-open door.

(Chapter 13 continues after illustration)

A hand shot out from along the wall and grabbed his wrist. Another hand caught his ankle. There was a hoot of wild goblin laughter.

“Run!” he shouted to Polly, and tried to twist away. But it was too late. Polly didn’t run, she grabbed his arm and tried to yank him loose. Goblins pushed the door open and swarmed through. Goblin hands latched onto their wrists and ankles clothes. The goblins dragged them into the cavern, and the door slammed shut behind. More goblins rose from behind treasure boxes and rocks and crept out of the deep shadows and from holes in the cavern floor and walls. There were dozens of them, like an army of little Mr. Deeners, all shriveled and dirty and dressed in the skins of bats and rats.

An enormous goblin stood up from behind the kettle. He nodded his head slowly and squinted his eyes. He looked like a Mr. Deener badly made up out of spare parts. His arms were too long, like ape arms, and he had a face like a pudding. He was at least as fat as Mr. Deener, and looked as if he had been dumped into his clothes with a shovel. He wore a bow tie made out of tree bark, and his hat, or maybe crown, was tied up out of old rags and sticks and leaves. Wild strands of hair waggled out from beneath it. Clearly he was the king of the goblins, and was proud of it.

The goblins marched John through the treasure, up to where the king stood waiting. The king made the glasses sign with his fingers. “I don’t have them,” John said, and shook his head. “Ugh,” the king said, still looking through the finger glasses. “Ugh yourself,” John said. “I don’t have the glasses. Mr. Deener ground them up and the wind blew them away.”

The king nodded and made a sort of pickle face, as if finally he understood and was studying what John had told him. Then he grinned. His teeth were filed to points. He made the glasses sign again. He didn’t understand anything.

“The…glasses…
broke
” John said, talking slowly and clearly.

“Roke!” the king said, grinning even wider, showing his teeth.

“That’s right,” John said. “Roke.”

The king bent down and picked something up off the ground. It was a flat circle attached to a long stick and with a hole in the middle. But the hole wasn’t empty. Even in the flickering torchlight John could see that the hole was in fact a piece of pale green glass. The light shining through it cast a green glow on the cave-wall behind.

It was the lost spectacles lens, fitted into the hole in a flattened, dried-out glazed doughnut. Then the doughnut had been tied onto a broken stick. The goblin peered at John through it as if he were looking through a magnifying glass or monocle. His eye was immense.

He shoved the end of the stick through a rip in his shirt and made the glasses sign again, saying, “Roke!” and then nodding happily and holding his open hand out, as if maybe John would understand him now and give up the spectacles.

John shook his head and held his own hands out. Then he remembered the empty wire rims that he’d picked up in the weeds of the clinker garden. They were still in his jacket pocket. He thought about them for a moment before taking them out. With his hand hiding one of the lens holes, he held them up for the king to see.

“Roke! Roke!” the king shouted, dancing and pointing. A great cry went up from the rest of the goblins – cries of “Roke! Roke!” that sounded like the croaking of happy frogs. John put the spectacles back into his pocket and crossed his arms.

The king’s smile collapsed, as if it had been made out of wet sand that had suddenly dried out. He reached out his hand and opened and closed his fingers. “Roke” he said, and then something that sounded like, “Gimme.”

“Nope,” John answered. “No roke. Not unless you let us go.” He pointed to himself and then to Polly and made little walking-finger movements with his right hand.

“No roke?” the king said. He frowned, studying things out again in his dimwit way. With a sly grin he picked something else up off the floor and held it up.

It was Danny’s jacket.

Suddenly nothing was funny anymore. “Where is he?” John shouted, and he started forward. He didn’t know why – maybe to take the jacket away, maybe just to push the king over backward. At once a dozen goblins rose up on either side of him, and before he had taken two steps they dragged him down onto a pile of treasure. He wrestled and fought and kicked, and for one brief moment he caught a glimpse of Polly pulling herself free of the goblins that were guarding her, but then he was buried under goblins and half sunk in a heap of jewels.