CHAPTER TEN
Eidechse Von Feuer,
Der Menschenfleischfressende
Once upon a time, there was a huge cavern under the earth.
Jack and Jill and the frog stared.
But the cavern was not what they were staring at.
At the back of the cavern, a torrent of lava poured out of a rock wall, red and black and lurid and glowing.
But that was not what they were staring at, either.
The torrent tumbled into a magma river that wound its way around the back of the cavern, hugging the pockmarked black wall closely and then, in the distance, feeding into an endless underground lava sea.
But the three travelers were also not staring at that.
They were staring at a small mountain that sat beside the winding lava river. The mountain was made not of rock, nor of magma, but of pink, fleshy skin. The mountain had a ridge like a backbone, and little valleys formed by small arms and legs, and a slope of a wide, flat tail. There was no head. But its body rose and fell with breath. They could see thin black bones through the pink skin, and in the distended bag of a belly, black organs wound around one another, pulsing.
“I don’t want to do this . . .” Jill whispered.
Jack shook his head and muttered, “Maybe we can go back and beg Begehren to let us up.”
“Or we can just live down here . . .”
The two children backed into the tunnel they’d come from as swiftly as they could.
But the frog said, “Wait.”
“What?” hissed Jill.
“What?” said Jack, a little louder than he’d intended to.
Jill looked at Jack, eyes wide, finger before her lips. Jack slapped his hand over his mouth.
Silence.
Jack said a wordless prayer of thanks.
And then there was a roar. A roar that has never been described accurately, in all the times this tale has been told. A roar that shook the walls and the roof, that caused waves in the lava sea, that made Jack and Jill fear their eardrums would burst, that made their very bones vibrate and ache within their bodies, that was felt in a tremble not only up in the Goblin Kingdom, but indeed, even on the surface of the earth above that. Jack and Jill fell back into the tunnel, covering their ears and burying their heads between their knees and wishing, wishing, wishing the sound would stop.
And then there was heat. It scorched the children’s faces and arms, turning their skin red and blistery in an instant. Flame followed the heat, and it rolled up against their little tunnel like a beast that was too big to chase them any farther. The flame was red and yellow and blue and pale green, and Jack and Jill would have thought it was one of the most magnificent things they had ever seen in their lives—if their heads hadn’t been clamped firmly between their knees.
Finally, the flame subsided. The children peeked out from their protective positions. The frog had fallen from Jack’s pocket and was curled in a ball on the ground.
The children leaped to their feet. “GO!” Jack cried.
But the frog cried, “Wait!”
Jill hesitated, but Jack was already sprinting away, his spear discarded, his arms flailing wildly as he ran. “Wait!” said the frog again. “He only wants to know who we are!”
Halfway down the hall, Jack slowed to a jog.
“Excuse me?” said Jill.
“He was asking who we are,” said the frog.
Jill was staring at the frog in an attempt to determine if he had lost his mind. Jack had very much the same look on his face.
“He speaks Amphibian,” said the frog, and shrugged his little froggy shoulders.
“You’re joking . . .” said Jack.
“You’re certain?” said Jill.
“Sure,” said the frog. “It’s my language.”
The floor began to shake, the air heated to boiling, and Jack and Jill clamped their hands over their ears as another roar rocked the tunnel, the cavern, and the earth miles and miles above.
When it had subsided, Jill asked the frog, “Well? Was that Amphibian, too?”
“Yeah,” said the frog. “He wants to know where we went.”
Jack started laughing hysterically, and Jill was pretty sure that both of her companions had suddenly lost their minds.
“Let’s go talk to him,” said the frog. Jack continued to laugh insanely.
Jill looked back and forth between the two and, since Jack wasn’t giving her any better options, she followed the frog back to the very edge of the cavern.
The mountain had moved. It had turned and raised a humongous, grotesque, fleshy, pink head. This head was roughly the size of the rest of its body, excluding its long, thick tail. It had tiny black eyes that sat where you might have expected ears to be, just above the upward curves at the end of its wide mouth.
“Oh boy,” said the frog.
“What?” Jill whispered.
“It’s a salamander.”
Jill stared. “It is?”
The frog nodded.
“Is that bad?” Jill asked.
The frog shrugged. “Well, they’re not terribly clever.”
The mountainous salamander stared at them out of the tiny black eyes on either side of his head.
“I’m going to introduce us,” the frog said. Jill nodded as if this made sense. Jack walked up to them, giggling and mumbling about all the king’s horses and all the king’s men putting his head back together again. Then he tried to make his elbow touch his nose.
The frog croaked again. The beast opened his mouth, revealing a big pink tongue. Then out poured a roar that seemed to never end. Jill curled up in a ball and covered her ears. She thought they might be bleeding.
“He says his name is Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschen-fleischfressende,” said the frog.
“Yeah,” said Jill, “we figured.” Then she said, “Can you ask him not to talk so loud? I think I’m going deaf.”
“Sure,” said the frog. So he croaked at Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende. The giant salamander roared a roar that hurt Jill’s ears and blew her hair back but did not force her to curl up into a ball and want to die.
“Better,” she mumbled.
“He said his name is Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende again.”
“Yeah,” said Jill. “We got it.” Jack giggled and tried to fit his fist into his mouth.
“Also,” added the frog, “he said he prefers to be called Eddie.”
Jill was about to say something and then realized that there was absolutely nothing to say to that.
The frog croaked some more. “Eddie” roared back. “I just introduced you two,” said the frog. “He wants to know what’s wrong with Jack.” Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende’s head was held alertly up, and he seemed to be studying Jack curiously with his tiny black eyes. Jill turned around to see Jack trying to fit his left leg over his head.
Jill took him by the shoulders and shook him. Then she slapped him across the face. He shook himself. He said, “What happened? Where am I?”
Jill pointed to Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende. “He’s a salamander. His name’s Eddie.”
Jack started to giggle again, so Jill slapped him across the face again. Again Jack shook himself. “Sorry. What?” He looked up. “Oh.” And then, again, he said, “Oh.”
The children stared up at the beast of the translucent skin and the putrid odor. After a moment, Jill said, “Well, I guess we should ask him about the Glass?”
The frog said, “Right. Good idea.” So he croaked up at Eddie. The salamander roared.
“He apologizes,” said the frog. “Apparently he ate it.”
“He ate the treasure?” Jill exclaimed.
“Oh, boy,” said Jack.
The salamander reared back with his huge, pink, fleshy head and roared some more. “He’s very sorry,” said the frog. “He didn’t mean to.”
“At least he’s polite . . .” Jack marveled.
“He said someone dropped it into his pit a long time ago by accident, and he ate it.”
“Can you—” Jill began, but the frog cut her off.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll ask him to explain.”
So the frog croaked at the salamander. The salamander wrapped his enormous, fleshy tail around his legs. As he moved it, the cavern shook and shifted, and in the distance hundreds of stone stalactites fell from the rock ceiling into the lava sea. The salamander roared.
“He says he didn’t used to live so far under the ground,” said the frog. “He used to live near the surface.”
The salamander roared again. “The goblins used to like him, he says. He sounds kind of sad about it.”
The salamander roared yet again. “He powered their forges with his breath.” The frog waited for more from the salamander.
When there’d been silence for a moment too long, the frog croaked at him.
Eddie roared in reply.
The frog said to the children, “Right. Sorry. He’s starting the story over again. You’ve got to get used to this with salamanders. It’s very hard for them to remember anything they’ve said more than a few sentences ago.”
After a bit of roaring, the frog said, “Okay, he’s back to where we left off. So he lived in a big sinkhole, and would breathe fire to heat the goblins’ homes and power their forges. But then, one day, at some ceremony that he tried to explain but I didn’t understand, they dropped the Glass into his mouth. By accident. And they were very mad.” Jack and Jill looked up at the salamander. He was watching them with his tiny black eyes, as if he wished they would understand.
The frog croaked at Eddie, and Eddie roared some more. “He forgot where he was again. Hold on.” The frog croaked, the salamander roared, and the frog turned to Jack and Jill. “And we’re back. So once he’d swallowed their treasure, they drove him deep down into the earth by dropping boulders on his head and pouring cold water on him, which he did not like at all. So now he lives down here by himself, and he never gets to ask anyone any questions.”
“He never gets to what?” said Jill.
“Ask anyone any questions,” replied the frog. “You know. Salamanders love to ask stupid questions.”
“Oh,” said Jack and Jill at once. “Right.”
They stood there in silence, staring up at the massive, grotesque head of the beast, who stared back down at them as if he was waiting for something.
The frog said, “Hold on,” and he began croaking at the salamander. The salamander nodded his huge head and the whole cavern shook. “It’s still in his stomach!” said the frog. “It’s lodged right next to his intestines. He can feel it!”
Jill thought she was going to be sick. Jack said, “You mean, he could cough it up for us?”
The frog croaked at Eddie. Eddie roared back.
“He’s tried to disgorge it for however many hundreds of years he’s had it in there. He can’t. But he’d be happy to let you go in and get it.” Jill turned green and shook her head violently.
Eddie’s tiny eyes narrowed. Jack looked up at him and thought that that was probably what passed for a sly look for a salamander. Eddie roared. The frog turned to the children. “But before he lets you crawl down his throat, we have to answer his questions.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Jack.
“It’s going to be awful,” said the frog.
“Can we go back to the part about ‘crawling down his throat’?” Jill interjected.
“One trauma at a time, please,” said the frog. He croaked at Eddie, and was answered by a roar. The frog smiled. He turned to Jack and Jill. “What’s better, red or blue?” he said.
“What?” said Jack.
“Is that a joke?” said Jill.
The frog smiled smugly at them. “It’s the first question. Welcome to my world.”
“I don’t know!” said Jill. “What’s the right answer?”
“No idea,” said the frog. “That’s the beauty of it.”
“Blue,” said Jack.
“Red,” said Jill.
Eddie roared loudly. Jack and Jill clamped their hands over their ears. “Don’t confuse him,” said the frog. He turned and croaked at Eddie.
“What’d you say?” Jill demanded.
“Purple,” replied the frog. “Compromise.”
“He accepted that?” asked Jack. But Eddie’s eyes were glazed over and his mouth was drawn back like he was lost in a contemplative smile.
“That’s going to be a lot of information for him to process,” said the frog. “Give him a minute now.” Sure enough, a few minutes passed, and the salamander stopped grinning and roared again. “He wants to know which is bigger, the sky or the earth.”
“The sky,” said Jill.
“The earth,” said Jack.
Eddie roared, and Jack and Jill covered their ears. Their bones shook. “Guys!” the frog hissed.
Jill whispered, “The sky goes all the way around the earth, and it is really, really high! It’s bigger!”
“But the earth is really thick,” replied Jack. “It’s like wrapping a ball in a quilt! Which is bigger, the ball or the quilt?”
“Depends on the quilt,” said Jill.
The frog turned and croaked.
“What’d you tell him?” Jill wanted to know.
“Yes,” said the frog.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The frog glanced up at the mountainous salamander. “I’m not sure. But he’s working on it.” Eddie’s eyes were rolled back in his head, as if he were trying to remember what question he’d asked, and if yes was an acceptable answer. Eventually he seemed to decide that it was. He roared again.
“He says he’s always wanted to know which was hotter, summer or winter.”
Jill smacked her forehead. “How long is this going to go on?”
“Just answer him,” Jack told the frog. So the frog did. The salamander shook the cavern with his appreciative nodding. He roared again.
“He wants to know if smelly is good or smelly is bad.”
Jack and Jill laughed out loud at that. The salamander roared fiercely, and a ball of fire exploded from his mouth. They both stopped laughing.
“Bad,” said Jill.
“Right,” said Jack.
“Wrong,” said the frog, and he turned and croaked at Eddie. Eddie seemed very, very happy. He roared another question.
“He says, ‘Am I smelly? Very smelly? How smelly?’”
“Very smelly,” both children said at once. Jill added, “Unbelievably smelly.”
The frog turned and croaked at Eddie, and Eddie’s head started bobbing up and down, up and down. “He’s very excited,” said the frog. Eddie asked another question.
“Does everyone have a birthday?” the frog relayed to the children.
Jill hesitated. But Jack said, “Yes,” and the frog told Eddie. Eddie roared.
“He wants to know when his is,” said the frog.
The children looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. “What should we say?” Jack asked the frog quietly. The frog shrugged.
“Say yesterday,” said Jill. “And tell him we’re sorry we missed it, but congratulations anyway.” The frog turned and croaked that to Eddie, who looked a little deflated, but appreciative of their belated good wishes. He roared.
“Are salamanders people, too?” said the frog to Jack and Jill.
Jill looked at Eddie, with his grotesque translucent skin, his hideously wide mouth, his distended belly, and his thick, fleshy tail. But then she looked at his little black eyes, set just where you’d expect his ears to be. They looked at her. “Of course,” she said, and she smiled at him. Jack nodded vigorously in agreement. So Eddie started nodding, too. He nodded so hard that the ground shook up and down and knocked Jack and Jill over. Then Eddie lay his head down on the ground and smiled.
All of a sudden, Jill did something that surprised her as much as it surprised everyone else. She got up and walked slowly toward Eddie. When she was just a few feet from his enormous, horrible-smelling head, she reached out and she touched it. It was slimy and fleshy and diaphanous enough to see his skull bones through it. She let her hand come to rest on his nose.
Jack scooped up the frog and followed Jill. He, too, rested his hand on Eddie’s nose. The giant salamander sighed, and Jack and Jill and the frog were enveloped in the foulest stench you can imagine. And they laughed.
The frog said, “Well, shall we get the Glass?”
Jack and Jill nodded. So the frog croaked at the salamander.
Eddie opened his mouth.
“That,” said the frog, “looks like an invitation.”
Eddie’s mouth was probably eight feet across and six feet tall when open. Near the front were a row of small teeth—well, small for Eddie. Each was about six inches high and shaped like a little triangle. After the row of teeth there was a patch of pink flesh, and then, about a foot farther back, was another row of slightly larger teeth. Behind the second row of teeth was an enormous mound of a tongue. Farther back was a wide, dark passage that led down Eddie’s throat. It all looked pretty gross, of course. But how it looked was nothing compared to how it smelled.
Jill spun away as soon as Eddie opened his mouth. But Jack just clamped his hand over his nose and said to the frog, “Please don’t let him close it while we’re in there.”
“What about the fire?” Jill asked, still facing the other direction.
The frog croaked and Eddie closed his mouth and roared. “He won’t burn you,” said the frog. “Unless he burps.”
“Do salamanders burp often?”
“All the time,” replied the frog.
Jill sighed. “Remind him to keep his mouth open.” The frog croaked some more. Eddie nodded with his mouth open.
Jill turned back toward Eddie, closed her eyes, did not take a deep breath, and grabbed Jack’s left hand. But Jack said, “Wait.” He ran back into the corridor and got his discarded spear. While it was not necessarily hospitable to take a weapon into someone’s gastrointestinal tract, Jack certainly wasn’t going in there without it.
The children stepped over Eddie’s lip and into his mouth. The frog quietly croaked at Eddie, reminding him not to close his mouth and not to breathe any fire and to try, try, try not to burp.
“We could die right now,” said Jack.
“I trust Eddie,” said Jill.
“Then you’re probably as dumb as he is,” Jack replied. But he didn’t mean it. He was just a little tense.
Hand in hand, they stepped over the first row of teeth, and then the second. Jill reached out with her foot and touched Eddie’s tongue. It shivered and then lay still. She looked over her shoulder at the frog. The frog nodded at her and kept up his constant stream of reminders to Eddie. Jill stepped onto Eddie’s tongue. It did not move. Jack followed her. They walked across the tongue. The stench became worse, the air thicker and hotter. Jill gagged.
“Don’t,” Jack said severely. Jill swallowed hard.
They approached the dark hole of Eddie’s throat. “Ready?” said Jack.
Together, they ducked through the giant aperture and into the blackness of Eddie’s esophagus.
A rumble came from Eddie’s belly. Jack and Jill froze and gripped each other’s hand more tightly. They could hear the frog croaking.
“Why do we have to do this?” said Jack quietly. “Why are we bothering?”
“Greatest treasure in the history of the world. Very powerful. We don’t get it, we die,” Jill answered.
“Right. Just wanted to make sure this wasn’t optional or anything.”
“Not optional.”
The esophagus narrowed, and Jack and Jill were forced to crawl, their hands and knees sliding along his slimy throat. The growling grew louder. And then it was joined by a buzzing.
“What’s that?”
Jill was slapped in the face by an enormous bug. She frantically swatted it away. Another one crashed into Jack’s neck. Jack screamed and then shuddered.
They pushed on. The darkness became heavier.
“Look for treasure. Or a giant mirror,” Jack whispered. Jill nodded.
The two children slid out of the esophagus and into the stomach. This was a burbling swamp of acid that burned their skin when they touched it. Foul-smelling gloop dripped from the ceiling and coated their bodies and then began to sting. Jack and Jill winced in pain. They couldn’t hear the frog any more. “Hurry,” said Jill. They pushed deeper. Bugs slapped them in the face and got caught in the sticky, stinging gloop. The children pulled them off, and the bugs protested and stung at their hands. Jill thought she might cry. But she gasped, “Deeper.”
On they pushed. They felt with their feet under the pool of acid for treasure chests or strings of pearls or golden mirrors. Anything that might be the Seeing Glass.
They found nothing.
“It’s not here,” Jack said.
“Maybe Eddie got mixed up.”
“Maybe he digested it.”
“I can’t believe it’s not here.”
Sudden panic gripped the children. “What are we going to do now?” Jack demanded.
They arrived at the back of Eddie’s stomach. There, in the dim light that filtered from Eddie’s mouth and down his throat, they could make out a round little hatch of muscle. It led, they figured, to his intestines.
“That’s all there is,” said Jack. “The end.”
But suddenly Jill was pointing at something.
It did not look like a bug, or like anything edible.
It was a round disc, about a foot in diameter.
“What’s that?” Jill asked. They waded up to it. It was lodged in the hatch of muscle.
“Dunno,” said Jack.
“Pull it out.”
“If I do it I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Well, I know I will,” said Jill.
So Jack grabbed hold of the little disc that was lodged between Eddie’s stomach and intestines and yanked at it. It came out easily, and Jack fell backward into the burbling stomach acid. The acid burned his skin. He shouted and scrambled to his feet.
Suddenly, everything went black. Eddie’s entire stomach began to shift, and Jack and Jill were thrown into the fleshy back wall. Eddie was rearing up. Stomach acid poured all over the children, burning their faces, their arms, their hands, submerging them utterly. Jill began swimming upward to get to air, but Jack, holding onto the little disc with one hand and the spear with the other, could not. Jill reached the surface, looked for Jack, and began to scream. Suddenly, Eddie slammed back to the ground, sending Jack crashing into Jill, and both sprawling into the stomach acid again.
They got to their feet and groped frantically through the pitch darkness toward the throat.
“What’s going on?” Jill asked, terrified.
“No idea. He forgot?”
“Or he’s decided to eat us?”
“Was it a trap?”
And then the darkness was cut by an orange glow. Jack and Jill looked in the direction of Eddie’s mouth. It was still tightly shut, and no light came through at all. Where was the glow coming from, then? They looked back into the stomach. A small fire was burning there at the back. A small fire. But growing.
“He’s erupting!” Jill shouted, and though that wasn’t exactly the word she was looking for at that moment, it was in fact exactly the right word. For the fire was blooming up the length of Eddie’s stomach. Jack thrust the disc to Jill and gripped the spear with both hands.
“What are you going to do?” Jill screamed.
“I don’t know!”
The fire boiled toward them.
“This way!” Jill shouted, and she grabbed Jack’s arm and they crawled through the esophagus and into Eddie’s mouth.
“Eddie, open up! Open up!” she cried. Something exploded in Eddie’s stomach. The fire burst into Eddie’s throat. Jack aimed the spear at the roof of Eddie’s mouth.
“You’re going to kill him!” Jill shouted.
“What else can I do?” Jack cried.
“EDDIE!” Jill screamed.
And Jack sent the spear straight up at the soft part of Eddie’s palate.
And then, just before the point of Jack’s spear hit Eddie’s flesh, the giant mouth opened and the great tongue flung Jill and Jack and Jack’s spear out of Eddie’s mouth. They spun through the air and hit the ground hard as an arm of flame burst from Eddie’s throat and cut a line through the air just above the children’s bodies.
The flame died. Jack and Jill turned and looked at Eddie. He roared.
“Good God!” the frog cried.
Eddie kept roaring.
“What happened?” Jack and Jill shouted at the same moment.
“He had to burp,” said the frog. “I kept telling him not to. Eventually he closed his mouth to keep the burp down.”
“Why didn’t you call to us?” Jack demanded.
“I did! You didn’t hear me?”
The children shook their heads.
“What’s all over you?” the frog said. Jack and Jill looked at their arms, hands, bodies. They touched their faces. Their skin was raw and blistering, and totally covered in stomach acid. “You look horrible,” the frog added.
“Thanks,” Jill replied.
“And no treasure?”
Jack held up the little disc. “This is all we could find.” The frog turned and croaked at Eddie. Eddie nodded and roared.
“That’s it,” said the frog.
“What? That’s the whole treasure?”
“According to him,” the frog shrugged.
Jill, still lying on the ground, let her head fall against the craggy black stone. Jack stared at the disc. It was so coated in stomach gloop he couldn’t make it out. “What is it?” he said. No one answered.
Jack sat up, cradled the thing in his lap, and pawed at the gloop with his fingers. It stung them. He pulled at it, but it just drooped back into place, hugging the little disc.
“Maybe it’s a mirror,” Jack concluded.
“We better hope so,” agreed Jill.
Eddie roared. Jill looked up wearily at the giant, ecstatic salamander. “What is he saying?” she asked.
The frog sighed. “He wants to ask us more questions.”
Some hours passed while the children recuperated from their ordeal and fielded such questions as, “If a tree falls in a forest and there’s nobody around, how did it fall down?” and “What does the word ‘is’ mean?” But finally Jack stood up and said, “I think we should go now.” Jill, who had been coming up with the bulk of the answers to Eddie’s questions, gratefully agreed.
“The problem is,” said Jack, “there’s no way Begehren is going to believe that this thing is all the treasure that’s down here.” He waved the disc in the air. The gloop was beginning to harden. “How are we going to get him to lift us back up?”
The frog offered a suggestion, and then Jill did, and then Jack came up with one of his own. None seemed particularly promising. Jill tried another, and another. Jack added to one, subtracted from the other. The frog offered a variant. After a while, the two children were nodding.
“That might work,” said Jill.
“It’s the best we’ve got,” said Jack. “Let’s try it.”
Jill turned to the frog. “Tell Eddie.”
When the frog informed Eddie of their intent to leave, Eddie was crestfallen. But when the frog elaborated that they would need the giant salamander’s help, he looked like it might be the very best day of his long, long life.
“Tell him to lead the way,” Jack said to the frog. So Eddie began crashing through the tunnels that had led them there, smashing stone as easily as one might smash glass. Jack and Jill ran after him, the frog nestled in Jack’s pocket.
Jack and Jill stood at the bottom of the sinkhole and stared up. Far above, they could see the dim red light of the Goblin Kingdom. Beside them lay Eddie, still as death. Jack nodded at Jill. They cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted, “Begehren!”
Their voices echoed up the sides of the sinkhole and then died away.
No answer came.
Jill nodded at Jack. Again they cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted, “BEGEHREN!”
Again, no answer.
A third time they cupped their hands to their mouths, turned them to the great hole, and bellowed.
This time, far up above, a tiny round shape appeared, framed by the dim red light. “QUEEN? JACK?” called a voice. It ricocheted off the walls of the sinkhole all the way down into the ground.
“YES!” the children shouted. “WE GOT IT!”
Their answer was met by a burst of sound. Excited voices seemed to be calling out to one another. Then they heard, “Begehren is coming!”
A few minutes later, another round shape appeared in the dim red light far above the two children. “DO YOU HAVE IT?” The caretaker of the Goblin Kingdom’s deep voice echoed down into the hole.
“YES!” the children called back.
The large bucket came plunging down through the darkness and landed with a crash beside them. “START LOADING IT IN!” Begehren cried down.
“WE CAN’T!” the children shouted back up. “IT’S IN THE IDECKWHATEVER’S STOMACH! WE KILLED HIM AND LOOKED IN HIS MOUTH. IT’S ALL SOLID INSIDE!”
Begehren cried, “YOU KILLED HIM????”
“IT WASN’T VERY HARD! HE WAS SLEEPING!”
There were cries of surprise and joy above.
“WHAT’S IN HIS STOMACH? GOLD? DIAMONDS?”
“YES!” the children called. “AND MORE! MUCH MORE THAN THAT! ALL IN ONE GREAT BALL!”
Shrieking laughter echoed down the hole.
“WE’LL NEED A BIG PLATFORM,” Jill cried up. “YOU CAN LOAD HIM ONTO IT AND HAUL HIM UP. WE’LL COME UP AFTER.”
“YES, YES, GOOD!” Begehren called down. “JUST WAIT WHILE WE GET IT!” More shrieking laughter and giddy voices. Begehren’s voice returned. “YOU ARE THE GREATEST HEROES KNOWN TO GOBLIN OR TO MAN!” And then he shouted, “HOLD ON!”
They waited, and waited, and then down through the darkness came an enormous platform with three dozen of the strongest goblins the children had yet seen. The ropes that suspended the platform were reinforced with enormous, thick chains. When the goblins saw the giant salamander, lying as if dead in the clearing, they all huddled together, as far from the great body as possible.
“It’s okay,” said Jack. “He’s dead.” Beside Eddie, out of sight of the goblins, the frog was whispering into the salamander’s ear.
“HURRY UP!” came the imperious cry from above. The goblins reluctantly moved toward the salamander until they stood nine at a leg. Then they began hauling, dragging Eddie toward the platform.
Jack watched Eddie carefully. It looked like he was trying not to smile. The frog, unnoticed by the grunting, heaving goblins, hopped awkwardly alongside Eddie’s head as it dragged along the ground. The goblins finally managed to get Eddie onto the platform.
“WE DID IT!” one of them shouted up to Begehren. From above came the sound of giant cranks turning, and then, very, very slowly, the platform began to rise into the air. Jack scooped up the frog, and he and Jill clambered onto the platform with Eddie.
“Hey!” shouted the goblins in the pit.
“WHAT?” Begehren called down. The platform continued, slowly, to rise.
“THEY’RE ON THE PLATFORM!” one of the goblins shouted.
The enormous load came to an unsteady halt, suspended just a few feet above the ground. “WHAT?” Jack called up. “WHAT’S WRONG?”
There was silence from above. Then Begehren called back, “COVER THE CHILDREN!”
Thirty-six goblins turned and drew daggers from their belts and pointed them at Jack and Jill. Jack let his spear clatter from his hand to the ground below. The children raised their hands in surrender.
A goblin grinned darkly and called up, “OKAY!”
And the platform began to rise again.
Up and up and up past the glowing walls, through the obscurity of the sinkhole, toward the red light of the Goblin Kingdom went the platform, the goblins, the children, Eddie and, hiding just beside Eddie’s great head, the frog. He continued to croak quietly in Eddie’s ear, reminding him to keep perfectly still. Jill could see that Eddie was definitely trying not to smile.
Finally, the platform cleared the edge of the sinkhole. The children blinked and shielded their eyes, for though the Goblin Kingdom was dim, it was far brighter than either the sinkhole or Eddie’s cave. Thousands of goblins had filled the square surrounding them. Upon seeing Eddie, they began shouting and falling back. All, that is, save Begehren. He stared with wide eyes.
“Get that thing off of the platform!” he cried. Two dozen more strong goblins surged forward and grabbed at Eddie’s limbs.
But Jill smiled and said, “He can do it himself.”
Begehren looked at her like she was crazy, and for one moment, the entire Goblin Kingdom seemed to stand still. Then the frog croaked something, and Eddie lifted his head and roared. A giant arc of fire burned the air above their heads.
The goblins began screaming. High, shrill cries of terror. They screamed and cried and surged in a mass away from the horrible beast.
Except for Begehren. Begehren stared, unmoving.
Eddie closed his mouth, reloaded, so to speak, and recommenced in spraying fire all around him. Half a mile away buildings exploded and caught fire and people screamed.
When Eddie finally closed his mouth, everything for half a mile around was charred kindling and burned cinders. And there was a pile of melted flesh, just a few feet from where Begehren had been standing.
Eddie turned his curious little eyes on Jack and Jill and the frog. He roared again.
“He wants to know what to do now,” said the frog.
“Tell him to come down here,” said Jill. So the frog croaked at the salamander, and Eddie lowered his enormous pink head to the ground. Jill threw her arms around his nose. Jack did, too. The frog, in Jack’s pocket, croaked sad good-byes to their giant, lovely, smelly friend. Then Eddie lifted his head high into the air and roared the most deafening roar he had ever roared. The children covered their ears and stared as fire spumed all the way to the great roof of the Goblin Kingdom, hundreds of yards above them.
“He says ‘Good-bye,’” said the frog.
Eddie gave a little jump with his huge body, and the whole Goblin Kingdom shook. Houses in the distance cracked and tumbled to the ground. Then he turned and leaped back down into the sinkhole, sliding down the walls with a horrible tearing sound.
“I think he likes it down there,” said the frog. “It’s like a big, warm well.”
Jack turned to Jill. Her face, her skin, was blistered and covered in salamander stomach acid. As was his. “You look lovely,” he told her.
Jill grinned and curtsied. “Why, thank you. You, on the other hand, smell like a cesspool.”
They laughed. Then the two children took hands and walked through the now-deserted Goblin Kingdom, searching for a way back to the light.