Chapter Fourteen

Sam

Sam didn’t want to get in a word hog.

He was relieved they weren’t taking The Declension. But even a few goblins appearing at his dad’s office? That was going to be horrible. And one look at the word hogs made Sam realize there were going to be more than a few goblins.

By the time the second hog was on deck, prospectors had filled the seats in the first hog’s belly and were starting to take their places in the other. A broad-shouldered goblin happily claimed a seat in the second ship and grinned at Tolver.

Three goblins, including the first mate, carried an ornately decorated crate with leather straps and brass corners to the captain. They lifted the top off and took out a large spherical compass and leather-bound book.

With one hand on the map, the captain held the compass up to the sun. His assistants raised the book, which looked heavy, and all three said a word at the same time, and when they finished, it had burned clear off the page.

The compass lens was the kind that turned everything upside down, so Sam saw the goblin ship caught in it and the sun below that. Then he saw the big eastern portal open beside the ship’s hull.

Sam held his breath. The portal was the size of the word hogs if they all traveled in a line. The pilot fed a paper strip through a slot on the word hog’s dashboard. The machine’s hatch slammed shut.

Brass propellers rose from the word hog’s back. Wings extended from its sides. The creature lifted from the ship’s deck and glided the distance from The Declension to the portal. Then it disappeared.

“Get in, Sam, Tolver.” Julius gestured to two empty seats beside him. “I’m looking forward to this.”

“Now?” Sam really didn’t want to.

“NOW,” Captain Bellfont roared. Goblin hands grabbed Sam’s shoulders and pushed at Tolver’s, and they found themselves stuffed into a word hog, buckled in next to Julius.

Then, with a lot of clatter, the word hog lifted and bounced through the sky. Mason watched from the ship’s deck. Her face was one of the last things Sam saw out the slits in the machine’s side as they flew off.

When that stretching feeling happened again, Sam knew he was heading home, but in completely the wrong way.

“There aren’t real pookahs in here, right?” Tolver asked Julius as they traveled through the portal.

The first mate, who was sitting across from Tolver in order to keep an eye on Sam, laughed. “No. Pookahs don’t like metal all that much. I hope we don’t run out of fuel, though.”

Julius dismissed her. “We won’t.” Then he preened. “I discovered, with the help of a few other boglins, that most mis-used words have a particular scent—like old roses mixed with orange juice and paint—and I was able to build very delicate detectors into the noses of the word hogs. Plus, with a particular magic spell of my own design, we were able to mimic the pookahs’ shape-shifting powers. They’re very efficient. That’s the modern way to do it. Besides, pookahs make a mess on ships.”

Tolver grumbled. “A few other boglins . . . like my nana—”

Julius shushed him. And then he hushed Sam for good measure.

With a pop, the word hog they rode in emerged inside a post office sorting room.

Sam could see people walking down the sidewalk, beyond the post office’s glass doors. People. Not goblins. They wore summer clothes, not winter airship jackets.

He was home. Sort of.

When the post office door opened, summer heat blasted through the slats in the pig’s side. The sun glared off the glass wall of his dad’s building across the street.

“What floor is your dad’s office?” The first mate poked Sam’s ribs with a sharp finger.

Julius nudged his other side with a sharp elbow. “Tell her everything. Don’t make her ask again.”

“Twelfth floor.”

There was a groan. “That’s a long elevator ride. This had better be worth it.”

“If my experiment works,” Julius said with a tremor in his voice, “it will most certainly be worth it.”

The goblins hung on Julius’s pronouncements, but Tolver rolled his eyes. “Tolver,” Julius announced, “I cannot trust you with important duties yet; that much is obvious. You will stay and watch the pigs.”

Tolver fumed. “But . . .”

“No buts! Do as you’re told.” Julius’s eyes flashed, and the first mate glared at Tolver until he bowed his head in agreement. Sam groaned. He was going to be alone up there.

Julius nearly sang with excitement. “I’m the first goblin who’s thought of trying this. But that’s why you all have me here. We’re going to set up a few experimental tap lines. They’re made of a special material that will let us siphon words from specific moments and projects, instead of removing them entirely. With a few adjustments and these new lines, we can create a constant drip of spoken, misused words, with infinite possibilities. You’ll see.” He absently rubbed his medallion, leaving streaky prints. Sam realized the inventor was nervous too.

Sam felt hope tickle the back of his brain. If the raid was too difficult, maybe they’d call it off.

The goblins pulled on heavy canvas coats, goggles, and packs carrying various tools. They pulled scarves up over their faces too, and practiced going invisible all together.

“One, two, three, think of the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done,” said the first mate. Every goblin disappeared.

Tolver did as well, then reappeared, scratching his scalp. “Why does that always itch?”

Sam tried to do it too, thinking of what he’d said to Mason on the last day of school, but he blushed bright red instead.

Maybe the office would be locked up. It was Sunday, after all. Maybe the goblin captain would let him and Mason go to the Depository, just for trying.

Somehow, Sam didn’t think that was going to happen.

The other hogs arrived, and the mail bin they’d been balanced on tipped over, sending loose mail across the mailroom floor. Goblins spilled out of the hogs and scattered, while Tolver was stuck gathering up the letters and putting them back in the crate.

“This is prime ground for wasted words. Get them for the captain!” The first mate pointed at the bank of lights on the word hog’s inner wall. “The hog’s reading very high for mis-used words across the street. The boy will show us where.”

“Leave no trace when possible,” Julius whispered. “Especially if we want to return. If they thought the mail was broken, they’d fix it.”

They would, just like the tree had gotten fixed, and how Sam wanted to fix the Little Free Library. But given how technological the prospectors had gotten with Julius’s help, Sam wasn’t sure a quick fix would work anymore.

He helped Tolver pick up the scattered letters, and, after each of the goblins and their word hog disappeared, he opened the door to the post office. Tolver stopped him. “Just be careful, okay? Don’t trust them.”

Sam smiled grimly. “Got it!” Then he crossed the street with the goblins following and waited for the elevator in the lobby of his dad’s building. To the entrance guard, he looked like one boy heading up to meet his parent. Not a goblin raiding party. The guard even recognized Sam and waved.

They all got in the elevator, which was a tight squeeze. The mirrored walls reflected only Sam, looking like he was holding his breath and trying to take up as little room as possible. Then the doors opened on the twelfth floor and everyone spilled out and Sam could breathe again.

Standing in the white-and-tan hallway of his dad’s agency, Sam hoped to find the doors locked and everyone gone home. But the lights were on, the doors open. An intern—not the stern secretary—sat at the reception desk. “Hey, Sam!” She buzzed him in with a friendly wave.

“Hi!” Sam smiled weakly. “I forgot something in my dad’s office the last time I was here. Need it for . . . homework,” he said.

“Homework in summer! That’s hard! Good luck finding it!” The intern logged him in as a visitor. “I’ll print you out a badge. Just a minute. We’re putting the finishing touches on your neighborhood’s presentation—that’s why it’s so busy here. Your dad’s so proud of this one.”

She handed him a flyer that said, “Meet Mount Cloud’s New Look! Field and Neighborhood Improvement Proposal Discussion with James Culver,” with a photo of his dad, then went to find him a badge.

Sam heard the invisible goblins rustling and shushing each other right behind him.

Invisibility was a neat trick. One Sam wished very much that he had right then.

The gleaming metal reception desk showed Sam that he was turning a sickly green and shifting from foot to foot like he had to use the bathroom. Actually, he did have to use the bathroom. He put the flyer back on the desk.

By the time the intern returned, it was really urgent. But Sam wasn’t going to the bathroom with a whole goblin raiding party tagging along.

Where could he send them while he went to the bathroom?

Down the hall, he heard loud voices. Behind the glass panels of a meeting room, two young writers worked, tablets out, paper and pencils strewn across the table. Sam put his ear to the door, which was unlocked and slightly ajar.

“We can use the word URGENT! People pay attention to that word.”

“Or we could use EMERGENCY! People will click on that.”

There was a snort and a snuffle. A prospector appeared enough for Sam to see the mechanical piglet he carried. Its eyes were glowing in definite interest. Then the prospector pushed the door open, and he could feel the draft as the goblins entered the meeting room. The writers didn’t notice a thing.

Anita didn’t like when businesses overused words like urgent and emergency. Maybe if that’s all the goblins took, and it stopped there, everything would be all right.

And Sam really had to go.

“Don’t break anything,” he whispered. Then he ran to the bathroom.

When he got back, the meeting room was empty, and the raiding party either was being incredibly quiet—which was nearly impossible for goblins—or had moved on.

Oh no. Sam searched the entire hallway and every garbage can. The cans were very, very empty—suspiciously so. Most of the doors were locked, the lights off.

But then a door opened and—nothing spilled out, whispering loudly.

“Sam!” Julius appeared, waving his hands. “Come on! We’ve set tap lines—I sent the output ends back to the other side through the mail room! This place is great! The captain will be so pleased. The humans will barely notice because the lines look like spiderwebs— and we’ll get years of words instead of having to store one entire utterance in the Depository. At least, that’s the theory! So far, so good!” Julius gave Sam a big green thumbs-up.

Sam wilted with guilt as the goblins pulled him back into the elevator. He pushed the button to go back down. After the doors closed, several of the goblins reappeared, including the first mate. They carried satchels filled to bursting over their shoulders. Ribbons of glittering words spilled out. Paper ones too.

They’d done more than just set up tap lines and take a few words from the trash. “What did you take?”

“What didn’t we take!” A big goblin laughed. Then they all disappeared again.

Sam winced. He led the now-invisible prospectors back outside and across the street to the post office. Then he opened the door and waited until everyone sounded like they were inside. When they were, Sam took a last look out at the city sidewalk and at the metro stop not that far down the street.

He could run down those stairs and go home. To his parents and sister. He could drink lemonade and catch fireflies with Bella instead of going back to The Declension.

In the pale reflection of the post office door, he stared himself down. Mason and Tolver were still in trouble on The Declension and in the post office. His words were still in the Depository.

He had to go back.

Sam squeezed into the mail crate with the rest of the raiding party, and, with Tolver, climbed into the word hog. “Thanks for coming back,” Tolver whispered.

“Quiet!” The first mate pushed several buttons in the word hog’s interior and recited the words of the spell again, feeding the paper into the hog’s dashboard. The world stretched and skewed, and then there was a pop, and they were gliding through the sky, over the marshbog, and back to The Declension.

Sam put his head on his knees, queasy.

“It’s a bit of a bumpy ride.” The first mate patted him on his back after they climbed from the word hog back onto the deck of The Declension. “But you did very well.”

I did not, Sam thought.

“Here’s to you, Sam!” Julius added.

Sam sat on the ship’s deck, head in his hands. He’d just helped prospectors do a terrible thing. “Bumpy ride” didn’t contain nearly enough words to describe how he felt.

All around him, goblins high-fived and hip-bumped each other. The captain placed another brass medallion around Julius’s neck. Tolver slipped away as the captain hung a medallion around Sam’s neck too. The metal disk was so heavy.

When Sam finally caught up with Tolver, a broad goblin grabbed them both and pointed to a meter on the bag he carried. “Full to capacity in a single run! You’re a genius, especially about the trash! I’m going to earn my way out of conscription with this.” The joy on his face was immeasurable. “I’m going back home.”

Beside Sam, Tolver watched the meter hungrily. But then he looked at Sam and blushed chartreuse. “I’m sorry.”

But the prospector laughed as if Sam was their newfound piggy bank.

Sam was pretty sure he wasn’t headed back home now. He swallowed hard. What would happen to the agency? To his dad’s presentation? He needed to warn his dad, somehow. “What exactly did you take? I thought you were only doing an experiment.”

“Isn’t it wonderful? There were so many wasted words—in the trash, the email, a fancy presentation they were preparing. Thanks for getting us in there!” Julius couldn’t stop pounding Sam on the back.

Sam narrowed his eyes, even as the first mate brought Mason up on deck. “Then you don’t need the tap lines?”

“On the contrary, the tap lines are even more valuable now!” Julius said. He waved his arms at the hogs and at Sam. “Don’t worry, we’ll be careful. We won’t ruin a good source.”

As the prospectors celebrated, Sam took off the brass medallion and tossed it over the side of the ship. But it didn’t help. Every goblin who passed them and thanked Sam profusely made him feel more terrible.

There was a sudden stir as the captain brought Mason, Tolver, and Sam a platter of butter jerky. The big goblin smiled and said, “Anything you want, Sam. Anything at all.”

“What have you done, Sam?” Mason said.

Sam didn’t want to find out.

As the big airship circled over the archipelago, Mason, Tolver, and Sam walked the deck past gleaming word-hog hulls. They’d been back on the ship for a whole afternoon and they still hadn’t turned toward Felicity. The floating city hovered out of reach on the horizon.

“You made a deal,” Sam told the captain. “It’s time to go to the Depository.”

The big goblin chuckled. “We’re headed there now, son. Didn’t want anyone there to think this raid was easy.” He hefted one of the bags of words as he said it.

Sam could see the first mate tallying more numbers from the meters and murmuring to herself. Captain Bellfont put on magnifying glasses to look more closely at the readouts the first mate carried over. His silver mustaches were starting to droop; he’d been focusing so hard. “So many different words. Such a joy. Some words are better for balloons and airships, you know. Other kinds work for pumps and pneumatics because they’re already loud. Some are a bit odiferous, if I’m honest about it, but the ones from this territory? They are the best kind—universal-donor hot air, inoffensive to the nose or the ear.”

“This is stealing!” Mason protested.

The captain of The Declension removed his glasses and grinned at Mason. It turned out, when they wanted to, goblins really could get quite big and scary. “This is business.”

Mason said nothing. Her eyes spoke for her. Sam could see that she didn’t like the prospectors at all.

Soon, the first mate shouted for everyone to go to their stations. Captain Bellfont summoned Sam to his quarters to watch the docking. Sam grabbed Mason and pulled her silently along. They had their first look at the Depository through the captain’s windows as The Declension neared the port on the edge of the floating city. Two prospector ships were tied up to gangways. “That’s my previous ship,” Captain Bellfont said. “The Plumbline. Captain Geary’s vessel.”

On the city’s far side, several more gangways extended. One was theirs, the captain explained.

“Closest dock to the Depository. In honor of our profitable raid.”

Even in full sun, Felicity glowed softly. But to Sam, the city looked crowded up close.

“Do they ever go down into the islands?” Mason asked. “The marshbogs are so pretty.”

“Rarely. We’ve grown beyond boglin cottages.” The captain said, proudly. “Here, we have everything we need airship-delivered: fish from the marsh, vegetables. We trade for fuel. Goblins who live in the cities know things are easier here and certainly drier. Away from the water, equipment doesn’t rust or spoil. And that’s important for progress.”

Mason found a piece of paper in her pocket and drew equations on it for a moment. She narrowed her eyes at the numbers, then at Captain Bellfont. “But you have a problem, don’t you? The more fuel you use to stay up here, the more you need,” she finally said. “So you need bigger ships and more storage.”

The captain frowned. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

Sam hid a smile. She did. And it was wonderful.

Bellfont rose. “I’ll show you what we’re doing about that. The Depository is how goblins have always saved for lean times, when finding words is hard. And we are renovating it to keep the value of the words we mine at a strong, consistent peak. So we all benefit.”

The Declension shuddered as it moored. Prospectors shouted to one another as those goblins who had earned leave pounded down the gangway. The rest of the crew carried Julius’s spiderweb tap lines over their shoulders.

“What are they doing with those?” Mason asked.

“Not sure I want to know,” Sam said.

But the captain chuckled. “We connect them in the Depository and run the dripped words through a converter. They’re not nearly as powerful as truly mis-used words, but they don’t run out, not for a long time.”

But Mason glared from behind Sam’s back. “If the prospectors start to hook up tap lines, will you need ships and crews then? Or pigs or word hogs?”

“Oh! We’ll always need new crews. New lines to set, old ones to untangle. And when a supply point is running low, we’ll need to be sure we take that last word, Mason. Never fear. This is the way of progress. The marshbogs will be converted to help outfit more prospector ships! It’s all going to be very efficient.” The captain ushered them out to The Declension’s gangplank. He pointed at the arc of the Depository in the distance. “There, my promise to you, about to be fulfilled.”

“Where’s Tolver?” Sam asked.

“In the brig, so that the rest of my goblins don’t have to keep an eye on him.”

Sam tried to argue, but the captain swept from the room, dragging him and Mason along.

When they disembarked and the Depository came fully into view, even Mason was stunned. It was Sam who spotted the construction equipment, including a few word hogs pulling heavy materials, all around the base of the structure. “Your modernizations?” He pointed.

“Yes! For those who can afford to pay,” the captain said. The glee in his voice made Sam’s skin crawl. The prospectors were terrible for the marshbogs, and for his world too.

He and Mason had to try to slow them down somehow.

Wait a minute. Nana’s undoing spray was still in his bag. It only works on objects with lots of parts, she’d said. Would it work in the Depository? Sam’s fingers twitched, waiting for the right moment. Nana had hated the prospectors’ hold on the Depository. Sam owed it to her, and to both worlds, to try.

One of the Depository’s glass doors slid open, and the goblins entered at a high-numbered level. “Now that the prospectors are reworking the Depository,” Captain Bellfont continued, “we have progress! We’re cataloging all of the boxes and assigning each a number as we modernize.” The captain spoke about improvements as they ascended a network of stairs and ladders that seemed to go up and through and across the whole structure.

“Mmmm. Section 100, box 17A. Boglins, Nana and Tolver,” the captain finally murmured. He showed Mason and Sam a stack of post office boxes surrounded by a wide balcony. “Just there, to the middle.” He looked over the railing of the staircase and waved at the first mate, walking above. “I’ll leave you here while I attend to ship business. You won’t cause trouble. Not with your friend Tolver still on the ship. And there’s only one way out.”

Sam and Mason nodded that they understood. They were trapped here too. But when the captain had climbed the stairs several levels, Mason grinned and winked at Sam. He could tell she was still mad, but the plan was finally working. At least a little bit. They’d successfully infiltrated the Depository.

Except that Tolver was onboard The Declension, not here. That part was a problem.

But maybe, Sam thought, Mason’s my friend again.

17A, Boglins, was an old-looking box, tiny in comparison to others. It had an antique-looking lock on it, stamped with USPS, 1901. Sam sprayed the Boglins’ lock with the undoing spray. And waited.

Nothing happened.

So he sprayed a few more boxes too. A lot more.

On a staircase several levels above them, he and Mason could see the captain talking with his first mate. Then they disappeared into one of the larger glass rooms, with Julius following behind them carrying the tap lines.

Just then, and with a loud clanking noise, Tolver and Nana’s depository box unlocked and swung open. A tangle of word ribbons nestled inside. Some whispered faintly. Others had fallen silent. Not knowing which was his, Sam grabbed them all and stuffed them in his bag. They made quiet rustling sounds, and the bag felt heavier.

The captain had been right. And Nana had kept her word.

Now Sam was going to keep his. He checked the box to make sure it was empty and shut the door. But the Boglins’ box wouldn’t stay shut. He tried to lock it, but it wouldn’t lock, either.

Sam’s thoughts were interrupted by more creaking and clanging from Section 100. At first just a few doors nearby rattled against their locks, but soon the noise spread, echoing metallically, until the Depository shuddered with the sound of a herd of squeaky doors, all opening.

“Sam, what did you DO!” Mason said. She didn’t say we, but that was okay.

“It’s not me! It’s the undoing spray!” Sam said. Nana’s spell was so powerful, it was spreading.