“I thought that was on seven,” the Goblin called back.
“Do it now!” Grissel yelled again.
The next few seconds passed so fast, Elliot would never be sure exactly how it all happened. He let go of the leaves that were keeping him steady and, while tightening his legs around the branch, swung his weight downward. The Goblin holding Patches released her rope, which fluttered in the air past him. He tried to grab it once, but it slipped through his hand. He tried again, and this time he somehow kept a hold on it, although Patches was so close to the Goblins now they could almost reach her if they jumped high enough.
The weight of catching Patches caused the branch to bow, and then it sprang back up like a rubber band. The Goblin who had been holding Patches hadn’t considered the importance of holding on to anything other than the rope, and as the branch rebounded he flew into the air and then fell back to the earth like a Goblin-shaped rocket. He landed on another two Goblins who were trying to jump up and reach Patches.
Still upside down with his legs locked around the branch of the tree, Elliot felt Patches’s rope begin to slip. With only one arm, he knew he couldn’t hold on to her much longer. But he had no way to pull her up.
“You’re not Grissel’s prisoner anymore,” Mr. Willimaker shouted to Patches. “Elliot has you. Now poof out of there!”
Patches closed her eyes, and Elliot felt the weight of the rope disappear. He looked over to Mr. Willimaker and saw her poof close to her father, who grabbed her in a tight hug.
“Where’s my arm?” Elliot called to Fudd. If he fell, he wouldn’t last long against the Goblins below.
“Wish me luck.” Fudd snapped his fingers, and Elliot’s arm returned to his body. But something was still wrong.
“I don’t need two arms on my right side!” Elliot said as his left arm appeared just below his right arm. “Fix this!”
“Sorry about that,” Fudd said.
With another snap, the arm reappeared where it should be, properly attached to the left side of his body. Elliot wiggled it a few times to make sure it was going to stay in place, then used his arms to pull himself back onto the branch.
“We can poof you down now,” Mr. Willimaker said.
“No, thanks.” Elliot didn’t want to get poofed anywhere ever again. He pulled the rope up with him and tied it around the branch. Holding tightly to the knots on the other end, where Patches had been, he took a running leap into the air.
Okay, so it didn’t swing him back to the ground quite as well as he had pictured it. But in a clumsy sort of way, it did get him away from the Goblins where he fell onto the ground not far from Mr. Willimaker. It would have been nice if he could have landed on his feet, because landing on his hands and face didn’t seem very king-like. But at least he landed with all of his body parts in one piece and where they should be. Plus, Patches was safe.
She ran to him with a hug that nearly choked him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Welcome back,” Elliot said, getting to his feet. “But this isn’t over yet.”
“You’re right about that,” Grissel said. “Because my Goblins are just about finished eating that pickle relish. And if they can’t poof away, then they’ll have nothing better to do than attack you.”
“I don’t think so.” Elliot pulled his crown off his wrist and placed it on his head. It was a little small, but still a crown. It was time to end the war.
Elliot had put the pickle relish in a very special place in the woods, on an island. Of course, it didn’t look like an island at all. Instead, it looked like pieces of Elliot’s exploded home had fallen into the woods and landed in a wide circle around a pile of pickle relish. What the Goblins didn’t know was that the Brownies had put the pieces of wood from Elliot’s home around the island where the Goblins were able to cross over them like bridges. They were so excited to get to the pickle relish, they never thought about what was beneath that wood.
It was time for them to think about it.
Elliot stepped out from the trees and yelled to the Brownies, “Remove the wood!”
Brownies appeared from their hiding places. There were more of them than the Goblins could count (which isn’t saying much, since few Goblins besides Grissel can count higher than eight, their number of fingers). There were boys and girls, young and old, and all of them stood ready to obey their human king.
Each Brownie grabbed a single board and dragged it away from the island. It left the Goblins surrounded by at least a foot of water. The hose that Cole and Kyle played with every day was flooding the trench. A few Goblins tested the water with a toe or finger then pulled it out with a water welt on their green skin.
The Goblins hissed and scowled and shouted insults at the Brownies: “Your mother makes chocolate cake!” and “Pickles and Brownies taste good together!”
Elliot ran up to the island and stood on a large rock so that all the Goblins could see him. “Listen to me,” he yelled. “It’s time for the war between the Goblins and Brownies to end!”
The Goblins booed, the Brownies cheered, and a little squirrel who had wandered onto the tree branch overhead quickly scampered away. (As nearly everyone knows, squirrels have never been interested in interspecies wars.) Elliot held up a hand for them to be quiet and then proclaimed, “This war has been going on for a long time. You’re so used to all this trouble that it seems normal to you. But from now on, friendship will be normal. Peace will be normal. I know Goblins are used to eating Brownies, but now you must learn to only eat things that want to be eaten. Brownies, I know you’re used to losing in this war, but it’s time to stop thinking of yourself as losers. You’re too great to think that way. It’s not who we are anymore.”
Elliot paused and thought of Tubs. Tubs…who chased Elliot across town, and made Elliot do his homework, and who almost flushed Elliot down the toilet. Agatha had said Tubs’s problem was that one day Elliot would figure out who he was. Elliot smiled. It was so wide that his smile almost stretched off his face. Maybe what Agatha had said would happen one day just had happened.
&nbs
p; Elliot decided he wasn’t going to accept bullying from Tubs anymore either. Just as he was helping the Brownies stand up for themselves, he planned to stand up for himself from now on too. He stood even taller on his rock, like a true king would.