"Right," Elliot muttered, thinking about how the Goblins had started a whole war with the Brownies over a bag of pickles.
Elliot's mind wandered back to his own troubles. If Princess Fidget was so dangerous, why hadn't Mr. Willimaker warned Elliot about her? Mr. Willimaker had told Elliot everything he needed to know about the Goblins during the war. Why hadn't anyone told him about Pixies? Maybe Harold was making Princess Fidget sound worse than she really was. Just because he got himself tricked into becoming a marshmallow didn't mean Elliot was in any danger of being tricked. After all, Elliot couldn't turn himself into a marshmallow, even if he wanted to. Which he didn't, by the way.
He also wondered about the Shadow Men. When Harold had turned into one, everything in Elliot's body froze with fear. And that wasn't even a real Shadow Man. It was just a Shapeshifter pretending to be one. He was glad Kovol remained asleep, because he'd rather face a hundred Goblins trying to scare him to death before he faced a real Shadow Man.
"Hey, Tubs," Elliot said. "Are you afraid of anything?"
Tubs shrugged. "You'd have to be stupid not to be afraid of something."
"But you are--" Elliot stopped. It didn't seem like a good idea to point out the obvious, which was that several important pieces of Tubs's brain seemed to be missing, such as the thinking piece.
"So what are you afraid of?" Elliot asked instead.
"Same thing everyone's afraid of," Tubs said.
"Snakes?"
"No, you wimp. Afraid that the ground beneath us will suddenly turn to quicksand and all of Sprite's Hollow will be swallowed up under the world."
"Why are you talking about the Underworld?" Elliot said quickly. "There's no Underworld."
"Sure there is," Tubs said.
Elliot stopped walking. "How do you know?"
"The clouds are over the world. We're on the world. The dirt is under the world."
Elliot breathed a sigh of relief and kept walking. "Oh, yeah, sure." When he first became king, Mr. Willimaker had told Elliot that if he ever shared the secret of the Underworld with anyone, the Brownies would never be able to return to him again.
When they got home, Wendy met Elliot at the front door. "Why didn't you save me any dinner?" he scowled at her.
Wendy's eyes widened, then she said, "Mom told you to hurry home. But I can make you something else if you want."
"Nah. I can ruin my own food later on."
Wendy frowned, and Elliot knew he had hurt her feelings. But she shrugged it off and said, "You need to go to the backyard. You have a visitor."
"Who?" Elliot asked.
"Oh, just a special visitor who wants to see you. Better hurry."
Elliot handed her his backpack, then walked around his house into the backyard. Beyond the grass was the end of Sprite's Hollow and the beginning of a thickly wooded area that went on for miles. Since nobody had ever bothered to think of a name for it, everyone just called it "the woods." When Elliot saw who his visitor was, his eyes flicked to the woods. The idea of hiding there for a couple of years until it was safe to come out again crossed his mind.
Cami was sitting on the ground weaving blades of grass together. She was working on a chain that was now almost as long as her arm.
"Hey," he said, "stop using up all my family's grass."
"Sorry," she said, throwing the grass chain down. "I didn't realize you were down to your last gazillion blades."
"Never mind," he said. "What's going on? I thought you weren't coming here until tomorrow morning."
"Yeah, but when I got home my mom said I have a soccer game in the morning. Are you just getting home from school now? You're slow."
Elliot let Cami's comment pass and followed her to a big white bucket with a black lid on it. "I've added the ingredients already," she said. "I won't tell you everything that's in there, because you really don't want to know. The recipe says it has to sit in the sun for five days, then it's ready."
"Can I look in it?"
"Sure. Just don't smell it too deeply, because it'll probably kill brain cells."