The wolves had made themselves quite happy in the biggest cave. They had been used to sleeping out on the cold snowy ground, but the cave offered sufficient protection from the elements. The stone floor was hard, but Catherine had taken some of the quilts and blankets from the robbers’ treasures, and spread them out for the wolves to lie down on. Seldom had the wild beasts had such luxury, and they stretched out happily on the blankets and went to sleep.
The robbers slept in the other four caves. But Catherine and Alfred opted to sleep in the same cave as the wolves. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping in the same caves as the robbers?” Balsamer the raven asked. “I thought the whole point was to keep an eye on them.”
“We don’t want to push things too fast just yet,” said Catherine. “For the first couple nights, it will be enough to just be in their camp. Once they get used to us, then we can start sleeping in their caves.”
“You don’t need to worry about a thing,” Branoc said to Catherine. “My children and I will keep watch for you all night. If any danger approaches, we’ll wake you up.”
“You have my gratitude,” said Catherine.
“My family is forever in your debt,” Branoc said, spreading out his wings and lowering his head, which is a bird’s way of bowing.
“Okay, for the first night then, let’s try it like this,” Catherine said. “We’ll have the ravens at the entrance of the cave keeping guard. I’ll sleep near the entrance of the cave with the wolves. That way, if the robbers do decide to break their promise and attack in the middle of the night, the ravens can wake me up, and I can gather the wolves and organize a defense. Alfred, you sleep behind the wolves, towards the back of the cave. It’ll be safer back there.”
“I should be the one sleeping at the front of the cave,” said Alfred. “I’m the man.”
“You’re a boy,” Catherine said. “You’re younger than me.”
It was getting dark, so Catherine couldn’t technically see Alfred’s cheeks going red with anger, but she could read his expression clearly enough. The barb had hit home.
“Besides,” said Catherine, “you don’t control the wolves. They won’t listen to you if you tell them to attack.”
“But I can still sleep up at the front with you. I don’t need to hide at the back.”
“It’s not hiding. It’s strategy. If, by some chance, the robbers do manage to rush in and grab me before I have a chance to wake up, then we don’t want them grabbing both of us at once. We want you further back so you have a chance to wake up before they get to you. That way you can rescue me.”
“I guess when you put it that way, it does make some sense,” Alfred admitted, and he went off towards the back of the cave.
Then they all went to sleep.
****************************************************
And so it happened that in the middle of the night Alfred was sleeping soundly near the back of the cave when they came for him. By the time Alfred realized what was happening, it was already too late. He tried to scream, but his mouth was already being gagged. He tried to kick at the creatures and fight back, but he found that his legs had already been bound. Alfred squirmed and wriggled, but it was no use. There were too many of them. There must have been about fifty. They dragged him down, down into the hidden tunnels, far below the cave.
***************************************************
As for Catherine, she slept soundly all through the night, and she only woke at dawn once the wolves began to stir. As the wolves stretched and yawned and barked at the rising sun, Catherine also woke up with them.
“Good morning,” said Branoc. “You have slept well.”
Catherine rubbed her eyes. “I did,” she admitted.
“And it was just as well,” said Branoc. “For there was no reason for you to be awake. The night has passed completely without incident.”
“No one attempted to enter the cave?” Catherine asked.
“No one. None of the robbers tried to attack you. And none of the other monsters from the mountains approached either.”
“Yes, it sounds like the robbers have been paying them off,” said Catherine. “That probably explains why they don’t get bothered. Okay, let me wake Alfred up then, and we’ll see about making some breakfast.”
But when Catherine went to the back of the cave, Alfred was nowhere to be seen.
***************************************************************
When Alfred next awoke, he was in the tunnels.
He sat up and looked around. It should have been dark in the tunnels, but surprisingly there was enough light to see. Several of the rocks in the tunnel walls were glowing.
A voice came from behind him. “Alfred, is that you?”
Alfred turned around and saw a boy about his age. His face was dirty, his hair was unkempt and his clothes were ragged and torn. He was staring at Alfred intently.
“Yes, my name’s Alfred. But who are you?”
“Don’t you recognize me?”
In fact, Alfred probably should have recognized the boy at this point. But sometimes it can be hard to recognize even a familiar face when you are not expecting to see them. And Alfred had not expected to see this particular face ever again.
“It’s me,” the boy said. “Jack.”
And suddenly, Alfred recognized him. “Jack!” he exclaimed. “Jack, but how are you still… I mean, everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“Do they?” said Jack.
“Well, you wandered off by yourself one day, and you never came back. We just assumed you’d been killed and eaten by some of the beasts on the mountain.”
Jack thought for a moment, and then nodded his head. “Yes, I suppose that makes sense. I’d probably think the same thing if I were them.”
“But you’re not dead,” Alfred said excitedly. “You’re here. And…” Alfred stopped and looked around him. “Where is here, anyway? Where are we?”
“We are underground, in the goblin tunnels,” said Jack sadly. “It looks like the goblins have captured you too?”
“I guess so,” said Alfred. “It was too dark for me to see them. But something dragged me off. Somethings, I mean.”
“There were a lot of them, then?” Jack asked.
“Yes. They had hands and feet just like a human, but they were small, like a little child.”
“Yes, those were the goblins all right,” Jack said.
“So how did they catch you?” asked Alfred.
Jack sighed. “Well, as you know, I decided to take a walk by myself. I was feeling a little bit sick of the group. Lucas was being obnoxious, as usual, and Molly was talking a lot of nonsense, as usual, and I thought I’d just take a walk by myself to clear my head. I knew that I shouldn’t go off by myself, but I told myself that it would only be for a little bit, and besides it was still the middle of the day, so I thought it was safe. But as I was walking, I saw a little goblin sitting on a tree. I remember he was sitting there just looking at me. There was only one of them, so I didn’t think too much of it. I mean, the goblins are so small, that I didn’t think it was frightening when I just saw one of them. So I kept walking. But that was my mistake. I should have ran back the moment I saw him. The thing about goblins is that there’s never just one of them. If you see one goblin looking at you, it means that there are fifty more goblins that you can’t see, hiding behind the trees or under the rocks. And sure enough, as I kept walking, I saw another goblin standing on the ground in front of me, and then a bit further down I saw two more, and by the time I realized I was surrounded, it was too late. You see, the goblins fight by swarming.”
“Swarming?”
“Yes, you see, if there was just one goblin, you’d be able to fight it pretty easily. I mean, you’d have to be a little bit careful. They do have sharp pointy teeth, so they can do some damage if they bite you. And they have little sharp swords that they carry, so you don’t want to let them stab you. But generally speaking, assuming the goblin doesn’t sneak up on you from behind or something, if you have a human with a sword fighting against a goblin, the human has a very good chance. But the problem is they never attack you one on one. If there’s only one of them, they’ll just run away. They only attack when there’s about fifty of them together. And then at that point, you don’t stand a chance. They just swarm you, and either stab you to death with their short swords, or, in our case, they drag you down into their mines.”
“Ah,” said Alfred. “Is that where we are now? In the goblin mines?”
“That’s right,” said Jack. “I’ve been here for two years now, I think.”
“And why have they captured us? What do they want with us?”
“They want to make us dig, of course.”
“Dig for what?”
“For whatever we can find. Gold, silver, diamonds, jewels. There’s loads of gold in these mountains. Did you know that? I never knew that before.”
“I didn’t know that either,” Alfred replied.
“It’s funny when you think about it,” Jack said. “All those trips that the robbers make down to the forest to steal stuff, and all the time there’s all this gold right underneath their feet, but they never know it.” Jack gave a little laugh, but then he became serious again. “Of course,” Jack added, “someone has to dig for it. That’s what we’re for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you think the goblins captured us? It’s because they need children to work in their mines. We do the hard work of digging.”
“Who is we?”
“All of us. All of the children.”
Alfred looked around him.
“They’re not here now,” Jack explained. “But there are several more children in these caves. Maybe about twenty of us altogether.”
“Twenty? But where do they come from? There haven’t been twenty children who have gone missing. You were the only one who disappeared.”
“Anna is here as well,” Jack said. “Do you remember Anna? I had practically forgotten about her myself until I met her down here.”
“Anna,” Alfred said slowly, trying to remember.
“She disappeared when we were five years old. At the time, people said the wolves must have gotten her.”
“Ah, that’s right,” said Aflred, the memories flooding back to him from the vague mists of early childhood. “I think I do remember that now.”
“But I think the rest of the children are from the forest people,” Jack continued.
“What are the forest people doing up here in the mountains?”
“The goblin tunnels go everywhere,” Alfred said. “They go all the way down to the forest, and they run under the forest lands. So the goblins can steal a child from the forest and bring them into the mines just like they can take one of us.”
Alfred looked around him again. “It’s pretty quiet here,” he said. “And so far, just the two of us. Where are the other children? Where are all the goblins? And why is it light inside these tunnels?”
“The light comes from the moonstones,” said Jack, answering the last question first.
“Moonstones?”
“Yes,” said Jack, pointing to one of the stones that was glowing. “If you put these stones outside under the sky in the light of a full moon, they’ll absorb the moon’s light, and keep glowing for a full month afterwards. Goblins can see perfectly in the dark, so they don’t need them. But we do. And the goblins know that it’s no good sending us into the mines to search for gold or diamonds if we can’t see what we’re looking for. So they keep everything lit up with the moonstones.”
“I see.”
“As for the other children, they’re still eating their breakfast.”
“The goblins feed you?”
“It’s not great food,” Jack admitted. “It’s tasteless gruel, but it does give us energy to work in the mines.”
“And why aren’t you eating with them?” Alfred asked.
“I was sent by the goblins to fetch you,” Jack said. “They told me they had left a new boy lying in the tunnel, and they wanted me to get you and bring you down to the others.”
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