'Take it back!' Marie booted some poor rock that'd done nothing to her that the goblin could tell. 'Take it back, right now!'

Alas, Muggins wasn't the sort to rescind a truth after he'd told it. Fact was, he was at a loss to pinpoint exactly what he'd said that so upset the girl. Was it the 'pretend-friend' thing? he wondered, which, in the goblin's mind, was as far from a falsehood as the north gate was from the south.

This Dale fella she kept wimbling on about, he wasn't a real, existing sort of chap. Least not in the sense that you could see him or hear him or smell him or anything.

And if the girl honest-to-Diamond believed he was real? Well, that was just fine as rainshine. Goblins weren't made of the stuff to judge. Only, she'd best not expect ol' Muggins to play along, or to rally behind those daydreams of hers. He'd done enough of that for those fluttering shitterbugs.

No, sir, not anymore.

He pondered the tactic of apologising. Life was easier, he found, if you said sorry. Even if it was someone else who should be doing the sorrying. A proxy apology, if you will.

But he stopped short, on account of the fact that the girl struck him like she needed a bit of truth for a change. Also, Muggins was fast approaching the conclusion that this particular west gate biggun was a funny plum, with fictions doing figure of eights in that big person head of hers.

'Cut the child some slack,' he pictured an old friend from the west saying. 'Girl's got her reasons.'

'Fine,' the goblin quietly huffed, missing the irony of the moment. 'Stick with her a while longer, then. I hear ya, boss. Else she might go blundering into more trouble than even she could imagine. Besides, better two of us than one, when the troops return.' Which they would, he knew. Soon as likely as ever.

Meanwhile, Marie had given up waiting for the goblin to admit his wrongdoing and was busy shuffling the toes of her shoes in the ashes of the cottage, as if searching. For what, Muggins hadn't the faintest notion.

It burned him to admit that this small, strange person might be useful to him, and that the hummers - heck, even the lesser woodland recruits - would be drawn to a biggun such as her, more than they would to a lowly goblin.

More than to a regular-day goblin, anyhow. Not, perhaps, a goblin who knew their secrets, could bring them down, given the most perfect set of circumstances.

A goblin, as chance had it, like him.