Free Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher Page A

arm of the chair, and
the coyote dragged a long tongue over his fingers.
    The elf was content to slouch in the chair
for a few minutes, feeling the afternoon sun baking his face and
forearms.
    Sometimes, even though he was fairly young as
elves go, the whole thing got away from him. Too many animals, too
many injuries, too many things that needed to get done right this
minute. He occasionally wished for an assistant. Unfortunately,
humans weren’t all that interested in sending their young to live
with an elf, and the other elves…he knew well enough what they
thought. He was like some kind of martyr, as far as they were
concerned. They were glad he existed, but nobody wanted to get too
close, for fear of getting unicorn crap or something worse on
them.
    Sometimes he thought about giving it all up,
moving into the glade and taking up something respectable, like
glass-whispering.
    In a few hundred years, when he was ancient
and his knees creaked like old floorboards, did he really want to
be tottering around the farm, midwifing unicorns and bandaging
trolls?
    He opened his eyes with a sigh, and a troll
was looking at him.
    Sings-to-Trees didn’t quite yelp, but he made
a choked noise. Fleabane’s tail thumped companionably on the
boards. The coyote liked trolls. They brought goat meat, and
Fleabane was desperately fond of goat.
    The troll was sitting on the path, and
spilling over on the sides. He recognized it as Frogsnoggler—that
wasn’t the troll’s real name but it was the closest phonetic
equivalent to the complicated set of sounds that it used to
describe itself.
    At least, he thought it was describing
itself. He had never been able to learn their language.
Fortunately, they understood his perfectly well.
    “You gave me quite a start,” the elf said,
getting up. The troll’s silent approach didn’t surprise him—trolls
moved with eerie silence for their size—but seeing one out and
about before sunset was unusual.
    “Grah!” said the troll, and smiled. Trolls
were always smiling. Their mouths were wide and froglike and
naturally suited to it. With its eyes squeezed tight against the
sunlight, Frogsnoggler looked comically pleased.
    “What are you doing up at this hour, anyway?”
Sings-to-Trees asked, coming down from the porch.
    The troll’s face fell. “Gragh…” it said
humbly, and held out its arms.
    “Oh, no …”
    Cradled against its chest, almost lost
against the clay-colored bulk, lay a battered grey fox. An ugly
leg-trap, all steel fangs and metal, hung grotesquely from one
small back leg.
    “Grah?” asked the troll anxiously, holding
out the injured fox. “Grah?”
    Sings-to-Trees got his arms under the fox,
who snapped weakly at him. The trap hit his chest with a metallic
clunk. Outrage choked him. “Bloody poachers!” he growled, shifting
his grip on the fox. The trap chattered again.
    “Grah!” agreed the troll. Its low forehead
wrinkled in a frown. Immense tusks glittered briefly at the edges
of its mouth.
    Sings-to-Trees took a deep breath, and let
the anger go. There were more important matters at hand. The fox
was a skinny little thing, panting in pain and probably dehydration
as well, and standing around with his teeth gritted didn’t do the
poor creature any good.
    First things first…
    He wasn’t strong enough to get the leg trap
off himself, but fortunately, brute strength was squatting at
arms-length. “Okay, Frogsnoggler, I’m going to need your help.”
    “Grug!” It nodded vigorously.
    “I’ll hold him. I want you to pull the trap
open—slowly!—and I’ll see if we can get the leg out without
something worse happening.”
    The fox’s leg was badly cut but not crushed.
The little animal had been lucky. Sings-to-Trees tossed a towel
over its head to keep it from ripping his arm open, held the fox’s
torso firmly under his elbow, and nodded to the troll. “Carefully,
now…”
    Frogsnoggler reached down and opened the
steel trap as casually as