Good the Goblin Queen Read online

  GOOD THE GOBLIN QUEEN

  written by

  BECKET

  illustrations by

  RAVEN QUINN

  Copyright © 2015 by Becket

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 1-941240-32-1

  ISBN-13 978-1-941240-32-8

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the creators’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Under copyright law, if you are not the copyright owner of this work, you are forbidden to reproduce, create derivative works based on this work, download, distribute copies of the work, decompile this work without Becket’s express written permission.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Girl Named Good

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Forbidden Wish

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mr. Fuddlebee the Ghost

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Crinomatics & Gossamingles

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Good the Goblin Queen

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Pots and Pans Parade

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Seven Goblins

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Names of the Goblins

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marching Toward the Goblin Kingdom

  CHAPTER TEN

  Passage Through a Hollow Tree

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Down a Long Hallway

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hall of Countless Doors

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Speaking Goblin

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  This Way to the Goblin Kingdom

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Dream Kingdom

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Chocolate Heaven

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Nightmare Hollow

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Hall of Mirrors

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Giant

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Good’s Good Plan

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Hobgoblin’s Courage

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Giant Dances

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Gremlins

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Real Bravery

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Investigating Good’s Unhappiness

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Saving the Hobgoblin

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Dragon Duster

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Unsafe Safe

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Old Queen Crinkle

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Dimensionally Intelligent Operating System

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Old Queen Crinkle’s Defeat

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Hobgoblin’s Justice

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Bobgoblin’s Wisdom

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Good Day

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Come Back Anytime

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Girl Named Good

  The girl’s name was Good.

  She was seven-and-a-half years old when she decided that her life was not good at all.

  The first reason for this decision was because her mom and dad had named her Good. She did not want to be called “bad,” but she never liked being called Good either. It was not a normal name. She would have rather been called another lovely name—like Ginny or Gale or Gwen. People were always misunderstanding her. “What’s your name?” they would ask and she would reply, “I’m Good.” And they would think that she was not very smart because good is usually how someone feels, never what you’re named.

  The second reason she decided her life was not good was because of her mom and dad. You see, her parents were not normal parents. Normal parents have children in the normal way. But Good’s parents were a pair of orangutans. Yes, that’s right! They were real, honest to goodness orangutans who had escaped from the New York Zoo one morning when the orangutan cage cleaner left the cage door open.

  The third reason she decided her life was not good was because she was adopted. She was not adopted from an orangutan adoption agency because Good was not an orangutan. She was the most ordinary seven-and-a-half year old girl you might meet—except that her name was Good and she was adopted by a pair of runaway orangutans. No one thought it was strange when they simply walked into the adoption agency. No one thought it was unusual when they signed the proper papers and walked out with a baby girl bundled in their arms. No one thought it was odd when her parents bought a house in a neighborhood with a golf course and started driving around in a golf cart and playing golf. And no one ever thought it was just a bit bizarre when her orangutan mom got a very important job in a very tall building as a banana taste tester, or when her orangutan dad eventually became the President of the United States.

  Most people thought they were a very ordinary family.

  Her mom and dad were not bad parents. But they did not know how to be good parents. They liked to play all day and they never liked to do any real work. They liked to swing from trees and lamps. They liked to jump on their bed and throw food and plates and poop. They liked to pick bugs from one another’s fur and eat them and they liked to do the same with Good’s long brown hair. They wanted Good to be just like them and they seemed really upset when she did not enjoy acting like an orangutan. She liked to do her homework. She liked to go to the library and read books. She liked to be alone in her room and play with her dolls. That really upset her mom and dad because they really liked going to fancy parties, gossiping, and showing all their teeth.

  One of the first decisions that Good’s dad made as President of the United States was that the President would no longer live in the White House. So they moved all the desks and file cabinets and senators into the White Tree House. Good might have liked this very much, but there were always politicians crawling in and out of the Tree House, asking the President to sign important papers about world peace and taxes.

  To make things worse, Good’s mom brought her work home with her, so there were always large piles of bananas all over the place. Orangutans love bananas! There were bananas in the kitchen, bananas in the living room, bananas in the bathroom, and bananas in Good’s bedroom. She had to sleep on a pile of bananas and her pillow was a bag of banana peels. The more her mom taste-tested bananas the more banana peels carpeted the floor. Good was always slipping on them and dropping her books.

  And she was never allowed to clean the house either. Her mom and dad liked everything being in a specific order, which meant that there was no order whatsoever! The house was such a wreck from morning to night that important news agencies officially called it, “The Disaster Zone.”

  Good was never allowed to cook anything if it did not have banana in it. She had to make banana soup, banana stew, banana bread, banana butter, banana applesauce, banana salad, banana sandwiches, banana meatloaf, banana mashed potatoes, banana ice cream, and countless other recipes with bananas in them. In fact, her mom and dad’s favorite dish in the whole world was banana, banana, and banana, with a side of more bananas.

  Good was tempted to think that she was becoming what she ate, because sometimes she thought she was actually going bananas.

  Good’s mom and dad liked to eat books more than read them, especially if the topic was about bananas too. They would throw her books playfully and tear out their pages and rip off their covers and draw in them with permanent markers and paint brushes. Good could not keep any of her books in the house. She had to bury them like treasure in a box in the backyard to keep them safe. She drew a map with an X on it and every
night, once her mom and dad stopped jumping up and down and swinging from branches, Good would sneak out of the tree house, go to the back yard, and dig up her box of books. She would spend the night under the stars, holding a candle. She would read wonderful stories of kings and queens. She would imagine that she was a queen too—queen of a magic kingdom.

  The first thing she would do as queen, she decided, would be to write a decree outlawing bananas.

  Then, one magic night, Good looked up from a story about a Goblin Queen, and saw a shooting star rocketing through the nighttime sky. Following it were countless more shooting stars, all of them speeding through the night too, lighting up the sky like some marvelous show of fireworks.

  Good had heard once that if you wished on a shooting star, that wish would come true. She did not know if that were true, but she hoped it was. More than all the things in her home, her hope was all she really had.

  So she closed her eyes as all those bright shooting stars were flying brightly overhead. Then she made her wish.

  “I wish,” she wished in a soft, hopeful voice, “I wish I could be a queen.”

  The next day, her wish came true.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Forbidden Wish

  No one ever thought of Good as a good girl. They never thought of her as bad either. In fact, she was so ignored by so many people that no one really ever thought of her. She went to school and had no friends. She came home and had no friends. She walked around the neighbor-hood or the park or the beach and she still had no friends. But one day she started to change. And then she was noticed, not by people, but by a troop of goblins marching by in the Pots and Pans Parade.

  It began in the middle of winter. There was lots of snow on the ground and the wind was cold and biting. Her mom could not go to work because there was too much snow on the ground, and her dad did not work that day because he was outside throwing snowballs with the Queen of England.

  Good could not go to school either and because she did not have any friends, no one wanted to build a snowman with her. She was stuck inside the White Tree House all day with several politicians and a few tourists from the Deep South.

  Good’s mom was in the kitchen trying to make banana macaroni and cheese for lunch, but was making a complete mess with banana mush dripping from the ceiling. Her mom was screeching so loudly in the kitchen that the southern tourists thought she might be on fire! Good almost asked her mom to build a snowman with her, but instead she had to assure the tourists that her mom was only singing a song about the yummy taste of bananas on fingers.

  “That’s what my mom sounds like when she’s happy because that’s what all orangutans sound like when they’re happy,” she said, feeling very embarrassed.

  Good’s dad was in the Oval Office, which was not oval, but square, like the rest of the tree house. But his politicians liked having things stay the same even if it didn’t make sense, so they went on calling the square room the “oval office.” Good went in to ask her dad if he would like to build a snowman, even though she knew he would only knock it down again. But he was very busy signing very important documents about the Constitution of the United States by splashing his hands in ink and making funny looking smudges across the page.

  “That’s legal, that’s legal,” the politicians were muttering in agreement and nodding together like ducks.

  Good’s mom brought lunch into the room. There were no plates or forks or knives. But that did not matter because her dad did not use them to eat his food. He simply opened wide his mouth and waited for her mom to throw it at his face. It was the polite thing to do among orangutans. Then everyone started throwing food back and forth because that is what you do when your boss happens to be an orangutan who happens to be the President. They made the square oval office a complete mess!

  Good sighed. She knew she would have to clean the room later when her parents were asleep. She did not like throwing food. She thought it was a waste. She thought about all the other boys and girls in the world who did not have any and she would have rather given it away than throw it away. But her mom and dad made her eat her food by throwing it at her face too. It was awful. It got all over the walls and the floors and the ceiling. It got in her hair and up her nose and in her eyes and between her toes.

  The only thing Good really wanted was a normal life. She looked at other boys and girls. She liked how they sat down at the family table together, how they gave thanks together, and how they talked about their day. Their moms and dads helped them with their homework and then tucked them into bed at night. The only thing Good got before bed was a lick on the cheek.

  So she sat in the corner of the White Tree House. Some tourists were families visiting from Alabama. Those moms and dads were not letting their children throw food, partly because they thought it was not a good idea to teach their children, but also because they feared getting arrested for tossing bananas at the President of the United States.

  Just then the Secret Service entered. They were wearing black suits and dark sunglasses. They went right up to Good’s dad and spoke to him while they used karate chops to block the bananas that her mom was throwing at them.

  The head agent stepped forward and said, “Mr. President, we just got a terrible report. There is a threat to the nation.”

  Good’s dad replied by showing all of his teeth and nodding.

  But Good sat up and listened intently. She hoped nothing bad was about to happen.

  “It seems, Mr. President,” said the Secret Service agent, “that someone made a wish last night on a star.”

  I made that wish last night! Good thought, now shrinking smaller, hoping that no one would look at her. She knew there were things people should not do because they were dangerous. You shouldn’t break the law; that’s dangerous. You shouldn’t throw food; that’s dangerous too. But she didn’t know that wishing on a falling star could have any danger!

  “It’s perhaps the most dangerous threat our nation has ever faced,” the Secret Service agent said to her dad, as if knowing her thoughts.

  Just then a mad scientist came bursting into the square oval office. He was carrying stacks of papers, but then he slipped on a banana peel and they all scattered into the air like leaves.

  “Actually,” he said, picking himself up again and straightening his glasses, which were hanging off the end of his nose, “I have done the math and it seems that whoever made that wish did not make it on one falling star, but on many.”

  “How many?” the Secret Service agent asked in a worried tone. He was now reaching inside his pocket for a weapon, but he only found another banana.

  The mad scientist started counting on his fingers. “By my count, there were hundreds of stars,” he said. “So the wish-maker must have made about a million wishes.”

  “Don’t you mean hundreds of wishes?” the agent said.

  “Yes, yes,” the scientist said, correcting himself. “Hundreds of wishes.”

  Or one wish hundreds of times, Good thought.

  “How can you be sure?” the agent asked the mad scientist.

  “I can’t be sure,” the scientist said with a sad sigh. “I can’t count over a hundred. I used all my fingers and toes but I ran out after twenty. I did it five times and that was as far as I got.”

  “This is bad news,” the agent said.

  “I’ll say,” the scientist said. “I lost my socks too.”

  The Secret Service agent turned to Good’s dad. “We have to arrest somebody and put them in jail for a million years.”

  “Make it a million billion years,” the scientist added.

  Good’s dad made an official decision by sticking out his tongue and blowing a raspberry.

  All the other politicians applauded Good’s dad for being the best president they ever had. Then they scrambled out of the office to begin a nation wide manhunt for the criminal who wished upon all those falling stars.

  “Oh no,” Good said to herself when she was left all alone in the
room with food dripping off the walls. “Will I be arrested? Will I have to go to jail for wishing on a star?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mr. Fuddlebee the Ghost

  Good was very afraid that they were going to catch her and send her to jail. So she decided to run away from home.

  She packed her bookbag full of clothes and books. The books were heavy but she did not mind. Then she crawled down the rope ladder of the White Tree House and decided she would walk through a nearby park. She had many wonderful memories of that place and she wanted to say goodbye to her favorite swing. The park was covered in snow and she had to lift her legs high to step through it all.

  “Goodbye, swing,” she said to it when she got there. She brushed the snow from the seat and she sat on it and started swinging slowly. “We had some good times. But now I don’t think we will ever see each other again.”

  “And why not, my dear?” said the voice of an old man beside her.