"Bruce Holland Rogers - The Goblin King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

The Goblin King
by Bruce Holland Rogers
This story copyright 1990 by Bruce Holland Rogers. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal
use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


When I was small, my father would read me bedtime stories, and my mother would say from another
room, "You aren't reading him that poem, are you?" "It's his favorite before bed!" my father would
answer with a wink to me. I wasn't sure why my father thought the poem about the Goblin King was my
favorite. Every night after he read it I would lie awake for a long time, listening to the darkness. Later, I
often woke up crying, and my mother would come and hold me. Nevertheless, every night after my last
story, my father opened the book of children's poems and quietly read the lines about the Goblin King's
spies:
***


The Moon is an eye for the Goblin King
And watches all you do.
When you pout or cry or shout or whine,
The spiders tell on you.
***


Most of the poem was devoted to children who misbehaved and what happened to them when the
Goblin King found out. One little boy disappeared up a chimney, snatched by a nameless black thing. A
little girl was dragged into a well. And then there was Annie.
***


Little Annie was a noisy child,
dinner she banged her plate.
Her parents sent her to her bed.
Alas! They sealed her fate.
The Goblin King has feet of sand
And never makes a sound.
When Mother pulled the covers back,
Here is all she found:
A shriveled, blackened ball of hair,
A tooth, a nail, a bone.
Nothing more of Ann was left
Except, perhaps, a moan.
***


There was a picture of the Goblin King in the book. He sat on his forest throne, grinning. Except for
his yellow teeth and eyes, he was made of forest things-- branches, grass, sand, mud, and dried leaves. It