When Tinker Met Bell by Alethea Kontis

Author:Alethea Kontis [Kontis, Alethea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sugar Skull Books

8

Tinker opened his eyes…and then slammed them shut again.

He didn’t want to be awake. He didn’t want this life to be the real one.

He didn’t remember much of the night before. His non-traditional arrival in the Goblin City had left him spellsick. Unable to stand or speak, Tinker remembered succumbing to the blackness again sometime in the middle of Maker Deng’s magnanimous greeting.

He didn’t remember dreaming, which was a shame. He would have liked to have been in that snow globe one last time. In Bellamy’s arms. In that perfect moment full of golden hair and glitter and laughter and hope and the possibility of a future together.

Theirs was a love worth giving up a kingdom for.

But recalling those moments wouldn’t help anyone right now. Tinker shoved the image of his beloved fairy into a mental vault and locked her there. He needed to show no emotion the next time he met with the Goblin King. Tinker’s feelings would do nothing but give Maker the upper hand.

Think about something else.

Tinker slowly rose to a sitting position. Every bit of his body was sore, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. He’d been moved to a room in the keep, he guessed. Some sort of servant quarters, judging by the considerable lack of “treasures” junking up the walls. It might have also been a guest room. The Lost Boys took over this castle and occupied its grounds hundreds of years ago, but goblins had neither guests nor servants, so the majority of the keep went unused.

Both the bed and room were bigger than his dorm at Harmswood. Was this to be his chamber now? Like his first year at school, he didn’t feel like he belonged in it. It was too empty.

And there was no Hubble.

One tall goblin and one short kobold with very few resources between them still managed to accumulate a lot of stuff. And it had been great stuff. Everything that Tinker and Hubble had amassed over the years had a memory attached to it—the sum of their hoard could retell their lives. As a collection it would have been worthless in the eyes of their fancy-pants schoolmates, but each item meant something to them. Like a 3D scrapbook.

Everything in Goblin City had been obtained because it held some perceived value to someone else, somewhere else. In Tinker’s eyes, if an object didn’t have personal purpose or meaning—be it a diamond or a gum wrapper—it was junk.

Certainly not an opinion shared by the reigning Goblin King.

The image of Bellamy’s makeshift necklace popped into Tinker’s mind unbidden, its flash of dull silver dangling from a blue ribbon. So much faith and love embodied in one heart-shaped piece of tin. He was a fool for ever calling it garbage.

One goblin’s trash is another fairy’s treasure.

Oh, Bellamy…

Think about something else.

His clothes had been changed, he noticed. The fancy costume was gone, replaced by a threadbare shirt and loose trousers that were too short for his frame. It was for the best.

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