KATHARINE AND THE ELFIN QUEEN

One day years and years ago, a young girl was climbing up the side of a mountain.  She wore a sweater, and on her back she carried a knapsack with a sandwich, a little bottle of milk, an apple, and two cookies.  She planned to climb all the way to the top, for she wanted to see how the world looked from the mountaintop.  The young girl’s name was Katharine.

Katharine climbed and climbed, but mountains far away do not seem as high as when you are actually climbing them, and climb though she might it seemed as though she could never reach the top.  It grew late.  The sun set and night overtook her.

It was no use trying to return home.  Besides, the night was warm enough and the moon was bright, and Katharine was not afraid.  So she sat down on the mountainside in the moonlight and made herself a little bed of branches, crisscrossed and strewn with heaps of soft pine needles.  Then she opened her knapsack, ate her sandwich, drank her milk, ate the apple and one cookie, lay down on her bed, and fell asleep.

Not long after midnight, when the white moon burned straight overhead, Katharine was startled from her sleep by a shuffling and a rustling in the pine needles just a few steps away.  Those needles were really flying, and black moon shadows were shooting about over the earth, just outside the shadow of a thick fir tree.  But what the activity was exactly Katharine could not tell, for it was taking place directly under the tree, whose branches were so thick no moonlight could pierce them.  So everything that happened there was in shadow.

Katharine froze with alarm and held her breath.  She watched wide-eyed, but for a while could only see shadows and flying needles.  But she could hear shuffling and puffing, as if someone were struggling.

Then all at once a little dwarf, scrambling and scuffling, backed out into the moonlight.  He was pulling at a very heavy trunk or coffer, with handles on its sides and clamps securing its lid, and he had to wrestle it every inch of the way.  Long Katharine watched, and as the little dwarf inched his heavy trunk along, sometimes pulling and sometimes running around to the other end to push, she could finally guess where he was headed.  Just beyond a large boulder, which gleamed silver in the moonlight, was a little clump of trees, and just beyond the clump of trees gaped the mouth of a cave.  The dwarf was evidently heading there with his secret, whatever it was.  Long, long he pushed and pulled, and leaned and shoved, and puffed and blew, till the sweat ran down his face like rivers and glistened in the moonlight.

Then the moon went behind a cloud and all was in darkness.  Katharine thought she had only had a dream, and fell asleep again.

When she awoke it was starting to be light.  But the sky was going to be heavy and grey, and a chill, damp breeze was coming up the mountainside.  Katharine shivered.  She gathered her sweater close about her, picked up her knapsack and lifted it onto her back, and determinedly resumed her trek toward the top of the mountain.

But she had not gone very far when she remembered the dwarf in the moonlight, the coffer, and the cave.  Had she really dreamt it all?  If so, the dream was awfully realistic.  And she decided to turn and walk back down the mountain to the place where she had spent the night.  There was the mouth of the cave.  Since she had not noticed it before going to sleep the night before, she knew that all she had seen must have been very real.

Now Katharine wondered whether to continue up the mountainside right away, or take a look in the cave first and continue her journey afterwards.

Overcome by curiosity, she decided to take a look in the cave first and resume her journey after.  Little did she guess that that journey was never to be resumed!  And she walked into the mouth of the cave.

It was a bat cave.  Bats were hanging everywhere, sleeping.  A few others were still flying to their rest, for the dawn was still young.  They whupped past Katharine’s ears and made her duck and cringe.

Then Katharine noticed that some of the bats were flying down into a great dark hole at the inner end of the cave, in a corner where the floor of the cave met the wall.  It was like a cave within a cave, and evidently there was space down inside, for the bats kept flying in.

At this point Katharine thought it would be better for her to turn right around and march out of the cave into the moonlight.  She had seen all there was to see.  Hadn’t she?  There were walls, there were cobwebs, there were bats.  Well, and there was that dark hole.  That could be looked into for just a moment, Katharine thought.  So she crept over to peek in, to see if it was all dark down there and nothing was to be seen.  And it was.  Pitch dark.  So she turned to leave the cave.

And she slipped and fell into the hole.

Down the hole she tumbled into the middle of the mountain, rolling, bumping her elbows and her head, and bouncing around twists and turns until after what seemed like a good minute or two she came to a stop.

After the stars quit flying in her head Katharine sat up and looked around.  But she couldn’t see.  It was totally dark in there.

So she felt around.  She was on some sort of little shelf, or ledge, because wherever she felt, except on the side she had fallen from, there was a drop, and although she reached her hands down around it here and there she could feel nothing below.  She sat and shivered, knowing she had to be careful not to slip off her ledge.

Katharine sat there on her shelf and thought a minute in the dark.  Then she scooted around until she could reach her arms up into the hole she had fallen through, and tried to climb back up, to where the hole in the cave must have been.  But it was no use.  The shaft through which she had fallen was too steep.

So she sat down and thought some more.  She might as well just take her time and think things through, for evidently there was no way for her to simply walk away from that shelf or platform.  Besides, she was completely in the dark.  So she sat and thought.  What could she do to make her way out of the trouble she’d gotten herself into?

As Katharine sat on her ledge in the dark and thought and wondered, all at once there seemed to her to be little flashes of light below the ledge.  Were the stars flying again because she’d bumped her head?  Or were there really lights somewhere below the shelf, on all three sides?

There were really lights down there, Katharine finally judged.  But were they big lights far away or small ones up close?

Katharine watched and watched.  More and more lights began to shine below.  As her eyes grew more and more used to the dark, and as ever more lights began to flicker in the space below her, Katharine thought she could see forms and shadows down below.

At long last Katharine could dimly see something besides lights and shadowy shapes.  Into an immense room-like space far below her, dozens of strange little creatures carrying lanterns were emerging through three doors that had opened, each from one of its four walls, including the wall below Katharine’s ledge.  Only one of the walls, the one to Katharine’s right, seemed to be  without a door.  At least no creatures were coming from that wall, which was all in shadows.   Into the hall the little things processed, holding their lanterns at the level of their shoulders and looking as if they were performing some solemn rite.  In the light of the gathering lanterns, Katharine could see that the space below was a great stone hall.  She kept looking and saw that they were goblins.

Scores of goblins, with little yellow-glowing lanterns held high in their hands, were assembling in the great stone hall.  Katharine sat back on her ledge in the dark far above and watched.

The goblins formed two long rows, reaching from the largest door, a great portal in the wall to Katharine’s left, toward the other narrow side of the rectangular hall, on her right, which was still almost all in shadow.  All the doors, including the great door, swung silently shut behind them.

Perfect silence reigned below.  The ranks were closed, the rows were complete.  The lanterns no longer moved.  The goblins stood stock-still.  The great door swung slowly and noiselessly open once more.

Six huge, heavily armed and armored goblins now processed through the great door into the stone hall, escorting the little dwarf of the night before!

All seven figures marched rapidly between the ranks of lanterns and goblins toward the shadowy wall on Katharine’s right.  When they reached the middle of the hall they halted, and waited.  And waited.

Then “Dwarf!” boomed a voice from the shadowy wall.  “Have you discharged your part of the bargain?”

And the great stone walls rang and echoed a long while with the sound of that voice of thunder.  Finally “Bargain, bargain,” they rang, and fell still.  All goblin eyes were directed upon the figure of the dwarf, who by now was on his knees facing the shadowy wall, surrounded by the goblins of the armed escort.

Again perfect silence reigned, until Katharine thought she heard something like a mumble.  Then she saw the figure of the dwarf rise, turn facing her, make a clumsily dramatic gesture toward the great door, and take several steps backward toward the further of the two rows of lantern bearers.  The escort moved with him.

The great door of the stone hall, which had swung silently shut again behind the dwarf and his escort as they entered, opened once more, and six new figures appeared, bearing a coffer.  Even in the dim light Katharine could guess it must be the coffer she had seen the dwarf wrestling with the night before.

The six new goblins processed between the ranks of the lantern-bearers as solemnly as the rest of the company had assembled, carrying the coffer by its handles as if it had been a funeral casket.  When they reached the spot where the dwarf had been standing, they deposed their burden, prostrated themselves in the direction of the shadowy wall, rose, turned about, passed again between the rows of lanterns, and disappeared through the great stone door, which closed noiselessly behind them.

Katharine was rigid with excitement.  What treasure had the nasty little creature brought to the shadowy wall?

Now, from the shadowy wall, a new, far huger, shape began to emerge into the dim light.  A tremendous goblin appeared, striding slowly out of the darkness.  Katharine was astonished to behold a being no human person had seen for over a hundred years.  Katharine was looking at the Great Goblin–the goblin king.

The Great Goblin moved deliberately, with a kind of diabolical majesty, toward the dwarf’s coffer.  A little way from it he stopped still.  Four dark figures that had followed him from the shadowy wall divided into pairs, passed him to left and to right, and extended their hands to the coffer, unfastening its clamps, and removed its lid.  Katharine strained to see what lay within, but the light of the dim yellow lanterns was too faint.

For a moment no figure or shadow stirred in the scene below.  Then the Great Goblin turned and gestured toward the door directly beneath Katharine’s platform, turned again, and left the hall, by the door directly opposite Katharine, followed by his shadowy retinue of four.

For a moment, perfect stillness.

Then pandemonium.  Through the door below Katharine’s ledge, a great steel hamper came grinding, noisily, bumping and crashing, rolling toward the middle of the hall where the dwarf still stood motionless.  It carried such a weight that its axles ground and shrieked in its wheels.  Katharine looked down.  All the lantern bearers were now holding their lamps as high as they could reach, and she could see, even in the halflight, that the vehicle was laden with precious metals and jewels, and artifacts of these.  Silver, platinum, gold, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, crowns of gold and diamonds, scabbards of silver set with rubies,armlets of emerald-studded platinum, were all piled so high in the hamper that some were tumbling out and falling on the stone floor, while the goblins who had pushed the hamper into the hall scurried about retrieving them.

Meanwhile in the center of the hall the goblins with lanterns, still holding them high, had broken ranks, and were now churning about in most disorderly fashion, crowding toward the dwarf’s coffer, squeaking and squealing.  Behind them surged throngs of other goblins, gurgling, squeking, and screaming, the lesser folk of the Great Goblin’s court, who had been sitting hidden and motionless in the dark against the walls of the great stone hall altogether out of Katharine’s view.  All of this rabble were struggling to approach the dwarf’s coffer, while the six armed and armored goblin giants surrounded it and swatted with their clubs or slashed with their swords to try to keep them away, and blew their horns and whistles for assistance when they could get them to their mouths.  Katharine had never heard any such uproar in all her life, and she clapped her hands tight over her ears.

Despite all the best efforts of the armed and armored guard, the lantern bearers or most of them managed to approach the coffer, and the light of their lanterns was now so concentrated that Katharine could make out what lay inside.

Who lay inside, actually.  A beautiful young woman, dead or asleep, her eyes closed.  A crown of gold in her hair–a queen.  Delicately pointed ears–the Queen of the Elves.  Katharine gasped in astonishment and horror–withh astonishment at the young person’s beauty, and with horror at the unseemliness of the din and chaotic jostling all about her.  Once more Katharine’s eyes gazed upon a sight no human person had beheld in many generations–Xenia, Queen of the Elves.

The lovely body of the Elfin Queen held the wild attention of all except the dwarf, who was intent instead on the hamper of treasure tumbling toward him in the center of the hall.  He kept rooted to the spot where he stood, like a dog seeing a piece of meat and not yet permitted to devour it, until the hamper had bumped and rolled to the very tips of his toes and stopped.  Now the ugly little creature gazed upon the treasure not twelve inches away.  For a moment he hesitated, then he plunged his hands, arms, and face into the pile of precious things, writhing and convulsing like a person mad, screaming and ranting.  With difficulty two of the goblins of the hamper, assisted by one of the armed and armored guard, restrained him, and pushed and carried him toward the door through which the treasure had come, the one beneath Katharine’s ledge, while the remaining goblins of the hamper pushed the treasure along behind him, back toward where it had come from in the first place.  As he was pushed and carried through the door the dwarf twiisted about with his whole body to left and right to see whether his reward still followed him.  It did.  The door closed behind both dwarf and treasure.Meanwhile from the great door, the one on Katharine’s left, where the dwarf and the Queen of the Elves had been brought in, help had come for the armed and armored guards.  Militia in full panoply, with shields and spears, had heard the horns and whistles and had come charging into the court.  The near riot was put down, and cruelly.  In a moment there was silence again, and in another moment all the goblins had left the great stone hall except the militia, the coffer guards, and the dead or severely wounded.

What happened next Katharine could only guess by her ears, for as the goblins of the original procession had fled the court their lanterns had disappeared with them, leaving the great stone hall in darkness once more.  But she could hear the sounds of pushing and dragging as the armed and armored guards and the militia pushed and pulled the dead and wounded–the coffer too?–from the court of the goblin king.

Then all was still.  Perfectly still.  Katharine could only hear her own breathing.

The Elfin Queen!  Savior of the Four Maidens!  Rescuer of the whole of Faerie the night the giants surrounded all the glens of her realm at once.   Beloved heroine of all the children of the world of human persons, celebrated in song and story, invoked by a thousand children a day in their hour of need. Xenia had fallen victim of the goblins!  She of the noblest and kindest heart creation had ever seen.

Katharine wondered if the body of Xenia still lay in the great stone hall, as if in state, or if the soldiers and guards had shoved the coffer out through one of the doors and into the entrails of the mountain.

And she wondered how she could ever escape from this ledge.

Katharine sat in the dark and thought.  She shivered with exhaustion now, from all she had seen and heard, and she lay face down on her shelf to think so more.  Her feet were at the front edge of the ledge, with her head in the direction of the stone where the rear of the ledge met the steep tunnel through which she had fallen, it seemed ages ago, from the bat cave on the mountainside.

She thought and thought.  Then she fell asleep.  Probably she slept only a few moments before she awoke to think some more in the dark.

As Katharine awoke she stretched a little, lifting herself onto her elbows and moving her feet apart.  As she moved them back together her toes slipped from the edge of the shelf–and touched another ledge just below.

She was most surprised.  She had had no idea that the ledge attached to anything but a sheer wall.  She scooted backwards a few inches, and her toes slipped down to another ledge below.

Slowly, cautiously, Katharine pushed herself up onto her hands, and turned and sat up.  Now facing the front of the ledge, she swivelled about and then lay prone again, just as she had lain before, only pointed the other way.  Then she reached down with her hands to where her toes had slipped and touched the lower shelf.  Now she reached with her hands a little farther out and found that the lower ledge only went a few inches–and that below the second ledge there was another.

Surely enough, there were little steps, at least two of them, leading downward from her shelf.  This much Katharine could determine by feeling with her hands.  Were there more?

Were there, perhaps, steps all the way down from her ledge to the floor of the great hall below?  Katharine made up her mind to find out.

Cautiously as ever, she began to try to climb down from the ledge.  She rose to her hands and knees, turned about once more, and backed down onto the first step with her right foot.  Above her, she knew, was the hole or shaft leading upward, with its many twists and turns, to the bat cave.  She lifted her eyes, but could see nothing--not the faintest shimmer of light.  Then she put her left foot down behind her and slipped it along the first step down to the second.  Then her right foot to a third.Was there a fourth?  Katharine put her left foot down behind her, and there was a fourth.  Was there a fifth?  Now her hands must leave her ledge and rest the top step instead.  And yes, there was a fifth step.  And a sixth, and a seventh, and many more.  She continued climbing down backwards in the dark, with her hands on steps she had already stepped on and her feet ever farther down into the dark below.  The farther she climbed the more she wondered if she would ever come safely down to the floor of the great hall.

After what seemed a hundred steps at least, although it may have been less and only have seemed that far, Katharine began to think that perhaps the steps had already descended below the level of the floor of the hall and that she was climbing down a hole in the floor of the hall.  So she paused to rest and think a minute.  Then she thought she might as well t ry to go a little farther, so she put her foot down to touch the next step–but there was no next step and she fell off.

She only fell a few feet, but the noise of her landing was deafening, because of the echoes from the hard stone walls of the Great Goblin’s court.  She stuck her knuckles in her mouth and froze, hoping and hoping that all that noise would not have alerted any of the goblins in the mountain to the suspicion that there was a foreigner in the throne room of their king who had no business being there.  But the echoes boomed and died away, and all was silent again.  Except that she thought she might have heard something like a click in the direction of the door on the other side of the hall, the one through which the goblin king and his retinue had disappeared.  And she thought she might have heard something like a shuffle from the same quarter.  But then again this could all have been just leftover echoes dying.  She waited and listened and heard nothing more, then began to creep carefully toward where the chest or coffer with the Elfin Queen had been.

Before Katharine left the place where she had fallen, beneath the last step, she was careful to get her bearings by touching the wall along which the steps had descended.  But of course in the pitch dark, and having left the wall, she now had to depend entirely on her sense of direction in order to find the dwarf’s coffer with the body of the Elfin Queen.  And so she may have wandered very much, even gone around in circles for all she knew, before arriving at her destination.  Her slow, careful journey in the dark seemed to go on forever.  But the great stone hall, she knew, was really large.

In any case, at last she bumped into the coffer.  It was still there.  The soldiers of the guard had not removed it when they had chased the goblin rabble and dragged out their hurt and their dead.  Now Katharine stopped creeping and knelt, then rose to her feet, supporting herself against the side of the coffer until her hands rested on the edge of its open top.

Now that she had answered her first question–whether the coffer was still in the hall–she wondered the most important thing: Was the Queen of the Elves alive or dead?

So she extended her hands and touched Xenia’s legs.  They were hard and muscular, her abdomen, which was slight and smooth, her breast–she was breathing–and her lovely face, which was warm and soft.  She was alive!

Xenia the Elfin Queen was alive, but in a deep sleep.  Katharine’s touches had not caused her to stir.  Katharine touched her cheeks and and shoulders a little more boldly, in the hope she could disturb her.  But without result.

Then she called gently in her ear, in the quietest of whispers–“Xenia!”  But the echoes of even this slight sound, bouncing off the hard stone walls, sounded like a circle of waterfalls, and Katharine did not call again.

She paused to wonder what ever she could do.  Her hand was still against the Elfin Queen’s soft warm cheeks, there in the dark–this beloved lady of the story hour all over the world–this was Xenia!  And Katharine began to weep.

Katharine wept with exhaustion.  She wept for loneliness and sorrow, too–for here she was so close to this lovely person asleep, prisoner of the goblins, for what dismal purposes she dared not attempt to imagine, and she could not help!

Here was Xenia, whom all children loved so, and whom she herself had always loved though never seen, and Xenia was helpless, and Katharine could do nothing!  So Katharine wept for loneliness and sorrow.  And for love.

As Katharine wept for love her tears fell on Xenia’s breast the Elfin Queen awoke.  Katharine whispered to her now in earnest, not minding the rushing echoes all about, explaining to her everything, everything, why it was dark, and all she herself had seen in the light of the goblins’ yellow lanterns.  And Xenia listened well, nodding, and saying nothing except “Yes” from time to time, in a voice that sounded the way a fresh, moist breeze feels on your face in the springtime.

And Xenia agreed to rise and come with Katharine in the dark to a door of the great hall–around to all the doors of the great hall if need be, to try to find a way out.  So Katharine helped her to come out of the coffer and stand on the hard stone floor.  There she stood, a little unsteady, with her forearms in Katharine’s hands.. And there in the dark Katharine thought she could see her–although she could see her only in the eyes of her imagination, of course–and she seemed even more beautiful than when she had lain in the coffer in the light of the goblins’ lanterns, and even more beautiful than she had been in any story, picture, or song that Katharine had ever seen or heard.  Rather taller than other elves, Xenia was nearly as tall as Katharine.  And they kissed gently, there in the dark, Katharine and the elfin Queen.

Then Katharine turned and stepped a step to lead her away–and stepped right into the arms of a goblin.

The click and the shuffle Katharine had heard after falling from the last step had come from the goblins’ night sentry, who had heard the noise of her fall and stolen into the great hall from the door in the opposite wall to learn what had caused it.  He had been as quiet after entering the hall as Katharine had been while seeking the coffer.  And now he had his arms right around Katharine’s waist.Katharine was so startled that she released Xenia’s arms and flailed wildly about with her own for a moment–then she instinctively made an attempt to strike the goblin, and flailed once more, with her left arm, for all she was worth.  The back of her wrist caught him full on the side of the jaw, and very, very hard.  He released Katharine and slumped to the floor, momentarily unconscious.  Katharine immediately grasped Xenia’s hand, and together they ran to a wall, any wall, to grope their way along it to try to find its door.  The goblin came to himself almost at once, and presently they could hear the sound of his feet just as he must have heard the sound of theirs, but the ears of all three were filled with echo and the goblin could no more sense their location and direction in the great hall than they could sense his.

Luckily for Katharine and Xenia, the goblin sentry could not call for light or help.  Both would have appeared at once, but it would have cost him his life.  For how could a human person have entered the great hall of the goblin king without his carelessness, or even treachery?  So now–once more at the price of his life–he must catch them and kill them, then dispose of their bodies secretly.

And so the goblin was trotting his way about the floor of the hall, at random but as desperately as Katharine and Xenia were feeling their way along a wall..  But was it the same wall or a different one?  The echoes of his scraping and puffing came from all sides.  The pair froze, and listened.  Now there was less noise than when they had been shuffling along their wall, and they could hear the goblin trotting around somewhere to their right, whether sometimes touching a wall or not they could not tell.  So to the left they must go.

Katharine and Xenia began to move to their left along the wall.  Sith one hand each grasped the other’s hand, and with one hand each felt along the wall.  Farther and farther they moved, more and more quickly as they gained confidence that they would not stumble or lose each other.  They came to a corner.  They continued beyond it.  They tried their best to contain their heavy breathing, and when they could do so they were at an advantage over their goblin pursuer, for he made no such effort: his huffing and puffing, though drowned in its own echoes when he was farther away, betrayed his location when he came too close, and Katharine and Xenia could hasten their steps along the wall, even temporarily reversing direction.

Now in the dark the fugitives passed, without knowing it, under the step from which so that the first door their fingers felt was the one almost directly beneath Katharine’s ledge.  And it was a very good thing, for, as it chanced, not only was this door the only one unlocked, but it was the only one that led drectly to the outside of the mountain without leading first through the whole underground realm of the goblins.  This door–the one through which the treasure had appeared, and disappeared with the dwarf–was the one that led through all the goblins’ stores of food, arms, treasures, everything they had, including heapes of refuge to be delivered eventually to the outside: to a secret door in the side of the mountain, a sliding door of earth-covered rock altogether impossible to detect from the outside.

The way was long, but it was not in total darkness, for dim lamps burned high above the heaps of stuff along both walls.  And the way was straight–like a long hallway.  Katharine and Xenia were astonished at the wealth of precious things that lay along their way, piled from the door of the great stone hall to the secret way out the mountainside–enough to make the dwarf’s great bribe seem like nothing in comparison.  Little did they pause to examine any of it, however, for they were too anxious to learn whether they had found an escape route–and even more anxious whether they were being observed or ambushed from behiind any of the huge piles of victuals, refuse, or treasure.  So they moved along as fast as they could, still hand in hand.

When they reached the end of the long supply hall an accidental touch of the wall there caused–much to their startled surprise–tlhe secret door of the mountan to slide open and reveal a sunny blue day, fresh air, and the soft lovely green side of the mountain–the same side Katharine had been climbling, but rather lower than the cave.  They stepped out to the world they knew, and freedom.  The secret door behind them began to slide shut.  Something made Katharine stoop and place a pebble in its way at the last moment.

It was just past sunrise.  Katharine’s adventure had lasted the whole night.  Katharine and Xenia embraced each other in the dazzling day, and their tears of joy and love mingled with their quiet laughter.  They could scarcely believe they were safe.  And they walked hand in hand down the mountainside.

But not far.  Almost at once they came upon a strange and marvelous sight.  If you have ever seen this sight–and few human persons ever have–you will know what I mean when I say that Katharine was transfixed with wonder.  Katharine and Xenia came upon an elfin funeral, which is one of the most beautiful and sorrowful things, yet strangely joyful, that ever happen on the face of the earth.

A “funeral pomp,” as it is called, of the elves is held always in the open air, always on a sunny day, and always on the side of a mountain or hill, because of their “sure hope,” as they describe it, that their departed will come back one day, to a world far happier than it is in our time.  “Death,” they sing, “is but the portal of life,” and they carry out lovely circular processions with bright orange, red, and yellow banners swirling around one larger black banner, which represents death, like the patterns in a kaleidoscope.  And their harmonies are like the songs of angels.

Any elfin funeral pomp, then, is wonderful to behold.  But this was a special one: forst of all, that all the elves of the world were come to celebrate it.  And it was special too in that the corpse of the beloved departed one was not present–only an empty coffin of shiny cedar inlaid with ebonies.  For the elves were holding the funeral of their queen.  Cut off in the bloom of youth–she had reigned only a little over a hundred years–before she had married or had children, their beloved Queen Xenia’s death was terrible to the elves for yet another reason: she had been kidnapped, and had died at the hands of their primeval enemy, the goblins.  Or so they supposed.

But now this elfin funeral became more special still, for now Xenia walked down the mountainside, slowly and gracefully and smiling happily, still holding Katharine’s hand, straight into the midst of the majestic pomp.  There she took the black banner from the hands of its thunderstruck bearer, and carried it herself, bidding the procession continue to its appointed destination.

What followed defies description.  Suyffice it to say that a little hour later Xenia and Katharine were seated on elegant thrones that had been borne to a copse of the mountainside, addressing all the elves of the world.  Xenia told her story, then Katharine told hers.  Then Katharine remembered the pebble she has placed in the secret door,, and the limitless treasures of the goblins.

By noon of that day, just as the goblins within the mountain had finished searching for Xenia everywhere, their treasure corridor was crowded with hundreds of elves, some of whom were engaged in sealing the door to the great stone hall with mortar, while the rest were carrying off the treasure they had found there, which the goblins had stolen from them and from others all throughout the past thousand years and longer.  Among the piles of precious metals and jewels they found a great hamper, lying on its side, its contents spilled and mingled with other treasure.  Beside the hamper was the body of a dwarf, with his throat slit.

It took the elves weeks to carry off the goblins’ hoard.  But it only took them half an hour to climb a way up the mountain and seal up the hole in the bat cave, the only entranceway to the kingdom of the goblins besides the secret door that led to all the treasure.

And this is why there are no one has seen a goblin for such a long time.