Page 18 of The Goblin and The Dancer
Grik considered this carefully. “I mean, I thought we were. I suppose we are . . . or maybe not!”
He looked away from her, confused and, for the first time since they had been swept down the drain, hot. But he was also happy.
The cave was just big enough for them to sit side by side, and it was like being cocooned in a star.
Both of them sat for a moment in silence, looking at the brilliant patterns of translucent light that danced around them in a soundless dance.
Grik had seen plenty of caves like this before. Many like them were used by the goblins for health retreats for rest and meditation.
It was beautiful. Grik couldn’t remember thinking that about a cave in years. He had vague memories of being a little goblin—before he had seen the elven city above his home—and looking at caverns like this and being lost in wonder and delight. But he hadn’t felt that way in a long time, not until now, when he looked at it through Rosanna’s eyes.
When he was little, he had played in one particular crystal cave, where he hid all of the things that he didn’t want the other goblins to know about. When some other goblin children discovered his hoard and made fun of it, he had lost his interest in crystal caves: the connotation with those mocking playmates had spoiled it.
But now, because of Rosanna, he felt himself loving these caves again—these underground places that were as goblin as could be. In recent years, he had become so sad over feeling different than the typical goblin he hadn’t realized that there were things about the underworld that he still did like.
Rosanna had made him remember that he had once loved it. More than that, she loved it too.
It was astonishing. This place, this goblin world, was so different from her world, and yet she wasn’t repulsed by it.
He put his hand flat on the sandy floor, next to hers.
If Rosanna could like both worlds, maybe he could too. He didn’t think she was strange for liking both—so maybe he wasn’t either. He edged his fingers closer.
Rosanna didn’t pull away.
“This actually reminds me of the Metropolitan—only more . . .” She paused, searching for the right words. “Quieter, more intimate, more alive. I would like to dance here. It would be like dancing in the night or in the heart of the earth, as if you” —she blushed suddenly and finished with an awkward laugh—“as if you were the pulse of the earth.”
Grik realized he was staring at her. He quickly looked away when she glanced at him, but he still saw the soft glow of her eyes meeting his, and his heart nearly floated out of his chest in a wave of hope.
He opened his mouth. “Did you really like the jerky sandwich?”
He quickly shut his mouth again.Idiot!Of all the things to ask!
“I did.” Rosanna guessed at the nature of his skeptical silence and assured him. “I wasn’t just being nice. I thought it was good.”
“Maybe—maybe I could show you other goblin foods . . . sometime,” he stammered. There! That was better. “There are lots of goblin restaurants—”
He was doing it . . . he was actually going to ask her out to dinner!
“Where are you two?”
Paul’s voice boomed through the narrow cave mouth behind them like the crash of a gong, and both of them jumped. Grik was rather sorry that he couldn’t quite hold down a grunt of alarm, but he heard Rosanna gasp too and felt better.
For one brief, wonderful moment, he had forgotten what he had done and where they really were. Paul—the object of his reckless fury—had brought it all rushing back and broke the reverie that it was just him and Rosanna in their own little world.
This wasn’t a game. They were in deep dirt and deep trouble, and he had no business talking to Rosanna about restaurants.
A worthy suitor would have never made his love jump off a bridge.
And a true sweetheart would not have tried to rescue a different person, would she?
He moved his hand away from Rosanna’s—ashamed.
Paul’s angry face appeared in the cave mouth, his voice slicing between them like a blade.“I nearly had a heart attack when I came back and didn’t see you at first. I told you to wait; can’t you take a simple order?”
“We’re not some of your soldiers!” Grik couldn’t believe that he had actually said it out loud.
Paul turned on Grik with an expression of such black fury that Grikdidfeel like one of his soldiers—some pathetic underling that was about to be whipped within an inch of his life. At the very least, he could sense an insult to his person coming that would surpass the entirety of every insult he had ever received in his life.
