Interview With a Goblin
Book 2 of A Classic Retold has released!
Crack the Stone by Emily Golus released this past Friday, and today I am so excited to have the main character of this epic and beautiful Les Miserables retelling here on the blog for an interview!
I’m in the middle of reading this book right now (I did get the privilege of reading an early copy this Spring, so I already know it’s fantastic). Highly recommend it!
I am Valshara, the black stone born of fire. Break me, and my edges turn into knives.
Condemned to a slave camp for her crimes, goblin convict Valshara Sh’a makes a death-defying escape to freedom. But navigating Vindor’s treacherous cavern system is only the beginning of her troubles. An encounter with a rogue king turns her world upside down, and a bargain with fairy tricksters leaves her with a human child she doesn’t know how to care for.
As she tries to smuggle the boy through the walls of a barricaded city, Valshara can’t let down her guard. Because somewhere in the darkness behind her, a bounty hunter rises—relentless as nightfall and merciless as death itself.
Emily Golus re-imagines Victor Hugo’s beloved Les Misérables as an epic fantasy adventure about suffering, redemption, and the extraordinary power of love.
The portal crackles around me as I step through, making the hair on my skin tingle with electrical energy. I glance back to see the brilliantly green yard I was standing for only a moment as the door in the air snaps closed. I catch the sapphire pendant as it falls. Can’t lose that—it’s my key out of here.
But where is here?
I’m standing in a moonlit forest—an ancient wood, with enormous trees that must be hundreds of years old. Something doesn’t feel natural, though, and it takes me a minute to realize what it is: the ground beneath my feet is all soft moss and ferns. Someone—or something—has cleared away the fallen leaves.
In the entire forest.
This is definitely the shortest notice the InterFiction Gazette has ever given me on an assignment. Now, where is my interviewee?
Something rustles behind me, and I see a flash of color. I turn to find a creature with a blood-red cloak wrapped around tiny shoulders. She’s barely taller than three feet, with a bald green head and long pointed ears filled with rough iron piercings.
She grasps a crooked obsidian knife in one hand, her snarl revealing pointed teeth. Then she lowers the weapon. “Oh, it you,” she says with a heavy accent I can’t place. “I finded him. Come.”
She motions toward a shadowy path between two enormous elms. Her ragged claws glint in the moonlight, the fingertips beneath them stained a rusty red. “Come, come.”
I recognize her immediately. “Wait, are you Valshara Sh’a?” I ask.
She stops mid-step. “How you know my name?”
“I’ve read about you,” I reply a little lamely. Valshara stares at me oddly, but doesn’t comment.
Shaking her head, the goblin leads me to an old oak and kneels beside an opening beneath its tangle of roots. “Kozi,” the goblin calls softly. “I finded her.”
Something emerges from the hole. It’s a mass of tangled black locks, under which appears a little face. It’s a human boy, no more than six. He rubs his eyes with an ebony hand. “Huh?”
Valshara gestures toward me with her claws. “Look, Kozi. I finded you mama.”
I start with surprise. I am not this child’s mother… but, oh! He’s adorable. I would definitely adopt him and take him home… except that he’s fictional…
“The dark-skinned boy frowns up at me. “That is not my mama, Magma.”
Valshara’s green brows knit in frustration. “You say you mama have hair.” She jabs a claw toward my shoulder-length brown hair. “You say she tall, she have pretty eyes, and she ‘so, so nice.’” She turns to me, accusing. “Wait. Are you not so, so nice?”
I hold up my hands. “I’m nice! I’m definitely nice! But, Valshara, lots of humans have hair!”
Kozi yawns. “Mama is Dembeyan like me. This lady is a Huntsman.”
The goblin throws her arms in the air, exasperated. She turns on me. “Why you not tell me?”
“You didn’t ask!” I protest.
Valshara peels off her blood-red cloak, revealing a mud-stained tunic beneath. She presses the red cloth gently against the boy’s sleepy face. He snuggles into it and retreats back into the hollow beneath the tree roots.
“Go to sleeps, Kozi,” Valshara says gently. “In the morning I find you real mama.” She casts another judgmental look at me.
Once the child is settled, Valshara wanders around the clearing, sniffing the air.
I clear my throat. “So … do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
Valshara doesn’t answer, instead kneeling and pressing her green palm against a stone on the forest floor. She closes her eyes for a moment as though listening.
Then she sighs. “I answer you questions if you answer my’s.”
“Okay, deal.” I pull out my notebook and pen. “So is your name Valshara, or is it Magma?”
“I Valshara. Hims call me Magma. I not know why.”
“Who is he? The little boy?”
“I not know. Fairies catched him, I buyed him free. Now I looking for hims mama.”
I nod slowly. Fairies can be cruel. “Do you live here?”
Valshara pauses again to sniff the air. “No. I from underground world. Is cool and dark quiet and nice. This place so …” She looks up at the nearly full moon and shields her eyes with a green arm. “It is so too much. But underground not safe. In Goblins’ Dominion, are many goblins there, ruled by Masters with iron hands.”
I pause to puzzle this out. “You mean they rule with an iron fist?”
“Hands and fists, yes.” She rubs two of her red-stained fingertips together. “Once away a time, I helps them,” she says quietly.
I sense there’s a heaviness there, and I attempt to lighten the mood. “Do you, uh, have a favorite animal?”
“Yes. It …” She glances around the clearing, then points to something smooth hiding beneath a fern. “That one.”
“A frog?”
“Yes, the frog. Because thems taste better than beetle.”
“Wait.” A sleepy voice drifts up from the hollow space. “Magma? Did you eat Beetlebuggy?”
“No, Kozi,” Valshara says patiently. “I not eat your little pet. Go to sleep.”
She motions me to a spot farther away from the den, then turns to me. “I did eat Beetlebuggy,” she confesses. “I feel sadly of that. But Kozi not tell me bug on tree was his little pet until it was already eated.” Valshara sighs deeply. “Human childs—they hard.”
I give her an empathetic nod. “I have four of them,” I inform her. I glance down at my list of questions. “What are—?”
“No.” Valshara points a claw at me. “My question turn. Where is Soldier Street?”
“What?”
“Soldier Street. This is where Kozi’s homes is. Where it is?”
“Oh!” I know the answer to this one. “It’s in the human town.”
“Where is mans-town? The one on river?”
I scratch the back of my neck, not sure I should be giving her spoilers to her own story. “Um… it’s… on the river. That way, I think…” I point vaguely.
Valshara rolls her eyes as though to say thanks for nothing. She climbs partway up a tree, listens for a minute, and then drops back down. “Okay, you question turn.”
“Let’s see. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What sorts of things are you good at? What do you like to do in your free time?”
“Free time?” Valshara scratches a pointed ear. “Ah, yes. In my free time, I run.”
“You compete in races?” I ask.
“No. When powers change in Dominion, I thrown in Pit, become prison slave. Now I am free. This my Free Time. In my Free Time, I run.”
“Wait … you’re a prison fugitive?”
Valshara tilts her head for a moment to listen to the still night air. Her obsession with her surroundings is starting to make sense, and I find myself straining my ears, too.
“What I good at,” she continues, “is I live. Other runway goblins like me, they die in all-black caves, or get catched.” I see her shudder. “But me—I squeeze through tiny cracks they can’t. I find my way with no light. I listen for invisible waters, eat lichen and millipedes. I good at living.”
Somewhere out in the forest, a branch crackles. Valshara freezes.
“What are you listening for?” I whisper, not sure I want to know.
She turns to me, fear in her large eyes. “Blindwyrm.”
“What?”
“He have no legs, but hims so fast. Teeth like knifes. No eyes, but can smell you blood, hear your breaths.”
Another forest branch cracks, closer now.
Valshara inches toward a moss-covered stone and places her hand on it. She jerks away as though it has electrified her.
“It here,” she whispers. “Huntslady, you have way to go home?”
I touch the sapphire pendant around my neck. “Yes, but …”
Her body rigid, Valshara’s eyes alone move. They settle on a point somewhere behind me.
“Go,” she says, hardly breathing. “Fast.”
“Wait, I—”
The ground rumbles beneath me.
Valshara springs into action, dashing for the hollow where Kozi sleeps. She disappears into it, and I see her green hand shoving leaves and branches to obscure the entrance.
I’m not sure it’s a convincing hiding place, but I have no time to worry about that. My fingers fumble with the pendant. How do I get the portal open again? These newfangled badges blend into the surroundings better, but I didn’t exactly have time to go to the training for how to use them.
After several frantic attempts, the gemstone catches on an invisible spot in the air, and I pull, hard. In the midst of the dark forest, golden sunlight from my back yard in Wisconsin pours through. I practically throw myself through it. Before it closes, I glance back into the shrinking night forest.
Something enormous weaves between the tree trunks, crushing saplings in its path. Six black horns glint in the moonlight.
It's coming for Valshara and her child.