like chittering (if you have ever heard two squirrels argue over a conker, you have heard this sound) and the goblins startled—at a third goblin, who had appeared from the opposite direction, and was now staring at Floralinda.
Its two gluttonous fellows turned their heads to follow its gaze. The whites of their eyes shone in the darkness, thin rings around enormous black pupils. They both dropped their loaves.
This time Floralinda knew when to run for her life. She took to her heels with three goblins behind her, squabbling away in their own guttural talk, hot in pursuit as she sped down the corridor and flew up the staircase. They were much quicker than she, but did not work well in narrow quarters together. She made it up to her room just as the two biggest goblins thrust the third out of the way, and they crashed very hard against her door as she slammed it shut in a trice. She turned its key and locked it, and all three banged and shrieked and clattered the handle.
A light rain had started to fall outside, pattering on the windowsill. This was so welcome that Floralinda went with her injured hands and pinned the window-sash up as high as it could go, so that the cool wet breeze could circulate through the room. Before long the banging and shrieking and clattering ceased, and the sounds of wind and rain were all that was heard in the room. Eventually, the princess thought the goblins must have gone away, and went to check.
But the goblins were possessed of dumb cunning, and in any case were not at all afraid of Floralinda. When she tremulously turned the key and peeked out—they burst in on top of her!
There were only two, as the third had grown impatient and trundled off. Floralinda ran to stand stupidly on the bed, like a girl faced with two rats; one goblin caught her by her long unbrushed butter-coloured curls and tugged, meaning to drag her to the floor as the first goblin had. She leapt from the bed in a fright, dragging it with her, screaming with the goblin’s hands stuck fast in her hair, and her scalp feeling as though it must depart from her head entirely; she wheeled about, blind with panic and pain, trying to tear the goblin from her head; she shouldered her burden to the window, slapping at it aimlessly until it let go and fell from the sill. This would not have accomplished much except that it fell from the sill outwards, which made it, a few seconds later, the second goblin to die very close to the shining sword.
The other goblin—full of bread, and warier—turned and scampered back to the doorway, perhaps to go and call for more of its kind. In a panic Floralinda flew after it. She caught up with it just as it reached the head of the staircase down, and not knowing what else to do, she gave it a good push to the hunched shoulders with her foot. As she watched, it tumbled down each steep stair back to floor thirty-nine, which had the effect of breaking its neck.
Princess Floralinda then had the presence of mind to turn the key before being sick. She also had the presence of mind to be sick in her chamber-pot rather than anywhere else, which would have added insult to injury. She was ill until she could not bring up anything else, just nasty-tasting froth; then she sat on her bed. Her heart beat fast, and her brain beat faster. The rain had turned from a nice light pattering sound to a thick pelter, and this heralded a storm. The room shook with a full basso profundo of thunder—a deep, throaty roll somewhere quite close—and though the rain splashed in over the sill to the floor, Floralinda did not pull down the sash, but stood at the window as the storm broke over the trees and the tower, and stared down guessing at what must be the remains of her fresh dead goblin and its less fresh colleague. She stared out the window; she stared at the sky, and the feverish purple clouds; she stared down at the ground until she couldn’t look any more, as it wasn’t very nice. If you have ever stood at a great height in the rain, with a storm breaking all around you in a very effervescent way, you will know that it is a good time