Notebook for Fantastical Observations (6 page)
Read Notebook for Fantastical Observations Online
Authors: Holly Black,Tony DiTerlizzi
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A nighttime adventure I’ve had that my parents don’t know about:
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Things I’ve cut apart or opened up to see what they’re made of:
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Things I can do to help protect the environment and make sure faeries always have a home:
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Leaf rubbings:
Pictures of the weirdest bugs I’ve ever seen:
Pictures of bugs that give me the creeps:
“Fidirol, Fidirat!
Catch a dog, catch a cat
Skin it raw, skin the fat
On the spit, turn like that
Fidirol, Fidirat! ”
FROM
B
OOK
2: T
HE
S
EEING
S
TONE
When my dad got a new job teaching at a university, we had to move to a town nearby it. It wasn’t that different from our old town, so my dad was surprised when the neighbors warned us about animals getting into our garbage cans. At the old house, sometimes squirrels would get into the trash if we put it out too early or something, but it wasn’t anything we had to be warned about. Mom said our neighbor must think we were city people or something and didn’t have any common sense.
That was until we found our new plastic garbage can with the handles still locked and a hole gnawed in the side.
“What could do that?” Mom asked.
“Maybe raccoons,” I said.
“Raccoons my a—,” said Dad.
Mom frowned at him.
“Sorry.” He looked at me.
I grinned.
We bought new cans, metal ones this time, and
a Havahart trap big enough to catch a bobcat. Mom baited it with some gnawed-on chicken drumsticks from dinner the night before and we left it out by the garage where the trash cans rested when they weren’t sitting out at the curb.
Nothing much happened that night, but when I got home from school the next day, I checked the trap. Inside was the hugest, most disgusting frog I’d ever seen. Its blubbery body actually pressed against the hatched metal sides of the cage. It rocked back and forth—something I didn’t think frogs could do—and when I walked closer, it turned its gold-flecked eyes in my direction.
“Hey,” it said, voice rough and croaky. “Let me go.”
“Mom!” I yelled, and ran for the house.
She was washing carrots in the sink when I found her. I pulled her outside. We both looked at the giant frog.
“It told me to let it go,” I said, feeling, I admit, like a bit of a tattler.
She laughed. “It sure looks like it would say that, doesn’t it? Let’s just leave it alone until your father gets home. Maybe he’ll know what to do with it.”
With that, Mom went back inside. As I turned back toward the cage, out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn I saw the frog smile and I could have sworn that it had a mouthful of sharp teeth.
“I know you can talk,” I said.
“I can,” said the frog. “Now let me out. The metal burns my skin. It is very ouchey.”
“You bit a hole in our trash can,” I said.
“No, no.” It bugged out its eyes even more. It might have been trying to make an innocent face, but it wasn’t doing a very good job. “Not me.”
“Are there more of you?” I asked, looking around. “Did one of them do it?”
“Maybe,” said the frog.
I squatted down by the cage. There really did appear to be scorch marks striping the creature’s skin. “What ARE you?”
“What will you give me if I tell you?” it rasped.
“Nothing,” I said.
It gurgled a little.
I got up and brushed off my jeans like I was going to walk away.
“Wait,” it croaked. “Goblin.”
“What?”
“I’m a goblin. Let me out and I’ll give you something.”
“Give me what?” I asked. I was thinking of magic wishes, but I was also concerned that I might have to kiss that enormous green lump. There wasn’t much I wanted enough to put my lips on that. Then the first part of what it’d said filtered into my brain. “A goblin?”
“How about me and my friends don’t bite your things. No eating cans or cats nothing.”
“You eat cats?” I felt like all I was doing was repeating the last thing the goblin said.
“Kittens better,” it said. “Not so chewy.”
“I don’t think I should let you out,” I said. “You like kittens? Okay, I’ll promise not to eat any cats. Nothing from your house and no cats.”
“Forever?” I asked.
It grunted and groaned, but finally it said, “Forever.”
I opened the latch and let it shuffle out. For a moment the shape shimmered and I thought I
saw another shape, something still froggy, but more upright and with claws. Then it jumped into a patch of thick weeds at the border of our neighbor’s yard and disappeared from sight.
Dad was disappointed, of course, but I told him that frogs didn’t have the teeth to bite through a garbage can and we couldn’t hold it without more than circumstantial evidence. My dad said I needed to stop watching cop shows.
The goblin must have stuck to his side of the bargain because our trash was never troubled again, even when it was put out a day too soon or overripe with party trash. I saw lots more cats in the neighborhood and felt pretty good about that, at least until the day my neighbor’s pair of long-haired pet rabbits disappeared.