(In this thrilling chapter – Marianne and Bog talk about logistics, infrastructure, food, racism, history, biology, and paperwork. Bog also thinks about Marianne being hot.)

Chapter Twenty-One

"How much food does the average goblin eat in a day?"

"There isn't an average goblin. You've seen Brutus and Thang. If they were to split food evenly, Brutus would be half-starved and Thang would … quite possibly explode."

"But if there are roughly the same number of goblins of each size, we can determine an amount for equal divisions in theory and divide it equitably in practice."

Bog had moved another hospital bed next to Marianne's and they had repurposed it as a desk. Crop and livestock reports from the Fairy Kingdom overlapped the Dark Forest's former and current ration plans, and the revised edition that Bog and Marianne were working on.

"Rocco gave me our latest census data," Bog thought he remembered. "I – one moment." He dug through the satchel of paperwork he'd brought back from the Forest that morning, which Stuff had retrieved from the guest suite for him.

No, that was the monthly report on the North River villages, assessing flood risk; that was the descriptive summary and location of each possible new castle site; a half-written decree, amending the Bog King's previous decree from a ban on love potions and any and all public displays and declarations of romantic love, to only a ban on love potions; the usual papers from the treasury, which Bog had to sign to authorize salary payments for the staff and guards; a progress report from Titus on bat-training …

Naturally, the census packet was at the bottom.

"I never realized how many edible plants grew in the Dark Forest," said Marianne. "I would have thought it would be too, well, dark."

"It's not that many, in comparison," Bog acknowledged, looking over the Fairy Kingdom's crop report again. "Or perhaps there are things we consider edible that you wouldn't. Do you really eat buttercups?"

Marianne flinched.

"I don't."

Bog's heart jumped and his throat clenched. The only external sign of his panic at possibly saying the wrong thing was a twitch of his fingers and shoulder spurs. He tried for a gentle, sympathetic tone. "Allergies?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay."

Marianne's brow furrowed. "Okay? That's it?"

"Did – did you actually want to talk –?"

"No, it's just people don't usually accept that as an answer." She gave him a little smile. "Thanks, I guess."

"You'd have to discuss this directly with the elves and brownies, but, I know when birds come after the crops the farmers try to," Marianne grimaced, "hunt them, for meat, instead of just chasing them away. If goblins were to help out with that, they might, ah, catch more, and then the meat could be split."

"A long-term arrangement for mutual benefit." Bog nodded slowly. "And hopefully, any relative loss of meat for your kingdom would be compensated by relatively greater crops the birds would otherwise have eaten."

"Like I said, you'd have to talk to the brownies and elves about that. Bird meat is considered … sort of a bonus? Since they aren't livestock. So birds only get reported to the crown if a lot of crops are lost, or if they've started going after people."

"How is this paper made?" Bog picked up one of the Fairy Kingdom's scrolls and held it to the light. "I've noticed it's a different texture than mine."

"It's grass. A grass stalk is cut into thin ribbons and woven together, and then left in the sun until the colour fades." Marianne shrugged as best she could while lying down. "I mean, there's a whole process to soften and preserve it, but that's the basics. Fabric is made in a pretty similar way if we're not just using whole petals. How's your paper made?"

"We used to use leaves or harvest birch-back, but for the last …" Bog tried to recall what he'd been taught, but had to give up and estimate, "two or three hundred years, we've harvested dead tree branches and ground the wood to pulp, then poured that into a pan and let it dry as a flat sheet. I don't know the details either, but I do know old paper can be added to the pulp so it doesn't take as much wood anymore."

"That's really neat."

"Wait, so, officially, goblins don't have different races? You're all just … goblins?"

"Only on paper," Bog admitted. "After the city-states began allying and merging into one kingdom, interracial marriages were encouraged to keep the Forest from dividing back up. In practice, for example, I'm still insectoid," he flexed his wings, "and Mum's still a horned burrower. But it's easier to collect census data based on things like height and weight and diet and whether you have scales or a slime coat or both, rather than having to recite your entire family tree and which traits you inherited from each branch."

"I … guess that makes sense." Marianne tapped her chin with her quill. "We don't have that many pixies on this side of the border, but when they happen, they're usually classed with their mother's race."

"Pixies?"

"You know, hybrids. Between the fay races."

"You're really that divided here? You have a word for –?" Bog shook his head.

"Like I said, they're usually listed as the same race as their mother. Didn't you ever wonder why Plum was called the Sugar Plum Fairy when she doesn't have legs or wings?"

"No."

Marianne unrolled and skimmed the old Fairy Kingdom census scroll she'd sent for earlier; from the year before Bog had banned love potions and imprisoned their brewer. Shortly before he'd come to see her, Marianne had asked for any documentation they had about Sugar Plum. The woman had essentially vanished sometime between Marianne's departure from the Dark Forest and Bog's arrival in the Fairy Kingdom, and the princess wanted to make an educated guess about where Plum might go and what she might do with her newfound freedom.

"She's a pixie; her mother was a fairy and her father was a sprite. It says here her original name was Aura, but she adopted the name Sugar Plum when she came of age. I guess she wanted a traditional sprite name to honour both sides of her heritage?"

"So the Fairy Kingdom's royalty has always followed family lines?"

"About as far back as it's been called the Fairy Kingdom. We don't have many records surviving from before then, so it's hard to be sure what the government was like or if we even had one. Supposedly we were a vassal state of the Dark Forest at one point …"

Marianne's lower lip caught under her teeth. Bog knew plenty of goblins with blunt teeth, including his mother, but it kept catching him off-guard that Marianne didn't have fangs.

"I don't suppose your kingdom would have records of that?" she asked him. "It's probably grim reading, but, I'm curious."

"Ah, there's some oral history, actually; has to do with how my family ended up royalty …" Bog shifted uncertainly. Marianne was right, this was a grim topic. It would likely darken her opinion of him considerably, and of goblins as a whole.

On the other hand, disclosure was important, so they could all enter diplomacy clear-eyed.

"The throne was once passed down through combat. If you could defeat the last king or queen, you claimed their title. Usually the old king or queen was killed, but once in a while they were kept alive as an adviser – which usually ended with the new king or queen assassinated and the old one back in charge."

Marianne winced. Bog looked at his hands and kept talking.

"Eventually a couple, Thunder and Lightning, took the throne together. No one could beat them as a team, and since that's how they beat the last queen, they'd have to be defeated together. They, ah, both switched sexes regularly, so the 'king' and 'queen' titles never really stuck to either of them –"

"Goblins can do that?"

"Some of us. Mostly the amphibious ones. Anyway, Lightning and Thunder each bore a few children and they adopted a few more and they both lived to old age. Then famine struck and they both died. One of their kids – insectoid girl, orange-brown shell like autumn leaves and golden eyes like an owl, so the stories say – she said she wouldn't let Famine be named ruler of the Forest, and if anyone thought they were worthy of her parents' throne they could try to claim it from her."

"And she was your ancestor?"

"There may have been a few more adoptions interrupting the bloodline, but legally yes." Bog cleared his throat. "So, then, she, ah, conquered the Fairy Kingdom. The fays had to, to send a certain number … into the Forest every season, to –" He cleared his throat again, more ominously.

To be killed. To be eaten. To be harvested like livestock.

Marianne shivered. "She must have been seen as a hero. Ending the famine like that." She sounded like she was about to vomit.

"No one wanted to challenge her, or at least there's no record of anyone trying. Eventually the Amber Queen died and her son took over. A few generations later, the fays rebelled and the tithes stopped, but the famine was over by then." Though goblins had continued to hunt fays in any case, until Bog's father had put a stop to it.

"That's probably where our history records begin," said Marianne in a carefully neutral voice.

"I'm sorry," Bog blurted.

"I know goblins used to eat fays, Bog. I heard you telling them not to eat me the other night."

"It's not – it hasn't happened for a long time."

"Not for decades, as far as we know. But there are still a lot of people who remember losing someone."

"And many who remember eating them." Bog cracked his neck and made a desperate grab at a lighter topic. "That's, ah, another reason diplomacy is a good idea. Since, no one would want to eat their friends."

"Not to mention another incentive for us to send food and keep you from starving."

"Dandelion greens, yes, but none of the rest of these. I'm surprised you even have hostas."

"Well, it's too sunny to grow them in most places, but there are a few spots with enough shade. Do you have many in the Forest, then?"

"A few varieties. They're a bit like you how described dandelions – edible but seen as weeds."

"Okay, so if goblins really don't tend to eat any of these, then we don't have to worry too much about compromising our own winter stores." She made a decisive note on one of the lists they were composing. "So if we split the clover with the elves and you can send some hostas to the brownies – for some reason they tend to be allergic to clover, that's part of why we grow hostas – then they can send a larger percent of the legume harvest."

"I would have thought fairies migrated in winter. Or hibernated."

"Hey, just because we look like butterflies and moths doesn't mean we act like them. We don't pupate, either. We hatch with wings. And they're not as sensitive as everyone seems to think – we have to be careful about frostbite, obviously, but short term we can use our wings sort of like a cloak to keep the rest of our body warm."

"So …" Bog looked at her wings. "Are you overheated right now?"

She lifted them again, into a sail arching up from her back instead of splayed across the bed like a blanket.

"No, it's just a nuisance to have to remember to keep them open all the way."

Marianne's wings looked different with light shining on them instead of through them. They were solid and strong instead of glowing and ethereal. The colours were more saturated, vivid as the showiest flower but at the same time deep and dark like his forest.

Alright, Bog couldn't even claim to himself that he wasn't infatuated. When was the last time, if ever, that he'd compared something to a flower and meant it as a compliment?

Damn it all, he was the Bog King, fearsome ruler of the goblins, he who had banned romance in the Dark Forest! (Although he had his doubts about how well that ban had been enforced out of his line of sight.) He wasn't supposed to wax poetic about a fairy's wings!

Even if they were beautiful, and so much darker than the wings of other fairies he'd seen, almost as if she were meant for a darker place than this sunny field …

Damn, damn, damn, damn!

"Bog? You okay?" His eyes darted from her purple wings to her brown eyes. She'd pushed her eyepatch up while writing, so she wouldn't spill the ink. She smiled at him.

"I'm fine." Resolutely not looking at her wings again, Bog pulled a random paper towards him, made sure it was the right way up, and pretended to read it while trying to think of something to say. "I'm … glad you're not in pain."

"Hey, Marianne! I thought I'd keep you company for lunch!" Dawn got a mischievous smile when she noticed the goblin king at her sister's bedside. "Unless you two were planning to make it a lunch date."

"Dawn!"

The curly haired princess just kept smiling. Then she noticed the impromptu desk by Marianne's bed, scattered with papers, and how Marianne's and the Bog King's hands were lightly spattered with ink.

"Have you two spent the whole morning doing paperwork together?" she asked in dismay.

"… More or less?"

(A hosta is a leafy plant that tends to grow in shaded areas. They are edible to humans but poisonous to dogs, cats, and horses.)