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"Pssst, Your Highness!"
Elliot jumped back on the sidewalk as his Brownie friend Mr. Willimaker motioned to him from behind a tree. "Oh, it's you. I wondered when I'd see you again."
Mr. Willimaker pressed his bushy gray eyebrows together. "It hasn't been that long, has it?"
"Just a few weeks, I guess--since the Brownies finished rebuilding my family's blown-up house."
Mr. Willimaker nodded as if he had no clue what Elliot was talking about. "Er, yes, naturally I know all about that story, so let's say nothing more of it. I've got to talk to you. It's an emergency."
Elliot sighed and tilted his head in the direction of his home. If he really concentrated, he could almost smell his mother's lasagna from here. And he had the sinking feeling that whatever Mr. Willimaker's emergency was, it meant Elliot might not get any of her delicious dinner.
"Okay," Elliot said, sighing. "Tell me your problem."
Elliot followed Mr. Willimaker deeper into the orchard where he'd been hiding. "If you can be invisible to other people, then why do we have to go so far away to talk?" Elliot asked.
Mr. Willimaker frowned. "I can talk, but you'll look pretty silly talking back to me. You can only talk to invisible people a few times before people start to wonder about you."
"People already wonder about me." Elliot noticed something new about his friend. "Hey, you've got a white patch of hair on the back of your head. When did that happen?"
"It's always been there. You just didn't notice it," Mr. Willimaker said.
Elliot was sure he would have noticed it, but it didn't seem important to push the matter. So he set his backpack down and knelt on the ground beside Mr. Willimaker. "So what's the problem? Are the Brownies okay?"
"Probably. But we need to talk about Grissel."
Elliot's eyes narrowed. "What about him?"
Elliot wasn't the type of kid to hold grudges, but it was hard to forget that as leader of the Goblins, Grissel had scared Elliot half to death and blown up his house. Elliot finally tricked the Goblins into ending the war and eating things for dinner other than the Brownies. All of the Goblins agreed and have lived quite happily with the Brownies ever since. All of the Goblins, that is, but one.
Their leader, Grissel, is cruel and calculating and entirely unpleasant, and that's when he's in a good mood. He is not in a good mood now. That's because in addition to having lost the war, Elliot also sentenced him to hard time in the Brownie prison.
Doing hard time with the Brownies means eating chocolate cake at every meal without frosting or even a glass of milk. You'd be entirely unpleasant too if you had to eat chocolate cake day after day while surrounded by a bunch of Brownies.
"What's the problem with Grissel?" Elliot asked.
Mr. Willimaker clasped his hands together. "It's, uh, just not working out with him. I feel--er, we Brownies feel it's time to release him. We're sure he'll return peacefully to Flog and never bother anyone again."
"Did he promise that?"
Mr. Willimaker's mouth, which he must have opened to speak, dropped a little wider. "I don't, er, think we need to worry about any promises. Just give the order to release him, Elliot, right here and now, and then he can go free and we'll all return to our happy lives."
Elliot scratched his chin. "Are you all right?"
"What? Yes, of course." Mr. Willimaker tilted his head. "Why do you ask? Don't I seem like my normal self?"
"You're acting really strange."
"Ah, well, this is just how I act when I want you to release a prisoner. You've never seen me act this way, because I've never asked you to release one before."
"Oh. Well, I'm not going to release Grissel."
"What?" Mr. Willimaker threw up his hands in disbelief. "Why not?"
"Because he'll just start eating the Brownies again. Until he promises to stop, he has to stay in jail."
Mr. Willimaker's face darkened. Normally, he was excessively polite, and his tidy gray hair and suit made him look like a gentleman. But something about him was different now, and Elliot was sure he heard an angry growl escape his lips. "But Your Highness," he said between clenched teeth. "If you knew how important this is."
Elliot sat flat on the ground and rested his arms across his legs. "What's going on, Mr. Willimaker?"
