Tammy’s Reviews > The Princess and the Goblin > Status Update

Do I even need to say influence of the moon? LOL Her courage grows. Then she finally sees the lights of her house. She walks quickly and entires the house and goes striaght up to the stairs of the tower. Nurse finally misses Irene and begins to search. It is too late for Irene is already at her grandmother’s door.

Irene sits on a rock, mad at herself for forgetting about her promise. She’s alone in the dark without a hat or coat on a cold night. She feels a drop of rain (quality of mercy?) and looks up. She sees a full moon in the oddest place and then remembers that it is not a moon. It is the lamp her grandmother keeps on at night to guide her pigions home! She walks down the hill quietly, hoping she will not meet anything.

Fear causes her to do the worst thing possible. she runs out of the house, through the gate, and up the mountain road, leaving her at the mercy of goblins and creatures. This reminds me of Ransom’s mad dash in Out of the Silent Planet. She keeps going until she runs out of breathe. She finally collapses on the ground until she can breathe. She realizes she has no idea where she is and what she shuould have done.

She plays with her doll house for an hour and then it becomes tiresome. Lootie goes to get tea but opens the window before she leaves becase it is stuffy in the room. Lootie was gone for a long time. Suddenly, a creature jumps into the room. She should have gone up the steps but she was afraid it would chase her down dark passages. She forgets her solemn promise to her grandmother.

Irene keeps asking herself if she really has a grandmother upstiars in a room with a spinning wheel and a moon lamp with those pigeons that feed her eggs. All she needs to do is go up three stairs and she can find the room. She is in such a dreamy state that Lootie wonders what is going on. She tries to get information but fails. Irene has only one week before she can prove herself. On Friday, she keeps busy.

Some of the creatures swam the stream to get above ground. The guards try to catch the creatures but they are too fast for men. They do not follow the creatures to see where they are coming from. They are happy to see them leave the lawn.

One by one, guards start to see the cobs in groups and they join the believers until there is only one denier left. Whenever it happens the new guard is freaked out and they forget to chase down the cobs. They make unnatural sounds that he describes as horrible dissonance. I thought they are cobs but they are the pets that the cobs brought with them when they moved under the earth.

Ch. 13 One of the new guards is ribbed for telling others about an encounter he had with the cobs. He has never scene creatures like this. He found them grotesque. He shoots and arrow at one and the creature howls. But, he never found the arrow nor the creatue. Everyone laughs at the guard and tells him he’s drunk. It’s like a ghost or alien story. In time, another guard sees a creature and joins the first guy.

He is confused for they are digging in the wrong place for a flood. It must be the other part of the plan. He often has to retreat. He’s not afraid of them. He doesn’t want them to realize they are being watched. He winds it up before going home in a hodge-podge way. While he rests, his mother unwinds it and winds the ball properly. Reminds me of crocheting with little kids. He has no idea what their back-up plan is.

Her rough hands are beautiful because of what she did, which makes Curdie willing to work hard for her in return. Rather than dwell on these things, they just do it. Every night Curdie works for a few hours. Then he climbs through the whole with a ball of string (like fairy tale pebbles or breadcrumbs) to avoid getting lost in the goblin hall. On the third or fourth night, he finally finds goblins hard at work.