Unlike some of the islands they’d passed, there were no beaches or sloping shorelines, and the footing was treacherous, especially for a six-year-old boy, even one who was half goblin. It wasn’t until his uncle, Targin, had helped him climb the jumbled rocks that Jak knew it was the island that his nasty cousin, Nihlo, had talked about every time he came home for a visit. There were the squat, stone buildings where the elders who taught the children lived. There were the trees so bent and twisted that their branches looked like writhing tentacles frozen as they reached for young goblins. There were the stone ridges that formed the maze where goblin children practiced lurking, hiding, and ambushing. And there were the jagged outcroppings that Nihlo swore were actually monsters that came alive at night. When his uncle tried to leave Jak in front of one of the ugly buildings that made up the main part of the school, the little boy clung to him so tightly that the cat goblin had to pry his nephew’s fingers from his hand.
