Her doubts increased when the ancient gobliness held up her hands, cried, “Wait! Wait!” and then farted with such violence that it raised her several inches off the floor.

The smell caused Violet to gasp in shock, and she grabbed a nearby stalactite to keep from falling over.

Flegmire, however, sighed in contentment and said, “Well, now that I can think again, tell me what it is you want.”

Eyes watering, the princess explained her difficulty.

“A sad story,” said the gobliness. “But I still do not know what you want of me.”

“You are the wisest of your kind,” said Violet. “Don’t you know anything I could do to rid myself of this smell?”

Flegmire hooked a curved green fingernail over her enormous lower lip. “You can’t think of anything yourself? No hints you’ve had along the way?”

The princess started to say no, then stopped. She swallowed nervously. “Well, Bindlepod’s frog did mention something about . . . Fire Lake.”

Flegmire spread her arms as if the whole thing had been the essence of simplicity. “Well, there you go! If you already knew about that why did you come here to bother me? I’ve got games to play, you know.”

“But the frog said the lake would change me,” said the princess.

“There are worse things that can happen,” said Flegmire. “Not changing isn’t so good, either.”

“But how will it change me?”

“What do I look like?” asked Flegmire. “A prophet? You want to get rid of your smell, you go in the lake. How you come out, that’s no concern of mine.”

“Well, can you at least tell me how to get there?” asked Violet.

Flegmire smiled. “Sure,” she said. “That’s easy.”

That night—night and day being pretty much the same in Nilbog—Violet rose from her bed in the little stone cottage behind the palace grounds that the goblin king had given her to live in. She put on her riding clothes, then slipped out the door, intending to saddle up the frog and ride to Fire Lake. But she hadn’t gone more than ten paces from her door when Bindlepod stepped from behind an enormous mushroom and said, “Going somewhere, my darling?”

Violet jumped and gasped. “What are you doing here?” she cried. Then, spotting the frog, who was crouched on the far side of the mushroom, she hissed, “Blabbermouth!”

The frog merely shrugged.

“He does have his loyalties,” said Bindlepod. “As do I. If you are going to do this thing, then so am I.”

“You can’t!” cried the princess.

“Piffle,” said Bindlepod. “There’s no point in only one of us taking the risk. If we’re going to change, we might as well change together.”

And nothing the princess could say would dissuade him.

So together they rode to Fire Lake, a journey that took them ever deeper into the earth.