Malagach hunched over a damp pad of paper and scrawled business name ideas around the soggy spots. Spatters of rain kept slipping through the planks of the bridge overhead. He ran a slender green finger down the latest entries to his list, scowled with dissatisfaction, and scratched each line out.
“Got it,” a familiar voice called.
Malagach’s brother, Gortok, was picking his way through the other homeless camps under the bridge. A few scruffy humans glared at his intrusion, but at least nobody promised to pummel him if he got “goblin germs” on their belongings. Malagach had received that threat earlier in the day.
Gortok carried a large piece of flat scrap wood atop his head. Even the board could not completely flatten Gortok’s wild white hair, which could compete with a blackberry bush on any day and win the Twisted and Tangled Award.
Gortok plodded across the stream, his bare green feet impervious to the cold water. He clunked the scrap wood against the bridge support behind Malagach. Gortok used his teeth to gnaw a splinter out of his thumb, then he spat the wood shreds onto the damp gravel.
“You’re uncouth,” Malagach said. “How is it possible we’re related?”
“Well, I’ve always figured an ogre dropped you off in front of Ma’s hut since you were too fussy to make a good meal,” Gortok said. “What kind of goblin combs his hair and wears shoes?”
Malagach was about to explain–for the thousandth time–the need to dress well if they planned to start a successful business in a human city where goblins were the lowly paid hired laborers. But before he could speak, his gaze landed on something.
“You wrote on it!” Malagach blurted.
One side of the sign clearly read GOBLIN BROTHERS WORKSHOP in big red letters.
“Yup,” Gortok said. “I found a bingleberry bush on the way back from the junkyard, so I squished up the berries and wrote out the sign.” He held up his hands. Both formerly green palms were stained red.
Malagach slapped his forehead with his own palm.
“What?” Gortok asked. “You said we have to save money until we can afford rent for a real workshop.” He looked around at the camp, its borders loosely defined by scattered trash, the sagging bridge overhead, and half-rotted mildew-streaked supports on either side of the stream. “Not that I mind this place. Reminds me of the mountain caves back home. Oh, are those toadstools?” He veered toward a slimy clump of fungal caps.
Malagach used a stick to pick up a cloth diaper and toss it in the stream. “Ma’s hut back home is palatial compared to this cesspit. In fact, so are the mountain caves. Anyway, I’m still working on our business name, so you shouldn’t have written anything. I guess I can put the real name on the back.”
“What’s wrong with Goblin Brothers Workshop?” Gortok returned with an armful of toadstools. He plucked the cap off one and tossed it in his mouth. “You said we’re going to fix people’s problems. I handle the mechanical stuff–” he nudged a box of hand-me-down tools, one of the few possessions the brothers had, “–and you handle everything else by coming up with your ludicrous plots that get us in all sorts of cells, dungeons, and dragon dens that I have to engineer escapes from, but in the end do actually help people.”
After Malagach unraveled that explanation, he said, “That’s not exactly what I was going to put on the business cards.”
Gortok grinned.
“Goblin Brothers Workshop is a bad name,” Malagach said.
“Why?”
“Just trust me. I took the business and language classes at Harborview Academy while you were immersed in math and engineering.”
Gortok lifted his eyebrows. “And you were sworn to an oath of secrecy? No sharing the business naming tricks with the math students? Maybe your teachers just don’t want you letting slip how boring all that business stuff is.”
“It’s not boring,” Malagach snapped. “Good names have to do with your ears.”
Gortok touched the top of one of the pointed green ears sticking out of his bird’s nest of hair.
“Not your ears specifically,” Malagach said. “Humans, dwarves, elves, goblins–we all have something called the phonological loop.”
“Oh, yeah,” Gortok said.
Malagach blinked. “You’ve heard of it.”
“Naw, it’s just that I was right. This is going to be a boring secret.”
Malagach sighed. “It’s not a secret. It just boils down to the fact that names that rhyme or use alliteration–or both–stick in people’s minds.”
“You don’t think business owners that are green and three and a half feet tall will stick in people’s minds by themselves?”
“People only notice goblins when they need the yard mowed, and even then they can’t tell us apart. They think we all look alike.” Malagach glanced up and down Gortok from wild white hair to toadstool stained shirt to dirty bare feet. “Well, maybe not you, Mister Uncouth.”
“Thanks,” Gortok said brightly. He pointed at the pad of paper in Malagach’s lap. “What have you and your phony thing got for names so far?” He leaned over for a better view, and a chunk of toadstool slipped out of his arms and splattered on the page.
Malagach flicked it off with his pen tip. “Nothing good so far.”
“You’re not lying.” Gortok chortled as he read. “Keen and Green? Savvy Solutions? Problem Professors?”
“I’m just coming up with ideas right now,” Malagach said stiffly. “Besides Problem Professors isn’t that bad. It implies we handle a range of difficulties, whereas your ‘workshop’ makes it sound like we fix appliances. I don’t want to fix mechanical sheep shearers.”
“I don’t want you to either,” Gortok said. “I’ve seen the damage you can do with a wrench.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“The sheep would end up missing a lot more than wool.”
Malagach sighed. “May we continue?”
“Why don’t we have a vote?” Gortok suggested. “On the best business name.”
“A vote between the two of us? If you think that would work, you didn’t deserve all those high marks in math class.”
“No, no, we don’t vote. They do.” Gortok swept his arm out to indicate the two dozen homeless people camped under the bridge.
A couple of them sent surly glares his direction. One man with several missing front teeth was chewing on something that might have been moldy fish jerky. Or a dried goblin ear. Malagach swallowed and avoided his eyes.
“I don’t think they want to help,” he said. “Besides, I doubt they have business backgrounds. And, ah, that woman is wearing her smallclothes on the top of her head.”
“Exactly,” Gortok said. “These people have problems. Doesn’t that make them potential clients?”
“Ah, I was rather hoping for clients with money. Businesses that don’t get paid don’t last very long.”
Gortok shrugged. “Gotta start and make a name for yourself somewhere.”
Malagach scratched his chin with his pen. “That is true. I suppose word-of-mouth advertising starts in the unlikeliest places. If we could get these people talking about the Problem Professors–”
“Goblin Brothers Workshop,” Gortok said.
Malagach grabbed his pad of paper and stood. “Let’s just take the vote before we get attached to that name.” He nudged the sign with his foot so it fell over. No need to influence the vote by letting people see that name beforehand.
Gortok snorted and led the way to the nearest cluster of homeless people. The tall, broad, rag-clad, front-teeth-missing trio of humans did not appear inviting, but if Malagach could talk to them, then the rest of the under-bridge dwellers would seem less intimidating.
“Pardon me,” he said delicately. He paused to find language that had no chance of offending them. “My business associate and I are conducting a survey. Would you care to participate? We can’t remunerate you for your time, but perhaps we can assist you in some minor task.”
All three men stared blankly at him.
Gortok rolled his eyes at Malagach and translated. “Me and my brother fix people’s problems. Need a hand with anything?”
“Yeah, I need a thousand gold. You wanna get it for me, Shorty?”
The men guffawed.
One waved a battered knife. “Maybe we’ll just slice ‘em open and see if they got gold inside.”
Malagach edged backwards. Solitary brainstorming had not been so bad. Perhaps it was time to reacquaint himself with the practice.
Then one man stopped laughing and spoke seriously. “I got a problem.” He produced a tin can with more dents in it than a boulder after a troll bowling game. “I found this can of soup–”
“Stoled it,” a comrade said with a snicker.
“Found it, only I can’t open it on account of the tip of our knife being broken off. Can you get it open?”
Gortok held up a finger, trotted to his toolbox, and returned with an awl and a hammer. A few precisely placed taps punctured a suitable hole. He then dug a sharpening stone out of his pocket and nodded toward the knife.
“I can’t fix the tip, but I can put better edge on what’s left.”
The man accepted the offer. As Gortok started rasping the stone along the blade, Malagach uncapped his pen.
“We handle bigger problems too,” he told the men. “Which do you think is a better name for our business? Problem Professors?” He said that with great enthusiasm. “Or Goblin Brothers Workshop?” He mumbled the last, which prompted a squint from Gortok.
“What was the second one?” the knife owner asked.
“Goblin Brothers Workshop,” Gortok enunciated.
“That’s better.”
“Yup,” the soup man said. “Professors are snooty know-it-alls. Wouldn’t hire one of them for help.”
“Wouldn’t even hire one of them to wipe my crack,” the third man said. This inspired another round of guffaws.
“That’s not exactly the type of work to which we aspire,” Malagach muttered.
Gortok finished sharpening the knife, and he and Malagach moved onto another camp. Gortok sharpened several more blades and fixed a pregnant woman’s stool. This earned them a dinner invitation. It wasn’t as good as money, but considering their current finances, the goblins could not object to a free meal. A can of beans was superior to eating toadstools. At least, Malagach felt so. Gortok kept casting speculative gazes at the toadstool patch, no doubt planning his dessert.
Despite a full belly, Malagach was glum by the time they returned to their little camp.
“Five votes for my name. Fourteen for yours.” Malagach sighed and flopped down next to the sign. “Maybe I just need to brainstorm more ideas. Problem Professors could certainly be improved upon.”
“Nah, I know you Mal. You’ll spend three months trying to come up with the perfect name, and you still won’t like what you’ve got.” Gortok picked up his sign and arranged it so the big bold letters could be seen by anyone who passed by. “Do you want to be under this bridge when winter comes, or do you want to start building your business now?”
“I suppose you’re right.” Malagach flicked a piece of toadstool off the corner of the sign. “You’re uncouth, but sometimes you’re smart.”
Gortok winked. “After all those language classes you took, I’m surprised you get sometimes and always mixed up so often.”
“Hmmm,” was all Malagach said, since a new thought had occurred to him. He could always change their business name when they made enough to rent an office and get a real sign….