The Good Goblin

by C M F Eisenstein

  “A child?” echoed the dwarf looking deeply into the creature’s green eyes. The budding human remained impassive, only his or her chest heaving up and down, the book rising and falling in cadence with it; then something changed.

  It was a moment when every natural element came together to display a truth to the four figures present that needed to be told. The wind swept the foliage in such a way that the light seized the opportunity and darted through the ephemeral opening. The luminescence threw the dancing shadow off of Cezzum’s corpus, bathing him in a dashing sheen of light, making his features clear and striking to the cowed, coiled, child. The book’s guardian stopped breathing. Its head lifted as if in a revelatory manner. With the aggressor’s back no longer hunched over, it was clear that the child was indeed a girl, but at that precise moment, her bearing suggested that she was a tower of a woman filled with the flame of rage and wrath. Her book idly fell from her hand, tumbling to the ground. Her grip reaffirmed itself with the dagger, the blade her only existence. With an unexpected speed, she leapt forwards, her weapon ready to eviscerate her target. She charged straight for the goblin.

  Cezzum, with Gnarlfang moving like a phantom, parried and deflected the girl’s blade as it swiftly darted high and low seeking any chink in her nemesis’ defence. Their swords clashed and clinked and resounded as they danced through the forest, their feet keeping instep to the leading weapons. Palodar and Tac’quin looked on in baffled consternation. There was no doubt that they needed to rush to the aid of their compatriot, but the notion of slaying a young girl in the process only caused their gall to rise. In a brief respite of the most unusual duel, Cezzum glanced at his friend’s wide-eyed helplessness. Palodar, his sword wavering in his hand, looked on blankly; he stood on the verge of an idea as to how to help, but it was Tac’quin who took the initiative.

  With a strong sweep of its tail, the dragon broke the most beloved contact between the girl’s feet and the forest floor, sending her reeling backwards. Her eyes opened fully and filled with the despair as disbelief became manifest; she collided with the ground; the impact knocked the air from her chest and the blade from her begrudging grip. Cezzum and Palodar immediately seized the advantage. They let their swords fall from their hands and leapt deftly at the girl, each of them grabbing one of her shoulders with one hand and her leg with the other, pinning her to the ground.

  The girl began to howl out in panic - a shriek so virulent that death itself might have been filled with frisson to look upon the face of such a banshee. Tears poured from her eyes, streaking down the sides of her face as she tried with every fibre of her being to squirm out of the dreaded imprisonment.

  “Stop! We will no-,” muttered Palodar, but his placating words were cut off at their knees.

  “Nooo!” wailed the child, her pleading, quaking voice overrun with supplication and terror. “I’s don’ wants to die! I’s a good girl, I’s am! No! Please! Please!” Her face became fixed on the trees above her and the sky further beyond. “Mum, help! Mum!” The girl’s body shuddered in earnest as if it were taken by a paroxysm of the most pernicious ague. Her body became limp; all noise, all movement, from the child was curtailed. Cezzum looked anxiously at the girl’s body and saw her breast still rising up and down. The goblin used the cuff of his shirt and cleared a stretch of dirt off the unconscious girl’s face, displaying the youthful skin beneath. He sighed in relief. Palodar fell backwards onto his buttocks and decided to sit upon the ground for a spell. Tac’quin, looking the human creature over, turned its head over its shoulder to the halflings and with a dour dryness said, “What now?”

  Embers fluttered into the night air as Palodar flung a wooden board onto the fire. The swish of sifting ash and the clangour of debris drummed dully in the ocean of charred remains. Cezzum rummaged through the rubble that was the once lucrative caravan train, searching for any wood that could be used as kindling, sparing the need to fell any thickets or saplings for fuel. They had erected camp on the edge of the road in the hopes that a traveller might chance upon them with news from ahead; sadly there was not an itinerant person on either of the road’s horizons.

  Tac’quin had set the fire ablaze earlier in the afternoon while Palodar had stripped the sole intact caravan which was used by the young girl as a refuge. When the cool afternoon breeze wended its way along the road, the dwarf engineered a simple pallet out of the large tarpaulin covering and various clothes and tightly bundled the sleeping girl inside; he sat down beside her, watching her carefully with concern and tending the campfire as he did so. Tac’quin had sequestered itself away from the group for the remainder of the evening, insisting that the area be properly scouted and secured from foe.

  Cezzum dropped a few more salvaged planks of wood next to his dwarven friend, much to the dismay of Palodar for the sudden clank broke his merry stupor that he had descended upon him from gazing into a warming fire. Cezzum sat down beside him, drawing Gnarlfang, and began to scour the wood of all varnish and veneer. With a sympathising voice Cezzum said, “It must have been a horror beyond all others for this child to witness; the slaughter of all her brethren.” The goblin used his sword to indicate the various mounds of burnt wagons and a particularly large heap of ash further down the road. “Ashen bones of humans and horses lie intertwined with the midden of slaughter.”

  A flake of wood flicked into Palodar’s beard; he looked soberly back at Cezzum and accented to his friend’s thought: “A tragedy of no parallel to be sure.” Palodar turned to the calm visage of the sleeping girl next to him and with a small smile he added: “I do not know if I could have survived something such as this; I have had supper with phagens once and know their hospitality first hand!”

  The goblin grinned at the dwarf. “Indeed you have. Although you hardly acquitted yourself with the similar grace our young attacker here has shown, being tied up and all and ready for a broth.”

  Palodar chortled and elbowed his berating jester in the ribs. “Aye, she did display cat-like dexterity keeping you on your toes - quite the adept duellist.”

  Another shallow strip of wood was shaved off and Cezzum’s face was locked in mischief as he said, “Well, my friend, at least I remained on my toes.”

  “Bah!” exclaimed the dwarf in merry indulgence. “So twice now I have been caught unawares; it is not a trend!”

  “Do not fret; I shall always be there to make up for your dearth of attentiveness.”

  “Ha! Cezzum, if it were not for such a fine fire and breeze, I might take offence to that; instead, I thank you.” Both of the friends gave each other a sly regard. Cezzum placed the effaced and shivered beam of wood onto a pile and looked up to see Tac’quin emerging from the southern woodlands.

  “The forest is clear for miles in every direction; no raiders loom,” said the dragon gruffly. With listless volition it circled around a spot adjacent the fire, surveying if it was fit for its belly; it then sunk onto the ground and closed its eyes.

  Palodar’s brow furrowed. “A surly fellow is it not?”

  “My eyes are closed, dwarf, not my ears.”

  It was fortuitous that the dwarf had a full beard and that a red glow bounced off his face, for none present were able to see the rising colour of his cheeks. One of Tac’quin’s serpentine eyelids slowly raised, its iris shifting in the ambient light, staring at the reposed child who began to stir.

  Amyia’s eyes blinked rapidly as her mind sought to bring her being back to some state of consciousness. A nippy wind blew across her cheeks, but her body felt pleasantly warm and rather comfortable. Stars shone down brightly through the pitted canopy of the woodland eaves; they were soon obscured from sight as a hirsute face floated above her. With a smile of gregarious proportions, and as wide so that it almost cut the face in twain, an affable voice saluted. “Hello.”

  Amyia’s chest tightened. “’ello,” she hesitantly wheezed out. Her eyes darted back and forth. “Wheres am I’s?”

  Palodar looked on, perplexed at the young girl
’s speech. “You are safe. We found you, well, you found us near a wrecked caravan.”

  Amyia sat up in a fever, a lost memory exploding inside her mind. Fortunately the dwarf was quick to react and moved away in time to avoid clashing heads with the girl.

  “I’s wan’ my book!”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears; she fixed her gaze on Palodar. The dwarf’s features were crushed into sympathetic puzzlement; he was dumbfounded and stared at the human child who apparently was speaking some form of ænglix he could not quite decipher. “Eyes won your book?” muttered Palodar with uncertainty.

  A listless voice snapped through the air, hidden behind the blinding glare of the fire. “She said: ‘I want my book.’ It is common among caravaneers’ children to slur their speech and incorporate misplaced plurality into their parlance.”

  Amyia looked into the inferno, but no spring of the oral provenance could be seen.

  “Ah,” uttered Palodar affably, and grinned, “very quaint; it will take some getting used to.” He reached over to his knapsack and pulled from it Amyia’s book. “Here you go; or should I say: heres yous goes.”

  Amyia’s nerves remained taut with anxiety at all that which surrounded her. With a strike, comparable to that of a snake, she snatched the book from him and cradled it against her breast once again, slowly rocking back and forth as if it were a child lost but now found. Minutes passed in safe silence while the girl sat tottering to and fro.

  “Thanks,” she murmured faintly after another handful of minutes had disappeared, her mind finally coming to the realisation that danger, at least for the present, was further away from her than the dwarf and the unknown voice around her.

  Cezzum looked apprehensively at Amyia and then turned his worried eyes towards Palodar. With a touch on the girl’s shoulder Palodar drew her attention to himself.

  “I can only imagine the horrors you have been through here, but I would like to introduce my friend to you… you brawled with him earlier; you must know-”

  The remembrance of her fight with the goblin ignited inside of her. Amyia slowly traced the invisible line drawn from the dwarf’s gesturing hand. Her heart froze and her body froze as she saw the goblin. Cezzum gazed on quite fretfully, doing his best to feign a smile at her and hold up his hand in salutations, but the green halfling’s placating bearing was lost upon her.

  Her blood heated. She nearly leapt onto Palodar’s lap; a dreadful sweat coalesced on her brow as Amyia stood.

  “Please,” cried Cezzum earnestly, “do not be recoil or be afraid; I mean thee no harm.” The goblin hesitated a moment in thought, then added: “My heart weeps for thee and for the ill that my kind has exacted upon thee and your family; I am deeply sorry. You must know that I am not akin to them; we, here, have been sent to halt them.”

  Tac’quin observed the child through the flames, its multitudinous membranes each filtering out various quantities, intensities and tones of light, rendering Amyia pellucid before it. Amyia’s gaze was still locked in innate fear and hatred towards the goblin, but Tac’quin could sense that the air about her was changing ever so slightly.

  Again, the unknown voice filled the young girl’s ears. “The goblin speaks truly; he is without peer amongst his kind – his intentions are noble. No deceit webs his tongue; you may trust him.”

  Amyia looked to her literary benefactor for a sign of affirmation, Palodar somehow suddenly becoming an advising figure to the height equivalent child. With a warm smile the dwarf nodded. Her face and hands trembled less as she more fully regarded the goblin; slowly, tremulously she raised her hand and offered it to Cezzum – it was a well-known and highly regarded gesture of caravaneer women. Cezzum shifted himself forwards and took her hand gently, clasping it between his own two; with a firm and tender movement, he shook Amyia’s hand. A deluge of tension could be felt draining away from the girl as the two released their bonding. Amyia feigned a slender smile at the goblin whose face was still hewn with concern. The smile confused Amyia greatly for upon the sight of the goblin’s kindly mien, her affected gesture became half veracious.

  Amyia’s gaze was snatched by another; her eyelids shot upwards and greatly exposed her wide eyes in such a way that if it were not for the complexity of devices holding them in their sockets, they might have stood a fair chance of popping right out. But it was not an alarm born of fright but rather one of incredulity.

  A dragon appeared around the fringe of the campfire. Tac’quin’s wings were raised high above its body, still folded together, as it stretched the stiffness from its ligaments; the small dragon appeared loftier than it normally did. Its scales flickered a thousand hues between ruby and gold; it all added to the sense of grandeur and astonishment swelling inside Amyia. Strolling idly, Tac’quin moved towards the entranced human, finally resting its head in the air an arm’s length away from her.

  “What is your name, child?”

  “Am- Amyia,” answered the girl timorously, before she turned to Palodar as if the dragon could not hear her. “I’s never sees a dragon before, ‘ist real?”

  One of Tac’quin’s lips raised an inch, the only indication it gave that it was grinning, or hungry; it said, “Dragons are reclusive, but do not doubt that I am corporeal.”

  She looked at the dragon for a moment, her eyes mystified, then once again turned to the dwarf. “What’s coopereal mean?”

  Palodar laughed as he shrugged. “I do not know that ænglix word.”

  “It means ‘relating to the physical’ or, in this case, that Tacquin is indeed real,” offered the goblin casually.

  Amyia’s brow furrowed as she regarded the goblin and the dragon. “Goblins and dragons whos speak betters than dwarves and humans, I’s think I’s in one of mys book’s stories!”

  “There are many strange happenings in the world at the moment, Amyia,” declared Palodar, “these two are by far the least of them that I have seen; which too should be a mighty fine indication of what I have seen.”

  The dwarf was about to continue weaving his tales for the mesmerised child when Tac’quin interrupted curtly. “Tell us, child, what transpir- what happened here? Why is such a forlorn wretch such as yourself drawing breath when it is clear many others have perished to foul hands.”

  Cezzum sent a glowering look towards the surly dragon; the chastisement was lost on the winged creature. Inching himself forwards, Cezzum gently took Amyia’s hand in his own again, her eyes entrapped with his, and he reassuringly said, “What our unfriendly companion here means to ask is: if it is not to trying on thee could you tell us what occurred here and especially how you managed to escape.”

  The young girl let her gaze stroll across each of those present in turn, her mind furiously debating what as to what should be done or said. The memories of the slaughter, and more poignantly of her mother’s death, still brought grisly tears of consummate melancholy to her eyes; she bit each one back and hid them away. She not only prevaricated on the pain of recounting the story to those gathered, but also upon whether or not they were to be trusted. Tension had contorted her face to those around her; they all, however, remained silent and only looked on kindly, apart from the dragon whose indifference was clearly demonstrated, although Amyia sensed that the dragon’s own curiosity raging within for its eyes were unyielding. Amyia was in a place she dreaded the most – one of little choice. Her rescuing captors seemed well-meaning and truly concerned; it was that token that finally brought her mind to a vague point of resolve.

  She released the comforting hands of both the dwarf and goblin. Standing up, she absently warmed herself at the fire. The blinding yellow flames filling her teary-eyed vision; the flames would hide them from the others she hoped. With an unexpected voice which quivered, Amyia started to recount her tale from the moment she was thrown into the back of the caravan by her departed mother.

  “’An that’s when I’s ran – a whole bunch of ‘em chasin’ me,” she cried, sitting with her back to the fire and with tear-soaked chee
ks from the telling of her mother’s slaying. She looked at the lambent faces feeling every word she told, for even the dragon’s mannerisms had softened slightly.

  Cezzum’s own sympathetic impetus caused him to want to move to comfort the grief-struck child, but a quick glare and snap of Tac’quin’s head, who saw the trappings of movement from the goblin, inhibited the goblin’s designs.

  “I’s felt like I’s ran forever, duckin’ under brushes ‘n even climbin’ up ‘em trees, to get away. A lot of ‘em hads stopped chasin’ me ‘an had gones back to the road; I’s a very fast runner I’s is, but theres was this one phagen whose wouldn’t stops, an’ I’s don’t know how but hes was following me all the times no matters what I’s did.”

  With the recounting of her mother’s death at an end in her tale, Amyia’s mien began to take on a prouder and more energetic feel to it, more so than she herself had felt in days.

  “So I’s climb this tree rights, ‘n sit between alls these branches ‘an I’s wait. Sure enough, minutes or two later the creature comes a sniffin’ rounds the tree, ‘n he starts to climbs it! As he’s climbin’ I’s jump downs on him an’ my knife goes right straights into hes head, but its real toughs sos its scrape ‘n slide straights into his neck. ‘N then we’s both falls to the ground; luckly I’s lands on top of him, and hes back also snappeds when we’s hit the ground! I’s loved thats sound!” As to both visually and aurally emphasise the moment, Amyia pulled her lips into a wide snarl of mirth that was filled with a satisfaction of exacting revenge. With gesticulating hands, she slammed them into each other with a crash and sounded a piercing pop from her mouth.

  Palodar threw an askance look towards his goblin friend, seeing if he too was smacked with the sudden worrisome ardour whose mantle had just been donned by the girl.

  “Then I’s pulleds the knife out stucks it in him again, jus’ to make sure hes was dead. I’s ran backs to the road, this time bein’ very quiet an’ hiding in the bushes. They’s were doing terrible things! Men who’s survived were bein’ cut and tied up ‘n carried off; women and youngin girls, jus’ like me, were bein’ raped, while ‘em others were cuts down like chickens ‘n eaten rights there, before me’s eyes! I’s couldn’t watch anymores an’ I’s ran back into the forest ‘n I’s find this big ol’ tree with big roots comin’ up outa the ground, an’ theres I’s just hid untils midday.”