Now my family is on the brink of losing everything. My sister Clara knows the goblin king’s story has always intrigued me, and she’s willing to sacrifice me to get her hands on his money. But I finally have the chance to sate my curiosity.
What will I find when I get there? A man who is cruelly cursed, haunted by a past misdeed? Or the man who will unlock all of my secret desires?
It has been a long time since the Goblin King trusted anyone, but if he is willing to trust me, I might be able to save him and his people. But the witch who cursed him is close at hand, and she doesn’t play fair.
Beauty and the Goblin King is a fairy tale retelling for those who like an adorable happily ever after with a side of serious steaminess!
Chapter One
I was a girl when the goblin king first sent out his messages. Any young, unmarried woman willing to come to his castle would receive one gold piece for every night she spent there.
Everyone whispered about him. What did he want with them? Why was he asking for human girls?
The goblin king was a young man, who used to come to town sometimes, flashy with gold, riding a black horse, accompanied by his friends. They were ugly, noisy tricksters, everyone said. Dangerous.
But there was the matter of the gold.
After his message, he never came to town again. Neither did any of his subjects. They didn’t even trade for the most necessary items, like salt. It was as if all the goblins had vanished.
He was there, though. Desperate women traveled to him from every town and village within several days’ journey, and they got their gold pieces. Sometimes one, sometimes a week’s worth. A single gold coin was a substantial sum, about the cost of a horse, or a wardrobe suitable for attracting a wealthy husband—enough to change a peasant’s stars.
Not that I knew anyone who had been to see him, personally, but the stories went around. The girls who went to see him never said much about the experience, except that he wanted exactly what you might expect him to want, but they didn’t complain either. It was one of the great mysteries of the region. Why had the young goblin king become a recluse, willing to rut any unmarried girl who comes to his doorstep, even if she isn’t much of a catch herself?
To me, there was an air of intrigue about the king. By the time I was a young woman myself, his situation had not changed. People used to speak about the goblins as if they had died out in the region. Many years ago, they said, you could see their bonfires from the road at night, hear their songs. The goblin maidens used to ride into town astride, they said, as naughty as the menfolk.
Maybe I liked the idea of them because I was always given to fancy, always lost in books.
Just around the corner from the large stone house where I lived with my father and three older sisters was the town’s subscription library, and I spent so much time there that I was frequently teased about it.
I was seventeen years old when I was browsing—Local Legends, the book was called. I came across an etching of the goblin king. He had a grinning mouth full of fangs, a mane of untamed dark hair, and two little horns on the top of his head.
Goblins live in small “kingdoms” which are more like what we would call clans, but they are usually very prosperous, due to their skill at sensing out gold and gems within the earth. In the later years of King Stephen’s rein, the goblin king of the Green Hollows disappeared into his cavernous realm, and as of this writing has not been seen since. The only visitors he accepts are young, unmarried human women. It is suspected that he is under a curse, and he and his subjects are barred from leaving the cavern, but perhaps we shall never know what the curse is. Men have made attempts to approach his cavern, but the entrance has vanished. Only a woman traveling alone can find it, and when she returns, her memory always seems a bit hazy.
I stared at the picture of the king for a long time.
It gave me a strange feeling somewhere in my stomach, a sort of twist that was not unpleasant. I was supposed to think he was ugly, but there was something about that grinning, fanged mouth that made me wish I could see him, just once.
“What are you doing?”
My oldest sister Clara snuck up on me that day, and grabbed the book from my hand. “Is that the goblin king? Respectable girls should keep their noses out of that naughty business.”
I grabbed the book back, shut it, and shelved it. “And you shouldn’t be looking over people’s shoulders when they're reading,” I said, but my cheeks were flushed. My fair cheeks had a way of betraying me at inconvenient times.
Ever since my mother died when were young, Clara had become the boss, but she was ten times bossier than Mother ever was. She looked at me like she had caught me getting fucked by our stableboy. “All this reading isn’t good for you,” she declared. “You’re starting to get ideas.”
“It was just a book, Clara. You’re ridiculous.”
“You ought to be out and about, finding yourself a husband, not locked up in here with books.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my cloak off the back of a nearby chair, resigned to coming home.
Clara led the way, her back as straight as a post, her hood always pointed straight ahead. Clara was never curious about anything.
I’d never tell anyone, but way deep down in my soul, sometimes I wondered what would happen if I took the long walk over the green hills to the door of his cave and knocked.
That is, until my father lost all his money, and my wonderings came true.
* * *
At first it just seemed like a bad year. When you’re a merchant, bad years come and go. Some of the grain in the storehouse spoiled. A ship was lost at sea. My father had to borrow from one of the lenders down on Crow Alley, which he hated to do because they charged higher interest. But this had happened a couple of times before when I was a wee thing.
The trouble was, my mother had been alive back then, and all my older sisters were wee things too. Now, they were young women. The twins were looking for husbands. Clara was settling in to be a proud old maid, intending to take care of Father and probably to inherit the house. They were horrified at the idea of looking poor and losing their prospects. They kept spending as if nothing had happened. Appearances must be maintained. Father hardly protested.
Then, came the fire. It started in the night, and swept through all the storehouses on the west side of the river. By morning, all was ashes. All of the goods waiting to be shipped south were lost.
Those months were a whirlwind of denial. My sisters couldn’t believe that we wouldn’t make it out of this. Father had insurance, didn’t he? The insurance company collapsed, unable to make all the payments. The lenders were at our door and soon they were sending very aggressive men to pound on our windows in the middle of the night.
We had to start pawning our things. All of the silver was sold off. The better sets of bedclothes. A few items of furniture. A few pieces of Mother’s jewelry that was not so much in style now—but that was especially painful, because it was associated with memories.
Servants were let go, and we had to start keeping the house tidy ourselves. One might expect Clara to like housework, since she was such a stickler for everything, but she didn’t. Not one bit. She was always trying to get the rest of us to do it for her. I believe I was the only one who actually liked washing and scrubbing. It was a good chance to daydream.
But we were still in trouble, dodging lenders in the street in some embarrassing instances. Marta and Trixie were obsessed with snagging husbands, and terrified that word would get out about just how poor we were.
Soon, we were down to the essentials, and there was no hiding it anymore. We had sold the horse and carriage. The only servant left was the cook, and that was mostly because she had been with us so long that she refused to leave, and would work for nothing but food and board. We were no longer invited to social functions, because everyone knew we were on the brink of losing all respectability, and we didn’t have the money to keep up.
We were
about to lose the house.
It was time for a serious discussion.
“The dowries!” cried Trixie. “Our good name! Why couldn’t this have happened once we were safely married? I thought I had Danny Martin on the brink of proposal.”
“Someone would probably marry Sabela, even if she had no money.” Marta looked at me. I was the beauty of the family, so much so that Father called me “Beauty” most of the time. It had never sat comfortably with me; I didn’t especially want attention. Most of all, I didn’t like male attention. I could imagine nothing more stifling than to be a married woman in Fairhaven. Likely, my husband would be a merchant like Father, who would travel around, while I was home with the servants and babies.
“But Sabela never pays any attention to men.”
“Not real men. Just the men in books,” Clara said. “Books and tales. Like the goblin king.”
I flushed.
“One gold coin,” she said. “That would pay for this house.”
“But no one ever stays more than a few nights,” Trixie said. “He must get bored of them.” She was the closest to my age.
“Trixie, pay attention. One gold coin would shut up the lenders for a little while. Two gold coins, and we could buy some new clothes. People would think we were doing better again.”
“Maybe he won’t get bored of Sabela,” Clara said. “She’s too pretty. And even a few gold coins would buy us another month to think.”
I thought Father would snap at her that he would never, ever do such a thing to me. He would never send away his youngest daughter to sleep with the goblin king.
“We can’t…ask that of Sabela.” He looked very tired, and heaved a sigh. His hand moved to reach for his pipe, and then withdrew when he realized there had not been money for tobacco.
“But what else do we do? Lose the house?” Clara said. “Lose the house where we grew up, where we were born, where Mother died?”
His eyes met mine.
I looked at the floor, flushing again. It was a funny thing about the goblin king. No, you didn’t go to him unless you needed money, so it wasn’t a thing respectable women were likely to do.
But if you were desperate—
It wasn’t viewed the same way as prostitution. He was a magical creature who never left his caverns. I would never see him again. He would never gossip about me. And then, there was the fact that the women never quite remembered what had happened.
“The goblin king only accepts young women who go willingly,” Father said.
“Last year, I caught Sabela looking at a picture of the goblin king in a book, and she turned just as red as she is now,” Clara said. “I think she might do it.”
“Clara!” I had never liked Clara much. But this was the first time I hated her.
“My beauty, is it true, that you would be amenable?” Father asked, tentative, but even in his eyes, I saw something like hope. Like he just wanted someone to solve his problems. He was getting old, his hair thinning, his eyes growing too weak to read, but I still felt a pang when I realized he would let me go.
“I…” My voice died as I saw them all looking at me, my selfish sisters. Why me? I thought. Why shouldn’t one of my older sisters go instead?
But then I realized that if one of them were to volunteer, a different sort of emotion would pass through me, and it would not quite be pleasant. I don’t really know why I wasn’t entirely terrified of the goblin king, why something called me to go to his door now and indeed, ever since I started to become aware of myself as a woman, but it did. I couldn’t deny that. I didn’t exactly want to go, but if someone must, it would be me. Not my sisters.
“I will go,” I said, forcing my voice to be brave.
“Dear god,” Papa whispered. “What am I saying? Sending you to him?”
I stood up, my resolve building. “I will go willingly, as soon as the sun rises.”
I could hear my sisters letting out breaths of relief.
I had always been the strange one, the one who dreamed of a life beyond this city while the rest of them simply dreamed of handsome husbands and greater riches. Maybe, I thought in panic, as I struggled to sleep that night, I have built up an idea of this goblin king simply because going to see him sounds like an adventure. But what do I think will happen? Some hideous, fanged monster will answer the door, drag me underground, steal my virginity, and throw me out again.
What did I really know of him? I had seen a picture in a book. It might be wildly inaccurate. It might not capture his cruelty. I could hardly wrap my head around the idea that he would actually steal my virginity. I thought he must want something else.
It was certainly too late to change my mind. And even sleeping reminded me of the stakes, because I had a proper bed to sleep in with Clara, a feather cover and bed curtains to keep out the cold. If we lost the house, all these things would go. We would sleep on the floor on straw beds like the poor. One night with the goblin king, in exchange for countless nights of warm beds and soft mattresses. Someone must do something.
So, that morning, I put on my best dress, a clean white apron, a wool cloak, and my good boots. (My only boots, actually—it was easy to forget that I had sold the older pair.) The twins had packed lunch in a basket, for it would take all day to walk to the king’s caves.
They kissed me goodbye, standing all in a row like it was my wedding day. I said very little because my voice would quaver. My insides were quivering and buzzing like a hive of bees was swarming inside me.
“My daughter,” Father said. “Please forgive me. At least we know, they all come back.”
Then he kissed my cheek last, and I was so close to tears that I could only wave my hand and nod and force a smile before I set off down the path.
My boots forged a path down the rutted roads of Fairhaven, well traveled paths at first. It was so early that thankfully, not too many people I knew were out, but a young man who had once courted Trixie passed by and tipped his hat, asking if I was going somewhere important. And the baker’s daughter said hello and said I looked very nice today. In both cases, I acted coy, as if perhaps I was meeting a young man and I didn’t want everyone gossiping about it. Well, it wasn’t a lie, even the young part. People reckoned the goblin king was no older than thirty, which was a bit younger than some of the wealthy suitors Trixie and Marta had their eyes on.
Soon, I had left my neighborhood. The houses grew smaller, with larger yards where chickens, pigs and gardens mingled: the small farms that provided much of the food for the town markets. And then, before I knew it, I was walking on the road that led out of town. An old stone wall wove along beside me, and sheep grazed on the green hills.
It was an hour or so to walk to the next hamlet, where my best clothes stuck out even more, so I hurried through quickly. It was deep into the morning by now, so everyone was out and about. I felt as if all the women were looking at me and knew where I was going. I saw heads bow close, whispers exchanged.
But once I made it through, there was nothing between the goblin king and me except miles of lonely road.
Of course, I was not used to walking such distances. Here and there, I had to stop and rest a moment. At one point, I came to an ancient circle of stone. I stopped to admire it, because I had never come this far before, and I was always curious about the lives of people who had lived among these hills centuries ago.
I drained my water flask by mid-day, but clouds were gathering in the sky. Before long, I would have all the water I could wish for and a great deal more. A spring downpour pelted me for what felt like hours, leaving my hair soaked and making my cloak feel heavy on my shoulders.
By the afternoon, I was starting to wonder if I really knew what the goblin king’s cave looked like. Would it be obvious? What if it was a tiny door, overgrown with weeds, tucked into the side of a hill, and in my exhaustion I missed it entirely?
The terrain had grown rockier, the trees taller, the hills larger. My legs dragged. I yearned for dinner, and kept
staring at the sun, willing it to stay put, but it was sinking quickly, as suns tend to do.
The hills were turning vivid colors as the sunlight hit the grasses sideways. Soon it would be getting harder to see. Little creatures rustled in the tall grasses on either side of the road. It was only supposed to be a day’s walk. Had I walked too slow? I wondered what I would do if I never found the place. Should I attempt to turn around and walk home through the night? Sleep in the woods? Just press on?
As I was starting to feel the edge of real despair, I saw an iron gate at one of the bends in the road. It was open, and at the top was an iron arch molded into a official-looking seal, with a moon flanked by two rather gargoyle-like beasts. A path led me forward, around the gentle swells of two green, tree-covered hills on either side. Small wildflowers bloomed in abundance. It was a beautiful, sheltered place.
At the end of the path was a lush rose garden. It was too early in the spring for the roses to be in such proliferation, and yet, here they were, blooming as if it was the middle of summer. Huge yellow ones, pink ones with an almost squarish shape, white ones with frilled petals, red ones with more slender blooms. There was such a variety that somehow, they seemed to compel me to choose one.
I had always liked the wilder roses best. I kept walking around the bushes, trying to find a rose that suited me best. In the process, I spotted a door tucked among the flowers. I didn’t knock yet. I needed to find a rose first.
Ah—there was the one! A smaller, more humble flower in a dark crimson. My hand had just met the stem when the door creaked open.
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