Chapter 4: The Last Goblin

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The peddler and I both used the privy when we arrived at the overseer’s cottage, so I know where it is. The path looks different in the fading light.

And I can see the light of the lamp. I’d hardly noticed the lamp before. In daylight, you could hardly tell it was burning. It’s metal and it looks expensive. It hangs from a post carved from bone - something big, maybe even a leviathan. It’s still dark enough for the light to cast a shadow. I hold my hand out under it and see the yellow light below.

Seems odd - but then I see the shiny surface over the globe. It reflects the light down under the lamp.

I need to pee so I hurry along. I follow the path around the bend to the privy, pull my britches down and pee. I’m careful, before I start, to lay my hood by, keeping it well away from the hole.

There’s wind and I feel the mist on my face. I hear the peasants talking in their jibber jabber. I can’t make sense of it.

I finish and pull my britches up.

And the sky goes dark, all at once.

I crouch, left hand over my face, right hand groping around for my hood. The gravel is cold and damp as I prod and feel around.

Then I have it - my hood in my hand.

I rush back to the light of the lantern, hurry into the well of light.

I hear them.

The hisses, the clicks, the snapping of their joints like an old man’s knuckles and knees. I squat right under the lamp, in the spot where I’d held my hand just a few minutes before.

I see the lights reflected in their eyes. There are four of them, I think.

I wonder if I should put on my hood or rush to the door, tell the men that there are goblins -

But the darkness is passing. The sky gets lighter and all but one of the monsters are gone before I can make out the shape of the goblin.

A pointed mouth with sharp teeth, not suited for speech. Little eyes, set close together, big, sharp ears. Their bodies parody man’s - arms and legs, tiny clawed fingers. They wear no clothing and have no industry or craft. Their skin is hard as leather but serves no good purpose, because it burns in light, even after the creature dies.

The last goblin locks eyes with me, not in intelligence, but in hunger.

Then it scurries away.

Clutching my hood in hand, I dash across the way to the door of the cottage.

I wonder if I should tell the peddler that I’d seen a goblin. Seen it closer and better than I’d ever seen one before.

But the peddler was gone and Vesh and I would get ready for the dark.

I remember Vesh being kind to me in another way. He notices, when I come back from the last goblin that I favor one foot and has me show him my feet.

“Blisters,” he says. “You can’t let these things go or you’ll be no good to walk. Sit here, boy,” he says, and he drains the blisters and washes my feet. “Stay off them now,” he says. “Your feet will be tough enough soon enough.”

Vesh gets dressed for bed, pulling on his long night shirt. He shakes out his britches and his shirt and undershirt before he hangs them up.

“Here, boy. Bessil, was it?” he asks as he offers me another shirt - a man’s undershirt, long on me, but not as long as a proper night shirt. “Best to let your clothes rest for the night. Shake ‘em out good!”

The cottage is stone, with bone mortar, proof against the goblins. The door and the window coverings are bone, knotted tight together with mulberry bark, similarly fast against the monsters.

There’s two bunks, but Vesh tells me, “That’s no good. It’s to be cold, in the dark and the fire is tired. Here, we’ll be head to foot.”

Vesh crawls into bed first, rolling onto his side away from me, but looking over his shoulder to see that I settle well. He holds the blanket up for me to crawl under and I settle, my arm folded under my head.

Submitted: March 25, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones