Fate Deals the Cards

  Temperance

  Ch 7 Boogie Knights and Dance-Hall Daze

  “I go back, search camp for loot… again.” I mumbled, as I clambered back onto my reed boat in the morning sun. The galling embarrassment lingered in my guts, souring my insides. I wasn’t going to be fit for company, until I got this mess sorted out. “Take care of her… Back by nightfall.”

  Beryl and Emmie waved distractedly, deciding I was too weird to argue with and too crazy to figure out; they had women’s work to do. They hustled their charges into the house before I even finished untying from the crude pier by the garden gate… Which was a small gap in the thorny briars surrounding our home.

  Three days’ travel afoot through the marsh for a goblin family was about three hours by boat, at a leisurely pace. I poled along in silence, contemplating the night’s events. I’d had a steel dagger in my hand and dropped it in the mud, while mulling the belt and scabbard for their leather content… that was weird as hell. I replayed it in my mind, the moment when I dumped the human’s coins into the bog, cause I was pleased with the pouch!

  “I’m going full goblin…” I muttered around a mouthful of juicy, raw skeeter, while flicking its wings and legs into the slow moving water to feed the fish.

  The whole thing made no sense… Even thinking about using that steel dagger felt ookie and super weird. From my perspective, as a human with missing memories and a goblin body, I felt I was becoming an expert in weird stuff.

  Back at the sight of the battle… or rather, at my triple murder scene, I struggled long and hard with the strange tools, weapons and armor, but I just couldn’t seem to see any way to use the stuff and even thinking about carrying it away felt… disgusting. I could see the craftsmanship and understood how the things were created, on some pretty deep levels. I got a distinct sense that old me knew his way around a forge, but I wasn’t feeling it. Unlike those skills I could use, that knowledge seemed distant, unachievable, exhausting to think about and super janky.

  I had picked the place clean on my first pass; at least, everything I was allowed to take… Which really burned my ass! I could see that dagger, lying there and intellectually I knew it was super useful… Nope, I noped, while having trouble looking at it for too long.

  I was stuck in the stone age and something was pushing back, whenever I tried to get around that problem. It felt like something I’d have to push through, somehow. Until then, I would have to focus on refining and improving what I did have access to. “Like one of those civilization games…” I grumbled.

  I poled my boat away, after dumping everything I wasn’t taking, into the bog. Despoiling the stuff felt really good, very goblin-like, which somehow made me feel better about not being able to take the stuff for myself. Even in hindsight, I couldn’t attach any value to those coins, while the knights’ armor and weapons weren't worth a moment’s thought. I had my nice, new obsidian tipped spear, my blowgun and darts and a short, flint knife. What more did I need?

  Metal armor was stupid, when crawdaddies were so tough-shelled and tasty! I was feeling snacky, so I mashed a few skeeters into goop and started fishing for ‘daddies as I drifted home on the current.

  I got home before sunrise, with three big, ugly, dead pinch-monsters in the boat and a good sized catfish. I had another mouth or two to feed, after all.

  Emmie met me at the pier, looking harried and upset by my catch.

  “Ghaa! Nasty! Ugly-buglies are tasty, but I don’t wanna see, as you say, ‘how the sausage is made’. It’s creepy!”

  Her complaints didn’t stop her from jumping up and hanging off my neck like a monkey, though. “My Baby-not is wearing off… put those things out of sight and come to the baths with me!”

  She tugged and hauled at me until I complied, letting her steer me wide of the house and around the back. She was acting all snuggly and extra attentive, which, frankly I quite enjoyed, despite her obvious efforts to keep me out of the house.

  She bathed me very carefully… which was more like a full body massage, handjob and make out sesh, rolled into a wet, slippery, herbal soap party. I was already steaming and ready to hump a granite boulder into gravel, when she giggled, smirked and sighed in mocking disappointment.

  “Oops! Tummytime hasn’t started yet, maybe tomorrow… Guess I gotta yummy down all this goblin-meat!”

  I was in no position or state to argue, especially when she giggled like that, jiggling her plump little gobbo boobs at me, while clutching her favorite snack.

  A little while later, when I could try to speak again, I cornered her against the curb of the pool, pressing against her with my much greater bulk and physically dominating the tiny goblin girl..

  “Emmie…” I growled, trying my best to sound scary. To be fair, I was a big, muscular and dangerous goblin, with a face full of terrifying teeth that contorted my lips in unpleasant ways, so scary was a good look for me.

  “Yes, husband?” She asked with the sweetest, cutest smile ever on green-apple cheeks… Then she stuck her big toe between my buttcheeks and nudged my asshole.

  I laughed so hard I split my lip and had to submerge under the water to halt my giggles. “Yub yub… You is a big and scary gobbo! With a ticklish tush!”

  She stuck her tongue out at me and zipped across the bath, squealing with phony terror, while making certain that her plump little green butt was always waggling at me.

  That ate up a good portion of the morning, once I blindfolded myself to protect my eyes from the sun. I wound up sprawled under the berry bushes, curled up with my little green darling, snoozing the day away. When she stirred, stretched and reached out to grab me again, I gave her ear a careful whisper. “You could just ask Ghnash to stay outside. Tippi scared, yub? Big-scared?”

  Emmie blushed and nodded soberly, while continuing to paw at me, keeping up her ‘distraction’ anyway. “She’s big-scared. Her thinkin’ stuff is all messed up right now, so we hide her away. We would hide her in a burrow in the woods until she’s better, but can’t hide her from you.”

  She wriggled against me and purred warmly.

  “Promised Beryl I’d keep you outside for a few days… but I drank babynot a few days ago, to give my baby-maker a rest.” She shrugged and smiled at me, so delightfully happy with herself it was adoreable. “I gotta do what I gotta do.” And then she was back to gobbling me down and making happy noises.

  When the afternoon set in and the swamp fell into a slow, languorous mood, I pried Emmie off of me and took her around to the back door… and down into the basement workshop.

  Dirty minds, all of you.

  She complained and griped,until we were in the cool, dim interior, among my tools and supplies. I’d simply dismissed the door to the main house as we entered, cutting all connection between the upper and lower floor. To be fair, I was, and remain, unsure whether my basement is really there or not…

  Our silt island was stable and above the waterline, but any underground space should have flooded to neck height within a few minutes, if it existed in the ‘real’ world.

  Existential concerns aside, the girls almost never came down into the workshop, considering it my private space and losing all interest in my wetland flotsam, junk and dead monster parts when they did come downstairs.

  The ladies struggled with the idea of a structure with multiple rooms, already; the concept of a separate space under the same roof was bizarre in their eyes.

  “We are alone. They will nub see, smell or hear me, down here.”

  Emmie peered around for a few seconds, wrestled with the new idea, shrugged at me then went back to stalking her meaty prey. “Okies, we can be loud!” She declared, while grabbing at my stuff.

  “No.” I said firmly, with a wag of my taloned finger. She cooed, purred and wriggled against me, insistent as a cat that smells cream. “No!” I flicked her ear with a taloned finger and booped her nose gently.

  “I promised to keep you away from them!” She whined pitifully.

  “Ghnash stays down here. Working. Is okie. Understand.” I pulled her to me, soothed her and stroked her hair for a few moments. “Is okie. Just ask me for stuff. Ghnash will help.”

  “Yeah, I suppose…” She sulked and grumbled. “But I had an excuse to gobble up as much of you as I wanted…” She whined. “Don’t even have to feel guilty, since it’s just empty calories! Ghnash’s junk is junk-food!”

  Her sassy and entirely sexy giggle weakened my resolve, but I had a lot to think about and plenty of work to do. “Emmie… respect Ghnash’s personhood.” That was tough to say, because of the teeth and because she deflated a little and drifted over to a cozy little nest by the pottery kiln, where it was always warm.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I had fallen into communicating with the girls by grunting and pointing, mostly, since speaking was so risky and challenging, but I had questions to ask. She wasn’t going to be able to answer and I wasn’t going to be in any condition to insist, if she had her way, so I had to be strict.

  Her scent and constant teasing had me on a low, rolling boil, but my nose told me her tummytime was still a day or two off; that meant she couldn’t… accommodate me without discomfort.

  It seemed that most gobb men couldn’t even get it up, until a fully ripe female crossed their nostrils, triggering a mating frenzy. At the same time, the ridiculously outsized tackle all goblin men bore was a terrible match-up against the goblin girls, who were smaller, weaker, underfed and seldom asked for their opinions or consent.

  Emmie honestly never even considered just asking me to avoid Tippi and her baby. She knew with certainty I would, happily, too. But the concept of just asking a male for something was crazy, in her mind. It took a lot of gentle and painstaking questioning to get to the heart of the matter and even longer for me to get the message across. Which was almost entirely my stupid teeth getting in the way.

  “So, I ask… and you’ll just do stuff? That’s as weird as your always eager baby-stick!” She complained, while grabbing at me again. “Enough talking, gimmie my treat now!” She had no trouble making demands in that area, none at all. To be honest, she was a little bossy and a lot sassy, which tickled me in a lot of ways. Her genuine and ardent appreciation for my ‘charms’ went a long way there.

  We both learned a lot from each other over the next few days alone in my basement by day and in the yard by night.

  Emerald was as bright as her name suggested and far less feckless than she pretended; which was another tool the girls used to manipulate their male overlords, as best they could. There was a whole separate culture of female interactions that males never got to see, for obvious reasons.

  All goblins preferred to be nocturnal, except gobblings and their mothers. Goblin women became mostly diurnal during the sudden hormonal shift of tummytime, and only went back to partially nocturnal life after their pups weaned. Only after their pups left the nest, would they become fully creatures of the night again. Females gathered into loose tribes, once they had pups, which would eventually draw in a would-be Chieftain, to make himself lord of the village.

  Chieftains rose and fell with regularity, in the natural cycle of chaotic goblin life, ruling for a while, until toppled by a new, bigger, stronger gobb, or until they became intolerably obnoxious. When the demands and bullying became too much, at some point the women and their children would begin slipping out into the daylight and find new homes in the wilds, leaving the chieftain ruling an empty collection of huts.

  In the wild, outside the influence of a chieftain, goblin men would roam the wilds alone, seeking food and females, living little better than the simplest animals. When more than one solo male gobb encountered a female in season, a battle to the death was inevitable, often taking the lives of both, or all the participants.

  Imagine a free-for-all knife fight among a pack of naked, horny, stupidly well endowed little idiots… The ‘winner’ was oftentimes little more than a bloody mess, dying on the swamp grass.

  Biology and ‘culture’, such as it was, almost entirely divided the population down the middle, since goblin women vastly outnumbered goblin men and both sexes possessed an almost self destructive reproductive drive, when in season.

  A loose network of swamp witches, hiding in the wilds dealt in potions, like babynot, simple charms and spells, divination and kept the oral history of the race, such as it was.

  In the settlements and tribes, a matriarchal system operated in secret, pushing and pulling the volatile and unruly males in subtle ways. Endless generations of subservience had turned the goblin women into experts in the use of soft power and left them just as expert at dealing with the trauma their lives dealt out so openhandedly.

  Beryl and Emmie took Tippi and her babe in, tended them, ‘hid’ them from their male and then released her into the wilds a few days later, as if this were the expected outcome.

  “She will hide from all males for the rest of her life. Will apprentice a witch and never more have babies.” Emmie told me soberly, the morning she left carrying a sack of supplies.

  “Tell me about your witches, Emmie.” I said slowly. I’d been practicing talking and it was mostly safe, now. “You said she will apprentice. Are all witches women?”

  “Oh, yub-yub! All women. Learning witchery is not for men, not at all. Witches must give up babies to learn magic. Is always so!” She nodded eagerly, then dove back into her heavily sweetened mint tea and wild oatcakes. “So sweet…” She moaned in pleasure over her treats and giggled at me.

  “But I’m a boy and you say I’m a witch.” I mumbled, while pouring her some more tea and loading it with honey from the hives scattered around our island home. That was the real reason I moved us to the delta… Trees and bees.

  She fluttered her eyelashes at me, silently demanding even more honey, before she would answer. Once her cup was sweet enough, which meant it was basically syrup, she sat back and smiled. “Yub, you is a witch, it’s certain. Just another way you’re weird.”

  “Hey…”

  The little pest had taken to hanging out in the workshop, staying up late to talk with me, since I slept very little. More than three or four hours and I would wake cranky and irritable, just like when I skipped my morning and nightly spear dance practice, daily meditation or left my panflute idle and silent too long.

  Just as my internal energies were unbalanced and difficult to wrangle, without constant work, I found myself walking a tightrope between my raging desire for Emmie, my desperate fear of accidentally hurting her if I got too… excited and her eager willingness to put herself in that kind of peril, when her stinky brew of herbs and roots wore off. Even under the influence of her potion, I could smell her, but only when she was close, or too close, like now. I sat her back on her stool and warmed her tea a little, after prying the wriggly little munchkin out of my lap.

  Cooking was another thing they took to eagerly and with dedication that impressed me. Beryl was a real genius in the kitchen and a dab hand with herbs, once I gave her a few lessons on the use of my clay pots and hearth. Simple soups, stews and roasts were her limit so far, but she loved the work and continued to improve on her own. Perhaps because she had less contact with me, when she stuck close to her herbs and cookpots in the kitchen…

  The poor dear remained skittish and awkward, even though I clothed myself constantly on the grounds, in defiance of gobbo tradition. The times she happened to see me naked, she would always flee; unless her babynot tea was wearing off.

  We passed a long, peaceful season, out on our island in the delta, where goblin men seldom roamed. I harvested the hives and hunted beasts, bugs and monsters for meat, while the girls foraged.

  Little Sapphie had become a busy, active little runtie, zipping all over the garden, tasting everything and being generally marvelous. Beyond simply precocious, she had a keen and eager mind, hidden behind her silly antics and constant goofing.

  “Papa Ghnash, taste this beetle! They’re super gross!” She chirped from a banana tree Emmie had managed to transplant into the yard. She held a small stink-roach out, the butt end of it aimed right at my face.

  “Oops!” She giggled, when it predictably discharged a huge, snotty ball of filth at me, propelled by a wet popping blast of its own explosive, volatile farts.

  I wiped the oily, acrid and acidic bugshit off my face and growled at the terrible little darling for like the tenth time today.

  “Bad Sapphie!” I complained, splitting my lip as a bonus, which also made her laugh. I took away her filthy roach and tossed it out of the garden, beyond the warding line. “Nub bring stuff in! And nub go outside the wards!”

  ‘Yub-yub, papa! You is the boss of me! Yub-yub!”

  She lied merrily. The awful little wretch was already gone, skipping away to the kitchen, eager to tell her mother and auntie about her latest victory and receive their praise for her cleverness… Goblin life was filled with challenges.

  Our island was safe from wandering gobs, but my warding circle around the house wasn’t proof against the larger, hungrier threats in the delta. A croc or gator could snap up an unwary runtie from the waterside in a single gulp. Just as snakes, scorpions, giant crayfish, mudcrabs, giant coconut crabs, giant spider or any number of winged creatures might fly by, looking for a snack.

  I worried constantly about her unescorted roaming, but Beryl and Emmie seemed largely unconcerned, so long as she remained on the island.

  At around twenty pounds and two feet tall, she looked and behaved like her mother and auntie in miniature, slim, bright green and cheerful, she was the picture of a young, healthy and happy little gobb… and almost fearless.

  She constantly played with my musical instruments, often slitting my drumheads of frogodile skin, or gouging the fingerholes of my flutes with her sharp little talons. She wasn’t making music, yet, but she got a little closer every day, just by exploring the toys I made just for her. My panflute I kept stowed securely away from her reach, that was still a work in progress, as I slowly inscribed new lines and phrases almost every day..

  The girls couldn’t understand why I didn’t get mad or hide the things away from her grabby little claws, while I got a little more excited as she discovered new things, slowly but steadily. I’d tried teaching the ladies to play simple percussion, but they couldn’t get beyond the most basic beats and simplest time signatures; perhaps because they lacked a concept of time in general.

  Sapphie grew up in my house, though… My home came complete with a chime of sweet, resonant bamboo softly rattling the hour and half hour every day and night in the common room. I didn’t plan it or create it, the thing was just there from the start, hanging by the front door and clattering the measured passage of the day all by itself.

  My adopted daughter figured out the idea all on her own, and began to grasp simply counting the chimes to know the time all by herself. That was my little girl, cute as a button, sharp as a pin and a holy terror when she got bored.

  Those toy instruments were slowly and surely unlocking the secrets of time, timbre, key and melody in her eager little cranium. Each evening, as I practiced my panflute, waiting for the sun to fully set, she joined me in the garden with her current favorite toy and tried valiantly to follow along.

  Instruction in my alien arts was hopeless, just a complete waste of time in every way… It was much like my inability to use, or even collect metal goods or tools. What she discovered for herself, she absorbed, digested and expanded in a steady and deeply satisfying way. I was most helpful as a toy dispenser and backing track for her experimental goblin jazz wanderings.

  Once she made a breakthrough, I kinda hoped that her mother and Emmie might be able to unlock those secrets with her help. I wasn’t really goblin enough to teach them the human arts and crafts I had access to, it just couldn’t translate across the weird interference effect.

  “You think too much, papa.” Sapphie griped, when my slow and steady chromatic scale exercise bored her to tears.

  “Gotta think, gotta go slow, baby. I has teefs everywhere.” I mumbled between breaths. “Take solo… Play around me.” I mumbled, hoping to spark a little innovation in her.

  Her little bone flute began to whistle and pipe along, slowly following my scale progression along. I shifted to skipping around the circle of fifths, chasing triplets and letting her try to predict where I would land next, in a playful little game of cat and mouse. I almost heard an audible click in her head, when she grasped the concept, naturally and in a deeply profound way.

  “Oh! Tricksey tricksey! Papa is sneaky!” She giggled, at the end of ‘Piper In The Dell’, a simple country reel from… I had no idea where Wheatford was, but the name whispered in my ear anyway.

  “Good girl! Lets try…” our fun and games ended when I pierced my tongue with a fang, in my excitement.

  “Aww, it’s only funny when you bite yourself yellin’ at me.” she sulked, while I tended to my wound.

  “Sorree…” I moaned, while she helpfully cleaned the blood out of my pipes.

  “You never let me play with this one, papa…” She muttered quietly, during my first aid session. “I hardly break your toys any more, can I try? Please?”

  That was my kryptonite… and she knew it, the awful little monster. “Be careful…” I sighed, once the bleeding stopped fully.

  “I know it’s important, papa…” Sweet music rose from her lips a moment later, drifting higher and higher into the sky as I sat, entranced. Her nameless, wild song moved me to tears, along with the pain in my brutalized tongue.

  “That’s yours now, Sapphire.” I whispered, when she stopped for a long breath and a giggle of joy. “If it breaks, bring to me, I fix. Yours. Good girl.”

  Her brief hug and giggling, ecstatic departure felt warmly bittersweet, as did the music that rose across the yard, where her mother and auntie were just heading in to bed.

  Night time was mine, a time to roam and contemplate my arts in the stillness and chaos of nature, seeking my next elusive clue to the foundations of this world’s magic. Old, dead me from earth was not much help.

  His human memories of folk tales and myth had clues to the general concepts, but the reality of the subtle and all pervasive energies trembling just beyond the veil of mundane perceptions… one needed only look deeper and search for the truth, deep within the…

  “Papa… I broke my new flute… Fix it!”

  “Coming Sapphie!” I mumbled as loudly as I dared, heading inside. I had work to do.