Chapter 02 Greedy Goblins who Touched the Trash

My hand, still hovering, began to shake. A full-body tremor, starting deep in my core. I had nothing to lose, so nothing could hurt me. Now, these five warm eggs in a pile of garbage were a chain, and they were being looped around my ankle.

“I can’t, Grub. Don’t… don’t let me near them.”

“Hermit…”

“You don’t understand!”

I scuttled backward like a beetle, my back hitting the cold rock wall, putting distance between my pollution and their purity.

“Everything I touch… it ends. My kin. My home. The forest… it spit me out just to watch the rest die! This is all you have left. The last good thing. My stink is death. I’ll curse them. I’ll… I’ll look away for one second and the heat will fade, or a monster will smell my stench on the air and dig its way in!”

Fort spoke first. He didn’t look at me, but at the eggs.

“We all got that stink, gobby friend. Snag and me… we ran. We left the hatchlings screaming. You think our hands are clean? You think our smell is any sweeter?”

Snag nodded, touching his torn ear.

“The farm… the adventurers… they left their mark. Not just here. We’re all cursed. That’s why we’re here. Not ‘cause we’re the strong ones who survived. ‘Cause we’re the broken ones the forest didn’t bother finishing off.”

Grub crouched down in front of me.

“Listen. You think your bad luck is stronger than this cave? Stronger than this heat we make with our own muck? Stronger than us? We been keepin’ ‘em alive. All of us. With our cursed hands. Your two cursed hands ain’t gonna make it worse.”

“But why risk it?” I pleaded, “Why bring me in here?”

Grill answered, “Because you’re our gobby friend. You remember proper songs for turning of eggs. The stories you’d tell a clutch so they’d know their ancestors before they’d even cracked shell. Snag’s got the touch. Fort’s got the watchful eye. Grub’s got the strength to dig. I… I try to keep the hope. But you… you got the smarts. A clan needs smart more than it needs another pair of eyes. Without it, we’re just animals in a hole.”

“Grill... I… I'm not that smart. Not… not at all.”

“No, Hermit. You are smart. Smarter than any gobby friend I have met.”

Snag cleared his throat. It wasn't a gentle sound.

"Good. Good, you're here. Hermit. Grill. It’s… it’s good. The remembering. The songs. But we’re sitting in a grave we haven’t finished digging.”

We all turned to him. He was staring at the near-empty pot by the fire, at the meager pile of foraged roots beside it.

“We’re a few hills away from the human town. In open plains. One day wind may carry our smoke. Our smell. Every day we don’t get found is luck. The forest monsters are few here, yes. But ‘few’ is not ‘none.’ One is enough.”

He hugged his thin arms around himself.

 “We have maggot farm in the old log. It keeps us from falling over. Just. But when…” He gestured weakly toward the warm midden, “When they hatch? Six new mouths? They will be hungry. They will scream. Maggots will be a snack for one feeding. We have no meat. No milk-weed. Nothing.”

"I’m not saying we give up,” Snag whispered, “I love them already. More than anything. But loving them means… means feeding them. We are doing worse with each day. The roots are farther to find. And we are not hunters. We are… gatherers. Scavengers. And this land is scraped clean.”

He looked at each of us.

 “Keeping spirit high is good. But spirit doesn’t fill a belly. We need to do something. Something soon. Or we are just… just keeping them warm so they can starve to death in our arms.”

 I was not a hunter. I could not fight a forest beast. The thought of stealing from the human town sent a physical wave of nausea through me—the idea of their anger, their violence, was a death sentence. 

I looked at my hands as I spoke.

“Then… then we must think of something. Something… we are capable of. We know the land. We know hiding. We know what grows, what rots, what we can eat. We cannot take from the strong. So, we must find what the strong have left behind. Or… we must make a bargain with something.”

“The… the Tall-Wagons,” Snag said.

“The what?”

“On the stone-path. From the human town to the other human place. The big wagons. With the round feet. They are tall. They are full. They… they have things in them.”

Grub squinted.

 “Humans have tall things. Yes, they do, but what is it for us?”

“Listen,” Snag said, “When I was lost. I hid near the stone-path. The Tall-Wagons go by, pulled by the big nose-beasts. They are so full of… of human things. Grain in sacks. Sometimes round, hard fruits. They bounce. On the bumps in the path, they bounce out. I saw it. A yellow fruit. It fell. Rolled into the ditch. The wagon did not stop. And the back of the wagon… where it closes… it is never closed right. It leaks seeds. Little grains. It makes a trail. Like crumbs.”

Grub’s eyes widened slightly. 

“A trail… to where?”

“To Old Gutter, Grub! Old Gutter, drainage ditch that ran under stone-path. It is foul, full of stinky water and biting flies. We avoided it. Trail of seeds… it leads to Gutter. Seeds fall in. Things live in gutter water. Not good things. But things that eat seeds… and get fat.

We do not take from wagon. We do not ask. We follow. Like quiet bugs. We take what it does not want. What it does not see. Fruit that falls. Seeds that leak. And… and we fish in Old Gutter. For the fat things that eat seeds. We use maggots as bait. We catch fat things. We feed fat things to hatchlings.”

Grub scratched his head.

“So… we follow loud, scary human thing… to pick up its trash… to go to a stinking death-ditch… to fish for horrible water-beasts… to feed our hatchlings?”

Snag nodded, “Yes!”

"No-no, no-no. Nu-uh. We can't," Fort whispered, "Not humans. Not their path. Not their... their leavings. You all talk about humans like they don't care. Like they're just... there. Loud and careless. They're not. You know. From the breeding farm. They're not careless. They're... deadly. In their cruelty."

He wrapped his arms tighter around himself, making his thin frame look even smaller. 

"A dropped fruit isn't a gift. A trail of seeds isn't an accident. It's a lure. They have dogs that can smell a goblin's fear from far off. They have bows that can pin a running hatchling to a tree from farther than you can see. They don't just kill you. They make a lesson out of you."

"One mistake. Just one. A snapped twig at the wrong time. A reflection off a wet stone. A clumsy trip over our own stupid feet. That's all it takes. They won't just chase us off. They'll hunt. They'll follow our stink right back here. To this hole. They'll take the eggs. Not to eat. To... to smash. To show the others. Or to put in little cages, for their young to poke with sticks."

A cold that had nothing to do with the cave seeped into my bones. He was right.

"Fort say truth," Snag said, "we all know what humans can do. My kin at the breeding farm. They didn't die fighting monsters. They died from... from human hands. From being made to stand in the sun with their bellies cut open until they fell. From being given food that was poisoned, just to see what it would do. Humans... they think about how to hurt us."

Fort nodded, a tear tracing a clean line through the dirt on his cheek. 

"I'm not saying we sit and starve. I'm saying... human way is death. A sure death. A worse death. Forest monsters might get us. That's a bad end. But humans... they'll make sure our end lasts. They'll make sure we know it's coming, and that it's our fault for being greedy goblins who touched their trash."

Fort’s words had left us in silence. That’s when we heard it.

A sound that didn’t belong.

Not the wind in the grass above. Not the slow drip of water in the far crack.

Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter-patter.

Small, frantic, hurried feet. Scrabbling directly over the ceiling of our burrow.

We froze. Not a breath was drawn. Five pairs of wide, gleaming eyes snapped upwards, locking onto the thin, dark crack of our entrance.

The sound stopped right above it.

A dreadful, granular scratching followed. Not claws trying to dig. Something… lighter. Desperate. Fingertips? Nails? Feeling for a purchase on the stone.

Grill’s hand found mine in the dark, his grip icy. Next to me, Snag had stopped breathing entirely, a silent statue of fear. Fort had shrunk into himself, his haunted eyes now mirror of pure, primal dread. Grub slowly, so slowly, reached for the only thing resembling a weapon—a heavy, pointed digging-stick leaning against the wall.

Something was pushing at the entrance stone from above. This was it. A forest monster or a human scout. Something had found us. Our hidden pocket of warmth and despair was no longer hidden.

 The stone shifted again, grating louder. A shower of dry soil and pebbles rained down on us, dusting our upturned faces. We flinched but made no sound. My bladder ached with a sudden, sharp pressure. We were five heartbeats from being dragged out into the night, or something awful dropping in to join us.

A small, dark shape plummeted through the opening.

It hit the floor of the cave with a wet thud and a sharp cry that was pure shock and pain. It lay in a heap, motionless for one terrifying second.

Before anyone could move, a second shape tumbled through the hole, landing half on top of the first with a yelp.

Grub raised the digging-stick.

Then the second shape shifted, groaned, and pushed itself up on skinny arms. The faint green glow of the fungi lit a face—pinched with pain and smeared with dirt.

Grub’s stick clattered from his hand.

“Trog?” he gasped, “Muddy? By the deep dirt! You two scared us!”

The two goblins who had been out looking for food had returned.