Chapter 23 No Answer Only Fear

The next morning, mist was thick inside the stump, Grub’s low groan woke us up. 

We roused, blinking in the gloom. Trog, who slept closest, sat up and looked at Bog, who lay propped on his moss bed.

Bog wasn’t just lying there. He was coated. Overnight, while the stump slept, a herd of Swamp Slugs had found him. They were as big as a goblin’s fist, glistening black and grey, their fat, muscular bodies pulsing. A dozen of them were stuck to Bog’s spindly legs, his torso, even one was nestled on his neck, right under his slack jaw. Their rasping, tooth-covered mouths were latched onto his skin, slowly, mindlessly nibbling away at the top layer.

Bog slept through it. His breath wheezed in and out, undisturbed. He didn’t feel the gentle nibbling.

Trog let out a yelp of disgust and lunged for the slug on Bog's neck. He pinched the cold, slick flesh and yanked. It came free with a soft pop, leaving a circular rash on green skin. The slug writhed in Trog’s grip.

 Snag reached over and plucked a slug from Bog’s thigh. He held it up, inspecting its underside.

 “Stupid slug. Breakfast do not eat goblin, goblin eat breakfast. Big, fat slug is good eating. Get in my mouth, now!”

The disaster became a harvest. One by one, we peeled slugs away. Each left a bright, irritated patch, but no real wound. Just a bad scrape. Bog stirred only once, when Muddy pulled a particularly large one from his stomach, letting out a faint, confused "hunh?'' sound before his breathing evened out again.

Soon, all the slugs were in a writhing pile in the cracked pot. They sizzled when I tipped them onto the flat cooking stone over the fire. Their bodies contracted, then stilled, giving off a smell like cooking mushroom and wet earth.

We ate them, crunching through the crispy outer skin into the soft, hot insides. They were rich, a little bitter, and filling.

Trog fed tiny, shredded pieces of the cooked slug to Bog, who swallowed them reflexively.

By the time the morning sun burned through the mist, the 'disaster' was over. Bog was covered in polkadots of raw skin, already beginning to fade. Slugs were gone, turned into energy in our bellies.

The swamp had tried to eat Bog, slowly, softly. And instead, we fed them to Bog. It felt like a strange, small victory. No one said it. We just licked our fingers, checked Bog’s breathing, and started the day.

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Two weeks of careful feeding and quiet living worked their slow magic. Bog grew. He was now as big as any of us, a full-grown goblin in body but his mind still broken and his legs remained the withered sticks. The bone in his broken leg knit into a hard, crooked knot.

But the real change was behind his eyes. The cloudy stagnation stirred. He began to track movement. When Trog hummed, Bog’s head would tilt, his big ears swiveling slowly. He learned to make a sound “Gah-nuuh-uh!” that meant he was uncomfortable. 

He would look at Trog, his mouth working silently for a long time, his throat clicking. Then a sound would be born, rough and misshapen.

“Duh… duh... duh-dah.” It was Dada. 

When he was thirsty, his throat would make a dry, scraping sound. Trog learned to bring the water skin. Bog would look at it, his cloudy eyes focusing with immense effort. He’d lift a trembling hand, not to take it, but to point a single, shaky finger.

  “Guh… gah-luh.” Gulper. Throat-need.

Food was harder. He couldn’t name it. He would look at the stew pot, then at his own mouth, then make a soft, frantic whining sound in the back of his throat, “Muh… muh... Duh-dah... mmh-mmh... mmm-uh!” accompanied by a pathetic chewing motion with his empty jaws. 

The worst was the pain. His dead legs would sometimes cramp or twist, sending signals of agony to a brain that could no longer understand their source. He couldn’t say ‘hurt’. He would simply let out a low, continuous moan, “Ooooooh… aaaaaah,” and his hands would flutter uselessly near his chest, his face screwing up in a confusion that was worse than any cry. Trog would have to check him all over, trying to find the source of the pain, while Bog moaned his one-note song of distress.

He had a sound for comfort need. A soft, huffing sigh, “Huhhhh…” that meant peace. He had a sound for the scary crack of thunder. A sharp, involuntary “Gak!” that meant fear.

But most of all, there was the pointing. He would see a glint of light on a snail shell and point, grunting, “Shuh?” 

 He would see Fort climb a tree and point, whispering, “Uhh-up?”

 Every pointed finger was a desperate, exhausting attempt to bridge the gap between the world he could now dimly perceive and the words that were buried too deep to ever fully reach. 

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We were gathered around the evening fire, sharing a stew of snails and fungus, celebrating Bog successfully pointing to his own mouth for more, when Fort slipped inside. His green skin was streaked with new mud from high climbing. His face was twisted with fear.

“Friends, last night I scouted far. To the hard-ground edge. Where the swamp spits out into open plains.” Fort said, without greeting. He accepted a bowl but did not eat.

We went still, spoons hovering.

“Saw humans. Far off, but walking. Not kids. Men. With metal on chests. Heard them. Their voices carry on flat wind.”

“Oh no, humans? By the forest spirits, not now. Why now? What they say?” Grub asked.

 “They say… ‘goblins’. They say ‘seen sneaking’. ‘East walls’. ‘Filthy thieves’.”

A cold silence fell. Our home suddenly smelled like fear.

“But… that is not us. We are here. In swamp. We do not go to stone walls.” Muddy whispered, clutching his own arms.

“No, not us. Evil goblins. Bad-think goblins. Like goblin master's caravan. Greedy. Stupid. Go where the shiny things are. Another tribe. Must be. But this is bad. Very bad.”

“Why bad?” Trog asked, “If humans hunt evil goblins, they are busy. Not look for us.”

Fort fixed him with a haunted stare. 

“No. Think. Humans find goblins near town. They get angry. They get hunting. They get… looking. They remember old tracks. They say ‘swamp goblins not all dead, maybe more in swamp’. They come with fire and dogs to clean the whole swamp. Not just for evil goblins. For all goblins.”

“Also,” Fort added, “If evil goblins are near… they are hungry. They are mean. They might… find our smell. Our hidden paths. They might want our stump. Our food. Our Bog.”

The circle seemed to shrink. The walls of our safe stump felt thinner. 

“We must hide from humans. And we must be hidden from other goblins. No noise. No new tracks. No light at night. We must listen twice as hard.”

Grub gave a single, heavy nod.

 “We be quiet mud. We be still roots. We protect our own. No one finds. No one takes.”

The fire burned low, casting long, jumping shadows that looked like grasping claws on the stump walls. The dread Fort had brought in sat amongst us like a cold, heavy guest. 

"Maybe... we dig deeper," Muddy offered, "Under stump. Make down-hole home. Like before, but deeper. Humans no find. Other goblins no find. Deeper we can make sound no one will hear."

Snag shook his head, "Ground here is wet. Dig down, find water-pool. We get drowned, not safe home."

"Then we hide better!" Trog said, "We take all moss, all mud, cover stump completely. Make it look like... like a hill. A muddy hill with no door."

"Then how we get in?" Grill asked, "We need door. With no door we stay outside."

"We make hidden door!" Trog insisted, "Door that looks like rock! We paint it!"

"We have no paint," Snag said, "Only mud. Bad idea. Big rain and mud wash off."

"Maybe," I said, staring into the embers, "we leave. Try to find safer place. Swamp kept us alive, but it is not a place to rise new life. We need safe land. Hidden cave. Something out of sight."

The word hung in the air, shocking us. Leave. The stump was our home. Our roof. Our safe clay.

"Go where?" Grub asked, "Plains? Humans there. Deep forest? Monsters there. Other swamp? Other swamp has... other swamp goblins maybe."

"We find worse swamp," Fort muttered, "More stink. More suck-mud. So bad, no one goes there, not even evil goblins. Find safe nook there, something small, out of sight."

"But Bog," Trog whispered, "Trip will hurt Bog. Long walk. No safe stump to rest. He... he cannot walk. I carry, but... big rain come. Things hunt. No food to feed. We will starver. We need to stay."

They all looked at Bog, his adult-sized body with its tiny legs. A journey would be a torture for him and us.

"If trouble comes, we can't fight only hide," Grub said, "We could make sharp sticks. We dig pit-traps in paths. If bad goblins come, they fall in. If humans come, they... they see traps, know goblins here, bring more humans. No... stupid idea. We can only hide."

"Maybe we talk?" Muddy suggested, "No, not talk. Bad idea," then shrunk back at our looks.

Finally, Grill spoke, summing up our only real option with a weary sigh. 

"I say we stay. We hide better we can. We listen with big ears. We hope human and bad goblin fight each other far away. We hope swamp is big and we are small. We be... very small, very quiet mud. We see how thing go for few next days. If all quiet, we stay. If danger get closer, we move."

 We had no other plan to make. We would be still, and small, and hope the enemy did not turn our way. The meeting broke up with no answers, only a shared, heavier weight of fear to carry into the dark.