GOBLIN STAR By David A. Gray
The broad-backed young man stumbled along, arguing with the goblins in his head. His hair was damp with sweat despite the morning coolness. A finely tooled crossbow bounced on his back. “Get out,” he mumbled. “I refuse you!” The youth paused. He peered up past pan-tiled roofs, eyes fixing on a glittering point, and touched two trembling fingers to the center of his forehead before pressing on, finally lurching into the village square. He stopped at the parapet around the town well, scattering chickens. Two lean, silver-haired men in skillfully tailored clothes nodded and touched their own foreheads. “Is that the little people trying to push you out of your own head again, Tam?” Tam considered not replying to the old woman sitting opposite, because sure as the sun rose on Emain Ablach every day, Meg would repeat everything to the whole village. But the loudest goblin was yammering in its strange language and sending horrific mental images. “Aye, Meg, three, talking in tongues, and fighting like cats in a sack. The worst of them wants me to fell you, so it can possess your old carcass!” The old woman guffawed. “I wish it’d try, boy,” Meg said, “but it’s only the most sensitive of you young ones that they have a chance with. Us olders, our minds are too rigid. Mostly, we can’t feel them, and they can’t feel us. That one must be strong or a liar or both. But I’d be grateful if you don’t try the striking down part, all the same.” “I won’t, Meg, I promise,” Tam said, rubbing his eyes. “Is it always like this?” Meg nodded, her gray-green eyes glittering. “It’s the same every eleven-year. When the Goblin Star is in the sky, the little people come looking for bodies to steal, so they can escape it.” “Tam, come away from that old gossip, why don’t you?” Tam managed a weak smile when he saw Orla striding towards him with a basket full of purple berries. Her leather gloves and the front of her jacket were speckled the same Hybrid Fiction April 2020
