The deluge of cruelty was endless; each comment meted out as casually as a polite greeting, as if the serrated edge that flashed in the noontime sun wasn’t poised to cut right down to the bone. Ren struggled to wrap their head around it. These people knew Pansy. They were her neighbors, people she’d grown up alongside. And somehow, in this moment, none of that seemed to matter. She was an outsider, someone who didn’t belong – and everyone was going to make sure she knew it.
Ren wanted to say something, the desire to flee overwhelmed by another, fiercer urge. Already, the words had gathered on their tongue, as painful to contain as a fiery coal. A few more moments and they’d burn right through. But the fear of making things worse forced Ren to hold on, to lock their jaw and pin the words in all their ardency behind a wall of teeth. They looked at Pansy, the question –Should I?– gleaming bright across their eyes, unspoken yet heard all the same.
She shook her head and closed her free hand around the skull still resting against her collarbone, framed with delicate lace from the collar of her blouse. “It’s okay. We’ll make them eat their words soon enough. They have no idea they’re looking at the next winners of the Halvenshire Crop Competition.” She grinned.
Something in Ren’s chest softened, unleashing a tide that was equal parts love and sadness.I’m not the one who needs comfort right now, they wanted to say, but found themself struck by the strange sensation of looking into a mirror.
Words they’d discounted at the time floated back to the surface from whatever recess they’d been crammed into:You’d set yourself on fire if it meant keeping someone else warm. That’s what Thorn had said the day Ren had volunteered to be the cottage’s next Caretaker. Funny how it was only now that Ren understood them.
They gave Pansy’s hand a squeeze. “Let’s go show everyone what we can do.”
Apart from the fact that they’d nearly missed the cut-off, as noted by the middle-aged halfling tasked with minding the booth, entering the pumpkin in the competition turned outto be surprisingly straightforward. There was, apparently, no rule against goblins entering the competition: an egregious oversight for a people so staunchly against them, but not one the halfling who dutifully registered their entry cared to interrogate – especially not after they laid eyes on the pumpkin itself.
“My word!” they declared, pushing up their spectacles with the pad of their forefinger. “That’s the biggest pumpkin I’ve ever seen! Even if youwerelate, I feel like I’d have to let you in just so the judges could take a gander at this beauty. How did you get it to grow so large?”
“Love and sunlight,” Pansy replied, cutting in before Ren could so much as open their mouth. In retrospect, this was smart of her. Even if a goblin growth potion was, in Ren’s view, no different from whatever fertilizer halflings were partial to these days, chances were the entirety of Halvenshire would see things rather differently.
The bespectacled halfling gave a slow, knowing smile. “All right then. Keep your secrets. In the meantime, try not to wander off too far. I can’t imagine it’ll take too long to determine this year’s winner.” They winked.
As the pumpkin was carted away, Pansy nudged Ren with the point of her elbow. “Did you hear that?” she said, grinning. “Biggest pumpkin they’ve ever seen!”
“I was honestly more focused on the fact that they seemed unbothered by my presence.”
“Oh. Well,” Pansy shifted awkwardly beside them. “I think that their interest in vegetables didn’t leave room for much else. But to be completely fair, our pumpkinisvery impressive. One might call it the king of all pumpkins – or, perhaps, the Pump-king.”
Ren snorted. “You’re terrible,” they said, smiling even as they rolled their eyes.
“I disagree. In fact, I think I’m rather clever.”
“Perhaps your genius is simply beyond me,” Ren replied with a shrug, the curl at the corner of their mouth deepening.
“Maybe it is –ooh! You’re making fun of me again! Well, I’ll have you know that—” She reared back, ready to give as good as she’d gotten, falling into the familiar comfort of their usual back-and-forth, when a voice, unerringly smooth in its tenor, promptly knocked the air from her lungs.
“Miss Underburrow,” said a startlingly tall human man – a wizard, Ren presumed, given his ridiculous, gem-studded staff and equally ridiculous colourful robes, shimmering like silken velvet in the sunlight. “How good to see you. Was that your pumpkin I just saw Horace carting away?”
“Hello, Agvaldir,” Pansy said, pinning her mouth into a thin-lipped smile as she turned around to face him. The last time Ren had seen her this unenthusiastic was when they’d had to prune the garden of parasitic slugs. “Ren and I decided to enter the competition together this year.”
At the mention of Ren, Agvaldir’s eyes briefly flicked over them, lingering just long enough to drop a note of barely concealed distaste into the oil-slick brightness of his too-white smile. “I wondered if we might have a moment to talk in private about the matter you raised with me the last time our paths crossed in town.”
Pansy’s brow furrowed. “What matter? Oh! The thing I showed you from my notebook. Never mind about that,” she said, waving her hands about as if to sweep aside the subject. “Please consider the issue resolved. I’m so sorry for having troubled you about it in the first place. It really wasn’t that serious.”
“Resolved?” It was now Agvaldir’s turn to look confused, his thick brows pinching low across his deep-set eyes. “Miss Underburrow, the fact that this goblin is still following you is very much proof that this matter isnotresolved.”
Ren jerked their head towards Pansy, every inch of them abruptly pulling taut. “What’s he talking about, Pansy?”
“It’s nothing,” Pansy replied, too quick to be reassuring. Already, her expression seemed to be straining at the seams, her eyes too wide, her mouth too tight. Whatever truth coiled behind that mask of manufactured politeness, it wasn’t anything good – especially not for Ren, given that a wizard was involved.
Their stomach gave a violent twist at that, cold dread seeping through every pore. Ren saw the way Agvaldir looked at them. To him, they were nothing more than a nuisance, an insect that needed to be squashed. And Ren knew, with heart-stopping certainty, that this wizard, like any other, could do just that. With but a flick of his wrist or a half-mumbled spell, Ren would cease to exist, gone the same way as who-knows-how-many goblins before them. For as far as this man was concerned, all goblins were the same, agents of Evil just like the dark lords and necromancers he’d sworn to fight. Never before had he thought to question this belief, so secure in his conviction as a force of Good that the horror inherent in exterminating entire peoples registered only as a mild inconvenience.
This was who Pansy had gone to for aid.
To get rid of me?Ren thought, throat narrowing like a vice. Because if their being here was proof that this “matter” wasn’t resolved, then…
“Miss Underburrow,” Agvaldir said, more forcefully this time, “I really think we should discuss this in private. The implications of—”
Pansy, however, was already turning away, her grip on Ren tightening just beyond the point of comfortable. “I think they’re going to announce the results soon,” she said, in a tone utterly devoid of excitement. “Let’s go over to the main stage. That’s where they always do it.”
Without waiting for an answer, much less any sort of agreement, she dragged Ren off into the maze of stalls and streamers, where the air was thick with the smell of hot pies and candied apples. Unfortunately, these mouthwatering treats passed in as much of a blur as the various handmade crafts on display, from fluffy wool scarves to painted wooden figurines. Pansy had set a pace in between a brisk walk and a jog. Hardly appropriate for such cramped surroundings, especially with most attendees proceeding at a more leisurely gait. Perhaps, if she was excited, it would make sense. But Pansy wasn’t excited. She was—
