The Goblin Market (Into the Green)

  THE

  GOBLIN MARKET

  Jennifer Melzer

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue therein are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The Goblin Market

  Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Melzer

  All rights reserved.

  By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, compiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced to any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the expressed permission of Jennifer Melzer.

  SECOND EDITION

  ISBN 978-1461036579

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Formatted by Dragon’s Gold Publishing.

  For James and Kate with all my love

  INTRODUCTION

  “We must not look at goblin men,

  we must not buy their fruits:

  who knows upon what soil they fed

  their hungry, thirsty roots?”

  Christina Rossetti—Goblin Market

  “I’ll see you tomorrow dear,” Mrs. Grisham called. “Be sure to bring another dozen eggs. We'll need at least that many if we're meant to get all this baking done.”

  “Of course, ma’am.” Christina wound down the path leading away from the Grisham farm. “I look forward to it.”

  “Wilhelm, you see her safely home. You hear me?”

  “I will, Mother.”

  Christina swung her basket along the hem of her dress and skipped a step before leaning into Wil. Her lithe form fit perfectly against his powerful frame, and Wil lowered his thick arm across her back. He dropped his face into the fragrant curls of her rich, chestnut hair and breathed her in. Christina always smelled of springtime, and after a long winter of little contact with her, it was a most refreshing scent.

  “My mother worries too much.”

  “She’s a good mother.” Christina pressed herself closer to her companion. “She coddles you some and pecks at you like a hen, but only because you need looking after.”

  “I need looking after?” He pulled away to lower an incredulous gaze over her. “I think I take good care of myself.”

  Christina laughed and drew him near again. “Who does your washing and cooking?”

  “I…”

  “And who makes sure you get out of bed in the morning?”

  “Well she…”

  “You’re completely hopeless, you know? Without your mother you’d fall apart.”

  “Which is exactly why I hope to marry long before I’m without her so I have time enough to train the lucky woman who’ll take care of me.” Wil’s face reddened beneath the blond patches of beard he’d been trying to grow all winter.

  Christina giggled. “Whoever she is, she’ll have a lot of work on her hands if she’s ever to outdo your mother.”

  Whoever she is… As if Christina herself hadn’t been planning her wedding to Wil Grisham since she was six years old. She’d already decided she would help him tend to the farm, and in a few short years they would have half a dozen little children of their own. Until that day arrived, she enjoyed playing the game with him, leading him on and pretending she didn't already know he only had eyes for her.

  "Well, I am all Mother has since father passed away,” Wil reminded her with a sheepish sense of pride. “Maybe she holds on just a little too tightly sometimes, but it’s mostly ‘cos she’s lonesome.”

  Christina lifted the hem of her apron to dab beneath her eyes. “Your poor, sweet dear of a mother.” She shook her head. “If only my mother had lived, I’d have wanted for her to be just like yours.”

  “She adores you, you know,” Wil said. “She just asked the other day why it’s taking me so long to ask you to marry me.”

  Christina turned sideways, her eyes wide with mock surprise. “She asked you that?”

  “Not every boy can say his mother approves of the girl he loves.”

  She blinked as though stunned. “Wilhelm?”

  “It’s true, Chrissy, I love you.” His tone was strangled with apprehension. “There, now I’ve gone and made a fool of myself, but it’s true. I love you, and I want to marry you.”

  “Oh, Wil.” she turned her gaze toward the grass. The blades were still yellowed from the long winter. She toed the tip of her shoe along the vegetation and clasped her hands behind her back. “It all seems so sudden now that you’ve said it out loud.”

  She felt the immediacy of his presence behind her, and from the corner of her eye she thought she saw him hesitate. Would it be inappropriate to put his hand on her shoulder?

  “But you have been thinking about it too. I know you have. And all winter long I ain’t had nothing else to think about, and I decided that I won’t rest until you’ve said that you will have me.”

  “Wil.”

  This time there was no hesitation when his firm hand fell on her shoulder and spun her around to face him. Still avoiding his stare, she scanned the shadowed outline of his family’s farm just below the dying gold of sunset. She trembled a bit at the prospect of committing her future so easily and avoided his eyes, which sought her out in dire need of confirmation.

  “I promise if you marry me, you will never want for anything. I will take such good care of you, and you'll always be happy.”

  Hesitation set in. It wasn’t that she hadn’t always dreamed of a better life, a life in which she was the center, in which there was no guilt or reason to doubt her very existence. “But what about Merry?” She started to turn from him again, resisting the strong grip of his hands on her.

  “What about Merry?”

  “She’s my sister, Wilhelm,” Christina said. “I am all she has, and if I leave her, what then?”

  “You won’t be leaving her, Chrissy. We will still be just a walk away from her…” He gestured toward the hilltop in the distance where their tiny cottage was nestled. “You can see her every day if you want to, I promise.”

  Christina pulled her lower lip between her teeth in deep thought. She withdrew from his grasp and shook her head. “I don’t know, Wil.” She followed his gaze toward the cottage on the hilltop. “I need to think about things. You cannot possibly expect me to make such a hasty decision.”

  Wil was silent, his eyes still on her even though she refused to look at him. In his heart he knew that there was no one else, nothing that could ever bring him peace the way just walking beside her did. He cleared his throat and lowered his hands in front of him.

  “You’re right. I have sprung this all on you rather quickly.” He tilted his head in the hope she might look at him. “I wouldn’t want you to decide against marrying me because I pressured you.”

  Before she reached out for his hand, she lifted her chin and a slow smile drew at the corners of her mouth. “You are a good man, Wilhelm Grisham. I will think on things and give you my answer in three days.”

  He nodded concession, and then she dropped his hand.

  “And now if you’ll excuse me, I think I will finish the rest of the journey home alone so I can think,” she decided.

  “I don’t mind walking you,” he insisted. “Mother said I should…”

  “I know that,” she said, “but I think I want to be alone now.”

  Abashed, Wil’s face flushed red again. “Of course.”

  She stretched up onto her tip-toes and brushed her soft lips against the stubble on his cold cheek.
“Goodnight, Wil.”

  “Goodnight,” he echoed.

  Christina retreated without looking over her shoulder at him, but she felt the burn of his stare on her back. She didn’t have far to go. In fact, she could see the lantern her sister left out for her, and the sun had just begun to lower into the bosom of the mountains in the west. She knew Wil well enough to realize he would keep her in sight at least until she disappeared into the valley separating their households,

  Her mind raced with his proposal. She couldn’t deny she had been waiting for him to ask her to marry him ever since the very first time he kissed her two years prior. Yes, there were other kisses, other boys who fancied her a great deal, but none of them were as firm and reliable as Wilhelm, and while many of them said they loved her, no one’s eyes lit up the way Wil’s did when he said it. Just thinking of him made her giddy enough to bounce and pirouette with laughter.

  She couldn’t wait to tell Meredith, but the thought of her sister dampened her mood once more. Surely Merry would tell her to go, be married, but after their father disappeared, Meredith gave up everything to give her younger sister the best life possible. She took on mending by the pile to earn enough money to feed them, and tended to a roost of chickens, which produced enough eggs to earn them a little extra from time to time.

  In the spring and summer Merry tended to their garden like a slave to some strange passion. Sometimes Christina watched her sister from the cottage, a woman possessed, face smeared with dirt and hair decked with leaves as she examined flower buds and mended torn stems. Once, she’d even seen Merry whisper softly to a ladybug perched on her fingertip before it fluttered its wings and flew away. When she asked her sister what she’d said to the ladybug, Merry shook her head and asked, “What ladybug?”

  She was three and twenty now, having sacrificed her youth and marriageable years to take care of her sister, and Christina worried there was very little hope for Merry’s future at all. Her beautiful, selfless sister would live alone and die an old maid, and Christina would never forgive herself.

  It wasn’t fair, and Christina deeply resented their father for leaving them alone. Meredith deserved a better life than the one they’d been given. Maybe marrying Wil would be best in the end, as it would offer Merry a freedom she’d never known. But on the other hand, what if Christina’s marriage left Meredith completely and eternally alone? Christina pictured her older sister, estranged from the world in her small cottage, surrounded by a horde of cats. She'd become old and embittered with resentments until nothing was left of her but the dusty old cobweb of her soul.

  Christina’s heart felt weak, and as she became so consumed by her thoughts, she hardly noticed the alluring green light emanating from the center of the valley. Eerie music toddled out to meet her, and the illumination in the valley grew brighter with each step until the peculiarity of the sound evolved into something so loud and twisted, she stopped in her tracks and took in the scene unraveling before her.

  Swaying green lanterns dotted the darkness, illuminating a host of bodies that moved like shadows against the bruise-colored backdrop of expanding darkness. The bodies bustled between rows of tents, and carts and tables sprung up from just beyond the valley’s reach winding into a traveling marketplace.

  A distant gruffle of voices scrabbled in the dark, grunts and coughs, strained stretches and hollers of reproach, but the nearer she drew to the action, the more avid their conversation became until a particular song caught her attention.

  “Come buy, come buy! Oh so juicy, never dry. Be the first, first to try, fruits so sweet, come buy! Come buy!”

  That one solid voice flickered out like an old candle, but then another followed singing the praise of perfect peaches, pretty little plums and pears, pert papaya, pleasant pineapple and precious pomegranates. A third song rang clear, naming every apple ever known to man, from the pink lady to the royal gala, red delicious, tart for baking, golden spotted so sugary soft they melted on the tongue. Temptation and rhythm flowed from every word, and though she had eaten heartily, thanks to Mrs. Grisham just an hour earlier, Christina felt a sudden lurch of hunger inside.

  Mesmerized, she sauntered along the open pathway of the market, throngs of bustling bodies pressed around and against her. Strange, green skinned men with sharp ears and even sharper razor tongues, greasy hair and gruff voices. They pushed and rustled and bustled about as though she wasn’t even among them, but then a pair of eyes the color of seeping pus spotted her and called out in a gravelly tone, “Sweeties for the sweet?”

  His scarred face drew ragged with a cunning grin that grew wider with her obvious discomfort. “I say, sweeties for the sweet?” His unfamiliar accent was thick and villainous as tar.

  Christina took several tentative steps forward, closing the distance between her and the long-winding table decorated in fruits that wouldn’t come into season for months. Mouth-watering melons, bunches of rich, red grapes, white grapes, purple, green…there were bowls of red and black berries, cherries, strawberries, plump purple damsons, currants and figs, dew specked gooseberries, orange wedges, grapefruits…There were strange fruits, exotic fruits, and fruits she could not imagine had been grown anywhere on the Earth, but each of them was lovely, perfect and tempting. Her eyes ran greedily over every colorful display and her mouth watered for just one taste.

  “A treat for the sweet?”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t realized how close she’d come. Christina actually had to stop herself from reaching out to touch the smooth skin of an apple. “I have never seen this market here before,” she noted. “Where do you come from?”

  She took note of how wretched the little man in front of her was to behold, and how his companion vendors, who sold everything from armor and weaponry to sparkling trinkets and wares for the kitchen, were equally hideous. Their small black eyes glinted horrible green in the light from their lanterns, and their wicked gazes roved over her as though she were some tasty morsel meant for them to nibble on.

  “From the dark grove beyond, we bring word that our king is searching for his lost queen.”

  “The king?” she asked. “We’ve had no word here about the queen,” Christina said. “Has she been kidnapped?”

  “Worse still,” said a strange little with voice as thick and sticky as molasses. “She’s up and run off before the wedding.”

  Christina peered over her shoulder at him and he grinned; two rows of malice-sharp, yellowed teeth gleamed against the creepy light. “Of what queen do you speak? Surely not Elsbeth?”

  The little men exchanged queer expressions and then the fruit vendor said, “We don’t know no Elsbeth.” The vendor reached a filthy hand down into the platter of cherries. He filled his palm and then stretched the hand toward her. “Have a sweetie.” A blackened, pinkish tongue slipped out of his mouth and traced the edge of his cracked lower lip. “No finer fruits will ever be found. Have a cherry. Try a berry. Help yourself.”

  “But I haven’t a coin to pay you,” she said.

  The market produce glistened magically, as though bathed in magnificent moonbeams. Christina could almost taste it as she imagined the juices bursting in her mouth when she punctured the skin with her teeth. The aroma of strawberries so luscious they were near overripe wafted up to meet her, mingled with the bouquet of freshly cut melons of every kind.

  She had never felt so hungry, and suddenly the thought of not tasting just one little blueberry devastated her. She slouched into a pout.

  “No coins,” the weird little man snarled. “Go on, then.” He brought a tray decorated by a colorful assortment of fresh cut citrus. “Have yourself a little taste, love.”

  “I shouldn’t,” she hesitated out of mere courtesy, but inwardly she battled against herself to resist.

  “Why deny?” He taunted. “Go on,” he said. “Just a little tasty for the tasty.”

  Christina veiled her excited eyes with heavy lids, but the quickness of her hand when she reached out to pluck a treat from
the platter gave her eagerness away.

  Behind the shadows, the goblin vendor grinned.

  “There’s a good girl,” he said. “Go on then, help yourself. Have an apple.”

  The first fruit she’d popped into her mouth was a plump little raspberry that exploded gloriously against her tongue. A dribble of juice spilled onto her lip when she gasped, but she quickly licked it away and reached with greedy hand to pluck a firm red apple from the table. Her teeth snapped through the flesh and the succulent sap leaked down her chin. Christina suckled the sweetness from her lower lip, and wiped a hand across her chin before devouring the apple right down to the core.

  Grapes spurted delectable liquid, warm ripe strawberry juice coated her throat, and her head swam with desire to gobble every piece of fruit on that table.

  A crusty voice called from behind her, “Lookit her go!”

  Another added, “A right greedy little pig, that one.”

  A voice more powerful and commanding than all the others observed, “A greedy pig indeed.” It was musical in its incantation of that simple observation, but Christina was so consumed by her desire to devour she hardly acknowledged the regal power behind that voice.

  She dug her fingers into a basket of berries, her hasty touch bruising and squeezing while she stuffed as many into her mouth as she could fit. Other hand reaching, she barely gasped when a hard grip seized her by the shoulder. The small escape of breath that left her was not surprise, but fear that she might be denied one more taste of the sweetest, most perfect fruit she had ever sampled.

  “Tell me little girl,” the hand spun her around quickly and she stifled a cry of protest. “Do you always take far more than you are offered?”

  His shadow alone overpowered her slender frame as peculiar shades of twilight mixed with the otherworldly green light of the lanterns. She looked up into the carefully etched features of his face, which hovered inches from her own. He was handsome in ways Christina had never even dreamed men could be. He was tall and the rippling fabric of his cloak lay over broad shoulders. Unlike Wil, who was strong from hard work, this man was powerfully built, an obvious warrior born from a long line of men bred for battle.