The Good Goblin

by C M F Eisenstein

  A tranquil day swam across the world. Hundreds of clouds wafted, danced and jauntily sprung through the untarnished, blue sky; the sun enjoyed the spectacle and warmed its universal congregation, soothing all ails.

  Cezzum stood in the middle of a luxuriant field of neatly trimmed grass that was of the most splendid green tones, as if it were wrought by perfection. Off in the distance, rising majestically towards those jubilant clouds, were mountains whose peaks were caressingly smothered in shimmering snow. While all around the goblin’s field, a forest lay, encapsulating and beating and pulsing and teeming with life. Birds were warbling their inspiring melodies and hares, with all other manner of forest life, frolicked around the forest eaves, scrounging for food and seemingly gossiping about such a congenial day. Cezzum felt an overwhelming sense of euphoria as the halcyon environs moved about him.

  Cezzum knew everything that had brought him to this moment, for it was an entire life, knowable by all regards, that had brought him to the field - a personal history of lived experience without discernible fault. He had been a simple merchant, the last remaining goblin known to the world, who had spent his life in turmoil between being an honest trader and a fellon. That was his life and how he had lived it; he knew nothing of the future and his past was as it was remembered.

  Before Cezzum, on a rock a few feet ahead, sat a hunched figure with its back to the goblin. It wore a sable traveller’s cloak with the hood pulled over its head. The figure was no taller than Cezzum and appeared quite ailed as it sat on the rock, for it bore a resemblance to a monk churning and moving in a chant of some sort.

  Cezzum clutched his knapsack tightly as he approached the figure, in a manner he had done so many other times before in his long life. Standing behind the sedentary figure he queried, “Care to take a gander at my goods sir? I have some of the finest wares this side of the Brack-Wood Forest.”

  The robed form’s head lifted at the sound of the goblin’s word and ponderously rotated on the rock to face Cezzum. Cezzum was taken off guard and he tottered slightly. The face before him was his own. It was significantly older; decades had assaulted the goblin before him, but it was undeniably his own countenance. The hooded goblin bore the same aquiline nose, glinting teeth and fiery, yellow eyes.

  “What would you like to sell me young one?” asked the aged Cezzum, his voice hoarse and heavy with the weight of an epoch; his hiss deeper than the old oceans.

  Cezzum, addled by astonishment, stammered. “Well, uhh, these things, uhh, here…” Cezzum opened his knapsack and yet, despite vividly recalling filling the shoulder bag with goods, it was both bare and barren, like a house too long forgotten. Cezzum, his voice filled with surprise, said, “It is empty!”

  “Then how can you offer goods for sale if you have none? You are a most odd merchant.” The goblin upon the rock looked at Cezzum impassively.

  Unwittingly, Cezzum’s ire suddenly grew. He hated the older Cezzum. He despised the hooded goblin for mocking him about his absent goods. He reached for his weapon to strike the sardonic creature where he sat, but his scabbard was empty, his hand only groped the air.

  The senescent goblin let out a little groan as he looked blankly at the enraged merchant before him; he turned his head to face the forest and said, “You are a most odd bandit as well: wishing to slay an old goblin, yet lacking the means, a most odd bandit indeed.”

  As quickly as it came, Cezzum, felt his anger ebb. He stood bewilderedly beside his older self and watched the industrious forest creatures at work.

  “I was rumoured to be the last goblin in existence, yet, here I stand next to another, who apparently is a duplicate of me. What is transpiring here?” cried out the younger Cezzum, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

  “Do not be beside yourself young one,” chuckled the aged goblin to himself, as he pointedly ignored Cezzum’s question and indicated the flurry of animals under the eaves of the forest. “Are they not marvellous? Such a fury for life: going about their business, preparing for winter, assiduously striving for the next day and dashing away at the slightest hint of danger.” As if to illustrate his point the older Cezzum produced a small stone in his hand and hurled it at the animals. The stone thumped onto a patch of grass close to the critters; they all hastily darted away for cover. A moment later, when silence along with safety returned, the animals emerged from their coverts and went about their designs once again. “Marvellous, is it not?” repeated the old goblin.

  “I suppose,” said Cezzum quite indifferently; “But what does that have to do with me, and this odd place, and especially you! This is all terribly strange.”

  A gentle breeze just started to push its airy way through the meadow, bringing with it a delightful aroma of freshly bloomed alyssums.

  “But you see it has everything to do with it,” rejoined the goblin, as his creased visage regarded the young Cezzum. “It is their nature to seek food, to blissfully scurry about preparing for the next day of their lives. When the smallest of ripples presents itself, a danger to their world, they scatter at all costs to preserve their being. Yet, when that peril has passed, they carry on undeterred; unhindered. It is in their very nature to do so; despite a stoat that has lived in the forest, or an ermine that ploughed through the snowy highlands, they all have the same innate nature.”

  “What does this serve in relation to me?” cried Cezzum, petulantly. “All I wish is to barter my wares and return to home and store. This wastes my time!”

  The perched goblin regarded Cezzum carefully and said, “It relates to you in this: nature defines a good deal of us; experience might frame us, as a winter ermine might know where to find shelter in the snow yet not in the forest, but it is nature that is at our centre, for if that same ermine, having forgotten how to dwell in the woods, were to be placed in a forest unable to find shelter, it would still avoid all threats of life against it – that is its instinct, that is its nature. And so, akin to that creature Cezzum, you too have a nature. At any one time you might live a thousand lives, and this, this is merely one of those; I am another. Despite what you may be now: a merchant, a bandit, a tailor, a lover or even a bard, your nature will mould any of your destinies in some unfathomable way. That is why I am here. I am to find out your true nature.”

  “You speak in riddles!” murmured Cezzum, indignantly. “That does not answer why I should be here; this remains a waste of my time; I have an enterprise to run. As strange as you are goblin, I have seen more peculiar things in my life. I take my leave of you, intolerable kin. Farewell!”

  As Cezzum turned to walk the riddling philosopher called to him. “It is not for you to understand young one, merely accept. You feign annoyance, yet your breast beats with curiosity. Open your knapsack.”

  The goblin stopped in his tracks and turned on his heels. “This is ludicrous you aged fool! My bag is empty, you saw it for yourself.”

  Upon his rock, the old goblin turned to face the mountain and looked on in awe of the vast massif before him; the vista striking at the heart of him. After a moment he simply repeated, “Open your knapsack.”

  “By all means then!” yelled Cezzum scornfully. While opening his bag he mumbled and muttered: “Ancient fool, this is hardly worth my time, time is been wast…” Cezzum stood dumbfounded gazing into his knapsack. His head shot up to look at the goblin upon the rock, but his back was still turned towards him. Staring down again, ensuring he was not hallucinating or coaxing madness, he remained in awe. Inside his bag rested the largest rose-tinted diamond he had ever set his rapacious, yellow gaze upon; it was easily the size of both his fists combined!

  Cezzum, enraptured, ponderously walked back to the other goblin and stood next to him. Taking the massive gem out of his pack, he regarded its nimbus in the sunlight. “How is that possible?” he whispered.

  “That is nurture Cezzum,” replied the goblin, as he looked unwaveringly at the mountains. “Because you were brought up, or in this case, of your own accord, to fill yourself with a
varice, gathering and desiring all that gleams, this simple gem has piqued you now. But forget not that as swiftly as kingdoms are built, they collapse.”

  While Cezzum held the jewel, the rose-diamond started to tremble. Jet darkness soon erupted from within and rippled over to its surface, suffusing the stone completely. The greedy, mystified goblin looked on in wonder as the diamond turned to a large chunk of coal. Seconds later it turned ashen and withered away into dust; its tiny remnants fell between Cezzum’s fingers.

  “That is our lives, Cezzum. It is both what we are and what we strive after. By the coming of dusk both wilt; but your nature is something that will linger through the universe for all of time – as the hawk who fells mice, his nature makes him known to the world.”

  Cezzum was not quite sure what to make of all the words which bombarded him; he also could not fathom their meaning, regardless, an ineffable aspect, a hidden veracity, struck out at him. He raised his head and looked at the glistening, snow-capped peaks; for the first time, he saw the beauty of the sight and truly felt the warmth of the sun upon his back. “I have never looked at the mountains before,” he said sincerely.

  Cezzum could not see it, but his older counterpart’s mouth produced the smallest of twinges. The elder goblin plainly said, “Marvellous, is it not?” The two goblins let a handful of minutes sidle away in silence as they regarded the illustrious mountains.

  “I want to ask you a few questions Cezzum,” stated the older goblin; Cezzum looked at him passively. “If you were to be a bird, what bird would you envision yourself to be?”

  The goblin arched an eyebrow at the peculiar question. “A bird?”

  “Yes. If you were a bird instead of a goblin, what variety of our buoyant minstrels would you be?”

  “Well,” said Cezzum, considering the question thoughtfully, perceiving it to have some mysterious value to the doddering goblin. “An eagle perhaps. Yes. I think that is it: an eagle would be my choice.”

  “Tell me why,” instructed the inquisitor.

  “An eagle is one of the most majestic birds which sores above us. It is able to travel from the lowliest of grassy fields to the loftiest ranges. They are prey to none and they are the hunter of others, choosing at whim who might suffer under its grasp, or perhaps praised by those below for a benevolent sparing of life,” answered Cezzum stoutly.

  The hunched goblin fiddled with his chin, squishing the folds of his loose, elderly dewlap together and letting them once again flow away as small pendulums of flesh. He replied with deliberate tones: “Much is said in those words, and with them a great deal of yourself is revealed; yet for good or ill, I cannot say. It is strange however, that you might consider yourself to be a solitary bird, hunting and feeding off of others. This speaks to the depths of your mind, your nurture... but your knapsack, oh yes, your knapsack is your nature. You do not control it; it is beyond any falsehood. Now, open your bag... once more.”

  Cezzum did as instructed. As soon as he had opened the covering flap a bird launched itself out of the bag, taking to the air in flight. Its lanky, pink head and hooked beak shone in the sun while its large ebony wings mightily beat the air. The vulture flew high into the sky above them and circled around the two goblins below, as if sailing upon an invisible ocean far above. “A vulture?” asked Cezzum puzzlingly, watching the bird looping above.

  “Most revealing,” said the other goblin simply.

  “But I did not wish to be a vulture!” cried Cezzum vehemently in objection. “I am not some bird of carrion that preys on carcasses, existing simply to find scraps given to it by those unfortunate enough to have erred. I make my own path!”

  “You misconstrue the creature young one,” said the sedentary goblin soothingly. “As clear as if the vulture were a flying manuscript, its words are clear; I can begin to fathom your soul... your immutable innards. A vulture is not a blight; they are a blessing. They travail the world ensuring the proper order of nature by cleaning all the foulness created by others. And in so doing, they themselves, become sated in virtue. Oh no, young one, a vulture is a most promising bird indeed.”

  Cezzum stood as if he were a statue, still gazing at his avian avatar far above. He had not thought of the different interpretation of the creature; it struck him profoundly as he assented to his older self with a series of slight nods.

  “Let me ask you another question Cezzum,” said the goblin, reaching within his cloak; from its folds, he pulled out a tangled and tarnished pipe as aged as he was. Without filling or lighting the pipe the goblin placed it firmly between his teeth and chewed on it. “Imagine you were in a house. Now this house is an especial house, for it is the home of your most hated enemy. It is the abode of the man that slew your family years before when he was a mere brute. After years of tracking, you have finally trapped the slayer of your loved ones; he stands before you unarmed.

  “You are resolute in your decision for vengeance, for there is no greater crime that exists than the one he had perpetrated against you. Your sword is poised to impale him though his heart, for he cannot defend against your rage. But as you would strike, a door opens and framed within is a woman dandling a young infant in her arms; another small child clutches to her mother’s frock. The woman’s face is a veritable waterfall and she pleads with you not to slay her husband. She cries out it with great testimony that the brute has changed his malevolent ways; he has become one of the most upstanding men in the village. Your hand is cooled for but an instant, and the man who cold heartedly slew your entire world quivers before you. Would you be exacting in your justly deserved retribution, or would your hand be stayed?”

  Cezzum’s cheeks puffed as air blew air out of his mouth, pondering the question most profoundly. He closed his eyes, trying to garner the utmost veracity; he endeavoured to envision himself in the imagery his elder counterpart had created. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and sat on the grass, beginning to fiddle with its blades, brushing, twisting and ripping the vegetation. Cezzum gazed wistfully into the verdure, wishing passionately for a hint as to answer the vexing dilemma. Minutes passed as he sat in silence. While the young Cezzum’s perplexed pondering turned to brooding, the elder Cezzum gnawed away at his pipe, rambling a word or two under his breath, of musings long since forgotten. Eventually, Cezzum looked up at him and shook his head. “I do not know.”

  The wrinkled Cezzum smiled. “That is often the best answer. Outcomes of questions are at times less important than the deliberation involved in formulating those answers. Open your bag.”

  Cezzum dropped the handful of torn, green blades he fiddled with; a great curiosity washed over him; he opened the flap of the knapsack.

  Before him a silvery pommel greeted his eye. Reaching in, Cezzzum took hold of the grip of the sword and cautiously pulled it out. Cezzum examined it: the short sword was but an inch or two longer than a lengthy dagger; its steel hilt danced in the light; it was simple yet elegant, finely crafted with the utmost skill; yet, in spite of this, it bore no ornate decorations; the blade itself was covered with a hard leather scabbard. Cezzum pulled the sword from its sheath; the sight of the blade and fuller sent a pang of guilt through the goblin. “No!” cried Cezzum, distressfully gazing at the blood-soaked blade. “I said I did not know! If this is meant to represent my nature, it is false!” Cezzum jumped to his feet, holding the blade before him, and continued to protest to his elderly self.

  The other goblin raised his hand and Cezzum, whose face was clearly marked with worry, fell silent. The hooded goblin considered the blade that was held before him for a moment, then said, “Meanings are often double edged, Cezzum. Notice the blood sits but on one side of the blade, yet the other bears no stain of death. It represents both sides of your being: the need for justice and the virtue of mercy. As easily as a blade can rend flesh it can also be sheathed to preclude death. What you hold is not an answer to the question I posed, merely the two-sided outcome that the situation may have resulted in. Sheath the blade.”
>
  Cezzum began to return the weapon to the scabbard, but as the blade went further into its covering, the blood vanished upon the steel. A moment later the entire sword evaporated from his hands.

  “You have learnt, Cezzum,” said the enrobed goblin admiringly. “Despite your nature as the spawn of a wholly fell race, you have the capacity to exact mercy and forgiveness. In order to control one’s destiny one must always acknowledge this nature; it cannot be ignored. But once you accept it, you can mould it. That is how you nurture your spirit, and in that self-questioning you come to fathom both aspects of your being, creating the first step in the control of your own fate away from your own ill.”

  Cezzum looked solemnly at the odd savant upon the rock. “But to what end does this all matter, I still do not comprehend what all these riddled stories mean.”

  Senescent Cezzum looked up at the mountains again. “By all rights you never will, Cezzum, but such understanding is not important. What is imperative is that you comprehend that your nature has been seeded with a kindness never before known to your race. And while you are still laced with eons of your kind’s fell ways, you have taken the first steps of an amazing journey where you will shape your own nature. Your mind strides to places that have been shrouded in darkness to goblins; you alone have chosen to nurture your being, to build your essence away from your kin... a vicious pioneer. The questions and riddles proved but one thing: you have compelled your mind to wage a war upon your altered nature; in time, if you stay the tempest, you shall purge your being wholly, if that is your will.”