I put it down and the butter hopped. My silverware shifted position.
“Wha?”
Now I saw something out of the corner of my eye. The wardrobe opened, and a clean nightdress floated out onto the bed.
“Are you here after all?” I asked. “Goblins?”
Everything on the table jittered a little bit. The jam drew closer to the butter.
“Are you the king’s subjects?”
The silverware straightened up.
“Hmm. How about this? Fork and knife, can you cross positions to indicate no?”
The fork and knife just spun around in frantic circles.
“Maybe you can’t answer questions…”
The fork and knife shifted position again, forming a right angle, and then the knife on the top began ticking down like the minute hand on a clock, in even intervals. Tick…tick…tick…
“I don’t have much time?”
They reverted back to their original position.
“Well, I know that,” I said. “Believe me, I’m trying my best.” I picked up my spoon full of soup. “I feel a little strange putting you in my mouth if you’re really listening to me…but it can’t be helped, can it?” I slurped carefully before continuing.
“Let me think about all of this,” I said. “Goblins don’t usually have much to do with humans, except to steal apples out of the orchards and that sort of naughty thing. But then, ten years ago, this goblin king appeared, offering a gold coin to every human woman who spends a night with him. Let me suppose that he doesn’t actually want to do this, but he has to accept. Does he have to accept? Even if he thinks the girl is completely odious? It seems like the urge is very overwhelming for him, so I’m assuming that one way or another, yes, he must accept, even as he knows that human women usually find him ugly and only want him for his coins. He must’ve made some witch very upset.”
The dishes rattled a little.
“That part is easy enough to guess,” I said. “But…how to break the curse? That’s where it gets hard. It must have something to do with the man in the coffin, but I feel as if he is there to trick me, and if I’m not supposed to go to him, then what action do I take? How much time do I have?”
The butter started hopping up and down again, even more urgently than before. In fact, it managed to plant itself right in the middle of the plate of peas.
“Butter? What are you trying to tell me? …the rose? Is that it?”
The knife and fork formed the ticking clock again.
“The rose,” I repeated. “That was the first test…wasn’t it? I picked a rose from the garden when I wasn’t supposed to. And if that started the clock ticking, then I can only stay until the rose has wilted. Is that it?”
The butter hopped again. I felt like it was nodding.
I rubbed my head. “That would explain why none of the girls stay very long.”
I enjoyed the prospect of solving a puzzle, although I did wonder what it meant for me. After all, what did it take to crack a curse? Perhaps I had to sacrifice myself or something terrible, and that was why no one ever helped the goblin king. Equally possible was that most human girls didn’t have much sympathy for a goblin, especially one who made sure to get his money’s worth for that coin.
“I understand that you probably can’t help me as much as you like,” I told my animated little table spread. “You must be so frustrated. I’ll do my best to figure it all out.”
When the goblin king came to me that night, I was in bed with the lantern at my side, writing down everything I knew about the situation. He gave me a stern look. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to lift your curse,” I said. “It was the rose, wasn’t it? The first test.”
I could tell I had surprised him. For a brief moment, his gruffness lifted and I saw the faintest light of hope in his eyes. But then he walked over to me and grabbed the papers from me, throwing them aside. “Promise me you will stop this nonsense,” he said with a snarl, all his fangs bared, leaning close to my face.
“But—why? Don’t you want someone to set you free? What about your subjects?”
“You are only here for one purpose.” He grabbed me and flipped me over on the bed, pulling my legs down to the end and draping me over the footboard, the way he wanted me to be on the first night. “I never should have let you look at me,” he said.
He threw up my nightdress and thrust his cock straight into me, holding my hips so I didn’t dare think of moving. Last night, he was somewhat gentle. Tonight, he drove me so hard that I was rendered completely speechless, save a little grunting moan that came out of me with every thrust.
By the time he emptied into me and threw my legs back onto the bed, I was furious.
“Why?” I snapped. “How dare you! I’m trying to help you. I want to help you. I don’t think you’re such a bad man deep down, but you are trying your damnedest to convince me otherwise, aren’t you? To push me away?”
“Do you think you’re the first girl to try to save me?”
“No, but…” I hesitated. He was probably right. Did I think I was more clever than anyone else? Perhaps I did. “Can’t you let me try? Can’t we…can’t we at least enjoy the time we have, even if I fail?”
“It’s easy to give yourself permission to fail. You’ll return home to your family. You might be poor, but at least you have them at all. But I will still be here, waiting for the next girl to try her luck with me, and if I’m especially unlucky, she will be a girl like you. A curious girl, a clever girl, a brave girl…but never enough.”
“You,” I said, my voice quavering a little, “are a coward. Maybe the curse is hard to break, but you’ve given up. What about your subjects? Are they condemned to be forks and butter dishes?”
“My subjects…have communicated their presence you?”
Clearly, this didn’t happen often. “They did…”
“Why would they trust you?”
I hesitated. “I was talking to myself. Talking about—the test and—how I’d rather be a goblin maiden than go back to Fairhaven.”
He laughed. Well, I guess it was a laugh—it was so quick, and so dry, that it was gone almost before I knew it had happened. He sat on the bed beside me, twisting to face me, throwing one leg onto the covers. “Why would a human girl wish to be a goblin?”
“I—I don’t know if I really do,” I said hastily, because you did have to be careful with curses. “But at least, in the painting, the goblin maidens are having so much fun. And being a goblin has always sounded like fun. You assume I have a family to go back to, and strictly speaking, I do. But they don’t understand me. I’m not even sure they like me. And as soon as I return, they’ll be pressuring me to use my beauty to charm a husband.”
He leaned down on one elbow, close to me now in a more relaxed way than he had been before. While I was wearing just a thin nightdress, he was still fully dressed down to his boots and cloak. His hair, black and wild and a little coarse, much like the goblin maidens except a little shorter, fell across his brow and barely touched his shoulders.
“It was a marvelous place, once,” he said.
“What was it like?”
“We had dances on every full moon. Bonfires, and song… Even on an ordinary day, these halls were full of people and good spirits, stories and jokes around the dinner table. A lot of people don’t realize what a good sense of humor goblins have.”
“What? How could they not? You are such a wit,” I said sarcastically.
“I have learned my lessons,” he said. “Perhaps a ruler should be serious. But it’s too late. As you say, I rule over butter dishes and forks. They are trapped, and I can either blame myself, or the witch who cursed me. The latter breeds bitterness, and the former, despair. Perhaps it is as you say. I’ve given up. But I have no control over who can lift the curse. And if anyone grew to care for me enough to lift it, I would fear for her life.”
I looked down. This was the thing I feared, that lifting
the curse would put me in peril. Was I brave enough for that? My bravery had never been tested until I came here.
He drew back a little. My silence revealed my fear.
“Of course I’m afraid,” I said, before he could accuse me of being another girl like all the rest. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. Surely I can be scared and brave at the same time.”
“You do make it hard for me to not put one small shard of faith in you.” He pulled away. “I should let you sleep for a little while.”
“Wait, I…” I already missed his warmth. “What about the healing stone?”
“You shouldn’t need it after the first night.”
“I just…”
He brushed his hair back, sort of tucking it behind his horns, and scratched the back of his head as he regarded me. “Did you like it the other night when I touched you?” he asked, his voice deliciously low.
“Yes…I must admit that I did.”
“You must admit?”
“I liked it,” I said, more bluntly, but now I was twisting the hem of my nightgown between my fingers nervously.
He climbed back into bed beside me and put one hand over my body, his head craned down to look at me. “Would you like me to touch you like that again?”
I nodded.
He tipped up my chin. “Yes,” I gasped.
Still looming over me and looking at my face, he pulled my nightdress up again, revealing my bare skin. Once again, his thumb nudged between my nether lips and found the tender little nub of pleasure there. He began to circle his finger there, very slowly, painfully slowly. I was already very swollen and sensitive, and immediately I sighed, arching into his touch. The sensation of his glove, a little bit stiff, rough at the seams, against my tender skin—the claws just beneath. I knew they would tear me up if they were set free, and sometimes I could feel the suggestion of their edges, but their danger was tampered by the leather.
I was quickly growing very warm, and I lifted my heavy braids away from my neck and shoulders, spreading my arms so more of the cool air would touch my skin, as his thumb continued its exquisitely slow explorations.
I spread my knees, encouraging him to touch me harder and deeper. My body was responding as if of its own accord.
Now two more fingers slid into my already slick passage, and he drove them into me, skillfully mixing the fluttering sideways motion of his thumb with firm plunging thrusts of his fingers. I was starting to moan again. I was too warm.
I looked at him, wild hair and golden eyes, his face so intent that it was quite impossible to imagine he had ever laughed much. Nothing about his features would have been regarded handsome in Fairhaven. Besides his unearthly eyes that glowed in the night and the sickly pallor of his skin, besides that even when his mouth was closed you could see the faintest suggestion of the shape of his crowded fangs, his nose was a little crooked and brutishly shaped. Perhaps it was hard to find a man truly ugly when he could produce such sensations, but I rather liked his strange appearance, I thought.
Of course, it was true, compared to the golden fey man sleeping in the grotto…
“I must have you,” he said, with urgency.
His trousers were tight again.
“Then have me,” I said breathlessly.
This time, he pulled me to my feet and stood me between his legs, facing away from him. I felt him loose his cock from his trousers. He hooked his feet around my feet and nudged my feet apart, guiding me down until the tip of him found my entrance.
“Sit down,” he said.
I was excited by the command; this was the first time he had allowed me to have control of fitting myself to him rather than the other way around. I wiggled onto the head, and then the length of him slid into me more easily, his feet continuing to push my legs farther apart, until I was spread out, with him deep inside me.
He started to thrust into me while his hand reached around and resumed stroking me. I was already so sensitive. Almost immediately, I started seeing stars. My hands gripped his knees. “Oh—oh, goblin king, I do wish I knew your name!” And then I could say nothing else. I was almost crying. I had never felt such a thing, my body pulsing and clenching around his hardness, all of my skin shivering with pleasure.
As it passed away, it left me spent and tender, but hearing my cries die into moans only seemed to encourage him to rock into me harder. I didn’t even try to stop him; I wasn’t sure he could stop if he wanted to.
He suddenly whipped off one glove and then the other, revealing his bare hands and sharp claws. The sight of them thrilled me and frightened me at once. I didn’t think he would hurt me on purpose, but why had he taken them off?
He ripped the front of my nightdress. He couldn’t easily get it off me entirely, but he pulled the fabric away from my shoulders and breasts, my stomach and thighs, leaving it bunched at my wrists and back.
“My name is Nyar,” he said.
“Nyar?”
“It isn’t very handsome, is it?”
“No, I like it,” I said. “I would have liked to have had it earlier. My name is Sabela.”
“Sabela…”
Hearing my name in his ear seemed to change everything. I understood in an instant why he didn’t want to exchange names. Names made things real. It was harder to kill an animal if you named it. Maybe it was also harder to leave a man. Or lose a girl…
“I could fuck you all night, Sabela…but then you would have no energy left to think of breaking curses…”
It was hard to believe, in such a moment, that I would ever have energy again.
He wrapped his hands around my thighs, being very careful of his claws, and stood up, so I was impaled on his cock, his hands on my legs the only other support. I had to reach back to grab his arms for fear of falling forward, and he steered me around so I could grab one of the bed posts. He let my legs drop and drove into me. His lust had an animal quality. My arms were burning from grabbing the bedpost and yet the sensations of his body inside me were so strong that I thought I could hold the bedpost all night if he wished me to. My nightgown hung tattered around me.
“I want to stay here forever,” I gasped.
He put his hand over my mouth, as if he didn’t want me to say such things. But it had just slipped out.
When he finished, he pulled out of me and stripped off the rest of my nightdress, tucking me into bed, my bare skin between the sheets. I smiled at him sleepily.
“I may have made a terrible mistake tonight,” he said.
“What do you do between times?” I murmured.
“Probably much the same things as you do. I have a meal. I keep up with my sword and fighting exercises. I try to read, or take a walk in the moonlight.”
“I’d like to come with you some time.”
“‘Some time’, you say…as if we have much of that.” He wrapped a lock of my hair around his finger, almost absently. “If you were the one, Sabela…”
“Why don’t I stay up at night and spend more time with you?”
“You can’t. We would get nothing done. Don’t you understand?”
“The curse forces you to be alone,” I said. “I see.” Clearly, when he was around me, he was almost overwhelmed by his urges. It must be so with every woman, and meanwhile his subjects were given inanimate forms so they could give him meals and clean clothes and well-kept quarters, but no companionship.
He shook his head. “Sleep, for now. I will return when I must.”
Chapter Six
Nyar
In the early days of my curse, the cruelest part seemed to be the loneliness. In between my visitors, the caverns were quiet. I remembered when they had rung with laughter, and with frivolous joy, I had reigned over them all.
When the women came to me, even though their very presence was a large part of the curse, I was glad to have companionship. Where I had once seduced only the most charming women available, now I had no choice in the matter. The only stipulation in the curse was th
at they must be of child-bearing age, unmarried, and human.
Humans were not very amenable to goblins, but they were amenable to money, and most of the women who appeared at my door were experienced prostitutes or very desperate.
I knew this, and I tried to make the experience pleasant for them, as much as I could. I had never been a cruel man, or at least not intentionally.
Each time, it was much the same. They almost always picked a rose. I was awakened from my sleep when they passed through the gate, and it was never enough time to reach the door and stop them. Maybe it wasn’t possible to stop them, in any case. I could count a handful who had resisted the lure of the flowers of their own accord.
My enchanted home, still graced with the presence of my people if not their voices and dancing feet, would provide a warm meal and bath for them. By the time they went to their beds, my loins would be aching with desperate desire, even if the woman was ugly, scowling, and sharp-tongued. The anticipation of relief was the only happiness I knew anymore.
And yet, I tried to remain the gentleman I had once been. I could usually manage at least five or ten minutes before I had to fuck them. I would come to their bed, summoning all my compliments and charm. I would read their own deepest desires (they almost always had them) and try my best to tease them to the forefront. I would touch them in places that made them shudder and gasp, my ugliness hidden by the shadows, until they began to relax beneath my expert hands. I would ask their names, and not hesitate to tell them my own, so that when I was bringing them to their peak they knew what to scream.
But no, it was not long before this plan showed its flaws. When I made love to women, they were inclined to fall in love with me—or into infatuation, at least—and I might develop feelings for them, especially certain ones. The ones who reminded me of someone I had once known and loved were the worst. A wild lock of hair falling across a pale brow, a wicked gleam in a girl’s eye, a raised eyebrow, an unexpected quip—such things might ruin a night. Or a month of nights.
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