For the Love of a Goblin Warrior (Shadowlands)

by Shona Husk

  The woman grabbed a knife from the closest goblin, desperation in her eyes. He knew that look—he’d seen it in his wife’s eyes just before she’d died. Meryn looked away, unable to watch what happened next. Red blood stained the gray dust. But the goblins still fought, blaming the others for the loss of their prize.

  He’d always known he was different from other goblins, that something was wrong with him, but until that moment, he’d been able to deny it and pretend he was the same.

  Now he knew why he was different. He hadn’t yet completely surrendered his human soul.

  He glanced at the woman. She lay unseeing on the gray dust—the curve of her lips and cheek now strangely familiar.

  Chapter 4

  Nadine peeked through the window into the room. Meryn was sleeping, but it didn’t appear to be restful; his hands gripped the sheets too tight. What was he dreaming? The same nightmare that had made him call out in her ward? Was it some kind of post-traumatic stress? She bit her lower lip. Something about him wasn’t adding up. He could draw a detailed map of Europe but didn’t seem to recognize Australia. His reactions had all been normal. And if he was from Wales, shouldn’t be able to speak English?

  She lingered, watching him for a little longer. There was always something wrong with the really good-looking ones.

  She shook her head and turned away. Like she could judge.

  In the changing room, Nadine toed off her shoes, stripped off her scrubs, and dropped them on the floor. From her locker she pulled out her running gear, leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt. After the shift she’d had, she needed to get out and stretch her legs before crashing for a few hours.

  She dressed and tied up her sneakers. As she stood, there was no familiar bounce when her necklace should’ve hit her chest. Nothing. She traced the length of gold chain, but there was nothing hanging from it. Her mother’s cross was gone.

  “Shit.” Panic shot through her system like a drug.

  She shook out her scrubs, hoping the cross would drop out like it had last time. She’d pinched the clasp together a number of times with pliers, always swearing she’d take it to the jeweler to get fixed, yet never wanting to part with it to get it mended. When the cross didn’t fall out of the fabric, she ran her hands over the cloth, double-checking. Her hands trembled as she kept searching, and her stomach liquefied. It wasn’t there.

  “Damn it.”

  Where could it be?

  She couldn’t have lost it. She’d worn it for twenty years. Her social worker had said that, when they found her, she’d refused to let go of the broken necklace. Her first foster mother had bought her a new chain so she could wear it. Since then she had never taken it off. It was all she had left of a mother she could hardly remember.

  How could she have been so careless? If she’d gotten it fixed, she wouldn’t be in this mess. Nadine scowled at the scrubs on the floor. Maybe it had gotten stuck in her civvies. She pulled the clothes she’d worn to work out of her locker, waiting for the telltale tinkle of gold hitting the linoleum. Nothing.

  The contents of her locker followed the clothes onto the floor. Had she been wearing it when she came to work? Maybe it was at home in the shower or on the bedroom floor? She closed her eyes and tried to think when she’d last felt its weight around her neck but couldn’t remember. She was so used to it being there that she paid it no attention. Her left hand curled into a fist as if she could feel the cross’s weight and shape in her palm.

  She didn’t get that lucky. It wouldn’t be at home. It would’ve come off while she was working. Tears welled, but she swallowed and forced them back. She didn’t cry. And she wasn’t going to start now. If someone found it, maybe they’d hand it in.

  Yeah. Like that was going to happen. People didn’t hand in lost jewelry. They either kept it or pawned it. She unclenched her hand. She wasn’t a child clinging to hope anymore. For too long as a child, she’d imagined her mother and father would find her and take her back. Eventually she’d been forced to face the truth. Her mother was dead and her father was doing time for her murder.

  What she couldn’t remember she’d researched in old newspapers as a teenager. At the time it had been quite a scandal.

  French immigrant killed by Sudanese husband.

  Five-year-old daughter the only witness, too traumatized to speak.

  No remorse. Husband pleads not guilty.

  Wife-killer repeatedly refused parole for refusing to tell police where the body is.

  Despite everything she’d read, she still didn’t recall a thing about that night. All she had were nightmares that left her terrified of the dark but offered no answers. During the horror of being assessed and bundled off into foster care, her maternal grandmother had done nothing. She’d refused to get the granddaughter she’d never wanted and take her home to France—she didn’t want the embarrassment of a brown-skinned child in the family. It was no wonder her mother had left Lyon and come to Australia. How different would her life have been if her parents had stayed in France?

  She shook her head. That was another fantasy she refused to dwell on. Her father had taken away everything, and now he was free. As if a twenty-year sentence could make what he’d done all right. And now her mother’s cross was gone. It was just going to be one of those days…maybe one of those weeks. Ever since he’d been released, she’d been on edge, waiting for something to happen.

  Nadine folded up the clothes and packed them into the small backpack she wore when running. She cast her gaze once more over the floor but no gold glinted. With a heart weighed down by loss, she bundled up the scrubs and dropped them in the laundry. Then she scribbled a note and pinned it to the staff notice board, just in case by some miracle someone found the cross her grandmother had given her mother for her confirmation.

  But she wasn’t going to hold her breath waiting.

  For the benefit of anyone who saw her, she pasted on a smile. She’d learned a long time ago that looking sad drew attention and questions that people then wanted answered. It was much easier to look happy and be left alone.

  She slung her backpack over her shoulders and adjusted the straps so it wouldn’t move around. At least while she was running she wasn’t thinking about anything except her next step. She braced herself for the early morning chill as she left the hospital. The days were getting warmer, lighter, and longer. Spring was in the air even though it wasn’t September yet. Just the idea that the winter solstice was behind her was reason enough to celebrate. It would be nearly another year until the anniversary of her mother’s death came around.

  As she warmed up from a walk to a jog to a run, the chain around her neck bounced without weight. Every step was a reminder of what was missing. She ran along the river without seeing it, up the stairs that connected the city of Perth to Kings Park, through the park, and to the City West train station down the hill. Her lungs burned but she didn’t relent. She didn’t want to be able to think.

  Her feet hit the platform, and there was nowhere else for her to run to. But she didn’t stand still even though it was ten minutes until the train arrived. Instead, she paced and calmed her breathing. She’d pushed herself hard and still didn’t feel any better. Her hand touched the empty chain, as if she expected the cross to reappear by magic.

  This early in the morning, there was hardly anyone on the train, and those who were got off in the city ready to start their days. She didn’t miss the early morning crush. It had been hard enough to conform to what everyone called normal hours while she was studying. Having to attend classes during the day and attempting to sleep at night was awful. As a child she’d sleep as soon as she came home from school, wake up for dinner, and then play or read silently until dawn, the lights burning to keep away the creatures that crawled in the shadows and haunted her nightmares. Then she’d sleep until she was dragged out of bed by yet another foster parent who couldn’t understand why she was being difficult.

  By the time she got off the train and was walking t
he last couple of blocks home, she’d almost convinced herself the cross was at home, tangled in her bed sheets. The loop had never been quite right since it had been pulled off at school by a child who’d decided to make her suffer for being different. She’d pushed him off the jungle gym and broken his arm in retaliation.

  In hindsight, she could’ve killed him. Maybe murder ran in her blood.

  The two kids at the bus stop across the road waved. Their mother would have gone to work already and left them to get themselves to school. At least she’d never had to do that. She’d always had breakfast made for her and someone to send her off each day. Nadine waved back as always. They knew that if there were ever any problems after school, they could knock on her door. So far there’d only been a couple of Band-Aid emergencies.

  When she got inside, the house was silent. Gina was having an extra-long weekend away with her just-returned army boyfriend. For today the place was hers. The stillness echoed around her and she breathed it in, searching for peace and trying to rein in the hope that lingered in her belly—her cross was here, it had to be. She dropped her bag by the door and went to her bedroom. The bed was unmade, as she’d left it.

  She rummaged through the sheets, then stripped the bed, shook the sheets, and searched the floor. Then she went into the bathroom. The cross wasn’t there either and it was too big to go down the drain. She worried her lip between her teeth.

  It had been two decades since she’d slept without it and before then her mother had been alive and had read to her every night. If her father was home, and not driving a cab, he sat on the end of the bed and listened too. She couldn’t remember an argument between her parents.

  Nadine closed her eyes and put her hand on the empty chain. It wasn’t all lost. She still had the original broken chain. She swallowed and tried not to choke on the lump in her throat. That would have to do. But before she could sleep she’d have to remake the bed, shower, and eat.

  Dressed in striped panties and a hot pink tank top with her short, wet hair sticking up in all directions, she ate a bowl of cereal. She really couldn’t be bothered with cooking, and this had dried fruit in it. It was almost a real meal.

  As she ate, she sifted through the mail on the kitchen table. Most of it was junk. Real estate agents cruising for a house to sell. A letter for Gina. And one for her. She stared at the familiar handwriting.

  Nadine put her spoon down. She’d already received her birthday letter from her father. What did he want from her now? Part of her hated him for what he’d done; the rest of her couldn’t be bothered dedicating the time to hate him properly. She’d never argued that he remain in jail until he died, even though she was given the option every time he came up for parole—it had always been denied because he’d never shown remorse or told police where the body was. However, according to the letters she’d received from the Department of Corrections, he’d been a model prisoner. He’d gotten an education and worked on the prison farm. Good for him. She was still paying off her college debt and would be for years.

  She toyed with the envelope for a little longer, as if she could convince herself to read the first letter he’d written to her as a free man.

  Usually it was just her birthday and Christmas. When she was little, her first foster mother had read them to her. Later, when Nadine could read, she’d just put them in a box unread. She didn’t want to know how much he loved her. If he loved her, why had he ruined her life?

  Why had he destroyed the happy family they had by killing her mother?

  Her earliest memories were of laughter and singing. Of speaking Nuer with her father and her mother reading fairy tales in French. Not one of her memories involved anger or tears. She didn’t trust the only memories she had of her family. How could she?

  How could she trust anything her father said?

  If he’d pleaded guilty, pleaded insanity—anything—she would’ve at least had a father. Instead, she was the little girl no one wanted. Too difficult, too traumatized, too anything but loveable.

  Her appetite vanished and she threw the rest of her cereal in the garbage. But like every other letter from her father, she couldn’t throw it away, so she added it to the collection that lived in a box at the bottom of her wardrobe. Next to the box of letters was the book of fairy tales. Taped inside were the broken chain and a picture of her family.

  Her mother on one side of her and her father on the other. Both of them were smiling and in the middle was a tiny version of herself with pink ribbons in her pigtails. She didn’t remember the photo being taken. But there was no doubt she was their child. She looked too much like them both. She’d inherited his eyes, a murky mix of green and brown, and her mother’s wide cheeks and narrow chin; even her skin was the shade between her pale mother and dark-skinned father, as if she were the perfect blend of both of them.

  On the next page, handwritten in French, was the fairy tale her mother had told her the most—Le roi des gobelins, The Goblin King.

  Once upon a time, there was a king. He was fierce and brave and handsome, but also just and kind. When his lands were attacked by invaders from over the sea and his brother captured as a slave, he rose up full of fury. But the invaders were sneaky. They didn’t want to face the king who was uniting the people against them. So they laid a trap and tricked him and his loyal men with magic. The king was turned into a hideous goblin with a heart of solid gold and banished to the Shadowlands, the place where nightmares are created.

  Her gaze skimmed over the familiar script; she knew the words by heart. When she was young, she used to close her eyes and imagine she could hear her mother reading to her like she’d used to. The words blurred, but it didn’t matter. Her lips moved as she read to the end, the last line resonated in the air around her.

  Love is the most powerful magic of all. Never forget that. If you can love, you can do anything.

  Unlike the other stories in the book of fairy tales, The Goblin King didn’t have a happy ending. The story seemed incomplete. More of a cautionary tale. As a child it hadn’t bothered her; she’d believed the Goblin King would get a happily ever after because that was what happened, and she’d go to bed imagining a princess who could break the spell.

  Nadine closed the book with a heavy thump. Revisiting her mother’s stories was always bittersweet. With the curtains left open so sunlight would spill onto her and wake her if she slept too long into the afternoon, Nadine lay down on the bed, taking the book with her.

  At first her dreams cradled her, the way dreams should. Her mother was sitting in the garden; behind her was a fountain and a castle. As a child Nadine had spent a lot of time imaging this place until it was so real she knew each flower, each brick, and every turn of the path. It was her sanctuary. Here she had lived her perfect life with her mother and father, but she’d banished him when she was old enough to understand what he’d done. Sometimes she was an adult walking the palace corridors, looking for something or someone; today Nadine was little again. She skipped along the path and then jumped onto her mother’s lap.

  Together they read Beauty and the Beast and then Sleeping Beauty. Then her mother flicked back to the first page of the book and read The Goblin King. Her silky smooth accent made the story flow, so Nadine could almost see the King who’d been banished to the Shadowlands, a place so gray and bleak only goblins could survive. Even though she knew the story word for word, she shivered as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. She glanced up. It hadn’t. There were no clouds for it to hide behind. The sun had vanished, yet it wasn’t night. The sky was empty and weird and gray. That wasn’t right. There was always blue sky and sunlight here; it was never dark. Everything was always as it should be. The gray bled into the landscape around her, stealing the color from the flowers. She watched them wilt and die.

  Fear gripped her. This was her place; she was in control. She would not let nightmares encroach. Nadine stood and she was an adult again.

  “No!” Her voice echoed oddly. She spun to face he
r mother, but she was gone. Where her mother had sat on the bench the book lay open, the pages fluttering in an unfelt breeze.

  If you can love, you can do anything.

  The words spun off the page and danced in the air like black butterfly skeletons. They twirled around her and tangled in her hair. Where they touched her skin, they cut with razor sharp wings. Nadine slammed the book closed before more words could escape. Around her the world shattered as if it were made of glass. The sky began to fall in like shards of lethal rain and the ground cracked like she was standing on thin ice. She screamed as if she was going to fall off the world and cease to exist.

  Nadine sat up. Her breath came in short, sharp pants. Terror lodged in the back of her throat, jagged and rusted with age. It had been a long time between nightmares, yet her ears still rang with the sound of breaking glass.

  She knew that whatever lay on the other side of the glass in her dreams would hurt her, but she always woke up before she saw what it was. The child psychiatrist had said it was her brain’s way of protecting her from what she’d seen the night her mother was killed. Part of her wanted to know the truth; the rest of her was too scared to remember. It was one thing to know her father killed her mother, but another to have seen it. She took a deep breath and flopped back onto the bed and tried to go back to sleep.

  But Nadine couldn’t close her eyes; the fear was too fresh. Instead, she stared out the window at the blue sky, wishing she could see the sun, as if she needed reassuring it was still there. The blank gray sky of her nightmare had been alien and oppressive. She knew it was the Shadowlands of her mother’s story. She shook her head and closed her eyes. When she went back to her dream castle, she’d fix whatever was damaged and everything would be fine.

  ***

  Light and noise filled the room. Meryn opened his eyes in time to see someone being wheeled out. The man lay motionless on the bed. Was he dead? Where were they taking the man…and would he be next? When the door closed, Meryn eased up and looked around. One sleeping area had the curtain pulled around. The other two were now empty.