12. Leaving

When Dorothy stepped into her kitchen, she was surprised to find all three goblins sat in a circle: two supping from bowls of venison soup, while the larger goblin, who loomed over the other two like a huge man over a child, stared sadly down at a raw deer haunch.

"Thought I told you to hide," she said to Gob disagreeably, but all three of them turned.

"Manlings gone," said the herald lightly. "Thank you for your help, womanling!"

"I'm going to need you--all of you--to leave," Dorothy angrily demanded.

Gob met the words with a confused smile.

"Soon," said the herald. "First, we eating. Then, we speaking. Then, we leaving."

"I've nothin' to say to you," Dorothy countered. "And you can eat on the road. You've got your goblin back and that's all you wanted. Now you can leave me be."

"Taruk changes his mind," the herald explained. "Womanling must leave. There is no longer any room for manlings in these forests. If he permits you, then others will stay."

"Gob stay?" Gob then asked.

The herald smiled kindly at him as if he were a fool. "Great Chief Taruk no longer cares if you return to the clan. The womanling can keep you, or you can come back with us."

"Gob stay," Gob happily repeated.

"No." Dorothy's voice and face were grim. "You go with your kind now, Gob. I'm leaving. Off to live with the manlings. No more clan. Get gone. Don't come back."

Gob cocked his head. "Gob stay."

"No!" Dorothy stomped over to grab her iron pan. "You go! Gob goes!"

Gob's green features lapsed into sadness. "I stay... pleasing? Pleasing, Chief Dot? Go hunt?" he hopefully suggested.

"Gob," said the herald, reaching over and touching his knee. "You come to clan. Follow us. Do this. Must do this," he sternly added.

"No, no." Gob scrabbled back to the kitchen counter, rapidly shaking his head. "Gob go hunt!" he screeched. "Pleasing, Dot! Pleasing!"

Dorothy stood staring at him, one hand wrapped idly around her heavy pan. "No," she said again. "Gob go home. Back to clan."

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"We clan!" Gob insisted.

"No we ain't. And we never was. You were never welcome here. And I was never a Chief. I'm just an old woman who don't belong. And you don't belong neither. But that don't mean we're stuck together for the rest of our days. See this--" She brandished the pan. "I'll see to you like I did the other, if you don't run along. Crack open your head."

"Smash?" Tugg then idly asked, lifting the deer haunch up to his vacant eyes as if it were some mystery.

"No," said the herald. "I think we will eat on the road. Come along--"

"No need," Dorothy cut in. "I'm leaving. You can all stay here as long as you like."

"Gob stays?" Gob hopefully asked. "Oh. No. Gob follows!"

"Don't follow me!" she snarled, venom creeping into her words now. "Leave me be, you foolish runt! We ain't no clan!"

"Tugg," the herald then put in. "Grab the little goblin. Do that."

Tugg stared between the herald, and Gob, who were both quite short.

"Not me," the herald clarified.

"Oh. Do that--" He struggled up, reaching for Gob, who made a dash for the window. With a rattle of the shutters and a scrabble of wood, the scrawny goblin was gone.

The herald shrugged his slight shoulders. "Well... at least the noise can stop. Sit," he instructed of Tugg. "Eat. Then we will leave."

Tugg murmured something in answer, but Dorothy was already walking past them, marching to the sitting room.

She grabbed her sack of things, wrapped a cloak round her bony old shoulders, and then thundered out of her front door. She wasn't sure where she was going, or whether she'd been too cruel or not cruel enough, but she surely couldn't be looking after a goblin for the rest of her days. Soon enough she'd be so old she wouldn't be able to take care of herself. So maybe it was all for the best that she was having to leave her home in the middle of the forest. Even if the folk in town didn't much like her, they'd make for better company than a pack of goblins. And be far less liable to eat her as well. She probably had enough coin to buy that dead man's home, so she'd have a roof over her head, though not much more money left for food.

Dorothy hoisted up her sack, the weight already starting to make her neck ache. She cursed under her breath, and wished she'd never opened her door to those goblins.

Things could have stayed as they were. Simple. She could have just carried on until the day when her body gave out. Could have stayed in her home, that she knew, and died in the same place as Gordon. Instead she was going to have to go to folk she barely knew and barely liked with her tail between her legs begging for shelter and food. No doubt Moira and Young Gil had already told them all about Dorothy's fight with the goblins, and they'd all have plenty of snide questions and sly remarks to make by the time she arrived.

"Moira," Dorothy muttered to herself disagreeably. "Shouldn't have been so nice to her," she decided aloud, now annoyed with herself that the two of them had enjoyed an evening together. "Moira," she said again in an altogether different tone. Dorothy remembered that Moira's house would be abandoned now. The other woman had packed light, so there must be everything Dorothy would need to survive still left at the place. It had been built just as remote, but was far enough away from here that she might never hear from Great Chief Taruk or his clan again.

"That's it, then," she said to herself. "Don't need to start over. Won't have gossips or goblins botherin' me for the winters I have left."

She adjusted the sack on her shoulder, and headed towards Moira's place. Not paying much mind to the setting sun, or to the distant, doleful howling of a pack of wolves.