3. Mended

Dorothy's sigh shuddered out of her frail frame amidst a great weight of regretful exhaustion.

Whatever hurt she'd been spared in the heat of a battle, was now blooming four fold around every muscle and every bone.

She sat with her back to a kitchen cupboard, raggedly breathing while pain wrapped around her like a blanket. Great pulsating waves that started one place and began in another before the first had even ended.

She hadn't felt this sort of agony since giving birth, and that was now a distant memory. One she looked at more like a witness to another much younger woman's past instead of her own.

Her wrist was the only constant, which burned as if some cruel blacksmith had forged hot iron around her forearm.

The scrawny goblin lay opposite her, sprawled amid the dusty floorboards of her kitchen, half cloaked in shadows and half revealed by the weak light of the now rising dawn sun.

She'd managed to stitch the gash on his head. But by the looks of the poor thing, it hadn't done him any good. He'd stopped murmuring and now lay still and silent.

Probably for the best, of course. Else he might have decided, now he was rid of his own hunters, that a battered and exhausted old woman might make for a likely meal.

Dorothy couldn't reckon why it was she'd got herself involved to begin with. All these winters she'd played life safe, and now here she was risking her neck for a monster.

She'd been one wrong step away from being eaten alive. And even as things went, the goblins had said they'd tell of what happened here. Would that bring even more unwanted visitors to her door?

Maybe she really would be safer in a city. The grocer's boy would be here in a day or two, and she could travel back with him. Get clear of all this and thank Joyto the Trickster that she'd managed to come clear of a grizzly death.

Worst part of it wouldn't even be the dying, but her son hearing the news. 'Told you it was dangerous,' he'd say. 'The Midderland's no place for an old woman alone. Tried to warn her.'

No doubt he'd have some choice words if his mother did seek him out. But then Dorothy could survive a bit of an embarassment.

She doubted she'd live much longer with more goblins darkening her door. She'd leave out this sorry business altogether. Tell him she was getting lonely on her own. He wouldn't even believe her if she told him the truth.

"Hardly believe it meself," she muttered aloud. Her words were slurred and her eyes were sore and leaden. She wondered, idly, if this might be a strange dream. And then drifted off to sleep.

***

Dorothy woke to a startling clatter. Pots, and pans, and knives rattling all together or clattering across the kitchen. Then momentary confusion gave way to a flood of aches and pain. Trying to voice her distress, her lips moved but her jaw throbbed with a frightening soreness that kept her silent.

She squinted in defense of bright sunlight lancing in from the nearby window, able to make out the hunched green figure of a goblin.

Sudden panic gave way to regretful understanding. The little monster hadn't broken into her home, she'd carried him in the night before.

"Oi," she quietly managed, despite her swollen face. "Oi," she tried less feebly, but couldn't be heard.

The goblin carried on rooting through her things, grabbing and sniffing and biting, throwing away whatever he couldn't easily chew.

Dorothy grabbed the nearby handle of a cupboard, pulling it out and then slamming it closed.

The goblin leapt around, small claws up and out like a scared cat, but the grubby green visage soon curled up into a smirk. "Oh! You wake!"

Dorothy stared for a long moment, trying to sort through her thoughts amid an agony that seemed to ebb and flow. "I am."

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"You is," the goblin agreed. His hairless brow raised as if in intrigue or excitement. "What do now?"

"Well--" She began, twisting her mouth and changing her tone to lessen the pain of her jaw. "You can stop making a racket."

"Rat it?"

"Racket."

"Whack it? What I whack?"

"Noise."

"I whack noise?" he asked disbelieving. "Can not be! Or can?" he second guessed, almost nervously. "I can...?" he repeated, now hopefully.

Dorothy made a disagreeble murmur. Her head began to throb amid a persistent hissing sound. "Go home."

"Home...?" he repeated. "Clan home. Is home. Yes?"

"Yes. Go back to clan."

The goblin cocked his head. "I am home. Clan. This--" He stomped down. "Clan home! Yes. Yes? Yes...?"

'Gods above,' Dorothy thought to herself. 'What have I done?'

She tried to push up from the floor, but pain shot up her back and her wrist could barely bear any weight at all. Staggering, she almost collapsed but the goblin leapt forward, anchoring her weight on his shoulders, stopping her fall.

"Careful," he reprimanded, helping her to her feet. "Not good fall. Hurting. Yes? Yes!"

Shifting her balance onto the countertop behind her, she frowned down at the goblin in confusion.

Much stronger than he looked, he barely stood as tall as her bust. Which wasn't saying much as scores of winter had dragged them down, bending her back for good measure.

"Go... back," she decided. "To goblins. Your kind. Goblin," she repeated. "Back you go."

"Back?" His eyes, wild and yellow like a feral cat, widened. "No, no. I not back. They want eat. Me! I not want eat. We are back now. This is... here. Yes? No," he decided. "Us," he seized. "Us clan!"

Dorothy's senses were slowly coming back to her, reminding her of a terrible thirst and the sudden surety that her bladder might burst. "I'm no goblin," she answered.

"No," he happily agreed. "Womanling. I goblin... ling. Goblinling. Gob... lin. Gob--"

"Shush."

"Shush?" he echoed.

"Quiet."

"Oh. Yes, I--" Then he pressed his lips tight together and looked up at her in expectation.

"We are not the same."

The goblin's eyes narrowed as if he were unsure whether or not he should speak.

"You go," Dorothy then demanded as forcefully as she could. "Leave."

The goblin glanced over to the door, which rattled in the wind. "Go hunt?"

Dorothy groaned without patience, unsure of any other way short of killing the goblin to get rid of him. "Go on, then. Go hunt."

"Hunt what?" he asked.

She thought quite hard about the answer, considering a wolf but decided that was too liable to get the foolish goblin killed. "Hunt an owl."

"Owwweeell?"

"Hoot hoot," she mimicked.

"Oh!" He bared his fanged teeth in a grimy smile. "I hunt hooting. Yes. Do this!"

The goblin excitedly scampered off through the door, and leapt down the broken stairs. He had cleared the grassy clearing around the home and was crossing by the tall trees of the distant forest by the time Dorothy staggered over to close the way after him.

She made sure to block the doorway with the length of wood. She doubted he could catch an owl, and if he did she was fairly certain he'd rather eat the poor bird than drag it back with him.

Dorothy then set about her morning rituals, grateful when she'd emptied her bladder and had some water and food in her belly.

She reprimanded herself more than once for getting involved with a pack of goblins. And couldn't even decide whether or not she'd done a good deed. Like as not that goblin would go on to kill and eat whatever it possibly could.

Washed and dressed, she sat on a stool in the kitchen facing the barred door, waiting to see if the goblin would come scampering back to her.

Her good hand wrapped tight around the iron pan, and her other hand wrapped in an untidy bandage, she decided to rest her eyes. Time drifted back and forth between quick and slow until the bright noon day had given way to a dreary dusk.

She wearily sighed, about to get herself back to bed and forget this sorry business, when a polite knocking sounded out against her door.