Mr Miller noticed me when I slid into the shadows up near the tin roof.
He pointed to a black plastic trash bag wrapped around a box and gestured with an abrupt sweep of his hand, like he wanted me to take the box and go. I looked around and saw a pair of men inspecting the odd iron fittings rusting out in the sun. A person who appeared to be a little kid like me didn’t belong in a work area like that, so I snagged the box and took off into shadows. The box was lighter than I thought it would be. I ran off to a shady spot that stayed cool most of the day and untied the bag. Inside was a simple unpainted, sanded box with four white plastic feet screwed to the bottom. I didn’t want to get it dirty, so I took it to the den in the old man’s house and sat on it. One side had a panel held on by screws. That side had the sweetest sound. I played it for a while, then got a cooler, and put another pair of fish in it with some ice. I slid back through shadow to Mr. Miller’s shop and put the cooler down where he’d put the box. I hid in the shadows above him and watched him work as he measured and made notes on cast iron fittings in several carts.
Mr. Miller whispered, “I’m working late. Just me and Mr. Villers. Don’t worry about payment. It’s a gift.”
I spent the afternoon playing the box. I couldn’t do deliveries until an hour or so after school was out, or folk would ask questions, so I had time to play. Since the family wasn’t around, I figured I could be fast, and no one would think to report me to a truant officer. I cheated and took a pair of fish to Mr. Hebert’s place.
The jockeys were gone, and in their place were a pair of cement horse heads with hitching rings in their mouths. I heard voices and turned. Mr Hebert and another man were walking out in the ornamental gardens. The moment I looked at them, they both turned and looked at me. I didn’t have time to hide in shadow.
The man with Mr. Hebert said, “You have a visitor, Roland.”
Mr. Hebert looked from me to the man and back to me. They walked over to me, and Mr. Hebert introduced the man, “Phil, good to see you. This is an old old friend of mine. Anthony, this is Phil, Phil, this is Anthony.
We shook hands. “My pleasure. What should I call you? I’m too young to use your first name.”
He smiled. “How about Uncle Anthony?”
I smiled back. “Pleasure meeting you, Uncle Anthony.”
Uncle Anthony crouched down and winked at me. “I’m not really sure about these backwater corners of Louisiana, but insisting you can’t use a first name as a child would be a dead giveaway in just about any town I can name. It dates you. It means you’re not over six hundred and not under thirty.”
I almost ran into shadow when I figured out he knew I wasn’t a young boy, in spite of appearances.
Mr. Hebert said, “Anthony, I just managed to get Phil comfortable with me, and now you might have run him off.”
Uncle Anthony looked up at Mr. Hebert. “How do you know Phil?”
Mr. Hebert took the cooler from me and looked into it. “He’s the best source for fresh fish I know of.”
Uncle Anthony got up and looked into the cooler. “Just two?”
Mr. Hebert stepped back with the cooler. “It’s usually just me here. A maid comes twice a week, but she brings her own lunch. I pay the Roark’s gardeners to come over to help, so I don’t really have anyone else to feed. I haven’t managed to become a regular delivery, and I don’t know how to let him know I need more if and when a guest like you comes over. I suppose I’ll have to share these with you now that you’re here, unless I can talk Phil into delivering more fish.”
Uncle Anthony asked, “You do your own cooking?”
Mr Hebert gave me a look like he was lost in a world filled with worries. “Archer shows up and drives away any permanent staff. I’m dependent on the kindness of temporary help.”
Uncle Anthony crouched down again and examined my face. He smiled up at Mr. Hebert then back at me. “Really, how the mighty fall. It’s an eternal downhill slide. I’m reduced to carving garden gnomes, and poor Roland doesn’t have a servant to his name. Roland, you could come and stay with me for a while. Archer probably wouldn’t bother my servants.”
Mr. Hebert looked down at me. “Is it possible for me to order a dozen fish for tonight and a dozen for tomorrow?”
I thought about it. I’d need to mend and put out the trout lines sooner than I’d thought, but at the price he was paying, if he was paying, that would be a nice bundle of money. I glanced at the flower pot with the artificial flower.
Mr. Hebert said, “You’ll be paid. Phil. I always pay my debts.”
Uncle Anthony said, “Unless you can’t. Then you pay for your debts.”
I looked back at Mr. Hebert, and I couldn’t quite read the expression on his face.
Uncle Anthony said, “Phil, we have you at a disadvantage. We’ve both been around long enough to know a Goblin when we see one. You probably haven’t had a lot of experience with our kind.”
I backed up and made sure I had a foot in a shadow. “My family ran off when they figured out that a Daemon was following me. I was left behind to take care of a few responsibilities. Humans whisper scary tales about Goblins stealing children. Goblins whisper tales about Daemons twisting you into something you don’t want to face in a mirror.”
Anthony said, “We’re not actually Daemons. Daemons are, not to devalue them, a dime a dozen and common as dirt compared to us. Daemons are either descended from the gods or are the gods themselves. Like Goblins, we have a strained relationship with Daemons.”
I asked, “What are you?”
Mr. Hebert answered, “We’re the fallen who continue to to fall endlessly. We’re the remnants of an age before the gods made merry. Anthony and I are Titans. It’s the fault of our kind that Daemons exist.”
I wanted to check on the money, but I didn’t want to seem greedy. I glanced at the flower pot with the artificial flower.
Anthony said, “Go count your money. Then bring us more fish.”
I took the envelope from under the large pot and slid home through shadow. It was thick; he’d probably paid me too much.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
High up in a tree with huge limbs I could lie on, I counted the money. It was too much. I figured sixty for the two catfish and that seemed high to me. There were fifteen hundred dollar bills and two twenties. More than I made in a week, and I was doing well for cash. I didn’t realize it, but without the rest of my Goblin family, I was making decent money and not needing to spend much. I didn’t know how long I could stay in the old man’s house, and without the cement tanks, it was going to be hard to keep the business running. Still, the over-payment was probably a test, and I should give it back. I packed a dozen catfish and returned to Mr. Hebert’s estate.
Uncle Anthony and Mr. Hebert were sitting and drinking in the carriage house by the ice maker.
I put the cooler down and put the bundle of money back on the table. “Pardon, I think you might have put the wrong bundle of money in that envelope, or I grabbed an envelope meant for someone else.
Mr. Hebert sighed. “We agreed on thirty a fish, and the carp was seventy-one pounds. I weighed it. I went and checked it on a grocery store scale, and what they call fresh caught they sell for close to twenty a pound. The catfish were a lot larger than what I expected. I guess I shouldn’t have considered that what they sold and what you sell were the same. Would forty a pound be right?”
I shook my head. “I sell a fish like these for around five dollars and the smaller ones two for five. This is a lot more money than I expected.”
Uncle Anthony said, “Let Mr. Hebert pay you what your fish are worth, not what folks can rip off a child for. He was just asking if I thought he could talk you into catching some really large catfish. You know, the hundred pound monsters that’ll grow out there.”
I said, “I let them go.”
They both stared at me. I looked away. “My cement tanks won’t keep them healthy, and no one will believe I carried them to their shop. With my family gone, there’s no point in catching them.”
Mr Hebert asked, “You have cement tanks?”
“For now I do. Hard to time things and bring fresh fish to folk if you can’t keep them alive after catching them. My tanks are shallow, so I can’t manage a large catfish anyway.”
Mr. Hebert smiled. “If I paid a thousand each for large catfish, and I had a few large cement tanks set up, how often could I get one?”
“I’ll have to think on that,” I said, and then disappeared into shadow.
***
Mr. Miller and Mr. Villers were using staple guns and putting the sides on a box they were building around a large iron fitting with clean shiny steel facings.
Mr. Miller nodded towards the shadows I was in. “I think he’s here.”
Mr. Villers looked around like he was scared.
At a distance from where they were working, I stepped out of shadow and walked up to them. “Mr. Miller, the cajon is wonderful. How many fish do I owe for it?”
Mr. Villers looked at me and back to Mr. Miller. “You set me up to scare me, Vern.”
Mr. Miller said to me, “I have to thank you. I showed off the box to a few neighbors, and now I have folk willing to pay for me to make more. I don’t need payment, and I would rather not do dealing with the other side ‘til I’m on it.”
Mr. Villers said, “Come on now. Quit with the game. You set me up and scared me.”
I looked down at the cooler Mr. Miller had scooted out toward me. “So I shouldn’t come around anymore?”
Mr. Miller said, “If you would be so kind.”
I bowed to him. “God bless you both, and thank you, Mr. Miller.”
I picked up the cooler and returned to the shadows.
Mr. Villers shouted, “Whoa! That was real!”
I slipped from shadow to shadow to leave the enclosed field of rusting iron fixtures.
***
I felt bad about not paying Mr. Miller. I sat on and beat on my wooden drum, sang Irish ballads, and thought about all the wrongs in the world. I wasn’t a spirit, but I could see him confusing me with one. I didn’t rightly know what I was really; I just knew I was called a Goblin. I could move in shadows and disappear into them. I guess that made me a spook. A lot of poisons and diseases left Goblins alone. We regrew our teeth. From what I’d been told, we could regrow fingers and toes. My pointed ears were growing back, and I didn’t have anyone to trim them. Not that I wanted to go through that any time soon.
I got a strong urge to take care of children when I saw them being abused or ignored. I wasn’t like some Goblins, though. I didn’t hide under kids’ beds, wishing I could adopt a child. I wasn’t growing old fast, but I was growing lonely.
I really liked Mr. Miller. I didn’t want to upset him. I owed him but didn’t know what I could do for him without him detecting me and getting bothered. Some children noticed me hiding in the shadows, but only a few adults did.
I couldn’t play the penny whistle and beat on my crate at the same time. I saw an old picture of someone playing a penny whistle and beating a drum, but you needed a second hand to play all the notes, at least you did when playing a penny whistle. I missed people. I missed music with other people.
I checked on my step-father, but I wasn’t about to show myself again. The stories the other Goblins told all ended badly when a child tried to go back and connect with a lost parent or brother. The family ended up hating themselves and turned that feeling into hating you. Because you’d stayed young-looking, and humans thought being young was wonderful, they got jealous. If you did make a good connection, then you got to watch them die.
In the end, Goblins had to live with Goblins, so all the stories said.
***
On Mr. Hebert’s property, a crew was building forms for pouring cement. From the looks of it, he was serious about making fish tanks, and the tanks were going to be big enough to raise lots of fish in.
There was a note with the money. Mr Hebert wanted to talk.
I kept a foot in shadow as I rang the doorbell.
Mr. Hebert looked at my foot in shadow and smiled. “I’d ask you to trust me a bit more, but that caution of yours is part of what I wanted to talk to you about.” He gestured to a table out on the edge of the gardens. “Would you feel safe talking over there?”
I went through the shadows and sat on a statue’s raised base so I was near the table but out of reach.
Mr. Hebert walked to the table and sat down. “Do you know much about Fairylands?”
I shook my head. “A few stories. I was told that a man we saw once was a Fairy, but he looked like a human to me.”
Mr. Hebert said, “This property has a few passages to Fairy. Our kind follows the stories and buys properties that have such things. Often, there’s a doorway to Fairy near springs, and I have a large and ancient spring here on the property.”
I nodded.
Mr Hebert continued, “One of the passages to Fairy opens, or can be opened, around the twenty-first of March. It took me twelve years to find that out. It took me two years to get ready and get brave enough to open it. Nothing came out. Not even a sound. I tossed a few gifts in. Nothing came out.
“The next year I was better prepared. I put some gifts in with a string attached. I pulled the gifts back, but so as to not offend anyone there, I tossed them back in. Then I sent a few goats in and pulled them back by their ropes. I untied them and herded them through again. They didn’t come back. They were trained to return, but they didn’t.”
I asked, “Is it that scary?”
He nodded. “At least that scary. So, here was what I was thinking. Your typical Fairyland is worth more money than anyone in this county could pay. A good Fairyland is worth quite a bit more than that.
“I have done the basic tests. The Fairyland is survivable, it may be uninhabited, but it could also be quite dangerous. The tradition of old was to send a slave through next and to grant his freedom and fortune if he returned. That is, unless you had an expert who was willing to brave it for the reward. The best experts have always been Goblins.
“I was hoping to contact a clan of Goblins. Usually there are a few bold, wild ones that can be talked into this sort of thing for glory and treasure. I’m kind of upset with myself for even mentioning this to you, though. I’ve taken a liking to you, and I don’t want the pangs of guilt if anything goes bad. Your safety is more valuable to me than I can really say.
“But, sadly, there is a cunning, greedy, and selfish part of me, or I wouldn’t be telling you about this. I don't want you to do this, but if you know someone else willing to take a risk for a large profit, let me know. You shouldn't even consider it though. You can make good money keeping me supplied with fish, and Fairylands can be, and usually are, extremely dangerous for the living.”
I asked, “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
He smiled. “No, really, it’s more that I wanted to confess. The lady at the restaurant mentioned that you cooked and were trying to learn more. She said you knew your way around some of the classic recipes. I’m alone here most of the time, and I pride myself on my cooking, but I don’t have the recipes you might, and the kitchen here is rather large. What I want to do is invite you to come in and cook with me. Teach me, learn from me, and dine with me.
“You and I can’t just share our stories and backgrounds with everyone we meet. There are obvious advantages to being as long lived as you and I. One of the disadvantages is the loneliness of the long years when mortal friends all pass away.”