It's a common misconception that tiny villages in the middle of nowhere love an excuse to throw a festival.
That's not to say we never do, but having one a month would be a busy year - in terms of village events at any rate.
We've had all sorts of things, food festivals, car boot sales, funfairs, open air cookery glasses - ill advised -, and once the scouts from the nearest town came to showcase their survival skills to all the village kids. And those are just some of the ones that stick in the mind.
Though the early summer one always has a focus on fun and village fundraising. Get volunteers to run all kind of stalls, from the games we dig out of storage every year, to various hobbyists setting up a stall to showcase their talents or even people just donating items to the bric-a-brak.
We used to have competitions, but Mel had finally separated them out into a separate event on the basis that "when there's prizes, someone always falls out".
And this year, we had the absolute best weather for it.
Trying to enjoy a fete in the rain isn't fun. Trying to tuck into a slice of delicious cake when it's chucking it down on you is just demoralising - and a waste of cake.
The sunshine brings out the exact opposite, business at all the stalls is boosted. Drinks flow more freely, food is consumed almost greedily and the games are played with abandon.
Heck, even manning the Age League stall with it's various leaflets, petition forms and fundraising event flyers - after all we're still a charity dedicated to improving the local area - and, naturally, jam sees far more people dropping in than you'd suspect when the sun is beaming down on us all.
Which was lucky for me because I drew a shift manning it. At least I had people dropping by to talk to - and getting more signatures on the petition we were going to send the councils about the potholes. Maybe they'll listen to us this time?
"Hey, Henry, that pump still in your van?" Sid asked as he hurried up to the stall.
"Yeah, why?" Henry asked suspiciously from where he had been enjoying a slice of cake Muriel had supplied us with recently.
"The bouncy castle is starting to deflate -"
"What did you do?"
"Nothing!" Sid protested. "I think we just missed a hole on our latest patch job. Pretty certain that thing is older than most of us."
Henry chuckled. "Okay, fine, can you help Debbie here until I get back?"
"What's to help with?"
"Sid..."
"Fine, fine!"
"Don't touch my cake!"
I shook my head to myself in amusement as Sid raised his arms in surrender as he moved to join me on the other side of the stall. For all his objections he happily made himself at home restocking flyers whilst I unpacked more jam jars.
"Sid, is something trying to crawl up the splat-a-rat pipe?" I asked after I'd finished replacing said jars on the stall itself, and thought I saw something moving when I looked up.
"Eh?" He asked as he turned to have a gander too. Then he saw the same wiggling shadow I did. "You've got things covered here if I go look, right?" He said and headed off without waiting for a reply. He didn't even look back when I shouted a caution at him.
I mean, he wasn't wrong. Whilst the sunshine did bring more custom to all the stalls, it was still quiet at ours. There was just something really dumb sounding about him going over there to stick his arm down a pipe that we both suspected something had crawled up. Even if it was just a real rat instead of the most moth eaten set of plushy rats you've ever seen. And to be honest, I think one of them was a teddy bear in a previous life.
But even if Sid wasn't prone to bad luck... I think we've all seen this film.
As much as I wanted to watch to see what was about to happen, in a moment of bad luck someone came up to the stall to buy some jam. And in the time it took to complete the transaction and try and convince them to sign the petition, I turned back and Sid was stood stock still with a wriggling green thing in his hands and a slightly bigger green creature was stood on the top of the splat-a-rat pipe brandishing an arrow nocked bow at his head.
Exactly what do you do in response to that?
Ethel would probably snipe it with a crossbow. I didn't have a crossbow. I also wasn't that good a shot.
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Then I realised the one with a bow was saying something to Sid, though I couldn't tell what from here. He glared at it and for the briefest of seconds they both looked down.
The smaller one. It was a baby.
"Sid!" I hissed, scurrying towards them - to hell with the stall, who was going to nick some jam? - so they could hear me without my having to shout loud enough for way too many people to hear. "Give it it's baby back!"
"Baby!?" He demanded, without looking away from the small green creature threatening to shoot him. "What do you think this is? Bring your kid on the raid day?"
"Does it matter? If they are here to attack we're best off getting everyone else anyway."
"If?"
"You really think they'd blow their cover to just save a single one?"
He tilted his head as if to indicate I had a point there. "And if it doesn't work?"
"We've neither lost nor gained anything?" I replied unsurely. The armed creature occasionally glanced at me, but for barely a second at a time as if it didn't dare take it's gaze off Sid for long enough to lose a chance to strike. Clearly it didn't see me as much of a threat. I think that was a good thing. Could they understand us?
"Okay, but if this goes badly I'm going to haunt you, you know that right?"
I shrugged, that seemed fair.
"Okay, buddy, if I put this down and let it go, will you not shoot me? Or any of us?" Sid asked, I think it was more hope than any real bargaining, but the creature seemed to lose a fraction of it's tension. Sid glanced at me and I nodded as encouragingly as I could and then he turned back and slowly lowered the squirming, tiny mass of limbs back to the ground. Once there he let go and it scurried away into the long grass behind the splat-a-rat set up.
The one with the bow stayed just long enough to check we couldn't grab it before it leapt away and into the grass too.
"We're still alive, right?" Sid asked, hoisting himself up with a groan and dusting his knees off from the dirt.
"Yeah, but I think we need to get the others."
~-x-~
Naturally we got a bollocking for leaving the stall unattended.
Sid and I explained everything that had happened, and we got a second scalding about leaving things unattended.
"More importantly, what was it? And do we need to prepare for an invasion?" Sid asked, waving away their concerns about protocol.
"Nothing we've come across before," Henry replied.
"But similar," Muriel half agreed. "My best bet, would be goblins."
"So it's a raid?" Ethel asked, and I still have no idea how she already had a knife in her hand.
"It's possible," Muriel agreed. "We know very little about them other than the old stories of redcaps and similar mischief makers."
"No red hats on these two," Sid promised.
"So we hunt?" Jimmy asked instead. "If they are preparing some kind of foul play then we should be able to locate them now we know they're here."
"And how do you plan on doing that without anyone asking what we're up to?" Mel asked. "Unless you think it's serious enough to call off the fair?"
There was an awkward silence where no one wanted to admit that they'd feel a lot safer about their loved ones if we did, but also that at this time it was also a wild overreaction. Even Sid.
"Or, we all enjoy the rest of the afternoon and no one gets hurt?"
It took a moment for us to realise that wasn't a voice we knew, and suddenly we were all looking around before we located the new member of the impromptu meeting. A small green creature that was barely as tall as the stall it was standing next to, sort of using it as cover as if it wasn't sure if it should be hiding from us or not.
Ethel was the first to move, but Muriel stuck an arm out to halt her. "What are you doing here?" Muriel asked.
"We always come!" It replied happily, yet warily. "The games are fun, and our children play together."
"What!?"
"Ethel!" Muriel hissed at the outrage, before turning back to the creature, who'd taken a few steps back and it's ears were drooping slightly. "You come to play the games?"
"Yes! Good games, fun games! Always fun here," it agreed, brightening significantly.
"And where do you go afterwards?"
That earnt the first hesitation since it spoke up. "Used to go home."
"Used to?" Henry asked suspiciously.
"Home infested and not safe anymore."
"What with?" Muriel asked.
It scratched its head as if it was thinking hard. "Bull-horse whose poop wrecks the earth."
I must admit, that whilst I understood all of those words individually, together they lost all meaning. I like to think based on the looks on some of the others' faces they too were lost. However, Muriel and Henry just exchanged a look and said, in unison, "bonnacon".
Ethel swore.
"What's a bonnacon?" I asked, somehow knowing I would dread the answer.
"Like the little fella said, it's a bull with a mane like a horse and its manure will parch the earth. Nothing will grow again until it's been treated - if you're lucky," Muriel explained.
"Because of the acid, we think," Henry added helpfully.
"And it farts fire," Ethel added.
Somehow that didn't feel like a weird detail to add at the time. Which is possibly a sign of how much my life had changed in only a couple of months.
"I thought we got them all?" Old Charlie asked.
Several of the group shrugged unhappily. "We got all the ones we knew about, that doesn't mean there weren't some babies or eggs or - I don't even know! - that we missed," Henry replied.
"We don't know enough about their herds to know," Muriel added.
"It doesn't matter now, we'll just have to clean up the new ones."
"You help us?" The goblin asked unsurely, yet clearly incredibly hopefully as it took a step foward.
"Help!?" Ethel retorted.
"Ethel!" Muriel scolded. "They've not hurt us."
"You help us, we help you!" It agreed frantically with Muriel.
"What's your name?" Jimmy asked.
"Humans can't pronounce it, you can call me Nuk instead," he added with a toothy grin that I figured was supposed to look happy. Those little fangs however gave it an accidentally menacing air. "We can enjoy fair now? You let us play?"
Everyone looked towards Mel, who considered the question for a moment before nodding.
"But if you so much as harm a hair on anyone's head -" Ethel started.
"We will patch! We are good at fixing!" Nuk promised before bouncing happily off.
For a moment there was a kind of stunned silence as if everyone wanted - but didn't dare - ask if that had really happened or if it were some kind of fever dream because someone had added some illicit substances to the food.
"You know..." Henry finally said, "it would probably have helped if they'd said where they lived if they want help with the bonnacons."