The apple was the kind you would offer a fairytale princess. It was sweetly plump and blood-red, with a crisp skin so glossy you could see your reflection in it. It promised fantasy and wonder and forbidden knowledge all at once.
Lisa wasn’t a fairytale princess and she wasn’t sure that what she was looking at was even an apple.
It was held by a scrawny, clawed hand, which was attached to a bony arm wreathed in sagging skin the texture of crepe paper. The arm disappeared into a bundle of ragged clothing seated cross-legged on the ground, which held a basket piled with similar apples on its lap. Peeping out from the folds of grimy, fraying cloth was a round, wrinkled face, dominated by a large, prominent, hooked nose. Below the nose the face was split by a wide, gap-toothed grin, and above it two small black button eyes twinkled cheerfully at Lisa.
Lisa reached out reluctantly and took the apple.
Apples were Old Earth fruit. They could only be grown in the great glasshouses at the Founders’ enclaves, using a special mix of chemically balanced soil and Earth microbes, so they were considered a luxury item. Lisa had only tasted them previously at festivals.
She looked around her at the horn trees, which consisted of thick spirals covered in white bark, discoloured with grey-green smears where small creatures had burrowed through the outer layer into the honeycomb core. At the top of each tree were great waving fronds in blue, green and orange, casting coloured shadows across her skin. The ground was carpeted with the spongy growths of bubble moss, in grey and brown, which released a faint mouldy odour where her footsteps had crushed it.
Lisa looked down at the apple she was holding.
This was against everything she had ever been taught. Good girls followed to the gospel of the Founders. Good girls worked hard and supported their community. Good girls accepted the decisions of the Elders. Good girls didn’t sneak off into the forest and seek out things that weren’t even supposed to exist.
But Sara was a good girl, who’d done everything she was supposed to. It wasn’t fair. The Elders should have granted her petition, instead of kicking her to the bottom of the list, and ruining her life in the process.
It was all Lisa’s fault. She had to fix this.
She took a deep breath.
And bit into the apple.
The world stuttered. When Lisa looked around, blinking, the horn trees had disappeared. Or, no, they had changed. They had become taller and straighter, with rough, cracked brown bark. As their trunks rose up above her head, they split into a network of ever smaller branches decorated with a myriad of vivid green dancing petals—no, Lisa realised, those were leaves.
She was looking at wild trees, ancient ones from Earth.
The bubble moss beneath her feet had vanished. Instead, the ground was carpeted with a thick layer of emerald-green fronds swaying in a light breeze. It must be grass, but it rippled like the sea. The leaves above answered with their own susurrus, a rustling noise that raced around her like the hushed whispers of a half-heard conversation. There were jewels nestled amongst the grass—flowers, Lisa realised, little white and purple stars, and dancing golden yellow cups.
There was also a path, a narrow beaten-earth track which meandered off into the forest, as if inviting her to follow.
Lisa looked at old woman—creature—who had given her the apple. She, too, had transformed. She was now a short, plump being with youthful green skin, curly black hair, pointed ears, and a mouth full of sharp teeth. The basket in her lap held not apples, but a pile of white globes that, Lisa realised in horror, were giant eyes bigger than her fist. Even as Lisa watched, one of them twitched and rolled over to stare at her curiously.
She took a step back, then saw the creature was pointing a clawed finger in the direction of the path, indicating she should follow it.
“I know this is all an illusion!” Lisa said, her heart beating furiously. “None of it’s real!”
The creature’s grin widened.
“Isn’t it?”
Lisa was relieved to find the apple she had bitten into had disappeared the moment the forest had changed. It would have been a little too much to find herself holding a half-eaten eye. But she had already ingested it, whatever it was. Even if she wanted to back out now, it was too late. She had to see this through.
She turned and followed the path. The ancient Earth forest was colourful, painted in a thousand different shades of green. If it was an illusion—and it had to be—it felt real. Blades of grass tickled her calves, and the earth was firm beneath her shoes, utterly unlike the squishy feeling of walking through bubble moss.
Even the mouldy smell of crushed bubble moss was gone.
The path led to a rock face with a narrow crevice and a series of natural steps leading down into darkness.
Wherever Lisa was, or whatever she was doing in the real world, this represented a choice, just as the apple had been a choice.
Lisa approached the crevice and, without any hesitation, entered the Goblin Market.
Elder Pondmarch stared around him in irritation.
“The trail ends here, sir,” the ranger said.
Entirely unnecessarily, in Elder Pondmarch’s view. He didn't need a ranger to point out where the footsteps in the bubble moss had vanished into thin air.
“And the tracking bracelet?” he asked.
“No signal.”
“Any sign of goblins?”
“No, sir.”
“Where did she go?” he burst out, frustrated.
“Our data indicates there is a 76.8% likelihood of a goblin camp—maybe even a burrow—within ten kilometres of this spot.”
Elder Pondmarch was not impressed.
“That’s still nearly a hundred square kilometres to search.”
He didn’t like the rangers. They were different from the folk of the lowland settlements. Instead of being short and compact, they were tall, slender, and wiry, and instead of having sun-browned skin with curly dark hair, they were as pale as ghosts. This one had long straight hair pulled back in a ponytail, and was wearing smart-weave which coated him in light, flexible armour. His eyes were hidden behind a narrow black visor that was little more than a band across his face.
“Drones would expedite the search,” the ranger said.
“How much will that cost?”
There was a pause as the ranger retrieved authorisation for the expense from his handler, who was no doubt sitting comfortably behind the high walls of the City, instead of tramping through a damp, slimy, smelly forest.
“There will be no charge to Settlement Thirty-Eight,” the ranger said.
Elder Pondmarch had expected the Founders to be willing to cover the full expenses of the investigation, but he'd wanted the ranger to state it out loud for the record, just in case there weren't actually any goblins to be found, and everyone blamed him for the false alarm.
He shuddered inwardly. It sounded like a goblin camp was looking increasingly likely. And so close to the settlement, too! Damn that troublesome girl.
Lisa hadn’t been sure what to expect of the Goblin Market. Ragged stalls, perhaps, full of strangely shaped and furtive figures with the hoods of their cloaks pulled over their heads. A place of danger and desperation, populated by shifty-eyed merchants and buyers with nothing left to lose.
Instead, it was wondrous.
Her eye struggled to make sense of it all. There was a giant tree with little wooden houses in it, sprouting impossibly from the top of a cliff overhanging a great, thundering waterfall. There were iridescent bubbles bobbing in the air nearby, each one containing a single market stall which drifted through the spray. Occasionally they collided gently with each other and went spinning off in opposite directions. Beyond that, floating in the sky with no visible means of support, was a rocky island draped with thick greenery, vines tumbling over its side to serve as rope ladders.
Lisa turned in a circle, staring. Behind her there was no sign of the cave tunnel she had come through.
Instead, she saw a series of terraces leading down to a perfectly calm lake bordered by trees of gold, silver and copper, from which wafted sweet, twinkling chimes and ethereal pan pipes. In the centre of the lake was palace of crystal, gleaming with jewel-like colours, where a crowd of figures in fine clothing danced and spun together in chaotic, complicated patterns. Beyond that the land became towering fluffy white clouds that moved and shifted like the sea, constantly churning. Within them Lisa caught glimpses of a great leviathan with a city on its back, undulating through the mist while a pirate ship pitched and tossed in a lightning-wracked storm.
And everywhere there were people—or creatures—in any possible shape and colour you could imagine. Tall, thin, short, round, with pointy ears, with floppy ears, some with hair, some with hedgehog spikes, and some with scales, or horns, or antlers. Many had wings—butterfly wings, insect wings, eagle wings, or even tiny wings all over their body—and they leapt or glided or flew instead of walking. Some hopped like frogs, whilst others floated around as empty billowing robes.
Stolen story; please report.
Lisa sat down abruptly on the ground, overwhelmed.
“None of this is real,” she told herself fiercely. “None of this is real!”
“It depends,” a nearby voice said triumphantly, “On how you define real.”
Lisa took several deep breaths until she felt calmer and less dizzy, then shuffled round until she could see the speaker. It was a goblin. You could tell because his face consisted mostly of a gigantic nose, and he had elephant-sized ears sticking out from his head.
He was grotesque, but Lisa knew what goblins were supposed to look like. It made him, if not familiar, at least something within her frame of reference, unlike most of the other sights so far.
“Are you trying to make some kind of philosophical point on the true nature of reality?” Lisa asked, in response.
The goblin opened his mouth.
She added in a rush, “Because that’s not what I came here for.”
He snapped his mouth shut, his expression thwarted. He was sitting behind a market stall, and Lisa fastened her eyes on it gratefully because, compared to the rest of the Goblin Market, it was reassuringly mundane.
It consisted of a table with a shabby cloth over it, which was cluttered with small glass bottles full of different coloured liquids. A hand-written sign pinned to the front of the table read POTIONS.
They said if you ate or drank anything at the Goblin Market you could never leave.
“What did you come here for, then?” the goblin asked.
Now that she was here, Lisa wasn’t sure how to ask for it.
“It’s complicated,” she said eventually.
The goblin snorted.
“It always is, with you lot.”
“Now, don’t be rude.” That came from a dumpy female goblin sitting at the next stall.
Her table was full of pretty, wooden jewellery—carved bracelets, wooden-bead necklaces, acorn earrings, and decorative combs inlaid with patterns of a lighter wood. She leaned over and smiled encouragingly, and although she was just as ugly as the male goblin, there was something about her that seemed grandmotherly. “Welcome to the Market, lass. I can see you’re feeling troubled! Why don’t you tell Aunty Gorta all about it?”
One of the drones was busy humming around the clearing while the rest of the drone fleet—was it a fleet or a flock, Elder Pondmarch wondered—spiralled out in an ever-widening search pattern. He shifted uncomfortably, then froze as the ranger barked, “Don’t move! Sir!”
The drone dipped near his feet, and he saw a piece of red fruit lying discarded on the ground, half hidden in a fold of bubble moss.
The ranger approached it carefully, bringing out a long slender baton and using it flick the apple away.
“Did you touch it, sir?”
“No!” Elder Pondmarch exclaimed, hoping very much that this was true. Had his foot knocked against it unknowingly? Was he contaminated?
The ranger stared at him expressionlessly, and he could feel sweat trickling down his back. Eventually, the ranger crouched, and his baton changed into a spike which he used to spear the fruit.
Elder Pondmarch recognised it as an apple. He wasn’t terribly familiar with apples, but this one was a repellently poisonous red colour. It had a single bite taken out of it.
“Goblin-made,” the ranger said grimly. “It must have had a worm embedded in it. That's how they got to her.”
Elder Pondmarch gagged and clapped a hand over his mouth.
"She ate a worm?"
The ranger noticed his disgust, and stood up.
"Apologies, sir, not a physical worm. I refer to a type of intrusive software which can insinuate itself into biological neural networks."
Elder Pondmarch had no idea what that meant, but he didn't want to look like an idiot, so he ignored it.
“Is it true that people get … irretrievably corrupted if they eat goblin food?”
“Yes,” the ranger said. “And no. We may still catch her in time.”
“I see. If you do, would you take her back to the City?” Elder Pondmarch asked hopefully.
“We will ensure she poses no danger to community. After that she will be returned to your care, Elder.”
Damn, thought Elder Pondmarch.
Lisa was sitting down on a chair that had mysteriously appeared just when she needed one. She had stared at it suspiciously for several seconds before taking it, but it was holding her up so far.
Auntie Gorta was sitting beside her, having offered her a cup of tea—which Lisa hastily declined—and a sympathetic ear.
“It started when my family lost three commendations,” Lisa said. “You know what those are?”
“Of course, dear,” said Auntie Gorta.
The male goblin from the potion stall chimed in.
“A poorly designed and blatantly manipulative method of maintaining peer pressure, which perpetuates the oppressive social order mandated by the Founders,” he said. His name was Uncle Birtle. He held up a defensive hand when Auntie Gorta narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes, yes, no need to glare at me, I’ll shut up now!”
“It didn’t really seem to matter that much, at the time” Lisa continued. “We’re not chasers.” She was referring to the kind of people who spent all their time plotting and scheming in order to claw more commendations out of the Elders. Every settlement had a clique of chasers. “But then the Founders declared us to be in a period of stability. It meant the population quotas were reduced, so the City Creche didn’t prepare as many newborns this round, so when my sister and her husband went to the Community Centre on Spring Day, even though they signed up a year ago and passed all the requirements, they were at the bottom of the list, and weren’t selected.”
Lisa had later found out that the Farbloom family had been petitioning for Sara and her husband to be removed from the list entirely.
“Period of stability!” Uncle Birtle said with a snort, immediately forgetting his promise to shut up. “Stagnation more like! Moribundity!”
“I’m sorry to hear that, dear,” Auntie Gorta said. “That must have been very distressing for your family.”
“If they want children they’ll have to wait another ten years for the next Spring Day, and they’ll be older then, so they’ll be even lower down the list, and even less likely to be allocated, particularly if the period of stability is still in force!”
Auntie Gorta nodded.
“Yes, I see. How do you think the Market can help?”
Lisa hesitated.
“I heard … goblins can help couples have babies.” She paused, then quickly added, “Human babies, not goblin babies.”
Uncle Birtle puffed up at that.
“I’ll have you know we’re just as human as you!”
Both Auntie Gorta and Lisa ignored him. Lisa knew that already. The reason goblins looked like they did was because they had tinkered with their own biology to make themselves long-lived. However, some human facial features never stopped growing, so the older goblins eventually acquired great big noses and massive ears.
The longevity of the Founders had been intended from the very beginning, so the process that had gifted them with their extended lives had ensured they didn’t suffer the same fate. Lisa had only seen a Founder once, but she had been a tall, slender woman with an exquisitely beautiful face.
“It is true,” Auntie Gorta said, “That we have ways to assist with reproductive issues. However, I can’t help but notice that you are here, and not your sister. Are you confident she would accept any help we offer?”
“I’m here because it was me who lost us those commendations,” Lisa said miserably.
At the time, logging into the public messaging system with Elder Knotworth’s password and setting autocorrect to change the words commendation to condemnation, Farbloom to Fartbum, and Elder to Smellier had seemed hilarious, particularly when this had taken place right before yet another Farbloom commendation ceremony. Everyone had acted outwardly shocked, but Lisa had later seen both Farmer Haywines sniggering to each other, and quite a few people had subsequently began referring to the Farblooms as Fartbums behind their backs.
“Oh dear!” Auntie Gorta exclaimed, when Lisa relayed the story. It was obvious she was trying not to laugh.
“I have to help my sister,” Lisa insisted. “It’s all my fault. She cries when she thinks I can’t see, because now she’s convinced she’s never going to have a child.”
Auntie Gorta pursed her mouth.
“I need to be quite sure you understand what you’re asking. The easiest way to resolve this would be to restore your sister’s biological capacity to bear children. All colonist embryos have the necessary packages implemented, as it was part of the original charter. The Founders haven’t removed them, merely … blocked them. It’s not difficult to reverse.”
“The fact that it was de-activated is why the population is still criminally low, even after all this time,” Uncle Birtle put in angrily. “And a reduced population, conveniently, allows the Founders to retain control. A control they should have relinquished centuries ago!”
“How does it work?” Lisa asked Auntie Gorta.
“It’s probably better if I show you. Close your eyes and count to three, dear, then open them again. You’ll see a short demonstration.”
Five minutes later Lisa was back in the Goblin Market and reeling with horror.
“You can’t possibly intend…!” she exclaimed. “It was growing inside … like a parasite … that’s grotesque! I can’t ask my sister to go through that! How can that be the easy option?”
Auntie Gorta sighed.
“There is another possibility, but I hate to mention it. It’s very dangerous.”
“Yes?”
“You’re looking for a self-serving uterine pod outside the control of the City Creche.”
“Yes!”
“Well, I might just happen to know where some are.”
Elder Pondmarch was bored, tired, cold and thoroughly fed up with the forest. He didn’t see why he needed to be involved in the search for Lisa Coinstar any longer, but when he’d suggested it was time for him to return to the settlement headquarters, the ranger had merely cocked his head, as if listening to distant instructions, and politely requested that he remain.
It was all said courteously, with multiple uses of ‘sir’ but it was an order all the same.
The ranger also had questions.
“Why did Lisa Coinstar go looking for goblins?”
Luckily, Elder Pondmarch knew the answer to that.
“Because she’s rebellious and disruptive,” he said. “And always has been!”
The ranger wasn’t satisfied.
“Looking back over her past behaviour, sir, do you think this was the first time she contacted the goblins, or has it happened before?”
Elder Pondmarch hesitated. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised to discover that Lisa had had dealings with goblins in the past. It would explain a lot about her behaviour. But on the other hand, he didn’t want to make it seem as if there had been an ongoing source of corruption in his settlement which had gone unnoticed until now.
“I suspect things have been heading that way for some time,” he temporised. “This is hard for me to admit, because our settlement is full of good, honest folk who follow the wisdom of the Founders. Lisa was the sole troublemaker. However, this is the first time goblins have been involved—if I had been aware of any prior instances, I would have reported it immediately.”
The ranger absorbed this expressionlessly.
“Has anyone else in Settlement Thirty-Eight ever been in contact with goblins, sir?”
“No!” Elder Pondmarch exclaimed instantly, horrified at the thought. “Certainly not!”
“And you have no other troublemakers?”
Elder Pondmarch went to repeat his earlier assertion, but something occurred to him and then he realised he’d hesitated too long.
“Who?” the ranger asked. His visor was mirror, reflecting only the horn trees and Elder Pondmarch’s own face.
“We have an itinerant,” Elder Pondmarch said reluctantly.
Itinerants were settlers who had voluntarily left their own communities as a result of disagreements or because they were too poorly socialised to fit in. There were never very many of them, and most right-thinking smallholders chased them away or refused to deal with them. But each settlement consisted of a network of farms spread over a wide area, which meant that the outlying smallholders could, and often did, do their own thing. Some of them would even let itinerants sleep in a barn and offer them meals in return for doing odd jobs, and no matter how often Elder Pondmarch preached against it, the smallholders would just nod agreeably and go right back to doing what they wanted once he was out of sight.
It was infuriating!
The ranger’s perfectly smooth forehead developed a tiny crease.
“You let an itinerant stay, sir?”
“I didn’t!” Elder Pondmarch protested.
The itinerant was called Nettle, and she didn’t even seem to need the help of the smallholders. She was as tough and wizened as an old boot, and spent most of her time camping out in the woods and living off the land. Elder Pondmarch had tried more than once to gather up a group of his settlers to persuade her to move on, but whenever he did she was nowhere to be found.
He realised he had the perfect excuse for Lisa Coinstar’s behaviour, though.
“The itinerant—she must have told Lisa how to find goblins!”
“The longer the goblins have been here, the more like they are to have dug themselves a burrow, sir,” the ranger told him. “And if it’s a proper nest it will make it easier to find—” His voice broke off as something on his visor distracted him.
Elder Pondmarch wondered uneasily how long Nettle had been around. A good ten or fifteen years, he thought with dismay. And while of course he was keen for the goblin threat to be rooted out and destroyed, he would very much have preferred it to happen somewhere else, preferably at a great distance from Settlement Thirty-Eight.
He realised that the ranger was speaking to him.
“Forgive me for leaving you here, sir. I have just had word of an intrusion at a forbidden site. I must go immediately.”
The drones had already been recalled, and were darting into the clearing one by one, locking themselves together into a floating machine of some kind. As it took shape, it was revealed as a hoverbike, black and shiny, and shaped like an arrowhead.
“Wait…!” Elder Pondmarch protested. “You can’t leave me here…!”
But it was too late. The ranger straddled the bike, which rose above the trees and was gone in moments, the valley echoing with a thunderclap as it accelerated past the sound barrier.