I suppose I can start with the battle at Slipper’s Cove that day. Forty . . . one? Forty two years ago? I was there as part of Captain Rotter’s crew, an advance team sent by our raiding clan. We didn’t know about the troops, of course. Thought the village would be easy pickings. We usually just torched ‘em, since that’s the grem way on the coastlands. Post the archers, hide the knackers (the ones like me with scimitars), then attack with fire. Everybody hates fire.

The grems are more organized than you’d think. We’re strategists at heart, just also . . . you know, cowards. So first we’d down the guards with arrows, then loose the flaming ones into the town while the torchers and knackers burst through the gates. Took a lot of us to kick in the sturdier gates, so I think we had about a dozen on it. Being little has its disadvantages, you know? We kicked that honker in and burst through like a pack of red-eyed rats. Do . . . rats have red eyes? Maybe they do. Green-skinned rats, then. That works. Look at little old Finch, making figures of speeches.

I’m not proud to say we caught a bunch of the residents with their pants down, so to speak. I killed a couple. Houses were burning, humes were crying, little ones and bigger ones. The smoke smelled great, as usual. To folk like us, the humes are like big bullies hiding all the good stuff in their rich lands. So we come, we poke and stick, torch some stuff. We take, we celebrate. Nibble some of the gold. Simple folk, simple hobbies.

But I know you didn’t see it that way. And see it you right did, ‘coz you were there. To this day I’m not sure, but as the reinforcements poured in from wherever they came that day, as our noses drooped and grems cried out and fell to lances, I could swear I saw your face amidst the crowd. All I saw was one of the enemy, a weak one to kill. But I was too preoccupied with running. Grems don’t fight bravely, remember? We still had archer support, and they let out more flaming arrows at the soldiers as we fled and came back for their flanks. We sliced at their weak points, and got jabbed in the face by gobstickers for our efforts. They returned our fire-tipped sticks with iron bolts.

A fella never heard so much screaming in a lifetime of raiding. You know full well how terrible the sound is. Humes make wails and shouts, and we grems shriek through gnashing teeth. Hisses, screeches. I’d never heard them blend with the screams of the humes in such a way. No, not blend. It was a jumble, a clash all its own, and no one was winning.

But the real battle . . . someone was winning that, and it sure wasn’t us.

We fled and made for the beach where our boat was anchored, with two watchgrems posted. As my sweaty feet skidded in the sand, making for the ship on all fours, the enemy loosed their own fire ahead of us and lit pinholes on the rough, patched planks. They blossomed like flowers, the first I’d ever paid attention to. I recall the strange feeling of despair, and a faint ringing in my ears. The hollowness of my life. Was I supposed to have lived for something?

Nah. Somebody’d have told me.

The soldiers bore down on us, some on horses with sharp gobstickers spearing multiple of us through. I dove for cover, got one leg clipped by a stray hoof, tumbled a few times, sliced an arm on a dying clanmate’s sickle. . . . At that point, I just lay panting, looking up to see the foot soldiers coming with their chain armor and dull grey spears. The clouds above, previously our chummy ally in the fight, now seemed to bear down on us. I made no sound, and tried to duck down as the big men swept their spears from side to side, checking for survivors. Thrusts returned sharp yowls of pain, shrill enough to make my ears wither.

I didn’t even see it when the soldier speared me. I didn’t cry out, just tensed my back, waiting for him to pull the burning metal free. It’d pierced my scrappy vest like rancid butter. I’m sure my body jerked as my chest hit the ground again, but the soldiers took it as the dying throes of a pitiful creature. My mind grew dizzier, and I was vaguely aware that my brown blood was seeping out where it shouldn’t be. Pain was squeezing me, more pain than I’d ever felt. I don’t know how much time passed before I gathered the strength to look up and saw . . .

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Only dying flames. Dully glinting metal. Brown-dyed sand, and the bodies of my grem crew. The noise had died down, and the soldiers had evidently left us for dead. So I did the sensible thing and tried to crawl to safety. Tried. My limbs weren’t working properly, and I was leaving a fowl, slippery streak behind me. “Come on, Finch!” I growled to myself. “You can do it! Just gotta get away.” Although . . . only I knew what I was saying, because the grem words came out all wrong.

I wasn’t getting anywhere fast. My pitiful grem life was fading away like the last of the Sun’s light. My knobby hands scrabbled in the dirty sand, mostly to no avail. And then . . . you were there. I heard you scream briefly, and it reminded me of the nightmarish battle—the gremslaughter—that had just finished, but then . . . then you sounded curious. All I could think was, “One of them is still here. A female. Why?”

I blacked out at some point as you drug me over to the cove. You must have gone back to wipe away some of the tracks and bloodstains so people wouldn’t find us. When I finally shook awake, I was shocked to realize I was alive but disappointed to discover that my chest and back still hurt like fire, where a hole had been slit just under my shoulder blade and through to my armpit. You had me all wrapped up like a scumming mummy. My leg was almost all numb where the horse had trampled me. A painful look down showed me that someone had splinted it. Huh. A splint. I’d seen those before, but rarely, since grems weren’t much of the healer type.

A gasp. “He’s awake.” The voice was small and feminine—not the type of voice I was used to hearing. Soon I saw your face in my vision, a face I’d never forget. It took what little breath I had right away. “Mr. gremlin? Uh . . . goblin? I’m glad you’re awake now.”

That was what I assume you said. It was something like that. My humespeak was very patchy back then. I’d have learned more of it in my raiding voyages, but I didn’t know yet how many fun words your kind have. Nor why I would want to communicate with a hume. But without the fire and smoke, the screams and the frantic combat, in a quiet sea cave with water lapping in the background and the calm, flickering light of a single lamp . . . your face seemed downright angelic. Who was this angel what spoke with me, I wondered? Was it she who bandaged me up? Maybe she’s a witch doctor.

Nah . . . a witch doctor wouldn’t have bothered with the bandages—just muttered some words and turned me into a frog. I’d be all right as a frog. Better than all this pain.

But you kept speaking to me, while I just stared. Eventually, I realized you were asking after my health and consciousness. I grunted, coughed, snorked my nose, and then nodded. “All good,” I said in gremspeak, even though I wasn’t. “Just . . . wondering why you saved me, your angelicness.”

The mystery girl frowned, staring intently at my face. Was she . . . trying to puzzle out my words? Then she shocked me by saying, in my language, “Little bit. Speak little bit. I Marianne. Save you . . .” she seemed to grasp for words, making a gesture that moved from her slim chest outward. Like a gift.

I got it. Somewhere in the back of my mind. You were having . . . mercy on me. The word wasn’t even in my language, much less an idea I was used to. Something shifted and changed, and, to my surprise and shame, I felt tears welling up behind my red eyes. Don’t let ‘em out! Don’t let ‘em out, ya scrumbucket! The pretty angel will see.

And you know the rest from there. We talked, you fed me, and I slowly warmed up to this strange human who’d reached down to help an insignificant grem raider like me. You were a real hand at fishing, said your dad trained you. You even showed me the scrolls you kept neatly arranged in your big old pack, which you took out and wrote on every day. You wrote a lot about me, and my language, taking notes on my words and mannerisms. You taught me how to do the things you did, starting with what I could handle as a bedridden cripple. What made me really like you was how similar we were, though I didn’t realize it at first. You were only a few inches taller than me, even though you said you were twenty years old, and scrawny as a reed. Still beautiful, mind you.

But we were both outcasts. You, by the people who raised you, me by the strange justice I found in war. I never got what I deserved. You . . . well, you didn’t either, that’s for sure. You deserved so much better. Being the amazing girl you are, you raised yourself by watching the animals. Learned from villagers and monks what you could, taught yourself to read and write, and set out on a quest to study the world. I’d never even heard of humes like you. I can only hope you settled down and shared your knowledge with folks.

But let’s move on. My guilt compels me.