8. Gobbling Goblin Goods

Minced Forest was the reason why Alpin needed a friend. It was too close to his home for him to never visit.

Minced Forest is a versatile place. A grove of elms may give way to a wood of chestnut trees that turns into a plantation of ancient oaks. There are spots where you can pick lovely flowers of the season any time of  the year. There are clearings where you can play ball games without a worry or a care  that your ball might fall into the denser vegetation.There are darker, deeper, primeval spots rife with spiders and other creeping things behind the visible pinetrees where it is moonless midnight twenty four hours a day. There is perilous marshland somewhere to a side.A stream that turns into a small braided river runs through the forest, starting who knows where and ending always elsewhere than you thought it did. And there are homes for an astonishing number of unusual beings, both fay and mortal. Not all of it is safe. Not all of it is even charted. All of it is alive. One is never alone there, but one may be badly accompanied.

One day Alpin entered the forest, hoping to find something to munch on. There were nuts and berries and there were also mushrooms, because it had rained. But the fanciest mushrooms were already taken and could only be found in a blue bowl borne by a Goblin Man.They were there that day, a whole tribe of goblin merhcants, sailing by on half tame river rats, landing to gather pebbles and flowers and insects and edible fruit.

“I don’t have a penny with me,” said Alpin, attracted by the mesmerizing mushrooms in the bowl. “I wouldn’t give one for anything that grows here. I could take that for free, like you are doing. But I’ve never seen turquoise or mauve mushrooms before. Are you sure they aren’t sugar? Where did you get them?”

“Somewhere we’ve left behind,” said the Goblin Man. “What will you leave behind if you take some?”

The Goblin Man let Alpin choose a mushroom from his bowl when he promised to return the next day with money to buy more.

“This one is the largest,” said Alpin, picking out a deep purple one with dots a shade of yellow paler than his waxy face. “You’d better be here tomorrow. I don’t want to come all the way out here and not find you. I’m dead set on having those mushrooms.”

“We’ll be here alright. But you must come even if you don’t like the taste of the one you’ve picked.”

It tasted like humid earth on gummy bread, but Alpin didn’t really care what the things he ate tasted like. He simply had to devour them.

Come twilight, he had not returned home, and his mother went out to the garden and called for him. He didn’t answer.

“Girls,” she said to her daughters, “you two must go out and find him.”

“As soon as the sun sets, Mum,” said the girls. It was about to sink with a pink and red big-skirted curtsey.

It didn’t take the girls long to find Alpin.They could see as well as owls in the dark and Alpin had fallen to the ground in a narcotic sleep only a few feet away from the white oleanders that fenced his garden.

The twins couldn’t wake him, but they carried him home easily because Alpin is rail-thin despite all he eats and his bones weigh less than a little bird’s. There was no trace of the mushroom though, for Alpin had swallowed it whole, so they had no idea why they couldn’t wake him.

“He’s not dead, Mum!” said Darcy, in answer to the Demon Bride’s desperate keening. “I’m going to ask him what the matter is with him and he’ll have to answer, so please calm down. There will be no hearing his answer if you keep wailing, for he’ll probably mutter a reply talking in his sleep. What is the matter with you Alpin? Why can’t you wake up? Answer me this minute!”

The next day, Darcy had to ask Alpin to stop demanding to be given more mushrooms at the top of his drilling, piercing, drumming, incredibly irritating one man orchestra voice. Despite the unbearable noise, this was not something Darcy wanted to do, because he hated asking people to do things. He felt he was interfering with nature or some vast eternal plan when he did.

So, while Alpin now whispered  incessantly that he wanted those mushrooms and someone had better buy them for him, the twins locked him up in his room and went out to have a word with the Goblin Men.

These girls were not afraid to confront the Goblin men. They were very confident in their own ferocity. But the evil merchants were not easy to find, and the girls decided to take different paths to be done with it sooner.

It was Fiona who spotted them. They were still by the river, folding up the little yellow tents they had slept in the night before. 

                

“Forget about your brother, sweetheart,” suggested the first Goblin Man Fiona approached. “Buy yourself this heart-shaped mirror to look at your pretty face in. See the pretty buttercups painted on its back.and handle.”

“Something nice for yourself is what you need, dear. Let your selfish brother suffer. Did he buy anything for you yesterday? No, he didn’t think of you. Don’t buy him those mushrooms!” hissed another Goblin, who carried a display of tempting glass beads and baubles. “Spend your money on these!”

“All I will have is a word with the unreflecting fool who gave my brother a mushroom. He’s a minor!” insisted Fiona.

In answer, the merchantmen began to hum a waltz and dance around her flaunting their wares. Fiona bared her teeth.

          

“Ah! The dreamy-eyed blonde has pearly fangs protruding from between her cherry lips!”

“A file for the fangs! Buy one, you’ll look prettier!”

“Grimace and show her our own teeth! Hers are bigger, but she’s outnumbered.”

As they waltzed round her grimacing and displaying both their goods and their teeth, Fiona caught sight of the bowl with the mushrooms in it.

                                      

She grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a shoe tied to a string, and struck with it the merchant man who was closest. He fell flat on his back, toppling others in his fall and in the ensuing confusion she seized the bowl of mushrooms as she leapt over him and fled.

Michael’s Aunt Aislene had invited him to lunch to consult him about the mushrooms. He wasn’t a garden elf, but wouldn’t have minded being one and knew a lot about odd plants. Fiona showed Michael the bowl of mushrooms, but before he could begin to classify them he noticed she still had the weapon she had clobbered the goblin with.

“That’s my shoe!” cried Michael O’Toora. “That’s one of my lost shoes you clobbered the goblins with!”

Fiona released the leprechaun shoe from the string it was tied to and gave it to Michael.

“They haven’t got the other,” she said. “I´m sure of that. The Shoe Goblin carried a staff with pairs of shoes tied to it. This one had no match. You’ll have to be thankful for that and keep searching.”

“Then they aren’t poisonous? The mushrooms, of course,” asked Ernest, Death’s coachman, who was also Michael’s uncle and Alpin’s dad.

“No. All he would do if he ate them would be sleep for the rest of the day and the night and have weird dreams. He might not even remember them tomorrow.”

“I say let him have them then. That should make him stop hissing for them. At least for a while. Will he want more tomorrow?”

“Not if you distract him with something else he’d sooner have, I’m sure.”

“Then we’ll all have lunch in peace today!”

“Certainly not!” snapped Aislene. “The very idea! Darcy, ask your brother to stop asking for the mushrooms.”

“No way. He’ll get started on something else. I’m with Dad. Let him have the mushrooms. Just today. We’ve had enough stress for a day.”

“Only if you promise to find him a friend. A sensible one who will be a good example for him and stop him from eating the wrong stuff and getting into trouble in the forest.”

“Too large an order,” said Darcy, shaking his handsome head. “But I’ll see what I can do tomorrow if we can have lunch in peace today.”

And that day Michael was able to taste some of his aunt’s excellent cooking instead of just watching Alpin gulp down everybody’s shares, which is what having lunch with the Dullahans is usually about.

As for me, some people say I am sensible, others say I am pusilanimous, but all agree I am prudent for my age. That’s why Darcy chose me to be his brother’s friend.

                 

Christina Georgina Rossetti wrote a narrative poem about two girls tempted by goblins.The poem is a beautiful read and is called Goblin Market.