The Goblin Market (Into the Green) (3 page)

Chilled air mixed with the fire’s warmth and pried at her bedclothes like fingers. Meredith clutched the fabric of her nightgown closer and started for the door.

“Christina?”

The humming followed as Meredith stepped up to the door and gripped the heavy oak in her hands. Bare feet cringed against the slab of flagstone just outside the cottage and she scanned the garden with curious, careful eyes. The lantern she had hung out for her sister wavered against the slow wind, the flame flickering low on its wick.

She had no idea how much time passed since she’d fallen asleep, but a surge of fear gripped her. It was dark and if her sister had not yet returned, where could she be?

The song ebbed out to meet her again, and she realized it came from inside the cottage.

“Chrissy?” She called over her shoulder.

Still standing in the doorway, Meredith looked up at the display of clouds passing away from the face of the near full moon. Pale light reached beyond the wavering ring around the celestial body and shone softly over the dry and ragged remains of last year’s garden. Her eye was drawn to a small form in the shadows that hopped into a strand of light, revealing its long ears and twitching nose. She sighed relief, and then reached up to take down the lantern.

“Christina?”

One day that girl was going to learn that an open door in the middle of the night was like an open invitation to danger. Any manner of creature could just walk right in, from raccoons and bears to strange travelers.

Meredith scowled, still rubbing the goose bumps from her bare arms. She closed the door and lowered the lock before walking the lantern to the table and blowing out the stubby candle inside.

On the way to the bedroom, she noted another wide open door and shook her head. Christina was already in bed.

“The least you could have done was woke me.” Meredith held a hand across the flickering flame of her candle to keep it from blowing out with her movement. “I hardly need to start the day with a stiff neck from sleeping in the chair all night. Sometimes you are so inconsiderate, Chrissy.”

Candlelight infiltrated the dark bedroom, illuminating the empty bed, and inside Meredith’s heart leapt with fear. Cold air rushed forward to meet her, and the curtains ballooned out from the window on the other side of the room. The fabric fell to rest again, but therein hovered a swaying shadow. The melody came from within, Meredith realized, as the night breathed out again, exhaling the curtains into the room. It was her sister, arms hugged tight against her frame, body oscillating to the rhythm of that eerie song.

“Christina?” She placed the candle on the bedside table. “Chrissy?”

No answer. The girl kept humming. Meredith swallowed her fear and stepped closer, hand reaching to grasp at the curtain swaying outward again.

“Christina, what are you doing?”

Christina whispered, “Look, Merry, into the valley. See their lights, all gold and green? Tiny lights in the marketplace.”

Meredith stepped up behind her sister, lowering a gentle hand on her shoulder. “What are you talking about, Chrissy? Lights in the marketplace?” She noticed immediately that the bare skin of Christina’s shoulder was exposed and cold—so cold that she withdrew her hand with a quick, startled breath. “Christina, you’re freezing. Come away from the window and get into your bedclothes.”

“Goblin boys and goblin men,” she raised her voice above a whisper, a frantic pitch within the moonlit darkness. “They’ve set up market in the valley. Weapon makers, smithies, toymakers, and the fruit, oh Merry, the fruit…” She barely turned her head, profile bathed in watery blue light from the moon, open eyes unblinking. “I can still taste it in my mouth like it is dancing on my tongue.”

“You aren’t making sense,” Meredith reached for her again. “Come away from the window and get back into bed before you catch your death.”

Christina did not resist the guidance of Merry’s hands. “I saw the king, and he was terrible and dark, but so beautiful, Merry. Oh to be his queen… I would have done anything.”

“Enough of this nonsense.” Meredith braced her sister’s shoulders and pushed her down onto the bed. “You’ll be lucky not to catch a cold. What were you thinking?” She rummaged through the drawer for a warm nightgown.

“A real king, Merry.” Christina grasped at Meredith’s nightgown from behind. “He had your picture in his locket and he made me pay in truth. I am going to die, aren’t I?”

“You’re not going to die, don’t be ridiculous!”

Meredith was frightened, but she hid behind her maternal instinct and pretended to ignore the unnatural frigidness of the girl’s skin, the long tear in her blouse and dark stain upon her lips. “You are hallucinating,” she reasoned. “You must have already come down with some sickness. And no wonder too, running around in this cold half-naked.”

“I was wicked there, perfectly unladylike.” A tiny giggle bubbled from her. “Goblin king, choose a bride. Goblin king be quick, betimes. Before the night is through, my king, choose your queen, give me your ring!”

As the words flowed from her, Christina blinked blankly up at her sister, and Meredith trembled.

“But he won’t, you know. He waits for the one who was promised him. No other bride but you will do.”

“Hush now, and get into these warm clothes while I close the window.” Meredith said.

The quiver in her voice should have given her away. Fear gripped her as the strangeness of the situation consumed her. She stepped away from the bed, went to the window and for a moment she faced the chill air and parted the curtains. She peered out into the silvering darkness. The last of the clouds parted and the swollen moon hovered just above them like a watchful mother. Long, silver rays illuminated the valley just enough that she could make out a long string of eerie green lights and several shadows stalking awkwardly in the dark.

Behind her Christina rose, but instead of changing into her bedclothes, she twisted and turned her body, humming again, and dancing like a puppet strung up on invisible strings.

“I feel Death’s arms around my soul and we are dancing,” Christina moaned. “So close we should be on fire, and yet he is cold. So cold, Merry. Like poison in my blood. Goblin poison.”

Christina wavered in her balance and Meredith lunged forward quickly to catch her before she fell.

“You’re scaring me, Chrissy.”

It took all of Meredith’s strength to draw her sister toward the bed, and once they were there she allowed her to fall into place before leaning in over her to make sure she was still conscious. “Is it poison in my blood, or goblin blood run through these veins?”

“Enough talk of goblins, Christina!”

For a moment the girl was silent, her breath more labored than before. “It’s the poison,” she finally said. “Goblin poison… in the fruit.”

The bedside candle flickered, glowing brighter as the hungry flame lapped the air around it. Orange light illuminated Christina’s gaunt face, revealing the hideous truth about the hue of her skin: it was blue as moonlight, darker under the ridges of her deeply sunken eyes which closed just long enough for the curved black lashes to rest atop her cheeks. Meredith had only ever seen so pale a face one other time in her life, and that face had been at her mother’s death bed.

Suddenly the possibility of losing her sister tightened the muscles in her throat and made it hard for her to breathe. She both choked on and struggled against the air around her, and then exhaled in such a way that disturbed Christina.

The girl’s eyes fluttered open and she licked at her stained, parched lips. “You should have seen him, Merry.”

“Seen who, Chrissy? Who are you talking about?” she asked. “What’s really happened to you? Was it Wil? Has Wil done something wretched?” With shaking hands she brought the quilt up around her sister and tucked it close to her body. "Tell me, please."

“Wil,” the girl sighed, her voice serene for the moment. “He’s asked me to marry him. I said I had to think…”

“Did he hurt you, Christina?”

“I came into the market, but I had no coins. They said to try a little taste, but I ate up all the fruit.” A strange laugh escaped her, almost like a whimper. “…and he came to me then, you know. Oh, you should have seen him. Dark and beautiful, cruel, powerful…” She rolled her head back and closed her eyes. “Like an angel, but bleaker…less holy, but not less perfect.”

“You’re talking crazy!” Tears burned the edges of Meredith’s eyes. “Please, tell me what’s happened to you so I can help?”

“He is looking for her,” Christina murmured, her voice distant and sleepy then. “He's looking for you. His queen.”

“It’s all nonsense,” Meredith sighed.

“No.” She shook her head. “I am cold, Merry. So cold.” She stirred beneath the cocooned quilt around her. “Won’t you hold me a while, Merry? Won’t you make me warm again?”

“Of course I will little sister.”

Meredith climbed onto the bed and curled herself close to her sister’s body. Even through the quilt she could feel the unnatural cold coming off of Christina’s skin, and it chilled her soul. She swallowed and put her arms around Christina, asking, “There you are. Is that better?”

Christina moaned softly, “It is as though my very blood freezes inside me. Like I will never feel warm again.”

Meredith moved in even closer then, double piling the blankets over her sister, giving as much of herself as she could. She lay there until Christina’s breath became shallow, her body unmoving, and then she rose from the bed and walked back to close the window—still agape and drawing in the frigid night. She paused and looked down into the eerily dotted valley, watched the bustle of shadows against the backdrop of night.

A Goblin Market? Whoever heard of such a thing outside of fairy stories and children’s rhymes?

For a moment she faltered into memory of a sunlight painted afternoon, the whole world gold around her. Hand in hand, she spun beneath a perfect sky. From the garden her pregnant mother sat watching, but from time to time she shaded her eyes and watched as Meredith pirouetted and sang, “Goblin king, find your bride. Goblin king be quick, betimes. Before this night is through, my king, find your queen, give her your ring!”

“No!” her mother snatched her from the moment. “You musn’t ever… he’ll hear you.”

Dizzy white clouds above her kept going round and round and round.

“Who will hear, Mummy?”

Her mother’s eyes grew wide and wary. She looked around the garden and then leaned in to whisper, “The goblin king, my little love. You’re much too young to be a queen.”

“Who is the goblin king?”

“Oh we musn’t speak of him,” her mother said. “His spies are everywhere.” She pointed to the crow perched on the rowan branch. “Why there’s one now.” Then she pointed across the yard toward a sleek, black cat that prowled around the henhouse looking for a meal. “And another. Rats and cats, crows and bats, and all manner of ill creatures spy for his dark majesty. He has been looking for his bride for endless centuries. They say the one he loved did not love him in return, and so she ran from him. He searches endlessly to find her. The rats and cats, crows and bats and all other wicked things keep their ears pricked and their eyes wide, and when an unsuspecting maiden sings the song, the king comes to test her, to see if she is his long lost love. And when he finds her he will take her back to the Darknjan Wald and hold her forever as his prisoner.”

"What is the Darkening Wall, Mummy?"

"Look over there." Her mother pointed toward the trellis. "There's a butterfly on the bush."

Meredith came back to her senses, but the story her mother told her held firm. She had not thought of that old rhyme in years. She stepped back from the window, ignoring the strange movement in the valley, and closed out the night’s frigid chill. She made her way back to the bed and climbed in beside her sister knowing she would not sleep as long as Christina was so sick.

CHAPTER TWO

For hours after Christina grew silent, Meredith lay beside her in the dark watching shadows leap and dance across the walls. They stretched like strange bodies, those shadows, growing longer and more sinister as the night waned against the fog of grey dusk.

From time to time, she felt her head nod forward in exhaustion, but eerie sounds dragged her back to the moment and she found herself scanning the bedroom for telltale signs of the goblin men her sister whimper.

It was ridiculous, and she knew it, but her fear was very real. The combination of Christina's hallucinations and that old song from her memory disturbed something old and dark inside Merry—something not quite ready to be drawn into the light. She played that memory over and over in her mind and fretted over her sister's condition. The corners of her mouth wilted as she longed for the comfort of her mother’s wisdom, but even more than that, her loving arms.

Mummy would know what to do. Mummy always knew, and in truth, so did Merry. She had been playing nanny and nursemaid to Christina since she’d taken her first breaths. She’d gotten the girl through dozens of scraped knees, stomach flus and fevers in her sixteen years. Merry would get her through this as well.

Christina moaned softly, and Meredith laid a hand over her sister’s forehead. Her skin was as frigid and damp as dew-soaked grass on a spring morning, and in the candlelight, her coloring waxed wan and grey as fog.

Meredith squeezed her eyelids tight against the sting of tears and shuddered. Christina was all she had. Even before their father left them Merry was the girl’s guardian and keeper. She loved her like no other, and though she knew one day Wilhelm Grisham would sweep Christina away from their small cottage on the hill, they would be a part of each other’s lives forever.

If she died though…

No! Meredith wouldn’t even think it. She wouldn’t let her sister die. She’d just as soon sacrifice herself.

White daylight crept into the room, the lack of gold predicting a cloudy day, possibly even rain. Meredith’s heavy lids drooped drowsily over her eyes, and she struggled against the lull of silence calling her to sleep. She blinked again and again, slowly until the space between them was colored by the leaping imagery of dream devouring her conscious mind. Sleep wrapped vaporous arms around her and drew her away, and though she grasped at the fabric of consciousness, it dissolved in her hands like old smoke.