Chapter 16 Ren
Ren
So begins the longest absence
On a bed of nascent roots.
Where death and life intertwine,
These seeds shall turn to shoots.
“THE RETURN TO EARTH”, A GOBLIN POEM TRADITIONALLY RECITED AT FUNERALS
The door to the cottage was open when they returned the following morning – early, because the ground was apparently too hard for overly sensitive halfling spines, even with a blanket of plush moss and a makeshift pillow in the form of Ren’s arm.
Except, the door wasn’t open, Ren realized with a frigid, heart-seizing jolt, the kind that locked every joint into place.
No, it had been knocked clear off its hinges.
Pansy saw it too, less than a second later, lying flat across the entryway, a once unremarkable slab of wood now cracked and splintered, all fanning out from a single, central point.
Her breath catching in her throat, she stuttered to a sudden stop beside Ren, fingers tightening reflexively around their biceps.
“What happened?” she asked, voice breathless and thin. “The door… The garden! It’s all ruined!”
Multiple ten-days of hard work destroyed overnight.
What had once been a flourishing garden, thick with Running Beans, slakegourd and more, had become a grave of disturbed earth and broken roots.
Salvageable, perhaps – assuming the culprit hadn’t salted the ground out of spite – but not for the current season.
As Ren’s gaze swept over the damage, familiar in the worst possible way, the smell of ash and ruin tickled at their nostrils, dredged up from a memory they wished they could forget, of the day they’d lost the clan of their birth.
One deep breath, then another, and all they could smell was the fading sweetness of the flower crown still perched atop their head.
At last, they said, in a tremulous croak, “Dwarves.”
Pansy’s brow furrowed, the confusion that streaked across it an unknown privilege. “Why would dwarves break into our home?”
Ren’s voice was flat and toneless. “Because I live here.”
Before Pansy could open her mouth to unleash the torrent of questions no doubt churning behind her teeth, a familiar face popped out from behind the doorway.
“Pansy!” Blossom exclaimed, relief and worry tugging at her features in equal measure. She rushed over to them, careful not to trip over the fallen door on her way out. “Thank goodness you’re all right – that you’re both all right,” she amended after a beat, her gaze flicking briefly over to Ren.
“What’s going on?” Pansy asked, her grip on Ren’s arm tightening as she pressed herself more firmly into their side. “Ren said it might be dwarves?”
“It’s Agvaldir,” Blossom replied, pulling a horrified sound from deep in Pansy’s throat.
“He came to town with a small party of men, humans and a dwarf. Said he was going to ‘free you’ from Ren’s ‘goblin magic’ or something.
” She spat the words, upper lip curling in disgust. “We tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. ”
“We?” Ren asked.
“I and some of the other townsfolk. They’re all downstairs, including your parents.”
Pansy blinked. “My parents are here?” She sounded incredulous, as if her friend had instead suggested that Wolf Banefoot himself was waiting for her.
Blossom nodded. “Unfortunately, none of us are sure what to do. We’re not fighters. Not to mention, Agvaldir is a wizard, and the men he has with him…” She trailed off, the words left unsaid, yet echoing just the same: They’re all bigger than us.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a goblin had stood up to someone more than twice their size, Ren thought, their fingers finding the hilt of their dagger, still sheathed at their side.
The steel felt strangely warm against their skin, reassuring.
It was there if they should need it, though Ren sincerely hoped they wouldn’t.
“I’m going downstairs,” they declared, slipping their arm out of Pansy’s grasp. No need to drag her into danger too.
Of course, she was quick to rush headlong into it herself. “I’m going with you,” she declared in a tremulous voice, her chin canting up at an all-too-familiar defiant angle. Don’t try to stop me, it said. You’ll just waste your breath.
So Ren didn’t bother, knowing their efforts would be for naught.
Somehow, the inside of the cottage was worse than the outside.
Floorboards had been ripped up, revealing the subfloor and joists underneath, while the rugs that had once covered them, both moss and knit alike, lay in tatters in nearly every corner.
Furniture sat upended and, in some cases, broken in two.
Pillows and blankets had been ripped apart, blanketing everything in a hail of torn fibers and stuffing.
Hours of knitwork on Pansy’s part, gone; just like the moss inlays Ren had worked so hard to save.
This time there was no salvaging any of it.
Ruin had come for the cottage, stretching across every square inch.
It had gathered up everything the two of them had come to treasure and crushed it without a second thought.
Now, instead of joy and comfort, Ren saw only wretchedness.
And amid that dark, churning sea, one particular loss stood out: the small house Pansy and Ren had constructed for the mice.
Someone had thrown it against one of the bookshelves, dashing it to pieces along with anything vaguely fragile in its path, including all of Pansy’s glass baubles.
The mice, at least, seemed to have escaped unharmed, from what Ren could see.
A small mercy, desperately needed at the heart of all this grief.
For once, the cottage was unbearably still, free of the usual buzz of insects and the soft scuffle of small mammals underfoot.
There was only the distant groan of something deeper down, as if the cottage itself was crying out for help.
Hopefully that meant Mushroom and Pig had gotten out safely too, the pillows they’d napped on during the laziest hours of the afternoon tossed aside like trash.
“Mushroom! Pig!” Pansy called out, frantic. “Where are you?”
“Somewhere far away, I hope,” Ren said, their stomach plummeting when neither one made a miraculous appearance.
Pansy let out a choked sound, hands flying to her mouth. “How could someone do this?” she asked, her eyes shining wetly in the muted morning light, dampened both by cloud cover and the pall of loss that had drawn over their home.
“Because they hate us,” Ren said simply, the words cresting over their tongue like hot bile.
“To them, goblins are nothing but pests, taking up space they believe should be theirs. Everything we do is wrong; our existence, in of itself, is already a problem. They don’t understand us, and they never will.
You wouldn’t try to understand a fly or a mosquito, would you? ”
“But you’re not a fly or a mosquito!” Pansy protested, her voice cracking. “You’re a person, Ren.”
“And that’s precisely what sets you apart from them.”
Heat, protective and fierce, bloomed inside Ren’s chest as they headed for the stairs, ignoring the crunch of ruined plants beneath their heels. They didn’t even need to think, their pupils flaring wide against the approaching gloom.
Unfortunately, this part of the cottage hadn’t been spared either.
Whole chunks had been carved from the walls and floor only to be dumped elsewhere in a spray of dirt, rock and frayed moss.
Although the anxious knot rising in their gorge screamed at them to make a left at the upcoming junction, desperate to ascertain the status of their potion room, Ren ignored it.
Instead, they turned right, following the low groan of shifting ground, echoing ever louder.
At last, they reached the source: the hallway that went nowhere, the archway at its end as impassable as ever, filled with solid stone.
Dozens of halflings, enough to leave the reasonably wide space feeling cramped, turned to stare at them, their eyes, bright with fear, shining in the gleam of far too many lamps.
Ren flinched, the sudden transition from dark to light stinging their over-wide pupils. As they raised one hand to shield their aching eyes, vision bleached white and useless, Pansy took the opportunity to push past them, taking to the new light source like a moth to a flame.
No. Don’t, Ren started to say, lips parting around the first of only two syllables, but Pansy was already speaking.
“Agvaldir!” she shouted into the cavernous hall, loud enough that Ren could feel the reverberation against their skin. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Exactly what you asked me to do, Miss Underburrow,” Agvaldir said, so devastatingly smug that even with their eyes pinched shut Ren knew that he was smirking.
“I didn’t ask you to do any of this!” Pansy snapped, her voice a bright spot of heat at Ren’s front. “And why would I? You broke into my house, destroyed my things—”
“Ah.” Agvaldir clicked his tongue. “To think you would forget our conversation about those runes of yours so swiftly. Perhaps I should be hurt. I’m only here for your sake, you know.”
It was then that Ren finally managed to crack open an eye, the lanterns still bright but not painfully so. “What’s he talking about, Pansy?” they asked, seeing the way she’d gone stiff, her jaw flaring stark white beneath an angry, mottled flush. Just like at the Harvest Festival…
She ignored them. “I didn’t ask for this,” she repeated, now with the slightest tremor.
Agvaldir smiled, placid as ever, his face devoid of even a shred of kindness.
His entourage was no better. Four men stood at his back, dressed in hard leather and steel.
Three were human; the last was a dwarf, and though he stood a full two heads shorter than his compatriots, he easily outmatched them all in sheer breadth.
His muscles flexed as he hefted his war hammer over his shoulder, perfectly shaped to crack open a door.