The Goblin Flea Market
A Fantasy Short Story
They had been touring the country for six weeks, and now had arrived in the town of Hadrix. For one day only, the goblins would come in, set up their tables, and sell their strange wares—fruits grown from enchanted trees, meat cut from imaginary beasts, arts and crafts made from unusual materials and colored with impossible pigments. Rumors abounded—where did they come from? What did they really want?—but rumors always gave way to curiosity, curiosity to interest, interest to sales.
Then the next day, the market would be gone, leaving only an empty gravel lot.
Harold Genifus drove out to the goblins' flea market with his son Colin and daughter Aria. There was a large crowd, and Harold wasn't sure when he reached the parking lot that he'd be able to find a space. After going through two aisles he found an SUV backing out and waited for it to leave. An eerie glow came from its rear window.
The space was toward the back of the lot, and across the road from the market itself. The hot summer air smelled of potpourris and spices and perfumes, even from this distance. The crowd ahead was dense, and Harold told Colin to hold Aria's hand. He didn't want either of them to get lost, especially in a place like this.
"Daddy," Aria said, "I'm not a little baby."
Which she wasn't. She'd just turned seven, and was proud of it. Lucky Seven, she would say. She even drew big slot-machine-style sevens with her crayons and markers. Harold had never seen a child so enamored with a number.
"He's saying not to wander off," Colin said. "And you better not. I'm not sure about this place. You sure we're safe here, Dad?"
"I'm sure we'll be all right," Harold said, "as long as we stick together. At the very least, I haven't heard of anything bad happening at one of these."
"That they'll tell you about," Colin muttered. "Like those accidents at theme parks."
"Daddy," Aria said, "he's getting gloomy again."
"Ari," Harold said, "you know your brother doesn't mean anything by it." He ruffled his son's hair. "And Colin, you know that kind of talk freaks your sister out. I'm not saying don't be cautious, but at least save the doom talk for later." Harold certainly couldn't blame the boy for having such a dour attitude. It had only been a few weeks since the kids' uncle Richard's funeral. The kids had both looked up to Rich their whole lives, and Rich's kids in turn were like siblings they never had. Colin especially admired Rich's prowess with machines, from computers to cars, especially after he fixed Colin's Switch controller.
Harold thought that he himself had gotten the worst of it—he'd been losing sleep, waking up too early every morning, ever since his brother wound up in the hospital. But following the burial, Colin had developed an almost peculiar fixation with death. He'd started asking questions about disease and suffering and the afterlife that Harold didn't know how to answer. He'd especially become preoccupied with accidents. Small wonder, since it was a car wreck that took Rich away.
But it went beyond curiosity about traffic casualties, out into articles about plane crashes, train derailments, and deaths on roller coasters. Nobody took their awareness of mortality well, but it seemed to have hit Colin especially hard.
Harold wanted to help, of course. It pained him to see his son like this. But what was Harold supposed to do when he himself was still grieving? For the time being, all he could do was hope the market was the pleasant experience people in other cities had said it was. Maybe the enchantments here would lift their spirits.
Meanwhile Aria had bounced back fairly quickly, as far as Harold could tell. As long as she had Lucky Seven, nothing could bring her down, at least not for long.
Colin suddenly grabbed Harold's arm. "Dad, that hill over there just breathed."
Harold saw it too. What he'd thought was just a large rocky mound in the distance was actually an arm, shoulder, and back for a larger humanoid shape, moving up and down, up and down, behind the market. Harold also thought he could hear the low rumble of the thing's snoring. "It looks like it's asleep. Just… um… Try not to be too noisy."
When the three of them crossed the road, the first table they came across was actually staffed by an ordinary human selling shaved ice. Harold didn't wait for Aria to demand anything. He bought three cups, with coconut for himself, blueberry for Aria, cherry for Michael. Harold spotted other human vendors around the lot, selling magazines, videos, artwork, and such. Who did they manage to coordinate with to set up space at this thing? Did the goblins have a website where they could sign up? A phone number?
The goblin tables, of course, were the main attraction. One table sold crystal balls that actually worked—the woman selling them said they would answer any question you asked them. Another sold fruit in peculiar shapes, with free samples on a platter. Harold and the kids reached out hesitantly, but now that they were here, across the table from a man with green skin and a feline face, and clouds of magic wafting around them, they couldn't tell what would be safe.
Aria's fingers gnarled over one of the toothpicks. Finally she told the fruit, "I'm not afraid of you. Lucky Seven!" She plucked the fruit off the plate and popped it in her mouth. Right away her face brightened. "Mmmm! Daddy, Colin, try it!"
They did. "Oh, that is good," Harold said. It had the sweetness of a fresh strawberry with the tanginess of a crisp apple. If it had any other effects, Harold couldn't feel it, and the kids didn't show it.
The goblin behind the table said, "$5.99 for a pack of six."
"Let me think about it. I'll be around later."
The three of them finished off their shaved ice, found a trash can, and moved on to another table in the next aisle.
They wound up at a meat vendor, with various cuts spread out in front of a slim goblin with a triangular head and a bird's beak. Some live chickens clucked in birdcages behind him.
"What's special about these?" Colin said.
The goblin began to answer, "Well—"
"It's people!" a chicken said.
"Quiet, you!"
"These goblins are monsters! They kidnap people and chop them up and sell their meat!"
"Cut it out," the goblin said. "Sorry folks, don't listen to that bird. All of this is ordinary pork and beef and—"
"Lies!" the chicken said. "I'm not even a bird! I'm a boy! My name's Manuel Garcia-Ortiz, I'm from Richmond, Virginia, and the only reason I'm still alive is because they're trying to fatten me up!"
Aria squeezed her brother's hand. "Daddy, I wanna go home."
Harold was ready to pick her up and carry her straight to the car, when Colin said, "Wait a minute. You're clearly a hen. Why would they turn you into a hen instead of a rooster?"
"I… well… I guess maybe they also want me to lay some eggs. They don't tell me everything."
"What I really don't get is, if they could turn a boy into a chicken, and a female chicken at that, why would they turn him into a chicken that can talk? Wouldn't they want him to keep as quiet as possible?"
"He's got you there, Mircalla," the goblin said. "Just fess up."
The chicken lowered its head in shame. "Okay, fine," the chicken said. "I'm not a little boy from Virginia. I'm this dumb pooka's wife. He owes money to some enchantress, and I'm stuck like this until he pays it off, the horse's ass."
"I wouldn't have to owe a thing if you didn't keep blowing my profits on magic beans! What does a butcher need with magic beans, anyway?"
"Yeah, well, buck buck b'caw."
"And how d'ya expect me to pay anything off if you keep scaring off the customers?" The goblin smiled at Harold. "Sorry about that. Terribly sorry. Here." He wrapped up some cuts and bagged them and held them out. "On the house. Pork chops, got some chantments on 'em to keep 'em preserved and make 'em taste better."
"Um, thanks," Harold said.
"And look, we're good folk here, but it is definitely a good idea to keep your kids in arm's reach. I can't promise there ain't any unscrupulous characters here."
"I understand," Harold said. "C'mon, kids, let's go."
He led the kids on down the aisle. Ahead were vinyl records, firecrackers whose sparks made designs in the air, bootleg videos, and a giant octopus selling playing cards.
"I'm glad that wasn't really a little boy," Aria said. "I don't wanna go home anymore. Lucky Seven indeed."
"What did any of that have to do with the number seven?" Michael said.
"Seven's a lucky number. I'm seven. That makes me lucky."
"So nothing bad's gonna happen just because you're here?" Colin scoffed. "Yeah, just wait till the giant rolls over, or something explodes."
"Well maybe that'd be lucky for you, but not for me."
"I didn't say I wanted anything bad to happen."
"If you don't want it so badly, why do you keep talking about it?"
"Dangit, Ari, you're just a little kid. Quit acting like you know everything."
"I know more than you, you big dumb anus!"
"All right, that's enough," Harold said. "Do you two want to see more of the market, or do you want to go home and stay in your rooms all night?" Though he wouldn't admit it, he'd been interested in seeing where their argument was going. He simply drew a hard line at name-calling.
"I'm sorry, Daddy," Aria said. "I do wanna stay, really. I heard there's a table with dancing fairies out here, and I just gotta see it."
"We'll stop fighting," Caleb said.
"Glad to hear it," Harold said. "If you've got a problem with each other, it can wait until we get home. Understood?"
"Yes, Dad," the kids said in unison.
Harold just barely heard Caleb mutter under his breath, "Anus? Really?"
They reached the end of the aisle, a stone's throw from the shaved ice and crystal balls, and began to turn toward the next one. A line of port-a-potties stood nearby. "Hey Dad, I need to take a whiz," Colin said.
"No problem." Harold pointed at a table with a human vendor directly across from the port-a-potties. "We'll wait for you right over there."
Colin dashed toward one of the booths as Harold took Aria by the hand and led her to the table. It was run by an elderly woman, and it looked like the selection was largely seventies, eighties, and nineties comic books. Harold started leafing through the boxes.
"Daddy," Aria said, "didn't that goblin say to keep us in arm's reach?"
"Colin will be all right. He's right over there. We can't miss each other."
"But that isn't arm's reach." She stretched her arm out and made grabbing motions with her hand. "See?"
"It's just an expression, Ari. Hey, Amethyst of Gemworld. You might like that."
"But what if somebody actually does wanna turn him into a chicken?" Aria said. "Or worse… A turkey?"
Harold didn't understand the hatred Aria had developed for turkeys over the last seven months, and wasn't sure he wanted to. And yet she liked them fine in sandwiches.
Colin returned with a warm smile. "Oh hey, comics." He started searching a few boxes down from his father.
Harold ruffled his son's hair. "I'm checking to see if they have this issue of Batman I had when I was a kid. I've found it in reprints, but I'd love to have the single issue."
Aria, meanwhile, let go of Harold's hand, and began clinging to his waist, glaring up at Colin. "You're not my brother."
"What?" Colin chuckled. "That's a weird thing to say."
Harold said, "Aria, it's fine to be mad at him, but this is getting obnoxious."
"It isn't Colin! There's something about him. I can't put my finger on it, I just know it's not him."
Colin patted her on the head. "Come on, it's me, your big bro. Remember all the fun we've had together?"
"Not lately," Aria said. "The real Colin's gloomy and sad and depressing and only wants to talk about death. You can't stop smiling. You can't go from sad to happy that fast! Especially after what happened to Uncle Rich!" At once her face turned down. "And now I'm getting sad too thinking about him. What about you?"
"Come to think of it, Colin, you do seem to be in a brighter mood all of a sudden." Harold had thought Aria's imagination was running away from her, but now he was seriously studying this child's face, clothes, hair, for any difference from the boy he knew. "If you're a fake, you're nearly perfect."
"Take it easy, Pop. I'm your son! You can't actually believe Aria, right?"
"You've never called me Pop before."
The boy's smile was becoming strained.
Aria jabbed a finger at him. "I know how to prove it! I called you a bad name a few minutes ago! What was it?"
"A name?" Colin said. "Other than Colin?"
"She did call you a name," Harold said. "You couldn't believe she'd said it. Not that I could, either." Aria was on to something now.
"It was a body part," Aria part. "The ugliest one."
The smile twitched further downward. "Sigmoid colon?"
"Who are you," Harold said, grabbing the boy by the shoulders, "and what have you done with my son?"
Aria's jaw was hanging open. "Daddy, is that body part even real?"
The boy changed, the skin turning a shade of teal and the ears stretching out. The clothes became a short-sleeved tunic with a sash around the waist, and a pair of loose pants underneath. "Guess I've gotten rusty. Oh well, the lady's already got him."
"What lady?" Harold said. He obviously didn't mean the lady selling the comics.
"Tootles!" the goblin said, and disappeared, leaving Harold holding on to nothing.
"Hey!" Harold stumbled forward, jerking his head left and right. "Where's Colin? Where's my son?"
"They're gonna do it!" Aria squealed. "They're gonna turn him into a chicken!"
"Excuse me, sir?" The elderly woman reached across the boxes and tapped the front of one of them. "Is that him down there?"
She pointed toward the table with the crystal balls. It was hard to tell at first through the crowd. but through the gaps, Harold could see Colin staring into one of those balls, while a woman behind the table spoke to him.
"Thank you so much," Harold told the old woman.
"Don't worry about it," she said. "That changeling was causing trouble at the Knoxville market, too. Guess they didn't ban him like I thought. Go get your boy."
Harold scooped Aria up and ran as fast as he could to the crystal balls. "Colin!"
Colin kept his eyes forward, watching something in the crystal that it seemed only he could see.
"Colin, what are you doing?" Harold set Aria back on the ground.
"Really?" Colin said, "She likes me?"
Aria screeched at the top of her lungs. "COLIN!"
Colin jumped and tore his eyes from the orb to his sister. "Aria? Dad? What're you doing here?"
"I should be asking you the same thing," Harold said. "I told you to meet us at that comic book table. If you wanted to come back and look here, you just had to tell me."
"I was just gonna be a minute," Colin said.
"You didn't listen to the goblin, either." Aria made that grabbing motion again. "Arm's reach, remember?"
"Look, I understand, I'm sorry. I won't do it again."
"I'm not sure you do understand," Harold said. "Colin, while you were here, someone came up to us and impersonated you. It was a perfect likeness. If Aria hadn't caught him, we might have actually taken him home."
"Seriously? Even you couldn't tell the real me from an imposter." Colin turned toward the woman behind the table. "Maybe you were onto something, Miss Hesper." She wore a dense robe and had a face as smooth as a ceramic mask. Reds and blues rippled down her silver hair.
"Onto what?" Harold pressed his fist into the table. "What is your interest in my son, Miss Hesper?" That changeling had mentioned a lady, but Harold couldn't be sure it was necessarily this lady. Not yet.
"Simply to show him what he wants to know," the woman named Miss Hesper said. "That's what these crystal balls are for. Ask them anything, and they will tell you the truth."
"And what have you been asking it?" Harold asked Colin.
Aria squatted and leaned in for a peek under the tablecloth.
"Just basic stuff, to make sure it works," Colin said. "And it does. It showed me everything I got for Christmas, and where I keep my allowance, and it proved Aria didn't really rip my Avengers poster."
"I told you it wasn't me!" Aria yelled from below.
"Okay," Harold said, "but you didn't come out here to ask it questions you already knew the answer to. What was so important that you had to come over here without telling me?"
"Well…" Colin tweaked the fabric of his t-shirt. "I was mostly just curious…"
Aria lifted a flap of the tablecloth and gasped. "It's him!"
"Dammit!" a voice said from under the table. The changeling suddenly sprang up next to Miss Hesper. "I knew I was rusty. Can't even make myself scarce like I used to."
Miss Hesper shook her head. "You know exactly how to ruin a good thing, changeling."
"Hey!" Colin pointed at him. "You're the guy who bumped into me on the way to the port-a-potty! Didn't even say sorry."
"You're working together?" Harold said as Aria hopped up to her feet. "All right, what is going on? What do you want with Colin?"
"I don't want anything," the changeling said, working his way around the table. "I just do what Miss Hesper pays me to do."
"I assure you," Miss Hesper said, "this is all a big misunderstanding. All I did was send the changeling as a temporary substitute while I offered your son an opportunity for some closure."
"Closure?" Harold felt like he was starting to figure this out. "Colin?"
Colin lowered his head, pointing his eyes toward the ground. "I figured if the crystal balls could tell you whatever you asked it… Maybe… They could tell me about Uncle Richard."
"What about him?"
"You know… Like where he is. If the afterlife's real. Like, whether he's in heaven or hell? Or reincarnated? Or just… Nothing?"
Harold laid a hand on his son's shoulder. "And?"
"I haven't asked it yet. Actually, Miss Hesper says these crystals can't show that… but she has crystals that can. I've just been… well, I guess, putting it off. Those crystal balls are too good. I'm gonna get an answer, and I don't think I'm gonna like it."
"Are you sure?" Miss Hesper said. "We close in only a few more hours, then we move on to the next town. You won't have this opportunity again."
"Colin," Harold said, "It's not just about Uncle Harold, is it?"
"Of course not," Miss Hesper said. "The boy wants to know his own destiny."
"I mean…" Colin was wringing his shirt like a wet rag. "Why not? If the same thing could happen to me at any time… Why shouldn't I know where I'm going? But I don't want to be nothing. I don't wanna go to hell. Heck, I'm not even sure I wanna go to heaven, or come back as anything. I just… I…" His face wrenched into a red mess. "Dad, I don't wanna die!"
And he fell into Harold's arms and started crying. He wished he had the words to tell his son it would be all right, but nobody in the world would. The only possible answer he knew was in those crystal balls—assuming this wasn't some kind of trick. All he could say was "I know."
"What about you?" Aria leaned over the table toward Miss Hesper. "What if we did leave with the changely guy? What would you have done with my brother?" Her face was crinkling up, as if she was fighting the urge to cry as well.
"I'll tell you what they would'a done," a squat goblin in overalls said as he was passing by. "The changeling would'a stayed with you and mooched off you a few months, then he'd vanish and leave you searching for the boy the rest o' your natural lives. Meanwhile, she's got the real one in Faerie keepin' him as a pet. An old, barbaric custom we were right to ban."
Miss Hesper made a bitter face, with only a few wrinkles.
"A pet?" Harold said.
"A pet?" Colin said. "You said you were just gonna show me the crystals back in your wagon! You even said I could go ask my dad first!"
"Fat chance, kid," the goblin in overalls said. "She was tryin to keep you distracted so by the time you went to ask, they'd already a'gone home, an' never realized you were missing."
"And why should they believe you?" Miss Hesper said.
A yell came from the shaved ice guy. "Because he's the supervisor for this whole damn flea market!"
The eyes of Harold and his kids, as well as passersby, human and goblin alike, were now on Miss Hesper.
"You been warned about this, Miss Hesper," the supervisor said. "Gonna have to report you"
"No!" Miss Hesper stood up. "But… But the humans caught on! No real harm was done!"
"Don't make a difference, Miss Hesper." The supervisor took a whistle out of his pocket, and blew it. It made an eerie noise like the wind at midnight.
The giant at the far end of the flea market stirred. The mass rolled over onto its front, then lifted itself up, turned itself around, and looked down over the whole lot. He had skin like a mountain bluff, and wore fabric that seemed to have been woven from lumber, fringed with branches. "Who has awakened me?"
Harold felt the rumble of that voice deep in his stomach.
"I have, sir," the supervisor said. "These humans need to make a report."
"Us?!" Harold said.
"Of course," the supervisor said. "You're the injured party. Make your report. Don't worry, he can hear you."
Harold coughed, and began to address the giant. A pair of eyes each as big as a car stared down at him. "I… that is… This woman here…"
"She was gonna kidnap my brother!" Aria said. "And replace him with a changely guy."
The giant nodded his massive head. "Is this true, Miss Hesper?"
"Well, sir, you see…"
"Remember, no one may lie in my presence."
His words must have had the force of law, as they sent a shiver crawling over Miss Hesper's skin. "Yes, it's true."
"I'm afraid so, sir," the changeling said.
"And you," the giant said to the changeling, "what do you even do here?"
"Um…" The changeling began wringing his shirt just as Colin had earlier. "I change."
"This market depends on all of us being on our best behavior, and maintaining humanity's trust in us. We can ill afford crimes like abduction. You'll have to be punished."
The giant stretched his arm out over the flea market, and with his mighty fingers plucked the changeling off the ground. The changeling made a yelp, but otherwise did little to protest. The giant was in charge; he made the rules.
The fingers dropped the changeling into the giant's mouth to be swallowed whole.
"Don't worry bout him, folks," the supervisor said. "Sir has a slow digestive system, so he can just spit 'im back up tomorrow."
The giant began to reach out again, this time for Lady Hesper.
She pointed a long finger with a long blue nail at Aria. "You! You're seven, aren't you?"
"That's right!" Aria said, pointing back. "Lucky Seven strikes again!"
Miss Hesper fumed and raged incoherently as the giant picked her up, and was still spewing out her rant as she fell down the giant's throat.
"You swear she'll be okay?" Aria asked the supervisor.
"Trust me. Sir's stomach ain't so bad. I would know. He's had to set me straight, too."
"I think I'm ready to go home now," Colin said. "I'm really sorry, Dad. Didn't mean to worry you and all."
Harold slapped his son on the back. "I think you've learned your lesson. Aria, how about you?"
"We can go. I don't wanna see the fairies that badly."
"I hate that you were right about that Lucky Seven crap," Colin said.
"Let's get some fruit from that one table and go," Harold said. "We've had enough excitement for one day." But right as the kids started moving, Harold hung back. "Just… wait right there a moment."
The kids stopped at the shaved ice table, just a few feet away, still more or less within arm's reach. Harold returned to Miss Hesper's table, gazed into one of the crystal balls, and whispered a question:
"Did my brother…" His throat tightened. "Was he in pain when he died?"
The crystal ball showed him.
And he was satisfied with the answer.