First Contact

The yellow eyes belonged to a face.

A narrow face, greenish-brown in the dim light, framed by dark hair bound back from the temples. The figure stood half concealed behind the broad leaves, watching him with an expression Adrian could not quite read.

It was smaller than a human adult, though not as small as a child. A woven mantle covered its shoulders, decorated with intricate patterns in red, ochre, and faded blue. Several small ornaments of polished bone and carved stone hung from a cord around its neck. A narrow band of copper gleamed at its forearm.

A Goblin.

He had seen illustrations, of course. Crude woodcuts in old chronicles, usually depicting grotesque creatures with exaggerated jaws and hunched backs. More recent military reports contained sketches, but those were little better: hastily drawn profiles intended to identify an enemy rather than understand a people. This creature looked nothing like them.

The Goblin stepped out from behind the foliage.

Adrian forgot the rain, the cold, and the pain in his head. He opened his mouth.

After spending months preparing lists of likely greetings, questions, and elementary phrases in the languages attributed to the island's inhabitants, he had rehearsed introductions in the privacy of his cabin until he could recite them in his sleep.

Now he could remember none of them.

The creature tilted its head. It stood upright, its posture relaxed but attentive.

Adrian was still kneeling, at eye level with the creature, clutching his damaged satchel, and he suddenly felt absurdly undignified. He tried to rise, but his injured leg protested. He settled for sitting upright.

The Goblin said something.

The sentence had a cadence that reminded Adrian of one of the coastal dialects described in the collegium’s archives.

Cautiously, he replied in the language he had spent three years studying.

[“Good day. I mean you no harm.”]

The words sounded strange in his own ears, even though he had practiced them countless times.

The Goblin's eyebrows rose. It tilted its head slightly, then answered.

Adrian caught a word. Perhaps two.

The rest was incomprehensible.

He blinked and tried again, this time using a simpler phrase.

[“I need help.”]

The Goblin listened patiently. When Adrian finished, it replied with a longer sentence, speaking slowly, as if addressing someone who was slow on the uptake.

Adrian felt a small, unpleasant tightening in his chest.

I've studied this language, I ought to understand it.

He recognized the word for water. He thought he recognized a grammatical form associated with possession. The rest seemed to contain unfamiliar words, strange inflections, and unknown constructions.

The sentence refused to yield.

The Goblin pointed towards the sea, then towards Adrian's satchel, and asked another question.

Adrian understood none of it.

He felt a bead of rain trickle down his neck.

“No,” he said in his own language, then shook his head. “I don't understand.”

He tried again in the Goblin tongue, but the phrase came out awkwardly. The Goblin listened, then corrected his pronunciation with a repetition of the words.

The correction was gentle. Almost encouraging.

That made it worse.

Adrian tried once more.

This time the Goblin nodded, apparently satisfied, and continued speaking.

Adrian caught nearly nothing.

His mouth went dry. His knowledge was not merely inadequate. It was unreliable.

The Goblin crouched a short distance away, resting its forearms on its knees. It said something else, then waited.

Adrian looked at the Goblin's face. There was no obvious hostility there, only a patient curiosity that he found increasingly difficult to bear.

“I am a scholar,” he said in the imperial tongue, though he knew the creature could not understand him. He raised both hands, palms outward, in what he hoped was a universal gesture of peaceful intent.

“I am unarmed. I don't mean to hurt you.”

The Goblin listened to the unfamiliar words and asked another question.

Adrian tried to answer in the Goblin language. He managed some words before losing the thread of his own sentence.

The Goblin rose, brushed the damp sand from its mantle, and gestured towards the forest. It said a short sentence, motioning for Adrian to follow it.

As far as Adrian could tell, it might have meant “I'll lead you,” or it might have meant “I'll seize you.”

He swallowed.

What other options do I have?

With a grimace of pain, he pushed himself up and hobbled after the goblin.