~~~
The queen and her three warriors had crept around the house in the stand of oaks and pines to get at the back of the home. She wasn’t sure how his house was laid out, but even if the bedrooms were towards the back on the main floor instead of the second as in her own childhood Michigan home, she did not want to be seen strutting through the front door of a human’s home. There were protocols when interacting with humans which other faeries might not be willing to overlook.
She had just directed Krysim to try prying the lock on one of the back porch windows with his knife edge when she heard several quick footsteps and then the back door flung open, inwards.
One of the other goblins falling backwards trying to retreat towards safety had pulled on his bow string and let fly an arrow as he tumbled. It struck the door and buried itself half way up the shaft, despite it being a heavy bolt intended to strike heavy armor from a distance.
It took about a half second for Agent Davidson’s reflexes to kick in since he had not at all expected to be shot at. But when they did his anger was twice that which he’d built up storming from his bedroom to the back door to confront the queen or whomever it was he might find there. He pounced on the halfing fumbling around on the ground and then noticed a second goblin standing on the porch as well.
As Jackson lifted the fallen goblin with his left arm, he struck the other in the face with his right and swept his foot underneath it to knock the creature off balance. Pressing his heal to the downed goblin’s throat and shaking the other violently, the agent’s interrogation began right there on the porch.
“What are you doing here, filth!” Jackson cursed at the little creature through gritted teeth.
“Now, now Jackson,” said a familiar voice with a pleasant feminine ring to it. The sound of it was like fingers running up his back. He wasn’t sure if he was scared, excited or relaxed by the soft touch to his ear.
Jackson turned, both goblins still in his hold, and saw yet a third, and then the hourglass figure of the Goblin Queen in her leathers stepping lightly towards him. Her attire wasn’t just the battle-marked leather she’d warn when they first met, but adorned with a skirting and with more female-fitting design. If he didn’t know better he’d guess the queen was wearing a goblin equivalent of an evening dress. Though she still had bracers and an adornment of several small bladed weapons and leather bindings.
“What are you doing here?” Jackson asked a second time, but breathlessly and with little of the threat he reserved for the goblin whom he set back down upon the ground.
“Why,” she demurred and stepped even closer, “I’ve come for a visit, ha’n’t I then? Wanted to see how me ‘speriment was gettin’ ‘long.”
The oddball, and seemingly fake accent had returned with the Queen just as it had when she toyed with him in the forest.
“You…” Jackson fumbled, and then kicked off the grounded goblin. “You got lonely did you?”
“As ‘matter o’fact, I did, my precious Jackson!” She cooed, and lightly touched his chin as she entered the back door into the kitchen.
“You three guard the house,” she added in a rougher tone.
Jackson followed her in and fairly roughly slammed the door as Krysim timidly stepped towards it. He found pleasure in denying a goblin something it wanted. In some ways, his audience with the queen and shutting them out made him a feel a bit powerful. In the back of his mind he wondered what was wrong with him. He thought perhaps she were casting some sort of spell, but as he recalled their interaction back in the forests above Maple Springs among the Rocky Mountains out west was mostly affected by a spell his guiding sprite, Puck, had been casting when he asked him for help. That triggered a thought.
“You don’t have that Puck faerie with you this time, do you?” Jackson asked.
“Why, no. Of course not. He is not part of my troops,” she smirked as she turned from her slow wander through the house and examination of its contents. Jackson found her smile mesmerizing. “I had to teach that little punk a lesson too. Quite enjoyed it if I might say so myself.”
Jackson followed her down the hallway as she made her way towards his bedroom. “You’ve lost your accent again, my Queen,” he mentioned slyly.
“Have I?” As she walked down the hallway, she seemed to be listening or sensing something. Her hand touched lightly upon a family picture hung near the thermostat and then she blew the younger Jackson in it a kiss and moved on.
“Yes. You have.”
“And speaking of little punks, you have an Imp here don’t you?” she said, with much less favor as the rest of the conversation had gone.
“In my bedroom, probably.”
They walked into the room, the queen slowly pushing open the door. Once inside she faced the double, bi-fold doors to the closet and then pried them open. Sitting on the floor between shoes was the little Imp, Tword, picking his nose and red eyes blinking up at them.
His raspy voice hissed forward like smoke from an old oak log on fire pops and fizzles. “May I help you, my queen?”
“YOU! …Can get out,” the queen growled back at him.
“But…where would I go?” the Imp whimpered in his hissing voice.
“Go watch the house outside with my goblins then.”
The Imp stood up, probably only about half the short height of the queen and stepped out of the closet. In truth he knew he’d already lost any argument he might try to make, but he kept speaking anyway.
“Madam, Imps do not belong outside. We’re a product of faerie and human hatred together, forged in the industrialization of their race and as such, nature is now beneath us. It is for faerie folk such as of your persuasion to dwell out in the rock and mud…”
He was cut off. The Goblin Queen nabbed his shadowy, flickering tongue and held onto it. Both Jackson and Tword wondered loosely how she could get a hold of him as Imps are generally formed of soot and ash and unable to be confined but by magic or glass container. The Imp’s eyes widened immensely as the queen addressed him.
“You can go outside. You can go hide in the furnace. You can fly to the moon for all I care! But you’re leaving. NOW!”
If he didn’t know better he’d swear the queen had pinched his tongue with the tips of her fingernails and it had hurt. He slithered in the darkness out the bedroom door cursing as he went. “I am leaving. Yes. I am,” he groaned.
Jackson stood by the bed as she sat down on the end of it. He folded his arms and smirked just a bit himself, once again impressed with her confidence and command. “You’ve got to tell me how you did that at some point.”
She smiled and patted the bed next to her. “Sit down Jackson. Perhaps I will indeed tell you many things… in time.”
Though he hesitated, Agent Davidson did as he was asked, his arms still folded. When he sat a bit too far away from her, the queen scooted closer still and wrapped her left arm into the crook of his right elbow.
“What did you really come here for?” he asked.
“Now Jackson. Don’t rush this,” she was petting his forearm like one might stroke a cat, calming both it and the person alike. “It’s been so long since I’ve had…adult conversation. I’d like to savor it a bit.”
“What are you talking about?” Jackson tried to shrug her touch off of him, despite the comfort he too was feeling.
“Don’t deny. You felt something that night you first visited me, didn’t you?”
“Felt something?!” Jackson stood, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his robes so he didn’t do anything too violently reflexive when she spoke next. “I felt those… those worms entering my brain! That’s what I felt!”
“Well, now…” the queen too arose and tried to place a hand on his arm again. “That is what you came for after all, wasn’t it? But, that’s not what I mean.”
She walked to the front window and placed her finger tips on the sill as she looked outside. There was a
patrol car cruising by with its lights on but siren off, apparently watching out for any of the suburban kids looking to emulate those in Detroit proper who might be acting on the Devil’s Night traditions.
“I came to see you again Jackson, because…I think you and I might have a bit of a relationship. And I wanted to see if you felt the same.”
Jackson couldn’t believe what he was hearing. And yet there was the problem of her visage always in his mind. And the memory of her kiss.
“That…” he hesitated. “That was nothing. That stupid sprite you sent to bring me to you in the first place told me he was hexing you with a compassion spell. Otherwise you would have killed me.”
“Ah…” the queen was thinking to herself. She mumbled, “So his name really is Puck! You were able to command him to help you after all, weren’t you? Damn! I should have realized.”
“So you see,” Jackson continued, actually a little disappointed she didn’t argue against her infatuation being manipulated by a spell a little more. “Whatever feelings you think you have for me are untrue. And…I might add, you are absolutely corrupt.”
She patted his face, which between her nudge over five feet tall and his several inches over six was a bit of a stretch.
“Pay that sprite little mind, Jackson. He hasn’t the power to control me and I knew what he was doing the whole time,” she teased. “And, I might add that truly, are not all of Earth’s creatures at least a little corrupt?”
Now that she’d refuted it Jackson was on unstable ground yet again. He didn’t know what to think. How is it a faerie and a human could be attracted to one another? He had of course heard of sprite and human relationships, but he always figured that in part that was due to their shape-shifting ability and weird infatuation with humans in general. How could he…? And a goblin…? It was nonsense.
“I’ve been under the tutelage of a dragon these past few decades. There isn’t much magic in the world left that could overcome my will completely, you know?”
The queen sat back on the bed again and patted for Jackson to sit down. After a moment he did so, still somewhat hesitantly.
“I want to tell you something, Agent Davidson. And I want you to know that I’m telling you the truth. So, what might I do to regain your trust?” She smiled coyly again.
Jackson didn’t have to think long. “Get these worms out of my head.”
“Ah…” she laughed pleasantly. “I would if I could. I promise you that. But if you remove a snarl from a human’s mind it would kill. I’m not interested in killing you Jackson.”
“Then what is it, really, that you’re interested in. What did you come all the way out to Michigan to get from me?”
She crossed her legs, placing her interlocked fingers on her knee and pondered how to phrase the situation a little. “Jackson, what I want from you is to be friends. That’s all.”
“Friends, eh?”
“Yes, just friends, Jackson. That’s all I want. To be good friends. You can do that can’t you? I know you might like a visit from me from time to time, wouldn’t you? Or would you maybe like to live in the mountains? It’s very pretty where we live.”
“And ice-cold in the winter.”
“Yes, that it is,” she toyed with him. “But friends keep one another company, don’t they? And they help one another?”
Jackson was nodding in agreement as she spoke, until he realized what she had slipped in at the end.
“Oh boy,” he grumbled. “Here we go. Tell me what it is you want me to do before I even consider anything.”
“It’s not like that, Jackson. I’m not here just to use you,” she replied but was cut off.
“No?! It sure sounds like it!” He stood again.
“Jackson. If I were just going to manipulate you I’d use magic and you wouldn’t even know it.”
She stood and laughed a little gesturing with her palms up. Continuing she tried to grab his arm again with both hands and pull him back to sit on the bed.
“Listen, Jackson. I want you to understand who I am. I want to have an equal. Lord knows I can’t get by forever on the conversation these goblins offer, now can I?”
“What about this dragon? Surely he’s more intelligent?” Jackson smirked.
“She.”
“What?”
“She,” the queen corrected. “The dragon is female. And yes, she is very intelligent. But she’s certainly not a friend. Well…she wants me to be. But…What if I told you a little bit about how I became the queen of the goblins? Would you trust me then?”
“They don’t hold elections I take it?” Jackson teased a little, somewhat more comfortable.
“No,” she giggled an honest laugh. “You don’t even realize, do you?”
“Realize what?” the agent inquired when her pause became too long to ignore.
“I’m not even really goblin, you silly.”
Jackson’s response was his best Samuel L. Jackson poker-face he could produce. “Is that right?” he deadpanned.
“Of course not?” she giggled again, but this time obviously faking her humor. “I was born and raised until I was about ten here in Ohio.”
Jackson’s quizzical look told her how he was receiving and she tried to play her human part up a bit.
“No, really. Not far from here actually. A couple hours’ drive. But later we moved out west so my father could go to med school there.”