Excerpt: HOW TO LOSE A GOBLIN IN TEN DAYS by Jessie Sylva
How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days by debut author Jessie Sylva is the cozy tale of a halfling and a goblin who must learn to love each other despite their differences. Called “an adorable delight!” (Sarah Beth Durst), this novel is brimming with popular romance tropes and warmth and is perfect for fans of The Honey Witch and The Spellshop.
Read an excerpt from How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days (US), on-sale January 20th, below!
1
Pansy
To my dearest granddaughter, Pansy, I leave my cottage in the forest, along with all its contents, in the hope that it might provide you with the adventure you’ve been searching for.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ANGELICA UNDERBURROW
The problem with mushrooms, Pansy decided, half-squatting in the damp forest earth, was that far too many of them looked alike. Take the crop of orange fungus blanketing one side of the fallen log before her, for example. Was it the delicious, yet rare, Phoenix Tail mushroom she’d spent most of the morning searching the forest for? Or was it the far more ominously named Bloodletter Shroom? Gods only knew the answer to that one. Because Pansy certainly didn’t; not even with a borrowed copy of Fatleaf’s Fungal Fancies clutched in one dirt-stained hand.
At this point, a more prudent halfling would have backed away and left the mushrooms to carry on as they were, undisturbed. But the thought of leaving behind what could be the greatest culinary treasure this side of Giant’s Reach made something inside Pansy shrivel. Not to mention she would be coming home empty-handed—on tonight of all nights.
No. Pansy shook her head. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.
Blowing out a breath, she tucked a stray ringlet of copper-colored hair behind one large, rounded ear and squinted closer at the finger-like frills jutting up from the log’s mossy surface. Well, it was certainly orange. But was it the “burnished orange of a warm hearth”, as Elwan Fatleaf had put it? Maybe. Though how that differed from the “dull orange of an overripe pumpkin” Pansy wasn’t quite sure.
Perhaps her friend Blossom would know. She was a florist by trade, so mushrooms weren’t precisely her area of expertise. But it was her book that Pansy had borrowed. And if Blossom couldn’t give her a firm answer—well, Pansy would throw out the mushrooms and come up with something else. Better to be safe than sorry, especially when the alternative meant potentially poisoning your entire family.
“The things I do for a good quiche,” she muttered, retrieving a small paring knife from the folds of her apron. There were probably blades better suited for this: foraging knives or some such. But like most halflings, until today, the closest Pansy had gotten to foraging was visiting the local grocer, who did not deal in anything other than the very ordinary. And Phoenix Tails were anything but.
Even with only a paring knife at her disposal, the mushrooms came away without much fuss. Soon, Pansy was rising to her feet, her potentially-poisonous-but-hopefully-not haul tucked safely inside her wicker shopping basket.
As much as she would have liked to keep searching—just in case—the hour was getting late. The sky overhead, glimpsed in narrow snatches through a wild, thick canopy, had already deepened to a soft lilac, edged in equally delicate pinks and golds that continued to thin as daylight waned. Pansy estimated that she had a couple of hours before night set in. Plenty of time to walk the winding trail back to Haverow—if she left now.
As luck would have it, she managed only a few steps in the direction of home before a new treasure caught her eye: a truffle, white and plump, rising just above the carpet of dead leaves blanketing the forest floor. Had some animal unearthed it, only to abandon their plunder in a moment of panic?
“Huh. Well, you won’t find me complaining,” Pansy said, hopping off the path once more.
It took a little bit of maneuvering on her part, the ground here more gnarled roots than dirt, but soon she reached the shallow divot in the earth the truffle called home. The white bulb was enormous, nearly the size of her fist. With it, she could make enough truffle butter to fuel dozens of recipes, from truffle-butter mashed potatoes to a wonderfully soft white truffle-butter bread she’d always wanted to try. None would be as extraordinary as the Phoenix Tail quiche she’d been hoping to prepare, but the truffle butter, at least, she could leave behind. It would be a piece of her heart for her parents to keep close, a reminder that her love for them could never diminish, no matter how much distance might come between them.
Warmth bloomed beneath Pansy’s breastbone at the thought. Perhaps tonight would not be such a disaster after all—even if the mushrooms in the basket did turn out to be poisonous doppelgangers.
Squatting down anew, Pansy reached for the truffle. However, before her fingers could so much as graze its pockmarked surface, a pink blur darted out in front of her, and the truffle was gone.
“Thief!” she cried, watching as a conspicuously well-fed pig made off with her would-be prize. “Piggy thief! Bring that back!”
Her demands fell on deaf ears. But Pansy would not give up so easily.
She surged to her feet, dress hiked pre-emptively around her knees. No need to give herself any more things to trip over; the forest already had her covered on that front. Still, even with a sea of uneven terrain before her, Pansy managed to keep pace with the pilfering swine. In fact, soon she was gaining on the creature.
“I’ve got you now!” she shouted, legs pumping harder still.
Pansy’s vision had condensed, leaving nothing but the rotund, pink mass ahead of her—plus, the truffle clamped between its jaws. When the pig released the truffle in apparent concession, she gave no thought to what might be around her. She dove.
No sooner had her fingers closed around the squat bulb than another set of fingers, longer and greener than her own, found hers, pressing nails like flat shards of obsidian into soft, unguarded skin.
For half a breath, hazel eyes met yellow in complete and perfect stillness, where even the world itself seemed to pause on its axis. Then, the moment passed, and both Pansy and the unexpected interloper broke apart, each relinquishing their hold on the truffle in favor of scrambling back several paces (and, in Pansy’s case, letting out a less-than-dignified squeak).
A goblin? Here? Pansy hugged her basket close, heart kicking hard against her ribs.
In truth, this shouldn’t have been such a shock. Just as the forest bordered Haverow and several other halfling villages on one side, it abutted a vast network of caves on the other, all inhabited—or “infested”, as the neighboring dwarves might say—by goblins. No doubt this was one of them, having temporarily abandoned the dank, festering darkness they loved so much to—what? Scavenge? Steal? That’s what goblins did. Provided they weren’t too busy slaughtering halflings in the name of whatever dark lord or necromancer they volunteered to serve.
This goblin, at least, seemed to be unarmed. Granted, the claws they sported at the end of each finger could do some damage with the right application; the tiny, pink pinpricks dotting the back of Pansy’s hand were proof enough of that. But even those claws seemed to have diminished slightly, as if they’d been retracted. Like a cat’s.
Still, it was difficult to know anything for sure. While Pansy had stumbled backwards in a straight line, the goblin had taken a more strategic approach, seeking cover behind the same knot of overgrown roots they had popped out from. If Pansy squinted, she could just make them out. But in the ever-waning daylight, who knew how long that would last.
In many ways, the goblin appeared exactly as Pansy had imagined: dark green hair; green skin; clothes in varying shades of brown and gray, all held together by scraps of fabric and a prayer. And yet, their features were also softer, rounder, even when doused in the gnarled, twisting shadows of the forest. With sharp cheekbones and an intense, lash-lined gaze, the goblin was almost—dare Pansy say it?—cute.
To think, she had an entire bookshelf’s worth of Wolf Banefoot books at home, and none of them had prepared her for this. But she could hardly expect stories about the greatest halfling hero to wax poetic about the very goblins he was fighting.
Speaking of: was this goblin going to fight her?
The goblin was still frozen in a strange half-crouch, their muscles pulled bowstring-taut beneath the gray weight of their cloak. While one hand gripped the curve of an immense tree root, the other extended behind them, palm flat and out, almost as if they were telling someone to wait.
But who? Pansy sucked in a sharp breath, panic squeezing around her throat like a vice. Her gaze swiveled away from the goblin, searching, instead, beyond. There, she found not another goblin as she’d feared, but a familiar thief, pink and potbellied, its head cocked slightly to one side. A goblin’s accomplice. Of course.
Had the goblin stolen the pig? she wondered, only to nearly scoff at herself for having deigned to ask such a silly question. They were a goblin. Surely, that was answer enough.
No sooner had Pansy glimpsed the creature than the goblin left cover and came back into her line of sight. Don’t you dare, blazed the silent accusation, knife-bright behind a tangled veil of moss-dark hair. No words had been spoken. Yet Pansy heard them all the same.
“I’m not going to hurt your pig,” she snapped, the hot swell of her own indignation shattering the uneasy silence between them. “I came out here to gather some ingredients. That’s all.”
A beat. Just long enough for the goblin’s long ears to unpin from their skull. “I didn’t know halflings foraged.” Their voice was surprisingly soft—almost pleasantly so—but oddly devoid of inflection, particularly when compared to the way Pansy’s neighbors in Haverow spoke.
“I’m making a quiche,” Pansy declared, canting up her chin at a defiant angle; anything to eke out a few extra millimeters against a goblin who thought her so low as to hurt a defenseless pig—thief or not. “A very halfling thing to do, mind you.”
The goblin’s eyes flicked down to Pansy’s basket, still clutched to her chest, the narrow slits of their pupils flaring ever so slightly wider. “You know those are poisonous, right?”
“What?”
“Those mushrooms. You can’t eat them. They’ll kill you.”
Heat flooded Pansy’s face, rushing all the way up to the tips of her ears. So, they had been Bloodletter Shrooms, after all. Just her luck. She’d spent the whole day slogging through these woods, all for the privilege of accidentally poisoning her parents with what was supposed to be the greatest meal they’d ever had. And worst of all, a goblin had been the one to tell her just how badly she’d mucked it up.
“I-I knew that!” Pansy stammered. “I wasn’t going to eat them.”
An awful lie by any measure. The goblin clearly thought so, given the way their nose wrinkled. Still, they asked, “What were you going to do with them, then?”
“I—” Pansy floundered, her cheeks burning hotter and hotter with every second wasted scrabbling for some halfway-believable excuse. As if there could ever be one! She knew it. The goblin knew it. Perhaps, even the pig knew it. And still the goblin continued to wait for her answer, their expression an inscrutable, unyielding wall.
“Decoration,” she forced out at last, managing to keep a straight face.
“Decoration,” the goblin repeated flatly.
“Yes.” Pansy sniffed. “Decoration. Am I not allowed to decorate my home?”
“With mushrooms. You decorate with mushrooms.”
She shrugged. “I like the color orange.”
The goblin blinked at her, long and slow, then said, “Take it.”
“What?”
“The truffle.” They gestured towards it, still lying between them. “You need it more than I do.”
Pansy balked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The goblin shrugged, their gaze drifting to one side. “I don’t want a bunch of dead halflings on my conscience, is all.”
At that, Pansy’s waning flush roared back with a vengeance. “I told you they’re not for eating!” Then, just to really drive home the point, she upended her basket, scattering the lingering evidence of her failure across the dirt. “There! Happy? Now you don’t have to worry about us stupid little halflings poisoning ourselves with deadly mushrooms!”
For several beats there was nothing beyond the ragged drag of Pansy’s breathing, her shoulders heaving as she stood at the center of an orange halo of her own creation. The goblin said nothing, did nothing. But then they started towards Pansy, pausing to retrieve the truffle, which they deposited in her otherwise empty basket, now hanging limply at her side.
“You should go home before it gets dark,” they said, close enough that Pansy could see the smattering of barely there freckles dusting the bridge of their nose. “The forest is thick and hard to navigate without light, especially for someone like you.”
As the goblin stepped away, Pansy considered whether she ought to thank them. Good halfling manners dictated that when someone gave you something, you responded with a show of gratitude in turn. It wasn’t so easy when that someone had been anything but polite themselves. Still, it was the right thing to do.
Steadying herself with a deep breath, Pansy opened her mouth to utter two words she had never expected to say to a goblin. But before she could so much as form the first syllable, the goblin tapped their cheek and, with a whisper of something like a smirk curling at the corner of their mouth, said, “By the way, you have dirt on your face. A lot of it.”
Pansy could have screamed.
Returning to her parents’ burrow in Haverow should have been a relief, a much-needed balm to soothe the sting of her encounter with that awful goblin. There was nothing an hour or two in the kitchen couldn’t fix, unless someone had beaten her there—someone who, to be clear, was not supposed to be there.
“Mum!” Pansy groaned as she set her basket on the counter, the truffle inside rolling lightly across the bottom. “I told you I was going to cook tonight!”
“Oh, honey, it’s fine.” Her mother waved her off with one oven-mitt-clad hand as she stirred the contents of a heavy red saucepan with the other. Judging from the state of her hair, often wilder than even Pansy’s own curls, she had just started: the brown ribbon she always used to hold her hair back while she cooked hadn’t even begun to slip. “You were out all day. You can cook tomorrow instead.”
There it was—the very thing Pansy had been afraid of. She swallowed the sigh that welled up in her throat and said, as kindly as she could manage, “Mum, you know I won’t be here tomorrow.”
Her mother shrugged. “The day after, then.”
“Or the day after. I’m moving out. We talked about this.”
A beat passed. Her mother said nothing, her gaze fixed on the pot in front of her: filling for a pot pie, Pansy guessed, given the smell—warm and homey and full of butter. But her mother’s thinking had always been plain to see, etched, this time, in the tightness around her mouth.
Finally, a sigh. “Do you really have to leave?” her mother asked plaintively, hazel eyes in the same shade as Pansy’s own flicking over to meet hers. “You’ll be so far away.”
“Not that far,” Pansy corrected, heading over to the basin to wash her hands. Just because her mother had already started on dinner did not mean Pansy couldn’t help. “I already told you I’d come visit. Every ten-day. Like I promised.”
Her mother would not be placated so easily. She shook her head, frowning. “It’s not right. You should be home. Here. With family. Even your grandmother recognized that, in the end, when she moved back to Haverow. Not that it made much of a difference…”
“Mum.” Pansy shot her mother a hard look, her hands stilling on the water jug. “I’m moving into Grandma’s old cottage. Not”—she gestured haphazardly, uncaring of the tiny droplets loosed from her fingertips—“running off to fight in some wizard’s war.”
The notion alone was enough to pull a noise of distress from deep in her mother’s throat. No matter that it had been nearly six decades since the last Great War, and that the Realm was, arguably, at peace—perhaps even the most tranquil it had ever been, with the latest in a long line of dark lords sealed away behind powerful magic, his cruel armies of goblins and orcs decimated by the forces of Good. It mattered even less that Pansy had no interest in following in her grandmother’s footsteps, whether it meant adventuring with some wizard, killing goblins or saving the world. The fact that she wanted to see more—the slightest, ittiest bit more—of what lay beyond the four corners of their cozy little hamlet was enough to mark her as a cause for concern in her mother’s eyes, an echo of an old wound that had never truly healed.
At this point, Pansy’s father, who had doubtless been eavesdropping since the start, poked his head through the doorway and said, “Your mother’s right, Pans. The forest is no place for a halfling. Plus, no one’s lived in that cottage for decades! For all you know, the roof could have been blown clean off by now.”
“Then I’ll fix it,” Pansy declared. Her father’s favorite nickname for her wasn’t going to sway her—not this time. “I know neither of you is happy with my decision, and I’m sorry you feel that way, but my mind is made up.”
“But there could be goblins!” her mother all but wailed, her lower lip trembling as a ruddy haze mottled her usual golden-brown complexion.
Pansy half-wanted to tell her about the goblin she’d encountered earlier, as proof that her mother’s concerns were largely overblown, but that was not what her mother needed right now. Letting out a breath, Pansy wiped her hands on her apron before pulling her mother into the biggest, tightest hug she could muster.
“It’ll be okay, Mum,” she said, resting her chin on her mother’s shoulder like always. “If anything happens, I’ll come right back.”
A sniffle. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Good.” Pansy’s mother pulled away just enough to lightly dab at her eyes. “I get so worried, knowing that there’ll be goblins living near by. That cottage is right on the border.”
“Hopefully they’ll stay on their side of it.”
“But what if they don’t? You know, a farmer over in Halfbough found his pasture ransacked just last week. Not a single goat left behind! The work of goblins, no doubt. He swears he heard a whole pack of them cackling outside his bedroom window. Of course, he was too afraid to go outside and check. Smart man. Who knows what they might have done to him if he had? We all remember what happened to Lillishire during the War.” She shuddered.
To be fair, Pansy didn’t exactly “remember” per se; not in the way her parents did. After all, they had been alive during the Great War, while she obviously hadn’t. Yet she knew exactly what her mother was referring to—any halfling would.
Often described as the “darkest moment in halfling history”, the Lillishire Massacre stood as a black albatross over their collective consciousness. Even sixty years later, no one could forget how the dark lord’s goblin armies had swept through nearly two-dozen halfling villages to the east, razing them to the ground while putting everyone who hadn’t managed to escape to the sword. Now, instead of two halfling provinces, the Realm had only one.
Perhaps her mother was being a tad overdramatic, referencing Lillishire like that. From what Pansy could tell, petty theft was more goblins’ speed these days. But, at the same time, could she really blame her? Because while Pansy had learned about all of Lillishire’s horrors in the abstract, her mother had seen them firsthand, in the haggard, terror-soaked faces that had flooded Halvenshire in the ten-days and months that had followed, seeking refuge in the only place they had left. That sort of memory wasn’t something you could just shake.
Pansy gave her mother a reassuring pat on the arm. “I already told you, Mum, I’ll come home. You’re acting like the next time I see you I’m going to be telling you all about my new goblin housemate.”
Thankfully, her mother let out a little, hiccuping laugh at that. “You’re right,” she admitted, now smiling as well.
“I usually am. Now what’s for dinner? It smells delicious.”
And like it would go well with some truffle. But as to where that truffle had come from—well, Pansy wasn’t going to think too hard about that one.
2
Ren
Look-alike, look-alike,
Do you think you guessed it right?
Sure, that mushroom does look tasty,
Better not to be too hasty!
Is it red-on-white or white-on-red?
Made a mistake, and now oops—
you’re dead!
“MUSHROOM MISTAKES”, A GOBLIN NURSERY RHYME
There was a halfling outside the cottage.
And not just any halfling, Ren realized with a cold jolt of nascent dread. But the halfling from the forest, the one who would have baked enough Bloodletter Shrooms into a quiche to fell a full-grown dragon if left to her own devices.
Evidently, she’d taken Ren’s warning to heart, despite her less-than-grateful response at the time. Given how mule-headed halflings always were, especially about things they knew comparatively little about (because of course that made perfect sense), Ren wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d loaded those mushrooms right back into her basket the moment they’d turned their back on her. In some ways, that might’ve actually been preferable. Ren wasn’t particularly enamored with the thought of some halfling tramping around their garden, and quickly discovered they were even less enthusiastic about it in practice.
Leave those alone, they thought, eyes narrowing as they watched the halfling prod at the start of their mushroom farm, a number of narrow logs, all stacked in a grid-like formation. Judging from the halfling’s expression, she had no idea what she was looking at, rendering her insistence on messing with it all the more infuriating. Exactly. It’s not for you.
But the halfling couldn’t hear Ren—what with several paces’ worth of garden and a window and, you know, Ren’s skull separating them. So, the inevitable happened: the logs fell over.
“Told you so,” they muttered under their breath, sour heat pooling beneath their skin. It had taken hours to put those logs together, and they didn’t relish having to repeat the process once more. At least she hadn’t broken anything that couldn’t be fixed.
Yet.
Abandoning the mess she’d created in typical halfling fashion, without even a shred of shame, the halfling clomped over to the other side of the garden, where she promptly vanished from Ren’s sight.
Smothering a curse between gritted teeth, Ren set down the fruits of today’s foraging on the kitchen counter—an impressive assortment of mushrooms, sweet chestnuts, wild garlic and blackberries—and went to find a new vantage point. Dinner would have to be a matter for later. No way were they going to let this halfling roam around unsupervised.
Slinking across the floorboards like a shadow, Ren crept towards the living-room window, a half-moon opening along the cottage’s front, framed in robin’s-egg blue. They carefully nudged aside the thick veins of ivy their family had grown to serve as curtains; enough that only a single, narrow sunbeam spilled across the sparsely furnished space. Just because they’d noticed the halfling didn’t mean the halfling needed to notice them. In fact, Ren would greatly prefer it if she didn’t. Or, better yet, the halfling could just turn around and leave.
Sadly, things couldn’t be so easy.
The halfling went right up to the front door and, after digging around in a vast array of bags and satchels that couldn’t possibly mean anything good, produced a key.
A key! Not even Ren had a key, and their clan had been taking care of this place for decades!
Too bad, the indignation searing its way up Ren’s throat would have to wait. The halfling had inserted the key into the lock and, discovering it unnecessary, had settled for simply turning the knob. A low creak then followed, unmistakable in its origin. If Ren was going to have any hope of keeping this halfling out of their house, they were going to have to act now.
“Oh, wow,” the halfling said, near-breathless with wonder as she stepped into the entry hall, its exposed beam ceilings, each inlaid with loose swirls of living moss, unfurling overhead in a precise geometric pattern. “This place has held up really well. I was expecting some holes in the roof. Maybe some missing floorboards. But this—”
With teeth bared and arms raised, Ren leapt from the shadows and roared. It wasn’t the fiercest of sounds—frankly, Ren had heard wolf cubs produce better—but it nonetheless had the intended effect. The halfling screamed, scrambling backwards without a second thought. Unfortunately, instead of racing out of the cottage like Ren had wanted, she slammed into the wall behind her at full-force, hard enough to send the beams overhead rattling and loose the carefully cultivated moss from its inlays.
Years of work, ruined in an instant.
“Stop! You’re destroying it!” Ren shouted, dropping into a far less aggressive posture. It was one thing for the halfling to break the things they’d made. But the work of Ren’s clan—well, that was something else entirely.
The halfling, however, wasn’t listening. “Get out of my house!” she cried, kicking at a nearby cluster of moss. Perhaps she’d meant to launch it at Ren’s face, but she only managed to send it fluttering weakly into the air.
“Your house?” Ren repeated, incredulous, their ears flattening with displeasure. “No. This is my house.”
“Then why do I have a, uh…?” The halfling fumbled for something, temporarily lost in the eye-searingly yellow tangle of her skirts. “A key!” She raised it in a moment of triumph, holding it high for Ren to see.
They snorted, nostrils flaring around the halfling’s heavily spiced scent, tantalizingly sweet even from a distance. “Is that supposed to mean something? Move your foot so I can try and salvage what you just broke.”
The halfling didn’t budge, which was hardly a surprise. She clearly had no concept of what now lay at her feet, the ruined tatters of moss scattered about her like bits of a desiccated corpse. Ren knelt down anyway, well aware that doing so pushed them into range of the halfling’s kick. But getting a boot to the face seemed a small price to pay if it meant scooping each green tuft into the safety of their palm.
Thankfully, the halfling’s curiosity overshadowed her capacity for violence—at least for now. “What are you doing?” she asked, as if Ren hadn’t already answered her question a second ago. Why couldn’t halflings just listen?
They let out a harsh exhale, not even looking up as they continued to retrieve bits of moss. “All of this? Came from up there. My clan planted the spores years ago in the grooves lining each of the support beams. That’s where they should’ve stayed, by the way; but apparently, destroying my mushroom farm wasn’t enough for you.”
Confusion streaked across the halfling’s brow; and yet, there was something else, too, a glimmer in her eye that Ren might’ve called interest if they hadn’t known better. Because, surely, no halfling would care one whit about goblin agricultural techniques.
Then again, maybe they would. If there was anything else as constant as the halfling penchant for running roughshod over everything, it was their love of food, made manifest in pantries so well stocked one would’ve thought these halflings were anticipating a several-centuries-long siege. But those didn’t happen to halflings, “peaceful”, “jovial” people that they were.
Obviously, whoever had popularized that belief hadn’t found themselves on the wrong end of a halfling adventurer’s sword. But, admittedly, neither had Ren, too young to have even constituted a spark in their mother’s eye the last time a dark lord had plunged the Realm into chaos. Still, something dark simmered in their belly as they looked upon this particular halfling, her obnoxiously bright clothing as damning as her cluelessness. Ugh. Why couldn’t she just leave?
“I’m talking about those logs you knocked over on your way in,” Ren explained, even though she didn’t deserve it. “But at least that I can fix. This”—they gestured around themself—“maybe not, and definitely not completely. This probably comes as a surprise to you, but cultivating edible moss isn’t something you can do on a whim, especially like this.”
The halfling’s cheeks pinked. “Well, you shouldn’t have been doing it here anyway,” she declared with a huff, arms crossing over her chest. “This is my grandmother, Angelica Underburrow’s, house. A house which she passed down to me, Pansy Underburrow. So, like I said, this is my house.” She spoke the last two words emphatically, as if that would somehow render them true.
Ridiculous.
“If this is your grandmother’s house, then why hasn’t she lived here in over twenty years?” Ren asked, finally straightening back up.
The halfling—Pansy—scowled as she plucked a bit of moss from the front of her sweater. She gave it a quick sniff, then flicked it over to Ren. “Because she was old and needed help. That’s why she moved back to town—to Haverow. Now, you have your moss; so, you can go back to… wherever it is you came from.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ren replied, standing as tall as they could manage. Thankfully, this put them at least an inch above Pansy. “Your grandmother left this place to rot. If not for my family, it would be exactly as you said: full of holes and missing pieces. Instead, it’s thriving. Look at how much life there is now!”
Bellflower. Creeping thyme. Stonecrop. Selfheal. Impossible to name every plant that coiled along the walls or from in-between the floorboards. Then there were the animals: the fireflies that slept inside paper lanterns repurposed to serve as their nests; the mice with questionable taste that lived in an old, halfling-style armchair too soft for Ren’s liking; and, of course, there was Pig, currently snoring downstairs, no doubt.
Somehow, none of this mattered to Pansy.
“This sort of mess belongs outside, you know.” She scowled. “Not to mention, no one asked you to do anything in the first place.”
Ren stared at her, incredulous. “What does asking have to do with any of it?”
“Oh, right. Yes. Of course. Silly me.” Pansy bopped the heel of her palm against her temple. “I’m speaking to a goblin. You lot never ask; you simply take!”
“Better than letting go to waste what others could use!” Ren snapped back, teeth flashing as fire roared inside their chest. “My clan needed a place to live. This house was empty. Clearly, no one was using it; so, why shouldn’t they?”
“Because. It’s. Not. Theirs.”
“Fine. So, a perfectly good home falls into disrepair such that no one can use it. You honestly think that’s better?”
“I—” Pansy snapped her mouth shut, brow furrowing as she considered Ren’s words. Whatever heat had ignited between them suddenly cooled, quelled by the need to think rather than simply feel. “Stealing is wrong,” she declared at last, albeit without her earlier fervor.
Ren sighed. “At least you had enough sense to actually stop and think about it. Surprising for a halfling. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong, which, for the record, is far less of a shock.”
Fresh crimson streaked across the bridge of Pansy’s nose. “Wrong or not, this is still my house, and I fully intend to live in it.” As if to drive her point home, she slipped the vast assortment of bags from her shoulders and allowed them to fall to the floor with a resounding thump.
“What a coincidence,” Ren remarked, their tone a touch too biting to be considered droll. “Because I was thinking the exact same thing.”
Pansy’s eyes bulged. “No! Absolutely not. You need to leave. Go be with your”—she gestured vaguely with one hand—“clan—or however you prefer to call it. I’m certain you’ll be far more comfortable there anyway. This is clearly a halfling burrow, not a cave. Hardly suitable for a goblin like yourself.”
Ren’s chest constricted at the thought of returning to their clan. If only such a thing were possible. But duty bound them to this cottage, and here they would stay. How shameful it would be to return now, after only a day, rendering their word barely worth the breath that had fueled it.
Swallowing around the lump that had knotted in their throat, Ren said, “I’m quite comfortable here, actually. You’d be surprised how cave-like a so-called ‘burrow’ can be. But thank you for your concern.”
Pansy huffed. “I’m trying to be nice here—”
“Oh, are you?” Ren cocked their head to the side, ears perking up in mock surprise. “I honestly couldn’t tell. Because where I come from, we don’t call someone who barges in unannounced, breaks things that aren’t theirs and insults others ‘nice’; we call them a—”
“Okay! Okay! I get it!” Pansy said, raising both hands in surrender. “You’re right. I haven’t been very nice. But, in my defense, I didn’t expect to find my grandmother’s cottage already… inhabited.” She ground out the word with something like a grimace, as if it physically pained her to acknowledge an otherwise readily apparent fact.
“If my presence is such a problem,” Ren said, crossing their arms over their chest, “then feel free to go back to your village. That way you’ll never have to see me again.”
A strange expression took hold of Pansy at that, pinching her features together in a way Ren couldn’t quite parse. It wasn’t sadness or frustration or anything nearly so simple; but, rather, a current of something old and deep-seated, like a snarl of roots forced to grow around an obstacle.
“I can’t do that,” Pansy said, averting her gaze for the first time. “I need… I need to stay here.”
There was a certainty to that statement, a level of conviction that Ren found admirable. But there was also desperation buzzing beneath that hard veneer, like a hive of frenzied hornets. Whatever had driven Pansy to this cottage, it would not be so easily dismissed; not even by an unwanted goblin like themself.
It was then that Pansy’s expression brightened, understanding flashing in the hazel rings of her irises. “You understand that, right? That I need this cottage.”
Her stare was back upon Ren, now with an added layer of expectation that hooked beneath their skin. They eyed her warily, uncertainty itching along their spine. “And? That doesn’t change the fact that I need it too.” That my clan needs it.
“Okay, but one of us can surely make better use of it than the other, no?”
“Of course,” Ren answered quickly, so assured of their own need that they didn’t think to consider where Pansy was going with this. What could possibly trump ensuring their clan survived the coming winter?
“So, that person should get the cottage. Easy. Problem solved.”
Easy? The gall of this halfling… “And how exactly are we going to determine that?” Ren asked, eyebrows arching. “You and I both know that words alone won’t suffice here.”
Then again, perhaps they were giving Pansy too much credit. She opened her mouth only to shut it again, whatever she’d meant to say lost beneath the press of her teeth. Ren nearly scoffed. Had Pansy seriously believed that they would simply take her at her word? Relinquish their clan’s last and only lifeline because a halfling told them to?
Yes, answered Pansy’s expression, the wide-eyed look of panic as she scrambled for another way forward. How self-centered she must be to think that her people’s distrust of goblins hadn’t sown similar seeds among the clans, too used to bearing the weight of their kin’s sins that they no longer expected anything else. And yet, at the same time, she’d displayed a very real capacity for understanding. Instead of digging her heels in and continuing to speak about the cottage in terms Ren neither recognized nor cared for, Pansy had stepped beyond the bounds of her own culture and listened; something the monolithic halfling in Ren’s mind would’ve never done. Maybe that was why they were still willing to hear her out.
“I’ve got it!” Pansy exclaimed, her expression sparking with yet another idea. “For now, we’ll both live here. But if either one of us decides to move out, then that person forfeits their right to the cottage. Hard to make use of a home if you don’t live in it, right?”
Ren blinked, wondering if they’d simply misheard. “I’m sorry, but did you just say you want to live together?”
“Well, it’s not exactly my first choice,” Pansy said with a shrug that was far too nonchalant given the circumstances. “But, like I said, I really need to live here, so I’ll tolerate it. And just in case you get any bright ideas about forcing me out: no breaking each other’s stuff. That’s rule number one.”
Ah. So, that was the halfling’s real plan. She wanted to push Ren out, and judging from the grin on her face, she really thought she could manage it. A laughable thought. It would take more than some unpleasant behavior and halfling decor to convince Ren to turn their back on their clan.
“Fine,” Ren agreed, their lips parting around a razor-edged smile; what Ren thought might be Pansy’s first clue that she’d made a grave miscalculation. “But that rule extends to the cottage itself, too. We can only add to what’s already there. Unless something is broken or needs to be repaired. In that case, we both need to decide on a solution together.”
“Sounds fair to me!” Pansy chirped, then shoved a familiar hand, soft and sun-kissed, out towards Ren. “We have a deal then?”
A strange tremor curled in Ren’s stomach as they stared down at the proffered palm. They’d touched it before, the memory of yesterday rising, unbidden, to the forefront of their mind, bringing with it a flash of remembered heat. So, why then, did an entirely similar prospect suddenly root them to the spot?
Probably just unease, they told themself, reaching out to grip Pansy’s hand before their hesitation could turn awkward.
Pansy, meanwhile, gave Ren’s hand one quick, businesslike pump, then pulled away just as swiftly. Less than a second’s worth of contact, and still it lingered, a tingling warmth that buzzed against Ren’s skin, ever-insistent.
Did Pansy feel it too? they wondered, fingers flexing in a vain effort to chase the sensation away. It might’ve been just their imagination, but Ren swore that Pansy’s fingers curled into the folds of her skirts a touch harder than before.
“Great,” Pansy said, her voice coming out oddly strangled. “I’m, uh, Pansy, by the way.”
“I know. You already told me.”
“Oh, right.” Red bloomed high on Pansy’s cheeks. “I forgot.”
“Obviously.” A beat. Then, grudgingly, “My name is Ren.”
“Ren,” Pansy confirmed with a nod. “I’ll remember that. Now, with all that settled, I’m going to go ahead and take a look around. And don’t you even think of throwing my stuff out behind my back while I’m gone. That, may I remind you, would be cheating.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Ren said with a derisive snort. “As if I’d need to cheat to get you out.” Then, with a sharp twist of their heel, they headed for the garden, pointedly leaving Pansy—and her plethora of bags—behind.
Granted, this didn’t stop Pansy from calling out after them, the need to have the last word in all things evidently yet another universally halfling trait. “Don’t forget to take off your shoes before coming back inside! Remember: dirt belongs outside, not in the house!”
We’ll see about that, Ren thought with a smirk. Because now they had an idea—a very, very good idea—one that Pansy was all but guaranteed not to like.
★ “Cozy, heartfelt, and deeply satisfying” —Publishers Weekly (Starred)
What if cottagecore and goblincore fell in love?
When a halfling, Pansy, and a goblin, Ren, each think they’ve inherited the same cottage, they make a bargain: they’ll live in the house together and whoever is driven out first forfeits their ownership.
Amidst forced proximity and cultural misunderstandings, the two begin to fall in love.
But when the cottage – and their communities – are threatened by a common enemy, the duo must learn to trust each other, and convince goblins and halflings to band together to oust the tall intruder.
“An adorable delight!” ―Sarah Beth Durst, NYT bestselling author of The Spellshop
“An adorable story that will fulfill your cottagecore dreams.” ―M. Stevenson, author of Behooved
“Cozy fantasy lovers will tuck into this lovely story and want to savor every last morsel.” ―J. Penner, author of A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic
