A long way away from the dim formal halls of Gringotts bank, in a large open throne room, the Goblin king Jareth sprawled carelessly in his throne, observing the tiny creature perched awkwardly on the arm, which was, in turn, watching him warily. The room was bathed in a soft ochre light, the air sweet and scented with ripening goblin fruit. There was, as always, a delicate dreamlike quality to this place. He could tell that the tiny human was not sure whether this was really happening or whether he might lay slumbering sweetly in his warm bed.
The Goblin king was an imposing being, for all that he, curiously enough, did not even faintly resemble a goblin. The goblins were small, squat, leathery, rounded, and generally a variation of brown in their younger years. They eventually matured into paler, pointier, more sour-faced and wizened, slightly taller creatures, after they had passed their first three hundred years. Not even a blind man could mistake a goblin for a human if they retained the power of touch. However, the goblin king himself could have easily passed for an attractive, if unusually tall, human male with odd dress sense, were it not for the pointed ears, slightly elongated catlike eyes and the barely noticeable pointiness to his eye teeth when he smiled.
The large room would normally, at this time, be crowded with small laughing and brawling figures – the younger goblins, which he tended to find littering every surface in the palace at all hours. Surprising even himself, he had ordered the guards for the first time ever to remove them today. Today, he found himself actually interested in something that the catchers brought back. This child was different to the others. He wanted less noise and distraction, so that he could examine it more closely – try to pinpoint exactly what was so captivating about it. It was a child. They were all…much of a muchness. Tiny squirming disproportionate bodies, chubby, foolish, emotional. Really there was very little difference between them and the goblins they became.
This child however, looked at him with different eyes. There was an awareness there, an intelligent cautiousness, that he had not seen before. It was unusual, too, that it did not have a name. A child of this age – talking, walking, it would be normal for it to have grinned at him and started babbling away, or crying, in some cases, but it would almost always give its name when asked, occasionally doing so between blaring sobs and pleas for its mother.
This child – this thin, far too old, child –did neither of those things. It watched him with interest. When he had asked its name it said it was just boy, seeming confused at further questions on the topic. It had worn a ragged pair of pyjamas, several sizes too large. That, in and of itself, was nothing surprising. Many of the children that were brought arrived in rags, and some in nothing at all. Unwanted children were always easier to steal. Neither too, where the marks visible on the child, indicating it was not a beloved creature to its family, unusual for the infants and children he received here. What was slightly less ordinary was the way the child began to remove its rags immediately when he picked it up and sat it on his lap. That had only occurred once or twice in his many hundreds of years. Sad, broken little creatures in every prior case. This child just watched him. Wary. Knowing green eyes fixed on him. He had stopped its hands and moved it to sit on the arm of the throne.
He tilted his head, watching it. He could taste the magic flowing off the small figure. Far too much magic for one so young. Fluctuating wildly now, betraying the calm visage the child presented.
"Do you want to return home?" he asked softly. The green eyes widened and the boy shook his head slightly. Jareth was surprised to find something within him relax slightly. He should return the child. It was far too risky to keep it here. And hearing the child also wanting to be returned, would have argued more strongly for taking the responsible course of action.
He was quite weary of taking the responsible course of action. A thousand years. A thousand years he had been overseeing the goblins as their king. Alone. Well… alone, apart from the goblins themselves, naturally.
His punishment. And theirs. Though they would never know it.
At the end of the last goblin war, what remained of the other magical races had come together for the first time in recorded history, to agree a long term solution to the problem that the goblins …and their offspring… presented. A pact. To prevent the horror from ever recurring. Things had been…different…back then. The goblins were stronger magical beings than they were in this age, they were irresolutely warlike, spreading like rats in every direction – a plague on all of the magical nations. Very difficult to kill, and possessed of no innate fear of pain or death. They were threatening the continued existence of the magical races. The wizarding world had near collapsed, the high elves too were on the brink of extinction. Even the vampires, centaurs and werewolves were struggling for survival and scattered, though their races had less of an affinity to become goblins, even in their infancy.
Only the fae had been protected. They had withdrawn themselves behind strong wards and remained aloof from the carnage. Most of the other races had suspected them of being behind the goblin spread for that reason. Arguably, it would not have been the first time that the fae sought to reclaim the world that had once been their own. But in this case, they had not (that Jareth was aware) had anything directly to do with the rise of goblin nation. …It had simply not been politically comfortable for them to seek to repress the goblins, since their child abductions were a perfect foil for the fae's own frequent child abductions. Whereas goblins had no other way to reproduce, the fae did still have the capacity to bear young. But it was a traditional practice, much celebrated, particularly in the more remote settlements. There was no appetite within the royal line to unsettle the population unnecessarily. So they sat back, safe in their domain, and watched as the other races were slaughtered and assimilated.
And the responsibility for this was borne by Jareth himself.
He had been younger then, obviously. Barely past his two hundredth year, he had only just taken up his seat on the royal council when the trouble began. Initially, it began slowly. A rise in the numbers of wizarding children vanishing, which could not be accounted for by the fae magical records. Then the problem emerged in the elves too – which was unusual, as fae hardly ever stole elven children. They were too clever to be lured away with music and dreams. When several fae children were found to be missing, the situation was immediately treated as serious. It took very little time for the council to identify the source.
And at that point, if Jareth himself had not been so desperate to prove himself to his family and peers, the entire situation might have been avoided. The fae would have handled the problem when it was small. But he was, and it wasn't. He had always had an unusually strong gift for the protective arts, warding, battle, enchantment, and could easily see a way that the fae could ward their realm specifically against goblins. He spoke up and there was much attention and praise for this pacifistic and natural solution. The other races were far more warlike than the fae. They would be better suited to resolve the issue in the way they resolved every issue. With brute force. That type of thing was not in the fae's nature.
And so, he himself warded his folk against the threat, and as the scourge rose, it fell only on the other magical races, leaving the fae to continue practicing their traditions and living their beautiful, peaceful, long lives. He soared on the admiration and love of his people. …But things worsened. The other races did not resolve the problem. It spread and the world itself seemed to darken. New creatures emerged. Larger than the goblins. Orcs. The product of goblin change on troll infants. Orcs were worse than goblins or trolls. They were intelligent like goblins, and virtually indestructible, like trolls. Worst of all, they could enact the change upon adult beings. It was all spiralling out of control. Still Jareth was able to strengthen his warding further to prevent the threat from entering their world. At that point, he was no longer seeking the admiration of his fellows, simply their protection. If the fae went to war now, they could be destroyed utterly.
When the tide finally turned within the council, there was very little left of the other races. The entire world lay in ash and ruins. The fae went to war.
The cost was unspeakably high. So many of their people were killed. Thousands of years of their history wiped away in a matter of months.
So Jareth turned his eye to enchantment once again to weaken their foe. He created a binding spell. A very specific binding spell, based on the fae's own ancient fealty oath of the royal line. He infused it into the very soil at the heart of the goblin empire. It infected the water…the plant life…the animals that fed there. He seized the goblins by stealth, forcing them to accept his rule, to battle their fellow uninfected goblins, destroy the orcs.
In a matter of weeks, it was over. He had an army of goblins kneeling before him, spreading out to the farthest reaches of the horizon, completely under his control.
And then he selected one thousand of the weakest specimens, and commanded the others to slaughter one another, and themselves, until nothing remained but carcases.
He was banished from the fae realm. His actions so abhorrent and shameful to his people's principles that his name was forever struck from any record. He was cursed. On the last day that he ever saw his home, he stood before the fae council and representatives of every other magical race, and his own father cursed him to watch over the goblins as their king unto his dying day, as penance for the death and pain he had wrought. To keep them safe and prevent them from ever becoming a threat to the world once more. He made a pact to never again allow the goblin race to turn a magical child.
And a thousand years went by, day for day. Slowly, he set about hiding the truth of the goblin's former and current nature from the other peoples. Protecting them from any future reprisal. He regulated their population, ensuring they were repopulated from only non-magical humans. This weakened them over time, but that was a favourable outcome, to Jareth's thinking. He built a society, such that the goblins were able to form such a thing. It took a very long time for them to mature, to become more intelligent and reasoned. But he fostered their development. He steered them to build industry, mining, farming and finally the skilled artifices of smithing and metallurgy that were practiced by his own people. Goblins were industrious and cunning, and their steel and silver came to be known as the best and most desirable. With the great wealth that came in from these pursuits, he directed them to create a moneylending institution, and finally, the magnificent financial edifice that was Gringotts emerged and spread across the great cities of the world.
He had brought the goblins to the first age of enlightenment for their people. And he was weary. And bored. And for once, he wished to do something that appealed to his own inclinations.
This child…the first magical being he had encountered in so long… And it was such a small thing – look at it. Ragged, beaten, clearly used to liberties being taken with it that no righteous creature would stoop to. It would surely not be missed…
"Have you eaten, since you arrived?" he murmured, narrowing his eyes speculatively. "Have you been given anything to drink?" The small head with its mop of messy black hair shook slightly.
"Would you like to?" he asked. The hesitation was much longer before the little creature looked down and nodded, its hands again moving to pull up its pyjama shirt. He stopped it again, gently.
"No. You do not need to do that anymore. Here you may eat and drink as much as you wish. There will be no price for this."
He closed his eyes and reached out, pulling a sweet yellow apple from his own private stores to appear in his hand. He would have to ensure that the boy never consumed any goblin fare. A magical human was one thing, but a goblin spawned of a magical human quite another. If the boy changed, he would have to destroy him.
The boy's large green eyes flew to him and he grasped the apple as if it might pop like a soap-bubble if he held it too hard. He looked stunned, eyebrows twitching between suspicion and hope. Swallowing hard he nodded. "Can I stay here?" he whispered.
Jareth smiled. His decision was made. "Yes. You may stay here. I think we shall call you…Gloth"
The small face wavered before settling on a frown.
"Not Gloth, then?" Jareth smirked. "Hmm… it is a fine name for a goblin. But perhaps you are not a goblin. A human name then?"
Little eyebrows raised hopefully.
"What about Elizabeth? I have heard of humans called Elizabeth. It is an esteemed name?" He struggled to maintain a serious mien, giving the prospect consideration.
The little figure gaped and seemed about to yell, before it jumped in realisation, panicking slightly and trying to calm itself at the prospect of angering him, curling its body protectively around the apple. He smiled slightly. The creature was quite damaged, but perhaps that would settle in time.
"No... not Elizabeth. I have a better name for you. I shall call you Twyden"
He examined the effect this word had on the child. It seemed confused, if anything. It had likely never heard a word like that before.
It was unwise, he realised, to give the child a name in the fae tongue. But the boy looked like a Twyden. He could see him in a few years, dressed in a saresh, running through the woods laughing. The child would have been a tempting prospect to his people, had they ever encountered him. A strangely otherworldly creature.
"It is a word in my own language. It describes the way moonlight dapples through leaves in the deep forest in the evening. There are many words that describe light falling through leaves, but Twyden is the word that is used when it is silent…still…magical."
Green eyes blinked. The small mouth twitched slightly before smiling wonderingly. "But I'm just boy…"
Jareth smiled before reaching out and grasping the boy under the arms and picking him up as he stood. "Not anymore."
