You’re late again son. Stop shuffling and stand straight. No, I am not angry, though I wish I was. Nor disappointed. I find the older I am, the only emotion I can sustain with any true conviction is regret.

Yes, I understand you’re not a boy anymore. You’re a man. No need to yell at me.

Sit down son, and pour yourself a measure of whiskey too. It’s going to be a long night.

Remember the bedtime stories I used to read to you? Fairytales and such? You never really liked them, did you? You scoffed at them, thought them foolish and childish.

Maybe I had been telling you all the wrong stories.

There were so many times I wished you could have had my youth, none so more than now. The town was older then, twice as beautiful, and not half as obnoxious. There were none of those fancy theatres or gentleman’s clubs or whatever it is that you young people frequent nowadays. There was only a single small church, and we attended enough masses to avoid the priest’s self-righteous speeches, but most of us believed in something far less benevolent than Christ.

I should start the story proper. Like old times, eh? Once upon a time, there was a boy who wore his heart on his sleeve, and the wrong people got hold of it.

I will not tell you his name. It’s ominous to speak it on a night like this, when the goblins stir in their crystal barrows. Don’t believe me son, do you? The boy didn’t either.

He was one of those new-age zealots, easily swayed by the church’s propaganda, believing himself to be a part of some holy mission. They fancied themselves crusaders, and went about seeking trouble where it ought not to be sought. Mothers who pierced their children’s ears with iron studs at the time of birth, fishermen who tossed chunks of meat into the water and fished out clusters of riverine pearls, riders who braided their mount’s mane in complicated knots to avoid being knocked on their ass by invisible fiends. The town was superstitious back then, you see. Wiser. But these were more than superstitions. They were traditions, heirlooms passed down through generations, like a Bible or a Stradivarius. When a bunch of green boys come and tell us to burn those at the stake, it’s understandable that they would be driven away, spat at, and be the target of seething resentment.

You must understand, we never intended to harm the boy deliberately. We were a community, and we do not easily forsake one of our own. If anything, all we can be accused of is negligence.

But I am a parent now, and I finally understand. I was wrong, so wrong. And I am so sorry son.

I can see you are fidgeting. I understand that you are terribly busy; you have no time to listen to your old man. Bear with me a little longer. We are just getting to the interesting bit.

In all my life, I have only known two women lovelier than your mother. Twins, actually, though they looked nothing alike. Aisling, lily-white and light-fingered and Roísín, fox haired and just as sly.

You couldn’t have not loved the twins even if you had been warned before. You couldn’t have not loved them even if they broke your heart and stomped on the pieces. Like a mistake you can’t help but make. A siren song you can’t unhear, not unless you stuffed your ears and heart with wax.

The boy knew no such thing, of course. Nobody had bothered to tell him.

They were traders by profession, and they had evidence of it as well. Trinkets made of seeds and crow feathers, candles black as tar, crystals thick as fingerbones and vials of strange herbs. We bought just enough so as to not offend them, no matter the price, for negotiating with the girls was as stupid as jumping off a cliff.

Where were they from? Nobody knew for sure, nor did we care to find out. You do not follow a snake back to its hole, but you do keep an eye on it when it ventures out into your fields.

Every Sunday morning, they would appear, like clockwork phantoms, riding their little cart down the town square. Looking back, I think they were mocking the tiny church with its puny minister who could barely summon a handful of people for Mass. How they must have laughed, when their most promising acolyte fell in their trap.

“What will you have, sir?” Aisling had asked, sweet as a lamb, the first time she caught the boy staring at her from the periphery of the market. “Perhaps a sprig of rosemary, to brighten your day? Or a block of crystal, to ward off evil spirits?”

The boy was astonished to be addressed so directly. “I– No,” he said lamely.“I was just looking.”

Fool.

Here’s what the church doesn’t teach you, and us old folks got right: Do not ignore a goblin’s offer, even if it promises harm. Especially if it promises harm. Or they will come back with something much, much worse.

“Perhaps,” Roísín murmured silkily, a spider weaving her web.“There’s something else that might be more to your taste.”

It was an open secret in the town that the cemetery housed more than dead spirits on Sunday nights. Parents used to tuck their children in tight, merchants closed business at the first sign of dark and headed home. Even the priest, pompous as he was, knew better than to venture out of his iron-bolted doors.

The boy must have known this. That’s what people tell themselves anyway. But his bed was empty in the morning, and his sheets smelled faintly of rosemary.

That is the official story the town knows, one that has been watered down into cautionary tales, bedtime stories. Beware of the goblin girls. It’s also the one your mother told you. I wish you had listened.

Well, you still can. I was groundskeeper once, son, and there are a few secrets I kept for the cemetery.

On Sunday nights, when the moon hangs high in the sky like an upturned bowl full of cream, and the wind sighs like a lovelorn boy, they arrive. Goblins. Hook-nosed, cat-eyed, winged, scaled and clawed. Some wear cuffs of crystal quartz while others adorn circlets of blackberry twine. They bend their horned heads together as they pitch their cobweb tents over tombstones, and lay their otherworldly wares over cold, hard graves. Strings of clawed enchantments, bone lutes to lure ghosts, cockle shells full of stolen memories and vials of mandrake curses. And the very worst of all and the most tempting; their accursed golden goblin fruits. Rind that glitters like the devil’s own horns, flesh red as the inside of your mouth. “Come buy,” they call, their voices shrill, their smiles wild. There is no need for pretenses. Those who follow the bone road will come no matter what, drawn like moths to flame.

It will not surprise you to learn the boy was one of them. It will surprise you to know, however, that he came not for love, but rather to rid himself of it. It had grown like a weed in his otherwise righteous heart, spreading its roots deep. All for the starry-eyed shepherdess who stifled her smiles when she saw him, but laughed boldly in the meadows where she grazed her flocks.

Shocked? So was I. But who can blame him? Your mother was an exceptional woman.

“One bite,” Aisling coaxed, dropping the fruit in his palms.“And you’ll forget her, all of her, until she might as well be a stranger to you. No more shall you be bothered by the sight of her, or strain your ears for the sound of her voice.”

“It will be as if you never knew her,” said Roísín, twirling her rosy mane, every bit the coy merchantess.“All you have to give up is your heavy human heart.”

The boy hadn’t lost his senses completely. “My heart?”

Aisling snapped her skeletal fingers. “It’s such a small price to pay, for such a grand gift. Hearts bleed and break and then stop altogether. Wouldn’t it be better, to have none at all?”

Don’t look at me like that. I couldn’t have saved the boy even if I had wanted to. He was damned the minute he saw the goblin girls, beheld their elusive goblin fruit. Freshly spliced, their aroma alone would drive you insane with want, for it smells like all the fantastical things young boys chase after; white harts and swan maidens, midnight kisses and splendid mischief.

And this is the reason, my son, why you should never scorn fairytales, for they teach you that all lovely things hide sharp teeth. Never accept the help of the nameless young man who claims to spin your straw into gold, for he might demand much more precious in return; never pick the rose that grows in the wild, for you never know what beasts might be lurking in the bush.

And that when a witch offers you an apple, may she be a crooked crone or a rosy maid, you should never, ever, accept it.

What happened to him after? I don’t know. I didn’t stay behind to watch. Call me a coward. A selfish bastard.

But I was a boy too, son. And I made mistakes.

So this is what this selfish old coward advises, too late perhaps. Do not take the short road, the bone road, the strange grassless path that countless boys like you have walked in search of the magical, the mystical. The goblins collect hearts like yours; wild, hungry, quivering with want, sniffs them out like a hound sniffs out a rabbit.

Oh, do not bother lying now. I see the fruitlust in your eyes, and I smell the cemetery air on your clothes.

No, do not stomp your feet and bare your teeth at me. Don’t you see? The goblin girls with their goblin fruits, which no branch will bear and no soil shall shelter, do you not wonder where they come from? The boy, the boy who had foolishly offered up his heart to them, fleshy with hope and soft with yearning, do you think the girls threw it away? Oh boy, did I teach you nothing?

Spit out the core, son. Yes, nice and easy. Now finish the rest of your drink. Oh, don’t cry. I thought you were a man now.

Tunvey Mou is a creature of unknown origins (possibly faerie) who is finally pursuing a degree in English literature after surviving numerous entrance exams and just general bad luck. She has edited and contributed to various college publications, written several unpublished short stories, and dabbled in scriptwriting as well as witchcraft. When not eating or sleeping, she can be found hiding behind the nearest stack of books; or glaring angrily at an opponent across the chess board.