Last Goblin | The

Snikk watched them through a knothole in a fence post. He watched the baker’s wife hang her washing. He watched the smith shoe a placid draft horse. He watched a little girl lose a marble in a crack of the road.

He turned it over in his long, knobby fingers. A hundred years ago, he would have stolen it. He would have taken it to his den, hammered it flat, and made a buckle for a boot that no one would ever wear. the last goblin

Not the sharp loneliness of a thief caught in a trap, but the deep, hollow loneliness of a song with no one left to hear it. Snikk watched them through a knothole in a fence post

He lived in a dry well at the edge of a village called Harlow. The villagers did not know he was there. They had paved the cow path, drained the bog where the will-o’-wisps once bred, and renamed their children after saints and kings. They were good people. They paid their taxes and buried their dead facing east. He watched a little girl lose a marble

They had simply... dwindled.

And if you walk into the deep wood on a quiet night, when the wind holds its breath and the moon is only a sliver, you might see him. A small, gnarled shape sitting on a mossy stone. He will not speak. He will not move.

But if you listen very closely—past the hum of your own blood and the whisper of the leaves—you will hear him humming a tune without any words.