Goblins used to roam over all of the cities on Earth. However, goblins were balanced in nature by fairies so that the circle of life would not be disrupted by the detrimental tendencies of goblins. The goblins feasted only on humans and were very careless about the victims that they chose for each meal, as they could draw upon the human scent to create illusions that murder was not happening in these cities.
One day, a she-goblin munched on the parents of a very powerful young fairy. This was a big mistake. The fairy caught the goblin in the act and assured the she-goblin that she would suffer from starvation since she had shown no self-control. The fairy cursed all of the she-goblins that walked the Earth to a deserted island called Goblin City.
In Goblin City, there were no humans to eat. Therefore, the goblins had to wait for food to come across them. As they starved, the goblins got wrinkly and weak, until a ship full of men eventually wrecked on the shore of the island. The men had no idea what was in store for them as the goblins used their scent to bring back their youthful looks and create the illusion that Goblin City was full of nice people that worked together for the greater good of their community. The goblins approached the travelers. "You all look worn out," one goblin said, as she offered her home to the travelers' leader. "Let's get you cleaned up and I'll make you some dinner." The rest of the she-goblins followed her lead and offered the rest of the travelers the same assistance. Many of the men fell in love with the women that took them in and eventually married the she-goblins, without knowing what they actually were.
One night, the leader of the men had a terrible dream that the women would feast on them soon, and it brought him to the epiphany that he actually did not know much about the women that took him and his fellow travelers in so readily... "We've got to escape!" he thought to himself, and he spent the duration of the next day telling his traveler friends what he had dreamed the night before. He approached each of the men as the opportunity came and said, “I think our wives are going to feast on us. I know the idea of beautiful wives eating their husbands sounds insane, but we barely even know these women that we agreed to marry.” Some of the men saw the dream as a sign that they needed an escape plan from the island while others believed that it was nothing more than a nightmare.
“How are you all so ready to turn your backs on your wives when they were so generous to us in our time of need?” one man said. The group of travelers were split in their beliefs about their wives’ intentions.
The next day, the men who were questioning their wives' integrity noticed that their ship was afloat right off the shore of the Goblin City. Only the men with open minds could see the brand-new-looking ship, but they were very confused about how the ship could possibly be afloat when it was in pieces the last time they saw it. However, the goblin-hating fairy sent her flying horse to the men. The horse said, “I am owned by a very powerful fairy named Angela. She fixed your ship and I am here to deliver you to the boat that she has fixed for you.” The horse rounded up the men who wanted to return to their dwellings and flew them to their newly-fixed ship so that they could sail home. The men who believed that their wives were pure in their intentions stayed on the island and the she-goblins feasted on the men that very same night, family style.
Author's Note: I stuck to the original plot in my version of the story, but I decided to give a little background on how the she-goblins all ended up in the same city and what events led to the localization of these she-goblins on that one island. In the original story, the she-goblins are all localized in Goblin City, but the author did not provide information on how they all aggregated together to this one place. Therefore, I included the event that occurred that led to the curse of the she-goblins to a secluded island with no source of food. Providing the background of how the she-goblins got to Goblin City also gave a pretty valid reason for why the fairy resented the she-goblins so much – she knew what they were doing to the people in the cities around the world and once her family was affected by their heartless ways, she had to do something about it. Also, I thought it would be interesting to see if the travelers would act on a dream of one of their trusted leaders instead of having one of the men actually witness his wife eating a man in the middle of the night. Lastly, I thought it was unfair that the goblins got to eat humans and have magic in the original story, so I provided a source that they would have to draw on in order to create magical illusions in my story.
Bibliography: "Goblin City" from The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India by W.H.D. Rouse. Web Source
Image Information: Dimitrios Shipwreck on shore. 9 December 2008.