The Peacock Cloak

understand anything do you? Cassie pretends she’s fine with them as way of coping and trying to keep the peace.”
    “No I don’t,” hissed Cassie in the darkness. “Stop lying about me. Stop lying .”
    She banged angrily on the wall. Her parents’ voices subsided immediately to a murmur, but she knew the wailing would soon start up again.
    “Run away, why don’t you?” asked a voice inside her head. “Why hold on to this dream?”
    She went to the window. Sure enough, the goblins had come back. They were squatting side by side with their backs against the fence.
    Cassie sighed. It was only a matter of time before Paula also sensed their presence, and then there would be no peace at all.

    “My dad said you had goblins round yours last night,” said Carmelo next day in the school playground.
    Cassie was in her usual refuge, a place close to the fence where she could squat down behind a spongy clump of pink vegetation and be shielded from the general view. Juan’s son had come over specially to seek her out. He was dark and wiry, with clever mocking eyes.
    Cassie shrugged. “Yeah, we did. I didn’t mind though. I quite like them.”
    Beyond the fence lay the silent, empty forest.
    “You quite like them?”
    The boy took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. He was only eleven but he drew the thick soupy smoke into his lungs like a smoker of many years, releasing it slowly with a contented sigh.
    He squatted down beside her.
    “Dad said your mum yelled and yelled when those goblins came back again in the night.”
    “Yes, she did. We had to get your dad out of bed again to chase them away. Mum hates goblins.”
    “Well, that makes one person in your family who’s got a bit of sense.”
    “Why? What’s the harm in goblins?”
    “They slowly take over your head, Agency girl. Slowly, slowly. Funny thoughts and dreams: that’s just the beginning. Next thing you know, you’ve forgotten who you are or where you came from, and then you belong to them. That’s why we shoot them and string them up. We’d be goblins ourselves if we didn’t.”
    He drew in more smoke and regarded her with narrowed eyes as he let it back out through his mouth and nose. The two of them were still only children, but there was a certain electric charge between them all the same. Carmelo constantly mocked Cassie for her stuck-up Agency ways, and she scolded him for his ignorant settler beliefs, and yet he often came on his own like this and sought out her company, when he could have stayed with the other settler children, or brought them over to tease her.
    “But you’re not allowed to harm goblins,” she told him primly. “It’s against the law. You’re supposed to treat them like people.”
    Carmelo made a scornful noise.
    “Like people! We’ve been dealing with goblins here since long before your Agency came here with its stupid laws. My dad says, when he was a kid, every single village had dried goblins nailed up on gibbets at the gates to warn the others away.”
    He drew deeply on the cigarette, regarding her carefully.
    “Goblins were here long before you were,” Cassie pointed out.
    Carmelo laughed as he released the smoke.
    “And we were here long before you, Agency girl. And Yava gave us this world.”
    Yava was the settlers’ god, and Cassie knew from experience that there was no point in even discussing him.
    “You shouldn’t smoke, you know,” she said. “It’ll mess up your lungs.”
    “Don’t do this, don’t do that!” the settler boy mocked her, and took another deep drag. “You agency people are all the same.”
    “Well it is bad for you. That’s just the fact of it.”
    Carmelo exhaled.
    “Those goblins didn’t come back again after their second visit, did they?”
    “No. Not after your dad chased them away again.”
    The boy snorted.
    “Chased them away!”
    “What? What’s funny about that?”
    “He chased them out of your sight, more like, and then did for the two of them with an axe. That way he got to sleep the rest of the night, without your mum and dad yelling for him every hour or so.”
    Cassie stared at him.
    “He killed them?”
    “Of course he did.”
    “But we didn’t want that!”
    “Oh come on, Cassie, they’re only animals.”
    “How could they take over our minds if they were only animals?”
    But Carmelo had spotted a floater drifting in over the fence. Taking one quick final drag from his cigarette, he took careful aim and flipped the glowing