Note: This is posted “as is”, no editing or proof reading involved, as part of the 30 Shorts In 30 Days project. During April I will be attempting to write and post a new short story everyday.
“You haven’t.”
“I have.”
“Yeah, right.”
The irrefutable logic of the playground is something that psychologists have studied for many years. The theory they put forward is that by being able to understand the logic used by young children before they are educated or influenced by outside forces, we might be able to understand the more basic, fundamental working of the human mind.
Others have put forward the theory that this is a load of tosh.
“Look Nigel, you do not have a twin. If you had a twin they’d be in school with you,” the girl pointed out, using a level of logic that belied her young years.
“They are, but they’re a magical twin. You can’t see them,” Nigel explained, using a level of logic that confirmed his young years.
“Magical? Nigel you are so full of it.”
“I’m not, watch, I’ll perform the ceremony to make him visible. You’ll see.”
Nigel put his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and pulled out a tooth that had been working loose for the last few days. He’d been planning this prank for a while, and was happy to accept a bit of pain to see the look on her face. A gentle twist, and a sharp yank, and the tooth came away quite easily.
The girl looked a little grossed out while Nigel did this, but she wasn’t going to let it show. Instead she folded her arms across her chest. Nigel started mumbling incomprehensible words, which weren’t words at all, just sounds he was making up to sound like words, got down onto his knees and pushed the tooth firmly into the soil.
There is a myth that if you plant a goblins tooth into the ground, a goblin will grow complete with armour and sword, and proceed to start hacking everyone to pieces. This just isn’t true. For a start, where does the armour come from?
What is true though is that goblins can grow back limbs, their body “remembers” what should be there, and if something is removed, it will grow it back. What is also true, is that a goblin’s skeleton is similar to a very hard sponge that is very low in water, and when it does come into contact with any moisture at all, such as ground water, it will expand very quickly. These two facts together are the basis of the myth of the goblin soldiers, if you take a goblin’s tooth, or any other part of their bone structure, and put it somewhere damp it will expand at incredible speed, and without the body’s “memory” to tell it which part to grow to replace, it will try to replace the entire body.
This however was lost on Nigel’s classmate, for Nigel was a goblin, and when he planted his tooth in the ground, all she saw was a skeleton grow out of the ground. And she didn’t see much of that as she was soon running away screaming.