George Joy’s Guide to Faery Tale Creatures, No 5: Gobettes

Goblins can be nasty, vicious creatures full of hatred and mischief.  Gobettes (pronounced in a similar way to how Gollum pronounces his name), on the other hand, are much different.

Always seen in small groups they appear at times of human stress to help ‘deserving’ people out.  Each of these patrol-like groups of five to seven belong to a larger community who live in secret serving an area inhabited by humans.  Estimates suggest there is a Gobette collective for every six thousand people.  How large these communities are is unknown as one has never been studied as a whole.  Gobettes have been spotted entering caves and trunks of trees, as well as disappearing under bridges and into molehills and the burrows of various creatures.  Nobody knows where they come from or how they live.  Only what they do.

What they do can range from the spectacular to the quiet and almost mundane.  They have pulled people out of pits and wells, for instance, and fought off wolves.  They have also talked people out of committing suicide, murder and arson.

Sometimes, though, it is much smaller things.  Old and lonely people frequently talk of the groups of Gobette visitors who sit cross-legged and listen to the tales of their lives with eager eyes.  And overworked and overstressed housewives of the help received from time to time by Gobette helpers.

Many people make the mistake, based mainly on names, that all Goblins are male and Gobettes female and that, like bulls and cows or rams and ewes, are the same species.  This, of course, is not true.  Female Goblins are never seen because they are hideously oppressed, prisoners in their own home.  Gobettes are more ambiguous, however.

Gobette groups are believed to generally contain members of both sexes but no one is sure because they all wear the same loose clothing and, of course, because nothing is known of their private lives.  These clothes are long, grey smocks that do not seem to inhibit their actions at all.  Rather they run and fight often.  A Gobette’s skin is leathery and a pale blue in colour.  They have thin, wispy hair and their feet are always shoed in leather sandals showing them to have three toes, and middle of which is the big toe.

And that is all that is known.  A remarkable and kind creature that seems to be almost omniscient and omnipresent.