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I can't remember the title or author of a short story I remember almost everything else about. All I know about the publication history is that it was featured in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (or maybe Year's Best Sci-Fi).
It was about a group of goblins that appeared near a human village one day and started stealing babies. The humans tried to prevent it, but everything failed, and eventually they just got used to losing some of their children. The story then shifts to inside the goblins' lair, where we find out that the kidnapped children are raised as servants, told that the goblins are protecting them, and when they get as tall as the goblin leader, they are freed to the Great Greenleaf Forest (or some name like that). The viewpoint character at this point is a very clever kid, who had been around long enough to learn about the goblins' lair because he was too short to make the Measure, and he had a name like Shorty or Runt because of that. His rival Apples rats on him for knowing something he shouldn't, and as a reward Apples gets measured and is tall enough to be released. The protagonists follows Apples and his escorts to find out how to leave, and discovers that the "released" children are actually slaughtered and cooked into a feast. He decides to make a break for freedom and takes his love interest Squeaky with him, and a younger child who hero-worships him tags along. They make it out and are found by human hunters, tell their story, and thanks to the protagonist's knowledge, the humans lead a raid on the goblins and destroy their source of power.
I've tried Googling for the names I remember, but haven't gotten results. Flipping through the Year's Best books and scanning lists of story titles online also hasn't revealed it. So I'm hoping someone with a better memory for titles might remember this.