The Goblin Market (Into the Green) (8 page)

Desire. What a strange and exiting thing, she pondered. She had felt it before, of course, but not as strongly as she did whenever she stole a glance at the Hunter beside her.

“Your world,” Him broke the silence, and brought her wandering spirit reluctantly back into her body. “It sounds somewhat bleak and uninspired. Is there nothing living there which rouses your spirit and brings you joy?”

“Flowers,” she admitted. “The birds and animals. I love to sit in my garden in the spring and watch them come back to life after the long sleep of winter. It’s magical. Here though, it seems like everything is always alive. The magic is evident and clear, but there is nothing so obvious where I come from.”

“’Tis a pity,” Him lamented, his brow furrowing. “It is good then that you have escaped the drab world that held you prisoner.”

She’d never thought of herself as a prisoner before, and for a time that notion hung heavy in my mind.

They still skirted the edge of the woods, but Meredith could feel the trees within calling out to her. Silence, once more, and Meredith concentrated on the strange combination of their feet upon the path. Him’s animal skin boots disguised his footfall completely, but her shoes rustled through the grass, while Sir Gwydion’s tiny feet chimed as he walked. The bells he wore on his shoes were so small, she barely heard them at all, and wouldn’t have had she not honed in her senses on the mystical, tinkling sound of his every step. Stone and grass, dried twig and leaf crunched beneath her own feet, and combined with Sir Gwydion’s bells, orchestrating a strange, but beautiful song.

“How far is the Darknjan Wald from here?” she wondered.

Him sauntered to a slow stop and lengthened his neck. He leaned close and asked, “Do you see that hill over there?”

Meredith followed the slender length of his finger. “I see it.”

“On the other side of that hill there is a river and the remains of an old bridge. When you see it, you will understand it’s purpose. It is the very place where one kingdom ends and the other begins.”

Sir Gwydion spoke up, “It’s as though the hideous darkness reached out to claim the bridge as its own.”

Meredith's shudder was intensified by the dampness of her clothes. Him moved in closer, as if to warm her with his nearness.

“We will enter the grove soon,” he told her.

She glanced back over her shoulder once more, the market and valley as lost as the tiny hill she once called home. She thought of her sister, wondered if she was feverish, if anyone was caring for her. Did the girl even know she was coming, that she was doing everything she could to save her from whatever cruel fate Kothar had planned? She tried to imagine that wherever Christina was, she was safe, suspended in some fairy tale sleep while Meredith battled evil to come to her rescue, but as she recalled the emptiness she had seen in the goblin king’s pure, white eye, she couldn’t be so sure that her hopes would be realized.

The trees on her left thickened, the foliage growing more dense as they traveled onward, and the distant hill Him pointed out to her disappeared as they slid into a deep copse of trees.

Many of the trees were of familiar ilk: oak, ash, beech, rowan, willow, maple, spruce, pine, but beyond that there stretched at least half a dozen more trees for which there were no names in her vocabulary. Some dripped with leaves in the distinguished shape of crescent moons that shone silver against the growing darkness all around them. Others held round pearly seeds of gold and green, and from the taller trees above them there rained a continual shower of spiral pods that seemed to dance all the way to the impenetrable forest floor.

With every step, they delved deeper into the magical woods. Silver light reached through the treetops, caressing their skin almost physically.

Beside her Him spoke animatedly about the scenery, showing her special landmarks she was sure she would have no memory of once they passed, but it all seemed so familiar. As if in another lifetime, perhaps, she’d walked through those woods hundreds of times and knew every knot in every tree, where every type of flower grew. But how could that be? She had never been to those woods before in her life. 

Him’s enthusiasm lit the way, and his voice was as familiar to her as if they had always been friends and only just reunited after a long spell apart. It was an eerie feeling, one she both enjoyed and felt terrified of.

Him spoke of his brother Sylvanus, of the kingdom itself, despite the occasional throat clearing from Sir Gwydion.

“Do you see that table there?” He gestured toward an immense slab of limestone covered in a thick green carpet of moss. “Note how the trees around it make a circle,” he pointed out. “That is where the Oak Fathers held council before the Great War.”

“They no longer hold council there?” She wondered.

“They no longer do anything,” a sardonic sigh escaped Sir Gwydion.

“The Oak Fathers were all lost in the Great War,” Him explained. “Including my own.”

Meredith did not know what to say.

 “It has been so long, and I was little more than a boy myself then.”

“But still,” she began. “You must miss him.”

“I suppose I miss his wisdom, but the things he taught live on in me,” Him decided. “Aside from that, I hardly knew him.”

Meredith’s heart ached when she thought about her own father. In light of Him’s loss, she felt guilty for earlier wishing her father dead. She struggled against her own shame, all those years of pride and anguish refusing to give in so easily.

He left them. He left them time and time again, only that last time he hadn’t returned.

Outside of Meredith, a strange force pressed into her woe, strangling and squeezing her painfully.

Him went on talking beside her, repeating the one tale of their father’s valor his eldest brother had passed on to him when he was a small boy, but as he spoke a continual claustrophobic paranoia wrapped itself around Meredith's body and mind. Suffocating fear pressed bruisingly in upon her while she watched their surroundings with caution. She looked toward her guide and the tiny pixie beside him with paranoia and doubt, her slippery mind snaking around thoughts of deception.

She scolded herself inwardly for how easily she allowed herself to trust them… strangers in a strange world… so soon after the goblins in the market had done their best to destroy her and end her journey before it started. Were these more of Kothar’s minions, sent to distract her from her task and draw her further and further away from her sister?

Unaware of her growing distrust and anxiety Him pointed out desolate clearings, battlefields upon which distant relations had fought honorably and died. She tried to focus on the sound of his voice, to battle against her own mind and the disharmony of her ill thoughts. She envisioned Kothar, imagined him sitting in some dank castle, huddled cold inside his own robes and watching with that milky eye in a large looking glass as she wandered unawares—drifting away from saving her dying sister.

Like the coming of a thousand voices, her doom was whispered back to her.

They are not your friends.This is a trap

All of it was some horrible trap designed to keep her from ever reaching the Darknjan Wald or her sister.

They lead you to your doom.

Her heart thundered wildly inside her with the realization of this horror, the wood around them eerily silent.

Sir Gwydion stopped in front of them and held a hand up to keep them from passing or stumbling over him. “Dark thoughts have silenced the wood,” he noted. “Either one of our minds has become ensnared, or there are enemies in our midst.”

“I have no dark thoughts.” Him turned over his shoulder to look at her. “Meredith?”

It took a moment for her to process what Sir Gwydion said, the words playing over and over in her mind.

Dark thoughts have silenced the woodland.

Her previous thoughts came flooding back to her, the images of betrayal she’d dreamed inside her mind; her growing fear that she was trapped stoking the flame of anxiety within. “I...” she stuttered over that syllable as if she’d been slapped from a frenzied state of mind and now stood staring around her in horror. “I was thinking that you were all part of his plan,” she admitted quietly. She lowered her eyes from their prodding stares. “That this was a trap, and you were leading me astray...”

“We should not have brought her this way,” Sir Gwydion crossed his arms. “Her own mind will destroy her before we even make it halfway through.”

“Meredith,” Him touched her elbow, and she jerked away, startled by the gesture.

They were on to her. They knew. Her awareness would be her downfall.

“Meredith, you must get a hold on your mind,” Him said. “The wood we travel is Ambiance Grove, a forest enchanted by the elders. It turns the dark thoughts of intruders against them and drives them mad.” He searched her face, his large, soulful eyes so innocent. “Even though you are our guest, your mind is not accustomed to the pressure of the enchantment. Your thoughts are working against you.”

Sir Gwydion explained, “The Luna trees feed on the dark energy and turn it into light.”

“How horrible!” She gasped.

“It is not designed to harm you, or those like you, but it is meant to keep our land and our kingdom safe. After the Great War...” Him’s voice trailed off into a murmur of thought she barely heard, her own thoughts jumbling over it until the firm press of his fingers into her skin drew her back to the moment. “Our people were separated, and it became impossible to discern friend from foe. Only with the employment of such magic could our realm remain safe.”

“Then you are not leading me astray?” She was stricken between fear and relief.

Him’s soft laughter momentarily lightened the shadow that strangled her thoughts. “Of course, not.”

“I want to trust you,” she admitted.

The dark voice inside her lashed back with,
but I know you’re a liar. A deceitful liar.

“Listen to your heart, it is your heart compelling you to trust,” Him said. “It is the only way to battle the darkness. Your heart knows what is right.”

Her heart felt constricted inside her, like a vice clamped down to squeeze the life from her, and she shook her head to resist it.

“I do trust you.” She remembered how they saved her in the Goblin Market. If they were Kothar’s minions, would they not have used her weakness to do her in? “I trust you.”

“I feel so stupid.” Him’s arm slid in behind her now and she relaxed against his side. “I should have warned you. I’m so sorry.”

Her breath was labored from the fretful pounding of her heart. “I should never have doubted you, not after all you have done to help me.”

“Even a wise man knows doubt from time to time, Meredith. It is the fool who allows it to rule his judgment.”

Sir Gwydion shook his head and wondered aloud, “Where do you come up with this garbage?”

Ignoring his friend, Him’s slow smile sought out Meredith’s heart. “I forgive you for doubting us, and I applaud your reason, but now we must move on, for it is not much further until we reach my brother’s realm.”

She nodded slowly, and offered an apologetic smile, but Him went on as though nothing had happened at all. The insult quickly forgotten, he leaned close to point out a dwelling in the trees, abandoned now, but according to his brother once home to a wise crone who had advised the Oak Fathers on all matters. Gradually, the soft tone of his voice mingled with his enthusiasm, the oppression of the trees began to wane, and Meredith noticed as they traveled on there were greater gaps between the trees and a smooth, silver essence traced the canopy above. The slowly rising moon was still masked behind the leaves, and she stretched to find even the slightest hint of its body above, but no matter how she searched she couldn't find the source of that silver light.

“Where is the moon?”

Him laughed and paused to glance up at the openings in the treetops. “She is everywhere.”

“But I cannot find it in the sky.”

“Perhaps you know not where to look.”

She felt the press of his body behind hers, and his arm lifted against her side, finger pointing toward the light, “Moon’s light is carried to our path in buckets by Moon’s daughter. She shares her mother’s light with us all.”

“Oh.” Meredith glanced upward again, her mind reeling with his explanation, but before she was able to ask another question they had come to an abrupt stop, and Him’s hand reached out to hold her steadily in place.

She retrieved her gaze from the sky and was startled to note they had become surrounded by a party of odd-looking creatures. She slid in closer to Him and eyed the bizarre host with caution. While she could not deny that the goblins had been hideous, and Sir Gwydion and Him both strange to behold, these new creatures were extraordinarily tall, with thin, muscled grey bodies. Just off their naked shoulders jutted malformed, papery wings. They had long, sharp faces, each one covered from the nose up by intricately carved masks of golden oak leaves. In their hands they clutched tightly to ornately carved spears decorated in the same oak leaf pattern. Their silver blades glinted against the moon’s light, momentarily flickering like blue flame before stabilizing in the hands of their wielders.

There were only five of them, but it did nothing to placate the irrational sense of panic that gripped Meredith's insides.

Him stepped forward and began communicating with them in a series of purrs, clicks and utterances she didn’t understand. One of the creatures replied in similar fashion, and several times both his eyes and his hand gestures indicated Meredith was the subject of their odd conversation. Him went on speaking, while Sir Gwydion remained silent, but protective beside Him, his sword-arm stiff with warning and readiness.

At times the gestures and sounds they produced seemed urgent and argumentative, and the one who seemed to be their leader turned to his companions to confer the information. Meredith hid behind Him, and listened as his replies grew adamant. At last he threw up his arms and shouted a strange collection of syllables that may not have made sense verbally, but had certainly grabbed her attention.