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“It’s been three days since you decided to find the Dark Wood by yourself,” Shea complained as they set off from their night’s rest. “Aeraldor said it was a week’s journey, and now it has been a week since we left Belmaeron and we haven’t found the lake.”
“We lost the map! Don’t expect us to get there when we had planned.”
Rain had grown increasingly worried about Shea’s new personality. Aeraldor’s description of the Soublight’s symptoms kept running through her head. Shea was constantly complaining, sometimes throwing in an insult to her and her “memory.” She once tried to ask him about it, to see if he thought it was the Soublight, but he refused to recognize that he had become rude and pessimistic, eventually ignoring her questions. She thought about trying to heal it, but it seemed much more complicated to heal the mind than the body. If they ever managed to get to Lake Dolmeria, she’d see if the goddess knew what had happened to Shea. The faint hope of it helped her deal with his annoying presence. Whatever attraction she had felt for him had turned to pity, or even despair. He had been a great traveling companion before he had grown strangely negative. She missed the old Shea.
The clouds had not gone away, and though it had not rained, the clouds seemed to be growing thicker as they progressed. Her memory seemed to be getting stronger, and she felt like they were very close to the Dark Wood.
The trees around them had massive trunks, looking similar to the ones in Belmaeron. They had nearly all been the same, she thought, during their whole journey from the city. She was almost tired of their monotony, but part of her was still awed by their beauty.
Abruptly, she saw a tree that was so different she had to stop and stare.
Its gnarled branches twisted in every angle and were completely bare, as if it was the heart of winter. The trunk was still fairly wide, but it was much shorter than the other trees around them. Something about it made her shiver.
Further ahead, more of these strange trees were interspersed with the other trees. She started Pan walking again and noticed a fog settling, as if the clouds had grown so heavy they stretched to the ground. Soon, she could not distinguish the fog from the cloudy sky above.
Turning to look behind her, she nearly jumped in her saddle in shock. The fog had crept behind them and the way they had come was completely obscured. They were surrounded by the dead-looking, gnarled trees, with none of the familiar ones to be seen.
“This must be the Dark Wood,” she mused to herself out loud as Pan cautiously moved forward in the fog.
“Creepy place,” Shea said from behind her.
“How will we know where the safe path is?” she wondered aloud.
“We won’t.” He looked straight ahead, expressionless.
She gave him a sidelong look and then sighed. “I guess I’ll keep feeling out this old memory of mine.” She squeezed Pan’s sides, making him move at a fast walk. The fog seeped in through her clothes, chilling her to the bone. She pulled her cloak tighter around her and pulled up her hood, but it wasn’t enough.
Their surroundings were barren. The forest floor was littered with browning, dead leaves. The trees were unnaturally bare of leaves or needles, and there was no sound other than the horses’ hooves. The horses’ hooves made a strange clomping noise that sounded like they were stepping on something harder than just leaves.
Next to her in the fog, Shea leaned over in his saddle to examine the ground. “Look there. What are those strange white sticks? They were obscured by the fog a few moments ago…” He shot upright in his saddle with a horror-stricken face, and looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Bones.”
Thinking his assumption part of his new pessimistic outlook on life, she dismissed the idea. But then, out of curiosity, she bent over a bit to make sure and the same look of revulsion cross her face. Knobbed white ends stuck out from between the leaves on the ground, and were spread out as far as she could see in the thick fog. She could not see anything that looked like a skull, and that strange thought helped her stay calm. “How can there be this many?”
“Maybe it means we’ll be dead soon, too.”
“Stop thinking like that. The bones seem to have been here for a long while. We can get through this,” she said, but worry creased her forehead.
They continued through the endless silence, only broken by the sound of walking on bones. The eeriness set Rain’s nerves on edge, and she jumped whenever the horse’s step broke something. After what felt like a few hours, she guessed it was getting to be late afternoon.
“Let’s rest the horses for a bit,” she said, stopping Pan and dismounting. She started to get out a little food for all of them. Their supply was getting lower. The apples and cheese were gone, and they only had the dried meat and some hard bread left. She took out the bag of oats and began to feed the horses.
“What’s the use? They’ll probably die anyway in this place.” He dismounted as well, but just stood there, staring into the fog blankly.
She ignored his comment for what felt like the hundredth time, because she knew no matter how much she told him to not worry, he would. She focused on the task at hand to keep herself from thinking about the Soublight. After the horses ate, she took out strips of meat for her and Shea. She stood facing away from him, stretching her legs and chewing on the meat, and decided not to mention the dwindling supplies.
“Hey, over there the ground looks different.” Shea’s voice was faint, the fog muffling his sound. She turned to look for him and found he was not by his horse.
“Shea! Where are you?” she walked through the fog, looking for any sign of him. She grew worried when she didn’t hear an immediate response.
“Here,” he said, faintly. Finally, about twenty paces from where the horses were, she saw his dark cloak.
She went closer and stood next to him. “What is it?”
He didn’t need to answer. Just two feet away, the ground turned abruptly from the brown, dead forest floor to bright green healthy grass. In fact, it appeared to be a meadow. The fog dissipated at the line where the grass began to grow. She could almost see the sun peeking in through the clouds.
“Amazing,” she breathed. It was so beautiful, she felt like running out and rolling in the grass.
“Maybe it’s the safe path! Let’s see where it goes.” He stepped out with one foot, just inches away from the strange dividing line.
She grabbed his muscled arm. “Wait.” She felt where her memory seemed to pull her and noticed the pull was weaker here than where the horses were. The more she gazed at the meadow, the more she felt there was something wrong. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if it’s a trick?” She felt like the pessimist now.
He pulled roughly away from her grip, and she was hurt inside yet again, no matter how much she told herself he was not his normal self. “It’s worth a try. Your way isn’t getting us anywhere.” He marched into the meadow.
The moment his foot touched the grass, he completely disappeared. “Shea!” she yelled, feeling frantic. “Where are you?” She nearly stepped in behind him, but then pulled her foot back. What good would it do to follow him blindly, if it was the wrong way to go?
She walked back to the horses and took both of their reins in her hand, leading them to where Shea disappeared. Either he had found the safe path, she decided, or she was on the safe path and he was tricked. The meadow did look inviting, no matter the worry in her head that told her it felt wrong. And she couldn’t just leave him wherever he had disappeared to. She took a tentative step into the vibrant green grass.
***
It felt like stepping through a wall of thick mist, cool and sharp. The meadow she was expecting changed to a forest, much like the one she lived by at home: smaller trees, thick undergrowth, and bright sunshine. The wall of mist left a chill in her body after she stepped through, pulling the horses behind her. The sunshine surprised her the most, but the uneasy feeling she felt before was stronger now. She pulled off her hood and looked behind her to see if she could go back. The wall of mist was gone. She was surrounded by the familiar trees, much like she had been surrounded by the gnarled trees when they left the giant trees of Ellwood behind.
“Shea?” she called, searching for him as far as she could see from the spot where she stood. She stayed silent for a moment, listening for any movement. She heard and saw nothing. Since searching for him was her only recourse, now, she mounted Pan and started him walking carefully through the thick mass of bushes, small trees and ferns, interspersed with pine and maple trees. It was bothersome to try to lead Ahearn at the same time, she let go of his reins to see if he would follow. He did follow, and, relieved, she continued on through the forest.
Some of the skinny trees and branches were low enough that she had to duck. She took out her dagger, not used much until now, and slashed through some of the more stubborn plants
“Shea! Where are you?”
They came upon a clearing and she slid her dagger back into its sheath. Pan stopped moving, though she hadn’t given him the order. She urged him further into the clearing, but for some reason he wouldn’t move.
“Come on, Pan! There’s nothing here to stop you.” She squeezed his sides a little harder, to no avail. He whinnied quietly, seeming to be on edge. She got off his back and walked into the circle of trees, wondering what could be keeping him from moving.
She heard a rustling in the ferns surrounding the clearing, and she immediately put her hand back on her dagger’s hilt, ready to pull it out. There was a strange sound, like something being dragged across the forest floor.
The first thing she noticed was their ugly ears. They were pointed at the end, but wider and longer than hers. Their heads emerged, and then their short, greenish-brown colored bodies, about three feet high. Two of them came out dragging something, their backs to her.
In unison, they stopped moving and turned their heads around to look at her. They both grinned, flashing misshapen, sharp teeth and muddy brown eyes. Their noses were different shapes; one had a long, pointed nose and the other’s was so short it was almost nonexistent. Goblins, she thought, thinking back to her childhood books.
“Hello there,” the long-nosed one said in a nasally, high-pitched voice. She found it incredibly annoying.
“We’ve got something for you,” the other said, widening his mischievous grin.
The first two were holding the feet of a person. They continued pulling something out of the bushes, and more of their little heads appeared. She counted ten in all. When the whole group of ugly green goblins was visible in the clearing, she gasped.
They were dragging Shea.
She could only stare in terror.
According to her books, goblins were the worst sort of faerie, even worse than the mischievous household brownie. If you were nice to a brownie, they would be helpful. But goblins would do unimaginable things to a person—torture, some called it, though she had always imagined it as too horrible for words—just for fun. It was in their nature. She noticed they were wearing different sorts of red pieces of clothing, from pants to smocks to bandanas. They loved the color red.
Shea’s body looked in one piece, but his clothing had large rips with gashes beneath them, and dried blood matted his hair. She could hardly recognize him, even though they held him with his face up. The aegis, the one like hers, was lying on top of his torn shirt.
“Release him!” she yelled angrily. She was so much in shock she couldn’t think straight, but she tried her best to think back to how her books had said to deal with goblins.
They set him down on the ground before her. “As you like,” the long-nosed one said, and all the goblins turned to grin at her. Out of his red sash he pulled a simple dagger. He walked around the other goblins and stood by Shea’s shoulder. Still looking at her and grinning wickedly, he reached out over Shea’s chest and held the knife over his heart, point down.
They had twisted her words. “No!” Rain yelled. “Stop!”
The goblin did not stop. He raised the knife in the air and before it could make contact with Shea’s skin, Rain shut her eyes forcefully, not believing the scene before her. The sickening sound of a knife in flesh sent a shiver down her spine.
“Don’t believe it.” A voice in her head sounded loud and clear, but it was not her own. It was an older woman’s, and it startled her so much she almost opened her eyes. “Keep your eyes closed. Think of the bone path. The brown leaves, the bare trees, the fog. Imagine yourself there.”
“Who are you?” Rain said aloud, unsure if the voice could hear her. The sounds of goblin laughter rang in her ears.
“Please, do it for your sake. Think of it as a calming exercise. Take a deep breath and imagine yourself on the path.”
Unsure of what to think of this voice, but not wanting to open her eyes to the horror before her and knowing she couldn’t run from it, she decided to do what the voice told her. Even if it existed solely in her mind, thinking of the path was better than being here. She just couldn’t remember how to outwit a goblin, and felt hopeless just standing here.
She took a deep breath and imagined standing on the bone path. She thought of the feeling of the fog around her and dried leaves crunching underfoot. The chattering of the goblins in their glee nearly brought her back to the scene in front of her, but she kept focusing as well as she could.
Her imagined feeling of the fog soon felt so real that she could literally feel the chill around her. The noise of the goblins faded away.
***
“Rain.” It was Shea’s voice, sounding like he stood two feet away.
She jerked her eyes open in surprise. There he was. No cuts or gashes, clothes clean and in one piece without any blood. Around them was the bone path, and she still held the horses’ reins in her hand.
“Shea!” She hugged him in relief, but immediately remembered his sickness. He did not hug back. She pulled away from him and decided he hadn’t said her name in surprise, or relief. It was just acknowledgement. “I thought you were—”
A finger was placed over her lips to stop her from talking, and it was not Shea’s. She realized an old woman stood beside her. Her ears were human, not elven. She wore simple robes of dark green and her wavy hair, dark but graying, flowed over her shoulders, framing her wizened face. The brown in her eyes was so dark they almost appeared black.
“Don’t talk about what you saw.” She lifted her finger from Rain’s lips. “It’s not good to dwell on it, lest you want to see the illusion again.” She smiled briefly and nodded her head. “Good to meet you, I am Edana.”
“Likewise. I’m Rain, and this is Shea.” She returned the nod. “So none of that was real?” Flashes of what she’d seen appeared in her mind, but she brushed them away.
“Correct. The entire Dark Wood is filled with illusions, except this path. The bone path.”
“Were you the voice?” Edana smiled in response. “You helped me out of there.” Rain shook her head, ridding her thoughts of evil goblins and bloody knives. “What is the reality here, then? What does the Dark Wood look like?”
The old woman studied her face for a moment, and then smiled. “You ask good questions.” She began walking away from them as she talked, and they followed. Rain led the horses along behind her. “You don’t want to see the reality of this place. It would bring you great sadness. When Myrna banished the moon elves… one could only wonder if she knew what the consequences would be.”
“You know about the moon elves?” Rain asked.
Edana looked back at her and smiled. “Yes.” Her face saddened and she turned away. “I loved a moon elf, when I was young and foolish.”
Rain turned to Shea to see his reaction, but he was strangely quiet, staring straight ahead as if he wasn’t even listening. He hadn’t said anything but her name since she appeared here in the meadow.
“You loved a moon elf? But that means you’re…” Rain trailed off.
“Yes, I am nearing my one hundred and forty-fifth birthday. I’ve been practicing magic to stay alive, hoping in vain that someday they’d come back and I could be with him again.”
Rain instantly felt pity for this poor old woman, longing for a young lover.
“What are you doing waiting in these woods?” Shea asked, breaking his silence. “I would imagine you are quite alone. Living in illusions isn’t a good way to live.”
Edana stopped and turned around sharply, scrutinizing him. Rain wondered if she knew something was wrong with him. The woman finally continued walking. “Watch your tongue,” she mumbled.
“Where are you taking us?” Rain asked after a few minutes of silence.
“My home. I expect you could use my help, and I could use yours. It is the safest place to talk.”
***
After a while, Edana stopped. “Here,” she said. There was nothing in front of them except more of the same path.
“I don’t see a house,” Shea said irritably. Edana didn’t respond. Instead, she took a step forward. She disappeared just like Shea had when he stepped through to the meadow before. “It’s this trick again, I see.” Shea followed her, and he disappeared again.
Rain cautiously stepped forward and felt her body go through another cool wall of mist. A moment later, they stood before a house. It was a small cottage, surrounded by fruit trees and flowers with a little garden to the side. The house appeared to be within a large clearing, surrounded by a wide circle of pine trees. Beyond the first few rows of pine trees, the foliage turned gnarled and dead, like the bone path.
Edana approached her house and motioned for them to come around to the back, where she had a small stable with two stalls. “I haven’t used these in ever so long, but they are kept clean and in good working order.” Rain and Edana worked to get the horses unsaddled, groomed, and fed. Shea only stood there, staring blankly straight ahead. It felt wrong to her, but Edana didn’t pay attention to him.
Edana closed the doors to the stalls, letting the horses rest after their long journey. Rain hoisted one saddlebag over her shoulder and held one out to Shea. Thankfully, he did not just stand there, but took it from her silently. Edana led them around to the front of the house again, past rows on rows of blossoming flowers and fresh growing vegetables. She opened the front door for them and stood behind it, smiling.
The inside of her house was cozily decorated and quite tidy. Ornate paintings and quilted wall hangings decorated the walls, and small statues of faerie folk hid in the corners and on tables.
“These faerie statues—you have so many!” Rain exclaimed, bending down to look at the depiction of a young pixie sitting atop a spotted toadstool. She placed her saddlebags on the floor here, by the entryway. Shea mutely did the same.
“Oh yes,” she said with a smile. “I like to honor them. They are my helpers. I would not have such a bountiful garden without them.” As Edana led them through her house, Rain saw wooden and metal frogs, dryads, pixies, and other symbols of the faerie world sitting next to vases with bright blooming flowers. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a goblin statue, but when she looked directly at it, realized it was only a pixie. The head and feet weren’t shaped like a goblin’s. But a shiver went through her nonetheless.
They entered her dining area and she told them to sit. The late afternoon sun slanted through the bay window overlooking her garden. “Would you like some tea?”
“I would, thank you,” Rain said, glancing at Shea, who was in the second seat to her left, and realized he wasn’t going to say anything, let alone drink anything. “Just one cup.”
Edana took a quick look at Shea and then looked back to Rain and nodded. She was gone only a minute into her kitchen, and then brought out a hot teapot and two matching flower-patterned cups. “Oh, I’m sorry. Cream or sugar?” she asked before sitting down.
“Yes, please.” Rain said.
“Very good.” She sat diagonally to Rain’s right, placing a tray between them that held a cup of cream and a plate with sugar cubes. She looked at Shea another moment. “What happened to him?” she asked. So she had suspected something.
“He’s been like this for days now, and it’s getting worse. I think it’s this curse that’s been running around Ellwood. I don’t know what to do. I tried to—” She stopped herself before sharing about her magic. If there was one thing she couldn’t do, it was trust strangers. Particularly in the Dark Wood. Followers of Myrna couldn’t know she had magic, and she didn’t know enough about Edana yet. She shook her head instead. “Nothing I do seems to work.”
”Ah, the Soublight. How did it happen?”
She guessed it wouldn’t hurt to mention how he got sick. It was probably a typical way to contract it. “We were attacked by a wolf a few days back, and he was bitten. It had the power to stare into your eyes and keep you from moving.” She didn’t mention that Shea had his aegis. She took a sugar cube and a bit of cream, stirring her tea. It had a slight bitter, tangy aftertaste.
Edana replied while looking at Shea. “I know how to help him.”