The Goblin Market (Into the Green) (11 page)

“After you were gone, things went badly. Enraged, Kothar set loose the darkness, and one by one those things oldest and most rooted in our world began to fade. On her deathbed, the crone spoke prophecies of your return. She said one day the youngest son of the Great Hunter would lead you back home. Together you and Him would journey through darkness, for when your strengths combine you hold the power to reunite the two kingdoms.”

“Me?” Him astounded. “You've never told me any of this.”

“No,” Sylvanus agreed. “Perhaps I should have, but you must understand, Him. I am the Historian, not a prophet. I only know what was written, not how it would come to pass. You could have learned any of this at any time you chose, if you’d just taken time to read the prophecies.”

“And so just like that, you would send her into the Wald without knowing what will come of it?”

“I send her nowhere she does not wish to go, but she must consider her place in all of this, and try to remember the importance of her task.” Sylvanus did not take his eyes from Meredith. “I only know now that just as it was written, she has returned to us in your company, and now that the Great One is gone, she is his only heir. It is only fitting that you make peace with our enemy and reunite the two kingdoms again.”

“You’re not asking her to...” Impatience and disbelief stoked a fire in Him, and he rose from his chair once again in rage.

“Keep your peace, brother.” Sylvanus held his hand up to stop Him. “As I said, I ask nothing of Meredith that she is not willing to give, but I do believe that only she has the power to reason with Kothar. Long ago, she was the only voice of reason he would hear.”

“This is all too much to bear,” Meredith said. “What about my sister? She’s only just a girl…A human girl, at that.”

It felt strange for her to refer to her sister as human, as though she herself was not, but inside she knew different. Knew she was something else.

“She is only a small part in the greater scheme of things,” Sylvanus said. “Kothar’s bitterness has had centuries to cure, and he may not be so easily assuaged. Your sister’s life is in grave peril.”

Meredith tried to put the pieces of it together in her mind, but nothing fit properly anymore. There was her mother, who was not really her mother, and memories which were not her memories, but stretched as thin as old spider webs on the inside of her mind. She was tired and sore, her bones ached inside her body, and she wanted nothing more than to wake up in her bed and find that this entire nightmare was just that: a nightmare.

“Well,” she started. “My priority is my sister, and so I will make my way through the Darknjan Wald as he has challenged me to do. From there, I will do what I can to reason with him and bring these kingdoms back together as you have asked me to do, but only when my sister is safe. I make no promises.”

“Listen to what your heart asks of you, Meredith, not what I ask,” Sylvanus recommended. “The Darknjan Wald is a horror I would not wish upon even the bravest of souls.”

Meredith’s smile was cynical as she asked, “And there is no secret... no amulet of strength, or light of purity that will guide me through this darkness?”

“No secret such as we possess,” he admitted. “All those who have entered the Wald have been lost to its darkness and never seen again, but there is a rumor that links the Wald to the Goblin Market. You see, it is fueled by the same hideousness, the same poisons, and it is likely that one who escaped the market unpoisoned will have the power to brave the Darknjan Wald. Have you not just come from the Goblin Market?”

“Yes, we have, but I only escaped because of Him and Sir Gwydion, not because of anything I could have managed on my own.” Her mind spun with everything he told her. Memories of her life mingled with strange moments in a past that both was and was not her own, and yet somehow it all seemed to have led her straight to that moment.

Him brought her back to her senses. The sharp tone of his disapproval charging through her confusion. “It is all madness! Like some kind of game. Meredith surely you can’t wish to take part in it.”

“I have no choice,” she said. “I cannot go back Upland without my sister.”

“Kothar’s cruelty knows no mercy and his loneliness no bounds.” Sylvanus said. “He will stop at nothing to make you his. I do believe that you hold the power to reunite our broken kingdom, Meredith, but it is not a task I would ask you to take on lightly.”

"My sister needs me,” she told him.

“Us,” Him interjected. “I am coming with you.”

Meredith looked into him, his eyes begging her to understand. “Him,” she started. “I couldn’t ask…”

“You don’t have to ask,” he said. “Sylvanus said himself that we must do this together.”

She swallowed against her apprehension, but before she could say another word Sylvanus said, “There is time to discuss the journey later, little brother. Might I suggest that before you set out with fire on your heels, the three of you rest here for the night and begin your travels after sunrise tomorrow?”

"The three of us?" Sir Gwydion's eyes widened. "I don't recall volunteering for this fool's quest."

"I volunteered you," Him said.

Meredith hesitated, her desire to get on with the task ahead overpowering her reason. Then she looked to Him, his long face made even longer by unspoken sadness. She was exhausted, and her bones ached to the very marrow. Not to mention she was still feeling sticky and tainted.

“I will accept your offer of hospitality, though only on the condition that I may bathe and wash the filth from the Goblin Market from my skin.”

Sylvanus conceded. “That wish is easily accommodated. I will also have provisions for your journey packaged and made ready for the morrow.”

“Thank you.”

“It is the least I can do for you,” he said. “After all, though you may not remember your life here, or our old friendship, you are our lost queen.”

Queen
.

That word hovered strangely over Meredith’s consciousness.

“Niliel,” Sylvanus called over his shoulder. Moments later the slender faerie woman appeared. “Please show our Lady Meredith to the bath house, and on the way request for her a new gown and clothes for traveling.”

“Of course, milord.” She bowed her head. “Come, Lady.”

Meredith rose from the chair, legs trembling underneath her. It was too much to digest. Her…a queen. It was laughable, preposterous, and yet there were the sparkling shimmers of memory that hung in the back of her mind. She was meant for that world, that place, and always had been.

Niliel linked her arm through Merry’s and led her out of Sylvanus’s house and into the silver night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Just outside Sylvanus’s home, Niliel knelt down in front of Meredith and craned her neck upward for unspoken approval. Meredith nearly jerked her leg away when the other woman’s fingers wrapped gently around her ankle.

Niliel drew Meredith’s foot off the earth and explained, “We enter into the underground bath. It is a sacred place, and no animal skin is permitted.”

“Oh,” Meredith nodded. It made her instantly uncomfortable, the quickness with which a stranger had dropped to serve her.

Niliel slipped a pair of silken slippers onto Meredith’s bare feet and then she rose.

“Follow me, Lady,” she smiled.

The inhabitants of the village tried their best not to stare as the two of them passed by their homes. Niliel held her head high, signifying the importance of her charge, but Meredith’s head craned wildly as she glimpsed their surroundings with awe and a sense of lost familiarity.

Meredith took note of the clothing Niliel wore, a simple tunic woven from soft material and embroidered with gold and silver threads. The patterns which adorned her tunic were the same caricatures etched into the buildings and doorways, as well as the staffs and masks of the Dælicti. Oak, acorn, and patterned leaves decorated every archway and door above each earthen home. Her surprise grew when she noticed that these same designs appeared as faded tattoos on some of the villagers' faces, like the markings of an old warrior class she had once read about in one of her books.

“They are the elders,” Niliel explained, as though Meredith’s look alone gave away her blatant curiosity. “The last of our people who were old in the midst of the Great War. Day by day they fade, as do the symbols they wear on their skin.”

One wrinkled old woman narrowed her cobalt stare in challenge to the Uplander, as though she dared the girl to claim the rights Sylvanus had summarized as hers.

Meredith trembled at the very thought, and could scarcely even imagine herself in the role he’d assigned to her. The strange revelations of that past were still a mystery, guarded by paper-thin memories and separation of several lifetimes. Meredith looked away from the old woman’s stare, suddenly ashamed of the curious eyes upon her.

They passed by beings of all different ilk—satyrs and pixies like Sir Gwydion, recognizable by their knotted hair and small, leafy clothing. There were blue skinned and tattooed faces, some as grey and green as the trees that housed them, lithe sylphs and nimble nymphs, more of the Dælicti, and of course faeries of the winged variety, small and glittering like tiny flowers of light as they flitted about. Many more appeared as they traveled on, nameless, unrecognizable to her, but each as wondrous and beautiful as the next. Most of their audience, however, was made up of children, small replicas of the parents that gathered together and watched the small procession to the bathhouse, their eyes wide with such curiosity, mouths hidden behind their tiny fingers.

Niliel was like Sylvanus and Him, only her skin was a pale shade of lavender. She had large, wondrous eyes the color of rich earth, and her plaited, silver-green hair was interwoven with leaves and wisteria vine that circled around and crowned her head.

"Most of us have never seen an Uplander before.” Niliel passed a grin over her shoulder. “You are a rare and mysterious wonder to us.”

Meredith almost laughed, as she'd always thought of herself as ordinary and plain.

“It is different for the old ones, though. They know firsthand the legend Sylvanus passed on to you this evening. Some were younger then than you are now, but many were older than the trees—even then. They have waited several lifetimes for her to return, but few believe the princess we once lost will return to be our queen, and even fewer believe she will just walk through the gates.” This admission was almost a challenge, Meredith realized. Niliel herself had doubts about the stories Sylvanus told, but as she served him, she did his bidding without question.

She glanced back over her shoulder into a pair of long, curious brown eyes. She waited for some spark of recognition, some knowing like the one she had experienced momentarily with Sylvanus, but nothing came.

“How will she return then, if not by the route she left?”

“Some believe she will be born again into our world,” Niliel said. “Others say she will not return, but her child will, and it is he who will reunite the two kingdoms again.”

Meredith said nothing, but continued on, her mind heavy with everything that had taken place. It was all too much to think about, and it was difficult to maintain her focus because the wonder of everything around them overwhelmed her. She tried to hide her eyes, but was drawn to each and every being they passed, as though they willed her with magic to look at them so they could judge whether she was their lost princess, or not. The further they traveled, the more impossible it was, as there were so many unique and wonderful creatures. While their stares were both curious and doubting, she felt a hint of acceptance, which was far more than she’d ever felt in her own town, among her own people, which she realized, weren’t really her people after all, if the things Sylvanus said could be believed.

The bathhouse was a wide, open knot at the base of a tree, which was wider than the cottage she shared with her sister. It was guarded by an ornately carved portal, the edges marked by strange symbols, and upon seeing them a peculiar feeling warmed her center.

She had been to this place before.

The doors opened and moist humidity from deep within the cavern rushed out to fill her with familiar scents and emotions. She knew that awaiting them was a dark pathway which descended deep into the belly of the earth where water from a nearby, natural hot spring pooled. Fragrant earth and herbs and flower smells wafted out of the darkness, enticing her to follow behind Niliel as she slipped inside the opening. Meredith paused, and then took a tentative step forward. The portal groaned closed behind them, and a series of magical blue lights burst into existence.

They descended downward, the stairs spiraling around the thick roots of the old tree. Those eerie blue lights flickered just enough to guide them, and a heavy awareness came over Meredith. Yes, she had been inside that place before, and in her mind she envisioned the door that guarded the sacred pool. She saw herself, only she was not herself, standing outside that doorway with her hands clasped at her waist and an anxious, rigidness about her body.

“This place changes people,” she murmured. It was meant to remain silent, but even the smallest whisper seemed to echo in the earth-mother’s womb.

“Only if you let it,” Niliel replied, reaching back then and grasping Meredith’s hand.

Moment’s later they arrived at the door she’d foreseen. The same oak and leaf patterns decorated the frame, but on it were more of those extraordinary carvings she knew to be words.

Niliel let go of Meredith’s hand and stepped forward. She stood silent before the door, and Meredith could feel the magic and energy emanating from the silent ceremony Niliel performed. At last, the door shifted and moaned on its tired hinges, allowing them entrance into the sacred pool.

Niliel gestured for her to follow, and then slipped into the opening.

Meredith drew in a breath of the thick, vaporous mist that rushed outward to meet them in swirls. The combination of scents relaxed her at once, as did the blue lights hovering in each corner. Steam danced in delicate patterns across the light so that a calming, yet mystical atmosphere was created, and then she saw them. A host of maidens stood in the water waiting for her. The slightest hint of self-consciousness arose in her when Niliel slid in behind her and reached around to unfasten her cloak. A trail of goose-flesh rippled across her skin as she realized she had never undressed before anyone but her sister, and even then it was discretely.