The Goblin Market (Into the Green) (16 page)

“Well, you’ve certainly shown your true colors, Lady Meredith,” Sir Gwydion commented as they paused beside a small tributary to wash the dust and pollen from their skin.

It was nearing noon, or so she gauged from the position of the sun almost directly above them.

Merry retreated, a quick, familiar reaction caused by embarrassment, which also painted her face a soft shade of rose. “And what is that supposed to mean, Sir Gwydion?”

“Nothing more than I’ve said,” he shrugged. “You were rather sullen and hard-pressed to save your sister yesterday, and yet today you seem a new soul altogether, laughing, singing. One might never guess we journeyed toward imminent doom.”

“Such drama, Gwydion,” Him shook his head.

“I do feel rather hopeful, despite the challenges ahead,” Meredith noted. “Should I have no hope at all?”

“Hopeful?” He scoffed and turned the point of his nose toward the path ahead. “It’s going to take far more than hope for you to brave what lies ahead. You’ve barely seen the worst of things to come.”

Meredith knew he was right, and yet her time in the bathhouse and among strange, but familiar company had altered her perspective. What else did she have, if not hope, she kept asking herself?

“What has gotten into you?” Him towered over the pixie in a menacing stance. “You have had nothing encouraging to say since we met Merry, and I’m beginning to wonder why you’ve bothered to come along at all.”

“To keep your nose out of trouble is why, though the further we travel, the less I worry about your nose and the more I worry about the rest of you. You’re making a complete fool of yourself, Him, as you often do in feminine company.”

“Oh please,” Him said. “As if you would know the first thing about how to behave in feminine company...”

Meredith let go of the thread of their argument and tuned in to the sound of the tiny stream trickling beside them. Without a word, she took a few steps in the direction they had been traveling in while Sir Gwydion and Him bickered behind her.

She supposed on some level she was grateful for Sir Gwydion’s company. After the wild dream she’d had about Him, it had become all too easy for her to sink into uncivilized familiarity, and yet she couldn’t for the life of her understand at all how the quick progression of their flirtation had been in anyway uncivilized. Things were different Underground; she could sense it in the air and the way her heart ached as it sped up at the mere thought of Him.

She glanced back over her shoulder in an attempt to put her feelings into perspective, and realized that all her life she’d never known such peace and oneness with the world around her. For the first time everything was alive and real, including her.

Eyes wide open, she was amazed at all she saw, but even more by all she felt.

And it was those feelings, she supposed, that made her glad Sir Gwydion had accompanied them. His company seemed to establish an edge of reality she could hold onto while her entire world spun out of her grasp.

Him caught up with her, still spouting over his shoulder at the
insensitive lout
behind them. “Don’t mind him, Meredith. Gwydion’s sense of loyalty has always been twisted.”

“You take that back!” Sir Gwydion marched in behind him. “You bastard son of a farmhouse mule!”

Meredith tuned just in time to spin around and grasp Him by the arm as he reached down to grab their smaller companion. “Gentleman, please. All of this arguing is unnecessary.”

“He started it,” Him reminded her.

“It doesn’t matter who starts such things, as long as someone is man enough to end it, now I say let’s end it before it goes too far and someone really gets hurt.”

Abashed, Meredith was surprised by the subtle shade of rose that colored Him’s cheeks as he looked away from her. “Perhaps Merry is right, and we should end it here, Gwydion.”

“There are miles to go and I would much rather not spend them trying to prove I’m the more clever of us both. It should be obvious, but that’s another matter altogether.”

His words made Meredith laugh, though judging from his expression, he hardly understood why. Self righteous and most definitely beside himself, Meredith tried not to let his brutish words effect her. Him was equally confused, but she urged them on despite it.

“I would like to reach the bridge before nightfall.”

“Absolutely,” Him agreed. “I want a camp set up long before sundown. The darkness may not cross the bridge, but that place is cursed, no doubt.”

Sir Gwydion made a strange gesture much like crossing himself against bad spirits, and then he spit over his left shoulder. “Agreed.”

“And to make matters a bit more complicated,” Him lifted his gaze toward the canopy of treetops above them, “it looks like rain.”

“Rain?” Meredith stretched her neck up over her shoulder only to discover that the sunlight that had winked and shimmered through the leaves only moments earlier had been dimmed by a series of quick-rolling clouds. “Surely those aren’t rain clouds,” she tried to convince herself.

Him drew in close and lowered an arm across her shoulders. “I’m afraid they are, my dear, but alas, we have the treetops as our umbrella.”

“Then we should move on.”

What began as a random sprinkle soon evolved into large plops of rain drumming across the canopy of leaves hanging over the forest. The drums soon became a downpour of epic proportions. As buckets of rain soaked their clothes, Meredith noted with a sigh that Him’s treetop umbrella didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of keeping them dry.

“What do we do?” She held her hands upward, and the water poured straight down over them, into the sleeves of her tunic like a cold snake against her skin.

“We’re already wet,” Him shrugged.

“So we just keep on walking?”

“Why not?”

Sir Gwydion marched on ahead of them, his ready eyes carefully scanning the way, while Him led her through the rain, his occasional laughter and constant merriment enough to bring a smile to her face.

“Nothing ever gets you down,” she noticed, glimpsing his smile from the corner of her eye.

“What’s there to be down about?” He slipped through loosely wound wisteria around a maple tree and turned to offer his hand through it.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve spent so much of my life feeling worried or sad, that even the slightest trouble has the power to make me feel out of sorts.”

“And now?” His wet hand gripped her wrist as he pulled her through the vines.

“What do you mean?

“I mean now how do you feel? You said so much of your life was spent that way, but now how do you feel?”

She leaned back a moment, her shoulders straight as she looked into his eyes. Raindrops glided down her cheeks, over the slope of her nose and tickled her scalp. “I...I don’t know.” She admitted after a moment’s thought. “I suppose I do feel differently.”

“And why shouldn’t you?” He asked. “After all, it’s only a little rain.”

They traveled on while the drops played musically upon the leaves and earth. Occasionally the nightingale wove her woeful song into the pattern of the downpour, and Meredith couldn’t help but marvel at how beautifully the two sounds complimented one other. It was like an afternoon lament, though it managed to lift her spirits higher, especially whenever Him reached out to take her hand and guide her across some slick passage, worn, wet bark, or slippery moss.

Eventually the rain slowed to a steady drizzle that lasted well into the afternoon.

Sir Gwydion kept to himself while Him and Merry made the best of the situation and one another’s company. He told her stories of the forest, of his life and family. His mother was a priestess and his father had been The Hunter. He was very old and was a great warrior, and did not live long enough to really know his son. His mother walked the path untread.

“What does that mean?” She was watching their footsteps as they walked, the tangles of wet leaf and grass, old twig and limb. “The path untread? I don’t understand.”

“She was priestess, voice of the Goddess, and because my father chose her she now walks with one foot in our world and the other in the realm of the Gods.”

“Oh.”

“She is sacred now, and mother to all, and so she must always wander.”

Meredith thought she understood, but for the most part Him’s situation seemed nearly as lonely as her own had been. “How old were you when she left you?”

“I don’t remember, just a baby.” he admitted. “I only know she gave me life, and then she was called to the earth. She is the Sage Mother now,” he said. “All knowing, all seeing, mother to everything.”

“Have you seen her then since you were born?”

A thoughtful look stole his features, his exotic eyes turning for a moment upward in memory. “I did see her once,” he admitted. “I was a small boy. We were playing outside the village when I heard a voice calling my name, but there was no one. I followed it until it led me into a dark tangle of wood and there she stood.”

“Wow,” she marveled, more over the enchanted look he wore than the story itself. “Did you speak with her?”

“No, not a word, but I knew who she was right away. It took everything inside me to stand there and not run away.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“Terribly so,” he nodded, “and yet she was filled with light and laughter, love and peace.”

“Wow.”

“I don’t remember much after that, but Sylvanus came looking for me after nightfall. Says he found me curled up asleep on a patch of earth with a ring of purple flowers around me.”

His laughter was soft, like the raindrops on the leaves, and Meredith took great comfort in it. Before she even realized, she was talking about her own mother with an open lightness she hadn’t felt since childhood.

Sir Gwydion called out from up ahead, “I’ll have camp set up and my dinner devoured before the two of you ever see the blasted bridge.”

“Nonsense,” Him replied. “I can see the hideous thing from here.”

“You can?” Meredith hopped up on the tips of her toes for a better look, but saw nothing except a large clearing ahead.

“You’ll see it soon enough,” he promised, nudging her forward with a gentle hand on the small of her back. It wasn’t an enthusiastic gesture, but an unspoken sort of comment on wishing to come face to face with the devil before one’s time.

They peeled back the last few branches between them and the clearing, Meredith following close behind Him to make sure she didn’t slip.

The first time she saw the bridge she had caught only a glimpse of it over Him’s shoulder, and then he stepped again, obscuring her view. With each step they took she could hear the rushing water more clearly until it became so loud Sir Gwydion had to shout just so they could understand him.

“Where do you reckon is the best place to build a fire?” he bellowed back over his shoulder.

“Just find a spot and get it going. Poor Merry is soaked to the bone.”

“Poor Merry is soaked to the bone…” he mimicked in a sing-song voice she didn’t think they were meant to hear.

She pretended she didn’t, and as Him reached back to grab her hand, he drew her with him into the clearing beside the river, exposing, for the first time, a hideously warped bridge that loomed over everything in its proximity like a diseased shadow.

Thick, black vines claimed three quarters of the monstrous construct in a rather obvious attempt to pull it into the darkness that lingered on the other side of the river. The only part of the bridge that remained in the light was faded, the boards warped and misshapen, broken and rotted away. Green moss stained the old wood stretching across one of the longest bridges she had ever seen in her life, and she could hardly imagine how they were meant to make it across when they had no idea what lie inside the darkness on the other side.

Mouth agape, she felt herself lean warily into Him.

“Is that...”

“The Darknjan Wald,” he nodded. “So dark you cannot even begin to imagine what lies beyond that shadowed wall.”

She swallowed, and tried not to think about having to cross over it. It was hours until sunset, though still clouded over from the rain, and a distinct feeling like night clung to their side of the shore. “Perhaps it will be brighter in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Him murmured quietly, and then started away from her and toward the small camp Sir Gwydion had already begun building a fire for.

Suddenly Meredith felt overwhelmed and just a bit hopeless about the journey ahead. Perhaps Sir Gwydion was right, and she wouldn’t make it on hope alone. She crossed her arms over her chest, and then drew them even tighter, as if to hold herself in comfort.

She had to remember that this wasn’t something she was doing for herself. She was doing it for Christina, to save her from whatever horrors Kothar had planned, and she needed to bear in mind that failure was not an option.

A flicker of ancient memory rippled through her, a daydream of the place they now stood and the shadow that hovered menacingly over them, but just as quickly as it had come it fled again.

Him and Sir Gwydion worked fast to set up a reasonable camp, and with the fire roaring, Him approached her. “You are lost in your thoughts.”

Meredith shook her head and found a slow smile to please him. “I felt for a moment as if I knew this place.”

“Perhaps you did,” he lifted one shoulder into a shrug. “I’m afraid I won’t be very useful when it comes to jogging your old memories. You left this place long before my time.” She got lost in his gaze for a moment, the warmth and strange familiarity of them calming her fears. Strange how she felt no need to question his intentions or anything else when it came to him. She trusted Him in ways she had never trusted anyone else before, and though she knew they had barely known each other for the full cycle of one day, she felt as though they’d walked that forest together for the length of several lifetimes.

“I am heading back into the forest to hunt game for our meal,” he told her. “We’ll need all of our strength to cross into the Darknjan Wald.”

She nodded slowly and looked toward the fire, into the great shadowed veil that lingered over the bridge and obscured the sky. “I never...” she started that sentence uncertain of where she meant to go with it. It seemed absurd to say she’d never imagined she’d have to face this strange world and its darkness, even if it was true.