Author: Hob Goodfellowe

They were less wary, now that they’d seen the boggart turn and go. As they went, they merely spoke quietly rather than whispering. The boy said, “There was a dream, while I was asleep. There were things in the dream. I don’t know… a shadow that was slinking around. I think it wasn’t really a…

It was terrifying.  Every second that passed  was a moment that he was sure a boggart was about to reach down, unexpectedly out of the darkness, and fall upon him with outstretched claws. He imagined the beast picking him up by the nape of his neck and shaking him as hard as a chook in…

 Of course, the boy had heard of boggarts and their ilk. Once even, in Wurmgloath, he had seen a dead bogle, brought in by a hunter who had filled the beast with arrows. And he’d seen what remained of the boggart that had been turned to moss-and-stone in the witch’s garden. But he had never…

“Looking for you,” hissed the boy. He’d meant it to be a whisper, but it had come out as an angry shrillness instead. He forced his voice quieter. “And the others,” he added with a touch more caution, and a touch less indigence. Fear was underlying his sudden anger, he realised. It had been frightening…

He was suddenly and awfully and painfully awake. It seemed as if the noises of the air and the glimmer of the moonlight on blades of grass and the small flecks of glowing embers were all powerfully strong in his eyes and ears and mind. He could even smell sharply. Everything smelled: the wet night-earth,…

He found himself on a grey and wind-chased plain. The grass moved like waves of water, churned by endless winds. In patches, high above, the sky was the most translucent of twilight blues. But there were clouds too. Across one side of the sky, the clouds were patchy, white and pale grey: they let through…

The dream was strange. In it, he dreamed that he was standing beside a dead tree, overlooking a village in the valley below. It wasn’t anything like the lands he knew: the houses were strangely shaped and the earth was sere, pebbly and harsh, encircled everywhere by hard, cold hills. He dreamed that he could…

As Dapplegrim stumbled sideways, the boy grabbed onto his mane with white-knuckled fists. A huge branch crashed down out of the canopy, and then a tree fell, and then another massive branch. The way ahead was cut off. The ambushers did not intend to let them get away. More of the black bolts flew and…