“Yes,” said Caewen. She seemed to have recovered enough to get out a few words. “Thanks and many thanks. That was awful. We’ve never met anything quite like those walking shrubs before.” “You haven’t,” said Dapplegrim. “Honestly, I should have known better. Hur. Hurm.” The strange-eyed boy blinked, slowly and magnificently. “It was no inconvenience…
Author: Hob Goodfellowe
A Charm for the Nameless Child #29
Caewen got to her feet quickly, if also somewhat unsteadily. She reached out with both hands for the saddle. Regardless of what she’d said, the boy couldn’t sit and do nothing–he reached for her with one free hand, while he tangled his other, loop upon loop, in a length of bridle leather. Dapplegrim said, “Ouch!”…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #28
The boy blinked and tried to understand. The accent was strange. “Are you talking the Altongue?” “I am. And so are you.” He blinked a big slow ponderous blink. “I thinks so, anyways.” Dapplegrim didn’t seem to have even noticed the strange child. He was stamping wildly, and snorting air through his big nostrils. The…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #27
The scrub around them grew thicker and wilder and less friendly looking. Soon they were crossing a landscape of rough rock, dusty soil and large gorse bushes. The gorse was adorned with the brilliant yellow flowers of the season, which gave the scene a sort of beauty that was rendered frail by the thick layers…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #26
Next morning, the boy rose, washed himself from a rain barrel outside, then stood and surveyed the landscape to the south. From this distance, there were no signs that an army had moved by in the night. He wondered if it had all been a dream, but when he asked Dapple, the horse-thing confirmed what…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #25
Unsurprisingly perhaps, the boy had difficulty finding sleep. Eventually, accepting that he was simply awake, he got up with the intention of creeping outside and talking with Dapplegrim. He had to walk around the moss-covered frozen visage of the imposture-witch–in the darkness and shadows it truly looked as if she might come back to life…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #24
He watched in mute wonder and fear as Caewen prepared her magic. She boiled the noxious leaves and twigs up with several unwholesome looking things taken from the shelves of the cottage. When the fumes were so thick and oily that they were nearly choking, Caewen lifted the pot off the hearth with an iron…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #23
“Well? What are you waiting for, you mutton-headed fool? Have I bewitched a simpleton?” He looked down at the pot. He looked at her. She was about two paces away. He threw the entire contents of the pot over her. It soaked her, wetting her hair into slick tangles, and running down her chest, arms…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #22
They went via a crooked little track that skirted the hillside and lead mostly in the right direction towards the cottage. The worn line of dirt among the heather was little more than a goat-way, and after half an hour they left the thin ruts, tracking eastward through low scrub until they found a wider,…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #21
Beyond the mountains they called the Toweradges, on the far side of a sluggish grey river, and across plains and hills all draped in everlasting twilight, a man walked in the shadows of a forest. He walked among standing stones that were old when the gods and goddesses last fought their wars upon the Clay-o-the-Green….