Hob Goodfellowe

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…

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…

“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…

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,…

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….

After a time walking, the ceiling grew in height and the walls expanded subtly and became smoother and more cleanly carven. They passed more of the little tunnels and doors left and right, but had no more trouble on the straight underground road. After perhaps a half hour of walking, they passed a lumpish, heavy-browed…

They barely had a chance to see the thing that came up out of the water before the slammed into them. It was sinuous, covered in pearly black, green and purple scales. For a head, it had something like a the head of a fish, something like a lizard. It thrashed into Dapplegrim, and the…

It took Caewen an hour to recover enough to walk. Even then, she was pale and had difficulty moving forward without frequent rests. The tunnel they followed was mostly carved out of the sleeping rock of the mountains, and the arches and stonework were so close-fitting they needed no mortar. Graven stone sconces decorated the…