Hob Goodfellowe

Caewen nodded and considered her options. She might ask whether Fafmuir could be trusted, or what Fafmuir was up to, assuming he was up to anything. Or she could ask why that assassin was at the moot. Perhaps, who hired the assassin? Although, that would be a wasted question if he had not been hired…

Confused, she looked around. A cave, rough and dripping with limestone fingers. Distant echoing droplets of water tapped the silence. Rich clay-smells of cave mud lay on the air. In the near distance, ancient looking images crawled over every surface; ochre, chalk and charcoal; hunters and huntresses; strange huge beasts that she did not recognise;…

He mistook her tone. “That’s better,” he cooed. “You be respectful.” It grew in her, feeling something like an urge to retch. There was a point of no return where the spell was coming out of her, and no amount of holding it back would help. It was like giving birth to a dirty flooding…

The shorter man spoke up then. “We could have some fun first. She’s not half-bad to look at.” The other one screwed up his face in a knot. “Don’t be an idiot. If she’s here, it’s cause she’s witching a-training, right? She’s dangerous, right, weapons or none.” He then cast a quick, wary look at…

Although it had been only the smallest sort of spell, the effort left her fighting for air, and feeling dizzy again too. Her right arm throbbed with an angry, hot pain. The magic had killed bits of her as it wove itself through meat, bone and tendon… small bits, certainly, perhaps no worse than what…

She walked forward, cautiously, into the next space that awaited her. And was blinded. The enclosure was dominated by a ledge that stood over an ornate and decorated door, all resplendently carven with dragons and roses. She understood immediately that this was the last door out of this succession of weird visions, though she could…

“What next?” she asked herself, as she cut through the darkening corridors and laneways. She met the answer not far along, in another little walled garden. The space was not very large, about as far across as a cottage, and was dominated by a large, scrabble-twigged tree that was leafless and grey. The walls on…

He seemed affronted, and taken aback, blinking those weak coloured eyes, pursing his lips, and even quivering a little, just along the line of his brow, but, at last, he answered, “If I could but wield this that I possess, then I might avert all that will otherwise befall, and all the folk of the…

She waited, anxious, for a few moments after her other-self vanished. Half-expecting to hear a scream, or a terrified yell, and completely at a loss as to what she would do if her double were to cry out for help, Caewen persisted in waiting, just a little longer, a bit longer still. But there were…

She left him then, and kept walking the path, past the dead tree, eventually reaching the other side of the enclosure. As she went, the sounds of his angry, under-breath muttering trailed along with her, like dust pulled in the wake of a passing wagon. Once Caewen was away from the grass-covered mound, the words…