Hob Goodfellowe

“So,” said the she-boggart, “you come before me. In this, I ought be pleased. I suppose. I s’ppose.” She waved a hand of tapering, knotty-knuckled fingers and long, hooked claws. “Will you sit?” Caewen returned a polite, if awkward, half-bow, half-curtsy. “We will.” She lowered herself into a cross-legged position opposite, and across the fire….

They wended a path among the trees, over soft shushing pine needles, under the harsh laughter of wind in the branches above. It did not take long to find themselves thoroughly lost. Cliffs and ravines, dead-ends and blind rifts stood all about the flank of the mountain here. The sides were too sheer to be…

The funerary rites of the hobbes struck the boy as both appropriate and horrific. By the time he was standing–watching it all unfold–his mind had grown dimmed. The sight of it all passed like clouds before the sun: fleeting, illusory and never quite blocking out a sun-brightness of guilt and grief beyond. Before they did…

The boy looked around. There were a lot of dead. “Where’s Fleat?” he asked again, more worry in his throat than the first time. The little hobbe was nowhere in sight. If he had survived the fight–if he was alive and uninjured–then he ought have returned. One step out into the carnage. And another. He…

Hobbes were now returning from their pursuit, and were changing back from their feathered owlish forms. It seemed that the chase had been abandoned. The shifting-of-forms meant that a thin cloud of many-hued feathers were falling, all twirling on the wind. Strangely, many of the hobbes were now standing about naked, or nearly-so, barring the…

After a while sitting in the cold winds, Caewen stood. She stretched her limbs as if she had woken from a dream, and moved her attention back to the aftermath of battle. She turned her back to the north, and the shadow-lands of Sorthe. With a half-smile, she stepped away from the cliff. The boy…

“You know,” spoke Dapplegrim. “Lordly sorts can ransomed.” He said this as he watched a hobbe draw a dagger across the throat of a knight: the prone man was outfitted in rich shining grey armour, trimmed with gold filigree. Velvet trimmed his cuffs. Ermine lined his cloak. But the hobbe just calmly proceeded. The knight…

The boy could only stumble to his feet, whilst doing his best not to be ill. The smell of the death-magic remained pungent and pervasive. Memories and fleeting glimpses of the battle were already chasing through the boy, weaving in and out of his mind. He saw in his head visions of dead hobbes, their…

As the boy crouched at the cliff’s edge–unable to take his eyes away from what was about to happen–an odd feeling came over him. His skin pricked. It felt as if all the hair on his head and nape stood straight up. An uncomfortable sensation of crawling spiders ran up and down his arms and…