Hob Goodfellowe

No more than an hour had passed since leaving behind the ivy-choked boggart dens when Fleat squinted into the sky and said, “There is a creature up there. Diving in and out of the clouds. It has a rider on its back, too, it does. One of them winged draig, I think?” Caewen squinted at…

They hurried out through the gap. The boy looked back when they were clear of the ivy, and saw it collapse into place, concealing the darkness beyond. They had emerged onto a circular stone area with dead trees standing all around, ivy-smothered all over their branches. The valley walls stretched above them left and right….

“Good.” She turned half-a-glance at Dapplegrim. “And don’t you be getting ideas, neither. I’m not easily trampled, nor bitten. My skin is tough. But. Now… as I said: who are you lot? You break into me nursery. Me idiot boggart-men are chasing you. And them’s all riled up. But you didn’t raise a finger against…

They came to another space but the air was even darker here. It was impossible to see any detail and everything–whether it was one of their own companions or a rock or a scrabbly ivy root–all of it was reduced to depthless shapes of darkness. The boy fumbled around his person for a flint and…

Caewen went at him with her sword, but though she landed two good swipes, the armour the creature wore was too thick or too spellwoven. The blade glanced off and the Boggart batted Caewen aside with one hand. She tripped and fell. The creature would have put a foot of iron-like claws through her throat…

They stood together at the mouth of the ivy-tunnels. The ceiling was looped by vines like thick old grey muscle. A few stabs of light shot into the space, but it was otherwise dark. “Shall we light torches, leastways?” asked Fleat. “No. That would draw boggarts and scarle to us. And the light of a…

It was morning. The twisting little road started to gather carved pillars and gates. Caewen, who was walking first, kept batting at lines of spiderwebs, frowning as she did. “No one’s been along this path recently, and maybe not for a long time. The webs attest to that.” Dapplegrim had been sniffing the ground behind…

Athairdrost had been walking in the Gardens of Night and Fireglow. All around him the luminescence of drifting firefly lights, and the soft glow of ancient twisted fungi lit up the gloom-dark woods. The trees here had vast, thick, reddish leaves to catch the bare few rays of light that reached them. Farther north there…

A heron the colour of sea-foam raised its eyes, and launched into the sky. Its voice, when it spoke to the air and the earth was the mingling of ghost-songs and distant memories of herons that had been alive a thousand years ago. It circled over remnants and ruins: places that had once teemed with…