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Knows the uncut threads you hold,
So close your eyes and hold me tight,
For I am with you in the night.
A collective sigh swept through the goblin children. They beamed at her, eyes glittering in the faint aquamarine glow from the runestone Trap always left lit for them beside the door.
“That was so pretty,” one of the girls whispered. “But what does it mean?”
Anrid paused, taken aback, but then she remembered where she was and who she was talking to. These children had probably never seen the snow, experienced a winter, or watched the sun set behind the mountains as the shadows of nightfall crept over them.
It filled her with a strange sort of melancholy.
“It’s about bedtime,” she said at length. “When the runestones are turned down and the blankets pulled close, you can go to sleep in peace because you aren’t alone. Skadi sees you.”
“But who is that?” Rig asked, his elbows propped on the edge of the bed and face cupped in his hands.
She smiled at him. “Skadi is the immortal fairy of winter—of the cold. Above ground, there are seasons that change. Winter, spring, summer, autumn...and Skadi is the keeper of the winter. Here in the tunnels where you live, everything stays the same. But above ground, where I live, everything changes. It’s a cycle of living and dying and growing.”
Half the children blurted out questions all at the same time. She realized, belatedly, that this sort of discussion would be better served during the day because it required a lot of explanation.
It hurt her heart that these children lived such secluded lives they didn’t understand anything about the outside world. Other than Rig, had any of them ever even seen the sky?
“Enough for tonight!” she shouted over them. “Back to bed, children. One, two, three—I don’t want to see!”
Amidst squeals, they plowed one another over to get back to their assigned places and dive beneath their blankets before she finished the little rhyme. She smiled at the wiggling lumps hidden beneath the warm blankets strewn across the floor.
“Goodnight, children,” she called.
Giggles and more wiggling filled the room. “Goodnight, Uh-NEE,” they chorused back to her.
She snuggled into her own bed with little Medda against her chest, and for one blissful moment, she had everything she needed in life.
Conflicting scenes punctuated her dreams. The dreamworld felt familiar and soothing at first, as she sat in a warm chamber beside a flickering fire with small bodies pressed close on every side. She could almost hear her own voice singing Skadi’s Song. But soon the images of her holding the children cut to dark chambers shattered by ribbons of hot, white light.
A sense of loss stole over her, not sharp like the stab of a knife but slow and sinister like the deadly fever that had stolen her parents.
The children were in danger.
Anrid ran through whispering shadows and searched for her goblin charges, shouting their names as she tried to find them before the Bad Thing happened.
There was always a Bad Thing in her dreams. Sometimes it was vague like an oncoming storm, while at other times she ran from a great beast with fangs as jagged as sharpened blades.
This time the shadows nipped at her heels, lashing out at her exposed ankles and drawing blood. She could feel it dripping over her jutting ankle bones and bare feet. She thought she heard one child screaming and raced around a bend in the tunnel, only to run face first into a solid rock wall. Blood spurted from her nose as she fell backward.
Hot, white pain exploded in her head and blinded her.
They are coming.
The familiar whisper sent shivers of fear down her spine, and she pushed up to her hands and knees and then to her feet, her desperation to find the children drowning out all other thoughts.
Run. They are coming. Run.
“Uh-NEE!” Rig screamed her name.
She raced down the sloping tunnel, but the grade grew steeper and steeper, almost as if the corridor wanted to tip and dump her loose. “I’m coming, Rig!” she shouted as she scrabbled for purchase on the ever-tilting floor.
They are coming!
