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The dark magic pulled me. It wasn’t from here, the feeling that it was from another realm wore on my senses. The whispers on the wind that whipped through the trees. Caressing me as I stood on the edge. A sad murmur,Come home.
“Coooome hooome.”
The trance over my senses broke every time. The trepidation of the woods and its hold on me doing just that. But it was the creatures hidden from sight and the cackles in the low brush that would keep me at bay. I wouldn’t step inside it. The dark, I wasn’t afraid of the dark. But I was afraid of the Ebony Wood. Eyeing it now, I kept moving along the paths in the garden. Checking each row before moving to the next, my basket in hand. It wasn’t quite planting season, but the ground was ready.
Crouching down to check the dirt, I noted I could begin planting soon. Mentally mapping out where each seed was going to be sowed. Over the next couple of months, I would faithfully tend to them. Allow them to grow and flourish before harvesting and storing what I could in the fall. During the other days of the month, I worked at the local tavern- our sole income. I wouldn’t call it a glamorous job, being the dish maid. But it brought in coins.
And we needed it, I needed it.
A breath escapes as I stand, making my way to the flower patch on the far edge. Most evenings, I collected the flowers that grew along the stone wall at the back of the garden. While they brought a little bit of happiness and joy, these flowers were for someone else. Every chance I had; I made the trek to the other side of the village. A stop at the cemetery, to lay the flowers on a set of graves.
My father, my mother and my little brother. These flowers were not only for the family I lost. Not this time. There was one extra grave for me to visit. One extra grave to tend. One extra heartbreak to add to the pain I already harbored.
My Nona Luna’s.
Snipping the flowers at the base of the stem, balanced on the balls of my feet. A sad smile spreads across my lips. Her memory would not die with her. I would not let it. Nona was a force to be reckoned with. She was something else. The townspeople used to say she was crazy. With her stories and her beliefs. All things she passed down to me. Nona Luna was my guardian. And I loved her to bits. She had left me everything- the land, the cottage, the garden.
All of it was mine.
A sad tear escapes from the corner of my eye and rolls down my cheek as I add a bundle of flowers to my basket. Forget-Me-Nots, fitting for now. Unfortunately, with her passing it has left me alone. Again. Even when my family died, Nona Luna was there. I was almost seven when it happened, my little brother was just a babe. It’s hard to remember any of it, just the flames and the shouts. A dark cloaked figure, really is all I can recall.
It’s like there’s a block on that part of my memories. It’s hazy and every time I tried to reach for it, to remember- it relinquishes its hold on me. I often feel drained and exhausted trying to remember my life before. The memories of those I lost. I barely remember their faces. The kind eyes of my mother, the fire within my father. My brother’s toothless happy smile and blonde curls. Other than that, I don’t remember much from before I was put in her care.
Just that she was already old then.
Now eighteen years later, she was gone, taken from me by the sickness. No one knows when it started or where or how it showed up. But every year someone is taken by it. There was talk that it comes from a place lost to us, that its punishment for things done wrong in the past. I don’t know, Nona wouldn’t divulge any knowledge she had on it. Just that it was spreading, and I should be wary.
Nona was eccentric. Not crazy.
Sure, she mumbled to herself when she thought no one was listening, or I was out of earshot. But I chalked that up to her just being cautious. She guarded much of herself and of me from the world. She trusted very few. And in turn, neither did I. Her ramblings made little sense but while she cared for me, and she made sure I had what I needed, she also made sure I would be able to care for myself.
She showed me how to patch my dresses, sew new pieces when we had the fabric to do so. How to mend my shoes to get me through another season, how to cook. Taught me everything I needed to know in the garden and the use of every herb and flower before me. How to care for those who were sick and dying, care for the animals who would come and go, many of them searching for help- everything.
She taught me that everything was a gift, life is a gift. The world around us was gifted to us by the Immortal Gods and we must not take it for granted. We must cherish it, nourish it and allow it to grow. Or we lose it entirely. We would laugh together, sing together, and she always let me cry when it felt like the world around me was against us. She told me stories. The stories of the Lost Fae and Inirea, the City of Immortals. Stories of goblins and fairies, dragons, and beasts.
She told stories of him.
The Goblin King.
A murderous and ruthless being, the ruler of Inirea and its people. Nobody knows where the stories of the Goblin King originated. How the tales came to be. But they were a part of the village and its people.
Nona Luna would tell the stories of the missing children. The ones taken from their homes in the dead of night. A new child is taken every year, at the beginning of Spring. Never to be seen again. I asked once when I was thirteen how it was possible. She’d stated that he’d come into the village in a rush of wings and wind, and then disappear again with them before anyone knew he had been there.
No one has ever seen him and those who claim to have vastly different descriptions of him. Some say he was tall with gangly limbs and straw like hair, others say he was short and round with bark for skin. I heard from a traveling merchant once that he only comes when wished for. Never will he reveal his true self to those who summon him. The tales say that only the one who is worthy will see through his glamour. Whatever that means. I don’t pretend to get caught up in the village folklore. Nona’s stories were more than enough to entertain me.
Hearing her stories though of the Goblin King a question always remained. What did he do with the children he stole away, and why did he do it? Nona once said that the children were turned into goblins and resided in a city outside the castle gates. Left to live out their lives while the wishes that brought them there were granted. I used to make wishes to the Goblin King, foolish as I was.
They were never granted.
Only recently in the last year had I again made a foolish wish to him. I had spoken rashly looking back on it now. I wished that a boy would be whisked away for breaking my heart. Whispered in the darkness as I cried over him. The boy I had once wishedfor.
The first boy I had fallen in love with.
Kaston Conwell.
Kaston was not only my first love, but he was my first everything. He was my first kiss, my first partner. My first heartbreak. I had crushes but Kaston was more.
So much more to me at the time.
