The goblin path, p.1
The Goblin Path, page 1
The Goblin Path
Chani Lynn Feener
ALSO BY CHANI LYNN FEENER
The Underworld Saga
Unhinged
Unleashed
Unbound
The Xenith Trilogy
Amid Stars and Darkness
Between Frost and Fury
Within Ash and Stardust
Roses Red
Tithe
Revelry
The Seven Deadlies
Bad Things Play Here
The Goblin Path
Chani Lynn Feener
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Goblin Path
Copyright @ 2020 by Chani Lynn Feener.
Cover Design Mary Ellen Conley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without written permission the author.
Dedication:
To anyone who’s ever wished for a low-key kind of adventure. Fighting off aliens and eating pomegranate seeds with Hades is all well and good, but everyone needs a day to just relax and smell the Goblin roses.
Chapter 1:
That path had definitely not been there a second ago.
Blair stood at the end of a narrow dirt path that wound its way deep through the forest. Small smooth white stones, set a few inches apart from one another, had been laid at either side. The whole thing was far too detailed and visible for her to have not noticed it there sooner and yet…
She’d glanced in this direction several times before, desperately in need of a way out. She was positive there had been nothing but more foliage and brush.
A tickling in the back of her mind gave her pause. She was being ridiculous. There was no such thing as magically appearing paths when one needed one the most. It was just starting to get dark out and she was hungry. It’d been at least thirty minutes since she’d lost Oliver and the others, and they’d been carrying all the food.
What a stupid idea, to come out here like this. And all because Oliver was certain the forest was haunted. When she found him again, he was dead.
With renewed determination, Blair quickly moved onto the path, feet only just fitting between the stone borders. She wasn’t sure which direction was the right one—hence being majorly lost—so figured following the first cleared path she’d come across was as good a plan as any.
Overhead, the night sky was starting to settle into place, casting shadows and a dim glow over her surroundings. Even with her 20/20 vision, Blair found herself squinting into the coming darkness, hands held out in front of her to catch any low hanging branches before they could whack her in the face.
“How did I get myself into this?” she mumbled, starting to feel a slight chill now on top of everything else. At least she’d had sense enough to put on a heavy NorthSport jacket before leaving home this afternoon.
Their small group of friends liked to pass the boredom of living in Falls Hills with a never ending game of Truth or Dare. Coming here had been Oliver’s brilliant Dare the other day. She was regretting calling on him now, should have gone with Ian or Layla. The first probably would have dared them all to come to his band recital next week, and the latter most definitely would have made them work this weekend at her parents’ restaurant—which, all things considered, wouldn’t have been so bad compared to this.
Blair was so caught up in her thoughts, she almost didn’t register the sound of footsteps at her back. A tingle rushed down her spine and she stilled, holding her breath even as she twisted to peer back the way she’d come. She could only see about five or six feet and struggled to remove her cell phone from her pocket so she could activate the flashlight app.
Branches rustled and she froze with the device halfway out in the open. That was definitely not her imagination, or caused by a small woodland creature. Was it…it couldn’t actually be a ghost or something, could it?
“Hello?” It was a struggle to keep her voice from wavering, but she managed. It had to be one of her friends. Who else would be out here, this deep in the forest, after sundown? There was even a sign letting people know it was illegal and that the camping grounds were further to the south.
Crap, what if it was the park ranger or something? If she got arrested, her dad was going to kill her.
“Guys, is that you?” She shifted on her feet, struggling to turn her phone around in her hand so she could unlock the screen and press the flashlight icon, all without taking her eyes off the direction she was certain the sounds had come from. Once the light flickered to life, she held it up, aiming the strong beam back down the way she’d come.
There was nothing there.
At least, there didn’t appear to be. The light caught on the dirt ground and the trees swaying in the breeze. The footsteps from earlier had sounded close, way too close to be someone further back, and she would have heard them running away so…Maybe she’d been hearing things?
Almost as soon as she finished that thought, the unmistakable sound of laughter suddenly filled the area.
It was low, snickers more than anything, but coming from at least two or three people. Before she could even consider her friends were messing with her again, her brain processed two things.
Firstly, the sounds were definitely coming from nearby, close enough she shouldn’t even need the flashlight to see them standing there.
Secondly, it was coming from above.
Slowly, almost like she was in a daze, Blair tipped her head back, staring up into the thick branches of the surrounding oaks. It was more out of instinct than anything—because logically, who would expect to find actual people hovering above them?—so it took her maybe a second too long to process that the small pinpricks of light peering back down at her were actual eyes.
One set seemed to be leaning in closer, the two bead shaped objects lowering down towards her face until she was able to see they weren’t actually set into anything. No face. Just eyes.
“Boo.”
She didn’t care that she couldn’t see a mouth or a nose or even skin. The second the disembodied voice said that she was gone.
Blair twisted on her heels so fast she slipped a bit, catching her balance quickly even as the laughter took up once more. She clutched her phone tightly in her hand as she raced forward, only barely able to focus on the flashes of white that made up the stones so she didn’t lose her way and get lost once more.
“Pretty,” another voice said, and she felt a tug on her blonde hair, letting out a yelp before getting a hold of herself.
“Loud,” came another, gruffer voice, clearly disappointed by this observation.
Blair didn’t bother with offense, picking up the pace instead, intent on getting away from…whatever they were. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed Oliver’s ghost stories. She’d been brought up on fairy tales and folklore so a part of her had always believed in the supernatural to an extent, but this? This was a lot.
Something jumped down from a branch, hanging right in front of her face and she stepped back, only just processing gray fur and withered mossy colored skin.
“Oh no,” the voices started up again, still talking to each other, “why’d you do that?”
She moved around the hanging creature and kept going, arms coming up to wrap protectively around her head as she did, just in case any more of them decided to drop on her. Her feet were starting to hurt and her thighs were burning a bit from all the hiking and running she’d done, but she had no idea how long she’d been on this path, or how long these things had been chasing her.
“Hey, stop.” Something reached for her again, impossibly long fingers tangling in her hair a second time and tugging hard enough she cried out.
Even though it hurt, she pulled herself free, not slowing in the slightest as she did.
“Hey!” the same voice repeated, but she was already almost seven paces away by then.
“I blame you,” someone else said, and she thought for a split second they were talking to her but didn’t have enough time to really decide for certain.
In the next instant, her foot landed on open air and she screamed, arms flailing in a poor attempt to catch herself as her whole body toppled forward. She tumbled, bracing herself in expectation of the oncoming floor, shocked when instead her body flipped and she just kept on falling.
And falling.
Blair’s scream echoed around her as she fell and she squeezed her eyes shut. The drop seemed to be impossibly deep, an eternity passing before she finally made contact and landed heavily on solid ground.
The air effectively rushed out of her, followed by a sharp pain in her left hip. It took another moment for the aching to subside enough she could blink open her eyes again.
She was sprawled on her back, a single ripe tomato hovering directly over her face. She frowned at it, caught off guard all over again as she vaguely wondered how a tomato had managed to grow in a hole in the ground. With a groan, she forced herself into a sitting position, eyes going wide.
It wasn’t just the one tomato. There were dozens of them, at least five rows of tomato plants neatly growing out of freshly watered soil. Dirt stuck to the bottom of her palms when she pressed against it to rise, and she winced when she noticed the pulp smeared against her jeans.
She’d landed in the middle of a garden, on at least four plants. They were crushed to the point of bei ng almost unrecognizable, but that didn’t explain how she only felt a little bruised, and slightly dizzy.
Shouldn’t she have broken something from the fall?
Blair glanced up, sucking in a breath. A pale blue sky painted across where the ceiling should be. There was no sign of the hole she’d fallen through, only a light scattering of cotton-like clouds that drifted aimlessly by. There didn’t appear to be any walls around either, just more open space in every direction.
She was positive she’d fallen down, so how had she ended up in a place like this? Not to mention the fact it had most certainly been night.
“Where the hell am I?” she whispered, another knot of dread starting to form in the pit of her stomach.
A screech from her left came then and she jumped, watching as a small woman appeared out of nowhere, twisting through the rows of undamaged plants with ease, only barely causing them to rustle slightly as she passed.
The woman only came up to Blair’s waist, and was wearing a tattered dress that had once been pink and white, but was now more brown and gray. Her wiry white hair had been pulled back into a messy bun at the back of her skull, showcasing her bark-like skin and the odd points to the lobes of her ears. One of her canine teeth poked out past her lips, and when she lifted her hands to her cheeks in obvious dismay over the destroyed tomato plants, Blair got a good look at disjointed fingers that were most definitely not human.
“Ruined!” the woman—Blair was certain she was still female—yelled, slamming her fisted palms against her thighs. “You ruined them!”
Blair took a step back when the woman came forward, heel effectively landing on the base of yet another plant. She heard the sound of it snapping and knew what she’d just done without having to look.
The woman screeched again, jumping in place suddenly in a way that would have been comical if Blair wasn’t half certain she’d been knocked unconscious and was currently suffering from either a really bad dream or a hallucination brought on by a major head injury.
“You!” The woman stabbed a gnarled finger at Blair, poking her in the stomach hard enough she felt it. “You! You! You!”
“I’m so sorry,” Blair held up her palms, “I didn’t mean to!”
“Didn’t mean to?!” She stomped her foot. “Meant or not, look! Look! Ruined!”
“I did ruin them.” There really wasn’t any denying that, and even though she was freaked out by whatever was actually going on here, she did feel a little badly about it.
“Yes!” The woman snatched Blair’s wrist, tugging her between two rows of plants and around onto a wide dirt road that Blair hadn’t noticed before. “You come! You fix!”
Blair tried to pull herself free, surprised and even more worried when she found she couldn’t loosen the woman’s grip even a little. Forced to stumble after her as the creature yanked her down the road, she almost didn’t notice the small houses they passed.
Almost.
Once she spotted one, it was sort of hard not to realize there were many others.
Many, many others.
Blair gaped, tripping over her feet a bit, leaning into the woman for more support than she should. None of the houses looked particularly fancy, certainly nothing an actual contractor had climbed down a massive hole to build. But the fact that they were even there…
Yup, she was clearly unconscious and dreaming right now. Hell, maybe she was even dead. After the fall she’d just had, it wouldn’t be too surprising to discover she’d snapped her neck or something.
It didn’t feel like a dream though, or a hallucination, if she was being truly honest with herself. It all felt surprisingly real, right down to the way her shoes were cutting into the backs of her ankles, and the unmistakable hint of baking bread she caught a whiff of as they turned the corner.
Some houses had thatched roofs, others were made of large pieces of tree bark. They were of varying sizes, and not all of them had windows, though none of them had any glass. There were yards and gardens similar to the one Blair had fallen in to, and roads that stretched in every direction, over land that seemingly went on forever.
In the far distance, she thought she caught sight of larger structures, maybe ones making up a small city, but they moved past before she could really inspect it.
The fact that there was no sun in the sky, yet it was bright as day, had bothered her a moment ago, but now she was too grateful for being able to take everything in. Reality or not, this was fascinating, and she wanted to see it all.
Every once in a while, as they traveled, she’d catch sight of someone else. Usually, they bore a similar appearance to the woman who currently still had a death grip on her wrist, but not always. Some were taller, others even shorter. Once, Blair spotted what she thought at first was a cat, until it’d turned around and winked at her with very human eyes.
“Where are we going?” she asked, admitting to herself silently that it’d taken her longer to do so than it should have.
“You ruined? You pay,” the woman snapped, and it was clear that was all the explanation she intended to give.
Blair opened her mouth to ask her point blank what exactly she was, but the words got caught in her throat when she glanced up and saw they’d somehow appeared before a towering building made of black stone.
They were too close at this point for her to get a good look at the place as a whole, but she could easily make out the spires at the very top and the ivy crawling up the smooth stone sides.
“This is…a castle,” she said dumbly, registering it herself a second before the woman shoved at one of the two massive front doors and pulled them past the threshold.
She didn’t know what she expected to find inside a castle, had never really thought about it before, but the swept floors and the spiral staircase off to the side seemed about right. There weren’t any pictures or paintings hung on the walls, or any light fixtures that she could see as she was rushed through the foyer towards another set of double doors.
The woman didn’t have to open these ones herself. They swung inwards at their approach, slowly revealing a room three times the size of the one they were leaving.
The first thing Blair noticed was that there were other people inside, and her gaze swept unabashedly over foreign faces, and even more foreign bodies. Some of them appeared more human than she’d expected, and she quickly moved past these, more interested in the odd ones.
She hardly noticed being dragged toward the end of the room where a set of stone thrones were placed, or the people seated in them until the woman brought her to such an abrupt stop Blair ended up bumping into her.
“This one,” the woman shook Blair’s arm roughly, “she ruined my garden! Ruined it!”
“It was an acci—” Blair finally looked up towards the thrones and sucked in a breath for what had to be the thousandth time that hour alone.
There was a man and a woman seated in the thrones, both dressed casually in black jeans and long sleeved sweaters. A boy stood off to the side of the woman, wearing almost the exact same thing, only with a white varsity jacket with charcoal sleeves tossed over the ensemble. There was silver detailing at the bottom and neck of the garment.
The jacket was the first familiar thing Blair had seen since falling down this nightmare hole.
The boy was the second.
“Wren?”
Chapter 2:
“Wren Woods?” she repeated, barely noting that he did not seem pleased to see her, in the least. “Oh thank god.” Blair let out a breath and hunched over for a second as a wave of relief washed over her. “If you’re here, I really must be dreaming.”
It was the only explanation, because Soccer captain—straight A’s—Mr. Popular—Wren Woods had no other business in her life other than in some strange fever dream. Back in the sixth grade, he’d pulled a chair out from under her. She’d been reading from the text book aloud, had finished, and gone to sit back down only to land on her ass.
He’d been in the desk behind hers, and the only person who could have pulled it away, but had insisted he was innocent. The guy hadn’t even asked if she was all right, let alone apologized. All the other kids in class sided with him, and she’d spent weeks after being teased and called a liar.
