The beast is too nimble for its size, and it plows into me, knocking air from my lungs as we collide with the hallway wall. My fingers tighten on the hilt of my blade, but the mysting presses against my right shoulder, and I can’t bring my arm around to stab it. A desperate cry rips from my throat.
Yet the gobler’s focus is not on my face. It grabs my frozen arm with stubby fingers, and I feel an unnatural heat from its touch—a heat that might be painful, were my skin not so permeated with cold. Lifting my appendage, it eyes the bracelet on my wrist and the deep, blood-red stone hanging from it.
I hear a swoosh of movement through air, and the gobler’s horrible face tightens before going lax. Its fingers loosen. The mysting slides down me like a drunken lover until its fetid fat puddles on the floor.
Looking up, I realize for the first time how hard I’m breathing, how angrily my blood pumps. My father stands behind me in his nightclothes, his hair mussed, his own breathing labored. He holds his sword in both hands, and down its blade runs bluish blood.
He brings the sword around, his muscles remembering their training, and stabs the gobler again for good measure. The mysting doesn’t even flinch. The first blow had been true.
Tears escape my eyes as I leap over the body and run into my father’s arms. He keeps the sword in one hand and embraces me with the other. Weeping into his collar, I bless this moment of clarity and swiftness.
Yet though my left arm begins to warm, the Telling Stone quivers, warning of other dangers lurking behind the veil of the wildwood.
CHAPTER 2
It is painful for mystings to cross oon berry. Weaving a circle of the thorny plants around your home will act as a proficient safeguard.
The gobler left a mark. An incomplete handprint mars the flesh of my left forearm, a deep gray that is almost black. It doesn’t hurt, and the skin feels no different to the touch, but the mark is undeniable. I’ve no idea how long it will last, but per the warning in my grandmother’s notes, I soak a cloth in red salt dissolved in water and wrap my arm, hindering the magic that would call other goblers to me. Between my precaution and the fact that goblers do not frequent the wildwood, I hope I’ll be safe.
I add a footnote to the entry concerning goblers, then turn to a clean page to sketch the mark. Once I’ve finished, I measure the mark and jot down the numbers.
Grandmother’s notes did not indicate whether the gobler mark would fade. Part of me is hopeful the salt soak will banish it. Another, foolish, part of me hopes it will not, for no one could doubt my credibility with such evidence to show. Closing my book, I let my mind wander for just a moment, imagining the volume in my hands as a true published work, studied by scholars. All of whom would believe my research, for I’d have garnered a reputation at a fine college . . . then I blink the fancy away and set my thoughts to the household.
I suppose it is fortunate that I prefer prudent dresses, all of which are long sleeved.
My father is confused in the morning, and I carefully explain to him what happened the night before, so as not to overexcite or concern him. He accepts this with clarity and, after cleaning his blade and returning it to its place on the mantel, builds a litter out of rope and wood planks and hauls the gobler’s body back into the wildwood. What he does with it, I’m not sure. Perhaps he will leave it for wolves, or for grinlers.
My left arm is no longer ice, but the stone was cold when I awoke, and has gotten progressively colder. Another mysting is near. Never have I sensed two so close together. Clutching the Telling Stone in my fist, I step outside and walk toward the wildwood, kneading the stone, urging it to tell me what approaches.
After some time, it does. A gobler.
A shiver of my own dances across my shoulders, and I rest my hand over the mark left by the first gobler. Surely it is a coincidence, unless my grandmother was mistaken about the red salt. Or perhaps this new creature does not sense the mark, and is merely looking for its predecessor. I thought goblers were loners, but my knowledge of them comes solely from my grandmother. Folk around here have little experience with their kind. All I know is that the stone grows colder, the gobler closer.
I head back to the house, into the thin protection of herbs and salts. The first gobler had been interested in my Telling Stone. There are many charms and baubles that whisper of the nearness of mystings. Why mine is of any particular consequence is beyond me, and there is nothing in my grandmother’s writings to answer my unspoken questions.
The first thing I do is gather new cloth and, after stripping away its thorns, sew tusk nettle into it as best I can.
I pull up my sleeve and study the murky print on my arm. Rub my thumb over it, as though it could be wiped away. The salt has faded its edges, but otherwise it remains unchanged.
I’m so absorbed in the mark that I don’t hear my father approach, only startle when he takes my hand in his to study the mark himself. He twists it this way and that, his forehead wrinkling. I can see the war inside the mind, old knowledge battering against the fog left by the monster realm. How dearly I wish I could look into his eyes and piece together his memories for him. To have him be whole, and to see the monster realm for myself, for despite my fascination, I would never dare go there to study it.
His hand slides down to the Telling Stone, and he frowns at the temperature. “Another comes?”
I soak the new cloth in salt water. “Gobler.”
He helps me wrap my arm. “If they are after you, that mark will help them find us again.” He rubs his temples. I wonder if my grandmother’s entry on goblers came from my father’s knowledge of the monster realm. Masking my thoughts and fears, I take my father by the elbow and lead him to his chair.
“Does he want the stone?” I ask, crouching by his side. “He seemed to want the stone.”
My father shakes his head, but in disagreement or confusion, I can’t tell.
I grasp his hand. Recently cleaned, even the nails scrubbed. I mull over my words and tamp down the anxiety in my chest. “I can get rid of it.” The stone is a treasure and a shield, but it is not worth the danger of safeguarding.
“No.”
“There are other means of—”
He turns his hand about and ensnares my fingers. His eyes lock on to mine. “You have lived longer than she did now.” He means my mother. “Because of that stone. And I lost . . .” His eyes glaze. “What did I lose, Elefie?”
“Enna, Papa.”
He lets go of my hand and breathes deeply through his nose. “Enna. I sacrificed . . . so you wouldn’t . . .”
Standing, I rest a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. I understand.” The talisman is a rare one, stolen from the very realm it’s designed to protect against. There are many types of Telling charms, but none so accurate as this one. I palm the stone’s coldness, wondering why a mysting would batter itself against my wards to obtain it, when in all my twenty years, it has attracted little attention from my neighbors, and none from the other realm. Surely the gobler was after something else entirely, and the stone had merely caught its eye.
My gaze drifts up from the stone to the silver bracelet encircling my wrist. The circle. Sketches copied from my grandmother’s journal spin through my mind.
A summoning . . .
“There are other mystings, Papa,” I say, tasting each word before letting it pass my lips. I step around the chair to face him. “Intelligent mystings, less . . . harmful ones, who might prey on a beast like the gobler. Force it and any others to leave.”