Free The Goblin Market (Into the Green) by Jennifer Melzer

belly.
    Desire. What a strange and exiting thing, she pondered. She had felt it before, of course, but not as strongly as she did whenever she stole a glance at the Hunter beside her.
    “Your world,” Him broke the silence, and brought her wandering spirit reluctantly back into her body. “It sounds somewhat bleak and uninspired. Is there nothing living there which rouses your spirit and brings you joy?”
    “Flowers,” she admitted. “The birds and animals. I love to sit in my garden in the spring and watch them come back to life after the long sleep of winter. It’s magical. Here though, it seems like everything is always alive. The magic is evident and clear, but there is nothing so obvious where I come from.”
    “’Tis a pity,” Him lamented, his brow furrowing. “It is good then that you have escaped the drab world that held you prisoner.”
    She’d never thought of herself as a prisoner before, and for a time that notion hung heavy in my mind.
    They still skirted the edge of the woods, but Meredith could feel the trees within calling out to her. Silence, once more, and Meredith concentrated on the strange combination of their feet upon the path. Him’s animal skin boots disguised his footfall completely, but her shoes rustled through the grass, while Sir Gwydion’s tiny feet chimed as he walked. The bells he wore on his shoes were so small, she barely heard them at all, and wouldn’t have had she not honed in her senses on the mystical, tinkling sound of his every step. Stone and grass, dried twig and leaf crunched beneath her own feet, and combined with Sir Gwydion’s bells, orchestrating a strange, but beautiful song.
    “How far is the Darknjan Wald from here?” she wondered.
    Him sauntered to a slow stop and lengthened his neck. He leaned close and asked, “Do you see that hill over there?”
    Meredith followed the slender length of his finger. “I see it.”
    “On the other side of that hill there is a river and the remains of an old bridge. When you see it, you will understand it’s purpose. It is the very place where one kingdom ends and the other begins.”
    Sir Gwydion spoke up, “It’s as though the hideous darkness reached out to claim the bridge as its own.”
    Meredith's shudder was intensified by the dampness of her clothes. Him moved in closer, as if to warm her with his nearness.
    “We will enter the grove soon,” he told her.
    She glanced back over her shoulder once more, the market and valley as lost as the tiny hill she once called home. She thought of her sister, wondered if she was feverish, if anyone was caring for her. Did the girl even know she was coming, that she was doing everything she could to save her from whatever cruel fate Kothar had planned? She tried to imagine that wherever Christina was, she was safe, suspended in some fairy tale sleep while Meredith battled evil to come to her rescue, but as she recalled the emptiness she had seen in the goblin king’s pure, white eye, she couldn’t be so sure that her hopes would be realized.
    The trees on her left thickened, the foliage growing more dense as they traveled onward, and the distant hill Him pointed out to her disappeared as they slid into a deep copse of trees.
    Many of the trees were of familiar ilk: oak, ash, beech, rowan, willow, maple, spruce, pine, but beyond that there stretched at least half a dozen more trees for which there were no names in her vocabulary. Some dripped with leaves in the distinguished shape of crescent moons that shone silver against the growing darkness all around them. Others held round pearly seeds of gold and green, and from the taller trees above them there rained a continual shower of spiral pods that seemed to dance all the way to the impenetrable forest floor.
    With every step, they delved deeper into the magical woods. Silver light reached through the treetops, caressing their skin almost physically.
    Beside her Him spoke animatedly about the scenery, showing her special