by Molly Ringle
When she was twelve, tromping around the woods one October afternoon, she heard music and followed it. It wasn’t beats from someone’s car stereo; it was otherworldly music, like if you took cricket chirps, frog croaks, breaking twigs, and river gurgles, and set them to a rhythm. That time, a friend of Livy’s soon appeared on her way through the woods, and waved to Skye. Skye turned to join her, and the music died away.
When she was fourteen, a glowing line of mushrooms at dusk—actually glowing—led her a few yards off the trail before she got spooked and ran home.
And when she was twenty, lying on her back with her eyes closed on a fallen log in the forest at sunset, listening to hip-hop through her earbuds, she suddenly smelled coffee. It was strong enough that she figured someone had to be standing next to her with a steaming cup in hand, but when she opened her eyes no one was there. Instead she found another of those paths that hadn’t been there before, this time a line of rocks, alternating gray and white. She took the earbuds out and followed it, her heart pounding. The smell of coffee clung to her like a cloud. Then came the voice. She heard it for sure this time; she was no little kid anymore. From overhead it said, in an eerie, squeaky tone, “Freshly brewed coffee, pretty lady?”
She looked all around, trembling, then nearly screamed when her phone jangled. It was a text from her boyfriend, asking where she was. She darted back to the log where she’d started, and sure enough, when she looked again, there was no line of rocks. With the next breeze, the coffee smell blew away and vanished.
All those phenomena had taken place around nightfall. She was almost never in the woods during actual night; it was too dark and there was no reason to be there. But dusk, twilight, when you could still see a little, she’d been here then, admiring the way the forest transformed into something mysterious and sinister in the dark.
As a kid she’d tried telling Livy about the sugar-cookie voice and the strange music. Livy had gotten excited and told her she’d seen or heard similar stuff. But then, she and Livy liked making up Teeny-tiny stories for each other, along with ghost stories and monster stories and alien stories and time-travel stories, so neither of them quite believed the other, was the impression Skye got. She even began to doubt her own memory of those uncanny events. She didn’t try telling anyone at all about the coffee-scent incident from a few years ago; it would sound crazy, and probably she had just been tired and half-dreaming.
But now, at twilight, alone in the woods, her curiosity flared to life. She fancied herself brave and open-minded, no longer as easily-freaked as in childhood. She looked around at the darkening forest, and said aloud, “You out here, Teeny-tinies? Making your coffee or cookies? Playing your tunes? Come on. Show yourselves.”
And someone, or something, cackled.
The laugh came from the shadows, higher up, as if the person or thing was in a tree. Skye squinted to look, but the trees had all become featureless black trunks with bits of dusk-blue sky caught between their fingers. Someone could be messing with her, or maybe she just happened to hear a bit of conversation from a person approaching on the path…
Then she smelled dessert. Not a mere whiff, but a wave of scent that made her mouth water. Fruity this time, a berry pastry perhaps—not sugar cookies, but pie or other baked goods. Where could that be coming from? The few restaurants in town were behind her, downwind, and the scattered country-road houses in the forest were nearly a mile away.
Her gaze dropped to the underbrush to seek a way through, and she blinked in surprise. Hundreds of flat white mushrooms grew low on the tree trunks, sticking out like rounded shelves. That she already knew; she saw them every day. But they didn’t usually line up in a perfect row the way they were currently doing, striping around one tree trunk and continuing onto the next and the next, like a dotted line pointing the way into the woods. There were two such lines, in fact, one on each side of a thin space between the trees, delineating a path.
The path hadn’t been there a minute ago. Skye would have bet all her colored pencils on it.
Her fingers tingling in excitement, she pulled out her phone and snapped a photo of the mushrooms. When she looked at the picture, it was hard to see the lined-up pattern that was so obvious in real life, and in any case the darkness made everything grainy.
She considered trying again, then the mouth-watering smell gusted stronger. Someone above whistled a sing-song call, three notes, low to high to middle. Someone else emitted a stifled giggle.
Skye stepped onto the path between the mushrooms and walked forward. Her shoulders brushed wet tree branches. Moss and soggy fir needles squelched under her rain boots. She considered switching on the flashlight bulb on her phone, but soon her eyes adjusted to the darkness—and besides, the mushrooms had started glowing. Now they looked more blue than white, and when she knelt to touch one, blue light spilled across her hand and cast a shadow from one finger onto another.
“Pretty la-dy,” a voice sang.
She snapped her gaze up, still crouching by the mushrooms.
A dark shape moved among the bare branches of a tree.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“Blackberry tart for the pretty lady? Fresh and sweet.”
Blackberry was her favorite variety of pie, tart, or jam. And it did smell maddeningly enticing, which was a beyond-weird thing to be distracted by right now. This had to be a hoax, maybe pulled off by people she’d gone to school with. And yet…
“I’ve heard your voice before.” She stood slowly, scanning the darkness, trying to pin down the shifting shadows. “Or voices like yours. When I was a kid.”
“Did she?” The new voice, higher than the other, sounded delighted.
“Has the lady been looking for us?” the first said.
“I have.” Her heart thudded in her throat. “Who are you?”
“I think the lady means what are you.”
Holy shit. Skye swallowed. “We’ve called you the Teeny-tinies, my sister and me. But we don’t know what you’d call yourselves.”
Many voices laughed now, in pleasure, it sounded like.
“Lady wants to see us?”
“Skye. My name’s Skye. Yes, I would. Please.”
“We are not so teeny tiny. Though we can be if we want.” The shadow took shape as it crept head-first down the trunk of the tree, into the range of the blue mushroom light.
A chill skittered up Skye’s flesh. The creature reminded her of a giant spider, dark and spindly-legged. But she counted only four limbs, and two eyes gleaming at her, so, more like Gollum than a spider. Still creepy.
If it was Gollum, though, it was a Gollum made of twisted sticks and clumps of lichen, or some kind of natural camouflage that had evolved to look like that. She and Livy had pictured the Teeny-tinies as truly tiny, little enough to stand on the palm of your hand. This creature, while still smaller than her, certainly outsized that imaginary being. It was almost as big as Skye had been herself as a child.
Others approached too, descending trees and crawling across the ground. Her feet felt rooted to the earth, and her breath came shallow and fast. She looked behind her, and a new rush of fear dizzied her. The lights of Bellwater’s streets, shops, and docks, modest in number though they were, should have been visible through the trees. Instead only a dark forest stood there, stretching away into the indigo night. Shadows moved toward her, and fuzzy lights floated in the air or bobbed across the ground. Decidedly not the lights of Bellwater. No lightbulbs behaved like that.
“You see us. You like us?”
Skye pivoted to face the closest creature. A tarnished ring glinted on a string around its neck, and a few small, white shells dangled from its thin hair. Those touches of human-like decoration gave her hope. Anyway, as they’d pointed out, she had come looking for them. She had been curious, and still was.
She nodded. “What are you, then?”
“We have many names. Most commonly ‘goblin.’” The creature, the goblin, smiled, and Skye tried
not to shudder. Its teeth were pointed and long.
“Goblin.” She cleared her throat. “Well then, sure. I’ve heard of you.”
Another goblin emerged from the shadows on a trunk on her left, at face level like the first. “She is a keeper.”
“Oh yes,” the first said. “We would like her. We like someone new once in a while.” The goblin pulled a pastry from a dirt-colored sack hanging around its body. It extended the pastry toward Skye. “Blackberry tart?”
Despite its disgusting storage location, the tart looked luscious, its crust golden, its scent warm and buttery and so pungent that Skye could nearly taste the flaky shell, could almost feel the sweet cooked berries melting on her tongue.
She closed her teeth with a deliberate click. Magic. Had to be. Everyone knew you shouldn’t go biting into fruit offered to you by magical creatures in the woods, even if you’d thought until just five minutes ago that such stories were, you know, only stories.
But her head swam pleasantly, as if she were drunk, and it was hard to say what she meant. “I don’t know,” she said. “What does it do?”
“It helps you join us.” The goblin nudged the tart closer. “Have a little party with us. Fun. Right?”
“I…I’m not…”
But as Skye groped for what she intended to say, someone shoved her head from behind, knocking her forward. Fast as a pouncing cat, the other goblin pushed the blackberry tart into her face. Sticky filling invaded her mouth, so hot it burned her tongue. Juice and crumbs smeared down her chin. Her throat made a muffled scream, but instinctively she swallowed the bite. Her arms flailed, feeling as heavy as if she were swimming. Little hands, rough like twigs, caught hold of her in several places at once.
She fell and never hit the ground. The goblins carried her crowd-surf-style. Everything became a dream; she couldn’t respond the way she wanted to.
Afterward she still remembered what she saw and what they did before releasing her. Even though she couldn’t speak of it.
CHAPTER THREE
KIT TROMPED INTO THE FOREST. IT WAS DRIZZLING, TURNING THE EVENING DARK EVEN EARLIER THAN USUAL, AND HE wore a rain parka over his leather jacket and flannel shirt. The large box under his arm had a spare parka over it to keep it dry. Inside the box was a milk steamer, stolen from a home goods store in Olympia with the blessing of his magical immunity. He would have bought it, but seven years of scrounging gold and other junk for the goblins had cleaned him out. A small-town auto repairer and part-time chainsaw-carving artist didn’t make all that much cash. If only their magic could have topped up his bank account instead of granting him license to steal.
He had at least left a five-dollar bill on the shelf in the store, where the milk steamer had sat. He always tried to offer what he could.
He whistled in the darkness of the woods. They whistled back. A path appeared: broken oyster shells on the ground this time, their pure white glowing in the gloom.
When Redring dropped down and morphed into her bathrobe-and-pajama-clad form, Kit removed the spare parka from the box. “Here. Your milk steamer.”
She seized the box and sniffed it. “You said four days. It’s been a week.”
“Well, I have a life. Now you can have lattes. There. Can I go?”
“Don’t you worry we might get up to mischief when you take so long?”
A few others giggled in the trees.
Kit narrowed his eyes. “Should I worry?” He’d heard nothing in town about anyone being attacked in the woods, but then, people didn’t always say anything right away. In fact, in the few past cases he’d heard about, people had been enchanted in such a way that they couldn’t say anything about it.
“Oh no, we are angels,” Redring assured.
The others cackled.
Kit turned halfway to go, but pointed at her. “I better not hear of anything. You’re getting what you want, you just leave everyone else the hell alone.”
“But we always want new things.” Redring’s tone started as a wheedle, then turned sinister. “You aren’t our boss, Sylvain. Only our liaison.”
Too furious to say another word, he glowered and stalked away. He’d have heard if anyone got hurt. It was probably nothing. They were just trying to get to him.
But long, slow pieces of mischief that unfolded over months—or generations—were another of their many specialties. He knew that firsthand.
Livy Darwen’s kayak glided noiselessly through the water. Puget Sound was glassy smooth this morning, clear and dark, a color between seaweed green and black. Wisps of mist drifted atop the surface, and Livy’s breath joined them in tiny clouds. It was the last day of December, and the town dock had been slick with frost when she launched her boat.
Today, she thought, probably belonged to Water. Although perhaps Air; something in the frozen, scentless quiet of winter tended to suggest Air to her. She was an environmental scientist and had therefore taken more than enough organic chemistry to know that nature contained far more than four elements, but the traditional Earth-Air-Fire-Water system of organization still appealed to her. There was something human and emotionally real about looking at nature that way, and she often found herself categorizing the feel of each day under one of the four.
Working for the Forest Service as she did, the importance of those elements was especially obvious. Understanding the forest meant understanding the soil, air, and water, and, much as they unnerved her, the wildfires.
At least winter had been good and soaked, free of forest fires, the way she preferred life. Dealing with a fire season on top of Skye’s problems would be altogether too much.
She frowned at something crinkled and silver marring the water’s surface. She steered the kayak toward it, jabbed the blade of her paddle at it, and fished it out.
“Fuck you, Mylar balloon,” she told it, and dumped it into the boat between her feet.
Lately she addressed too many inanimate objects that way. Used to be she would fish garbage out of the water and declare in triumph, “Haha, potato chip bag! No Pacific trash vortex for you.”
Now she swore at it. Same with the invasive plants she pulled out of the forest when she was working. Instead of her old, “There you go, trees, bet you can breathe easier now,” it had become, “Fuck you, ivy. Fuck you, knotweed. Fuck you, blackberries.” It had been like this ever since Skye fell ill.
Or depressed. Or whatever she was, exactly. Two weeks now, and the three doctors they’d seen weren’t sure what the problem was. A sudden-onset depression was their best guess, and they’d treated her accordingly—some pills, some therapy. Nothing was helping yet. Skye still barely spoke or ate, and looked unhappy all the time. She continued to work at the cafe, but not as many hours, and she didn’t draw or paint as much as she used to.
Livy let the paddle go still, resting it across the edges of the kayak’s cockpit. Why would Skye be depressed? It was such an abrupt change. Up until now Skye had been a resilient, happy person with so much going for her and plenty to look forward to. And lately Livy would have sworn she detected trauma in Skye’s eyes, as if something had happened to her. But then why wouldn’t Skye tell her? She knew she could tell Livy anything.
A scraping sound coasted across the water. Livy looked toward shore. She floated a hundred yards off the northern point of Crabapple Island, one of the many small islands stranded in the middle of their long inlet of Puget Sound. On the island’s rocky shore, a man was trying to haul a waist-high chunk of driftwood up the slope toward his truck.
Livy grimaced, swung the bow of her kayak toward shore, and paddled forward. The curt reminder about taking driftwood from public beaches withered on her tongue, though, when he stopped and jerked upright as if in pain, hands planted on his lower back.
Her kayak slid onto the beach. Its fiberglass hull scraped against the rocks, and the man turned. As she expected: Kit Sylvain. Scruffy dusting of beard, shaggy brown hair sticking out from under a ball cap, teeth flashing in a wincing smile as he spotted
her.
“Here. Let me help you.” She shipped the paddle and climbed out of the boat, stepping into the shallows in her knee-high rubber boots. She dragged the kayak higher onto shore where the tide wouldn’t pull it away. Small round rocks slid under her feet as she plodded up toward Kit. “Bad back?”
“Yeah. Tweaked it the other day when I was moving a Mustang engine.”
“Ouch.” She took hold of two of the twisted protuberances on the driftwood stump. “I’ll take this side.”
“Thanks.” He grasped the other side, and together they hefted the stump to his truck, and shoved it into the open tailgate.
“That’s a big guy,” Livy said, breathing hard. She ran her fingers down the stump’s bumpy surface, chaotically striped in all colors of brown. “Cedar, I think.”
“I think so too. Should be a good one.”
“Going to carve something with it?”
“Yep.” He grinned. “Guess you recognize me, then.”
“Course I do. Small town. I’m Livy Darwen, though, if you didn’t recognize me.”
“Course I did. Small town.” He thumped the tailgate shut, then gave her another smile-wince. “It’s illegal to take driftwood, isn’t it?”
“From a beach that isn’t yours, yeah. Technically. But I’m not going to bust you.”
“Really? I thought you worked for the state or something.”
“Forest Service. But I’ve got to admit, I like seeing your carvings when I drive in and out of town.”
“Thanks.” He patted the stump. The wind gusted and she caught the comfortable scent of his battered brown leather jacket. “Would’ve brought my cousin to help me carry it, but he’s busy at the auto shop.”
“You have a cousin in town? I hadn’t heard that.”
“Yep.” He smiled at her. And for a second, despite her numb hands and wounded soul, she remembered why girls in school always used to gaze at Kit Sylvain, and why grown women surely still did. “His name’s Grady,” Kit said. “A little younger than me, twenty-one. His branch of the family lives out in Moses Lake, but Grady loves it over here on the Sound. So I’m letting him stay with me till he finds somewhere affordable in Seattle.”