Fairy Dark Read online

  Adam Golden

  Fairy Dark

  Copyright © 2019 by Adam Golden

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  Contents

  The Shadows of Legend Continues!

  I. OVERTURE

  The Night Things Stir.

  II. JOGAH

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  III. RHIANNON

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  IV. EPILOGUE

  Weave and Woof

  Thank You for Reading!

  The Shadows of Legend Continues!

  In “The Grimoire of Yule” Nicholas of Myra battled Dark Gods, demons and his own nature to become one of our most enduring legends, Santa Claus. Now the stage is set for a thrilling new adventure in “Fairy Dark” but before you begin please take a moment to click the link below, leave a review and let me know what you think.

  CLICK HERE

  And if You’d Like to Receive Updates and Deals on the thrilling finale to “The Shadows of Legend” sign up for the Newsletter at:

  CLICK HERE

  I

  OVERTURE

  The Night Things Stir.

  “Sleep now little one,

  safe in the glow of your little light.

  Sleep now precious child,

  keep your blanket pulled up tight.

  Heed not his tricks or whispers,

  and do not venture out.

  Stay safe beside your little light

  The Bwgan man’s about.”

  A faint orange haze of light leaked through the open door, pushing weakly against the smothering blanket of darkness. The soaring hulks of ancient trees pressed close to the ramshackle walls of the cabin, their branches creaking and groaning as a shrill scree of wind rustled through their dry leaves. The iron hinges squealed a plaintive moan as the forgotten door rattled and banged against its frame. Night things were roaming—the mundane hunters and scavengers of the dark skittered and darted away from the tentative shuffling of frightened feet through dry leaves—yet other things drew closer. The hidden things, the shadow things that even the night dwellers fear, pressed close, drawn by the crystalline tinkling of childish sobs that melded with the symphony of night sounds.

  A slip of a girl glided through the close grown forest as though pulled on an invisible line. Tears squeezed out from under her tightly closed lids and cut slick tracks down her cheeks. Beneath her thin, faded, homespun shift, the girl’s rail-thin body was racked by shivering that had nothing to do with the cold autumn wind. This place, her beloved home in the daylight, had become her dread in the dark.

  How many days had she and Aislinge danced and played in this very spot? How many evenings had they whiled away watching the sun fade to nothing behind the great spans of trees? The gloom of this place had held no terror for her then. But that was before, before the dark grew so clinging and mysterious, before Aislinge changed. The girl’s chest grew tight with worry as she thought about her oldest friend. Aislinge, her beautiful mischievous Aislinge, confidant, playmate, helper, her oldest and dearest friend. The girl couldn’t recall a time when Aislinge wasn’t with her, coming up with some grand trick for them to play on the village boys or some ingenious new place to hide from Mama and Da. How close they’d been, and how bright and brilliant her friend had been.

  Vibrant, bubbling with laughter and curiosity, Aislinge had been the perfect friend, and then one day she’d gone. Just gone without a trace. The girl had searched all of their favorite places, spent hours calling Aislinge’s name in the wood, and when it was clear that her beloved friend was truly gone, she’d sobbed brokenheartedly for days. Mama said it was natural, that childhood friends like Aislinge never stayed about forever, that it meant the girl was growing toward womanhood. She’d said it was exciting, but the girl wasn’t excited, she was lonely and sad.

  That was when the forest started to change. The dark that had always seemed exciting and mysterious with Aislinge suddenly started to feel menacing and predatory now that she was gone. The girl spent more and more time with the village children, away from the wood. When she was forced to stay among the trees, she had the uncomfortable feeling of eyes on her back, of something unseen yet close behind. She never ventured far from the cottage, even in daylight, and was always well shut up indoors before the first fading of twilight. The pain of Aislinge’s loss faded slowly, as her mother said it would, but something inside the girl was changing. Something she hadn’t even known was there; something bright and free was gone.

  After months of pining, depression and loneliness, the loss she’d felt at Aislinge’s disappearance had finally begun to fade, as her mama promised it would. She’d even started to enjoy the company of the village girls rather than simply tolerating them as an excuse to flee the clutches of the forest. She began to feel as though there might be some hope for a return to the happiness she’d known before. That was when the nightmare started.

  The girl stumbled as toes numb with cold snagged on a hidden root. A shrill cry burst from her lips as she went down on the hard, uneven ground and began to sob. She sniffed and cringed at the glob of salty metallic phlegm that slid down her throat. Inside her mouth her tongue flicked automatically to the new pit in the back of her mouth and jabbed at the hole where no hole had been before. She yelped. And her eyes sprang wide in panic. It was gone! She stared at the irregular indent smeared with blood on her palm in horror.

  Where is it?

  Her breath came in rapid shallow gasps as she scurried around the dark forest floor on hands and knees, searching desperately. She had to find it, she’d been commanded, if she didn’t deliver the offering it wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop.

  “Tssk, tssk, little pet. You’re filthy. Mamma won’t care for that.”

  The girl gasped and froze, her body suddenly rigid as stone. Her eyes cinched tightly around a new stream of tears and her mouth worked silently, readying itself for the flood of babbling, begging apologies that were sure to come.

  “Nothing to say to me, little pet?” the soft cooing voice trilled. “Surely you’re happy to see me?”

  “Oh yes! I am!” the girl exclaimed, jerking herself to her knees to face her questioner and doing her best to make her panicked, blotchy, tear-stained face look as though she truly were happy.

  “Of course you are,” the new arrival said, running a long-fingered, deceptively delicate-looking hand down the girl’s tangled auburn hair idly, as one might stroke a startled horse. “And did you bring it?”

  “I did, of course I did.” The girl stammered, her hands going to her throat as though to ward off choking hands that weren’t there. “Just as you said. I’ve learned to listen. I have . . . I swear. I brought it ju
st as you said only . . . it’s so dark, I tripped . . . I dropped it . . . I was looking . . .” The last word leaked out in a pained hiss as the girl’s head was wrenched back by the hand knotted in her hair.

  “You dropped it? You dropped it.” The grip on the girl’s hair tightened with every syllable, until the pressure was so intense the girl thought her scalp might actually be torn free of her skull. “Useless creature!” her tormentor spat, throwing her to the ground. “Find it!”

  “Yes, yes Aisligne, I’ll find it. I will.” The girl snivelled as she scrambled back onto her hands and knees, nose close to the leaf-strewn ground like a rooting pig as she searched.

  Nearly three months had passed since the day that Aisligne suddenly reappeared in her life, standing at the foot of the girl’s bed in the middle of the night, as animated, excited, and full of smiles as ever. She’d been so happy, she’d thrown herself at Aisligne, overcome with joy at her friend’s return. They wandered the woods again, they danced and picked flowers. The girl was happy, life was right again. For a while.

  The changes were small, her friend was fairer, paler than she remembered, her honey-blonde hair a little darker and less full than it had been, and her features were a touch sharper, more angular, like some of the villagers looked after a long hungry winter. When she asked, Aislinge dismissed it, saying only that she hadn’t been well while away but was getting better now. Her appearance wasn’t the end to the changes, though, other things came out in drabs—a sharp word here, a pointed glance there. It was nothing the girl could really point to at first, just a feeling, a sense of otherness that pricked at her.

  Aisligne’s tricks, which had always been clever and full of mischief but harmless, developed a distinct turn of malice, a sort of petty cruelty that shocked her friend. Dagen Hywel was nearly killed when one of Aisligne’s ‘little games’ caused his cattle to stampede with him among them. Coira Trethewey was scalded when Aislinge startled her little kitten so badly the poor animal sprang at its mistress while she was cooking. Coria was splashed with hot grease on her face and arms, and the kitten . . . the girl still had nightmares about the kitten. When she balked at the next such game, Aislinge struck her for the first time. After that she struck her more, pinched her, pulled her hair.

  The ‘little games’ shifted focus, to her. Aislinge set about finding new ways to hurt her, shame her or embarrass her, and she was terrifyingly imaginative. Little cuts appeared on the soles of her feet, under her arms or on her scalp while she slept, inky oozing shadows followed her everywhere, grasping at her heels like thick mud, tripping her, voices that only she could hear whispered, wailed and screamed at her in droves day and night. She was too afraid to sleep, too exhausted to eat or groom herself, pounds melted off her already spare frame, and as she wasted away, her fresh-faced demon seemed to grow more hale, lively, and stronger.

  The girl’s parents were beside themselves with worry. They took her to the priest at the church a county over, who clucked his tongue, pressed some beads for her to mutter into her trembling skeletal hand, and launched into a meandering sermon on sin and penance. Mamma dragged her to the midwife, a rancid smelling crone who smacked her slack toothless lips as she prodded, poked, and pinched at the girl before declaring the problem a matter of the vapours and making her take a collection of foul-smelling and awful-tasting brews. None of their concerns or their solutions did anything of course. How could they? None of them could see Aisligne, could hear her, and the girl had been well instructed on the high price of talking about their little games to others. She said nothing, and her torment went on.

  “I found it!” Relief and hope surged like a shock of lightning as she thrust the recovered offering into the air. “I found it Aislinge, I did, see? Here.” She thrust her closed hand toward the other girl. She opened her small trembling fist slowly, carefully, as though frightened that she’d find it empty, its contents vanished, dooming her to yet another turn of Aislinge’s explosive anger. The offering slid from her sweat slick palm into Aislinge’s, and a wide, discomfiting smile that seemed too full of teeth bloomed on the fiend’s face.

  “What a good little pet you are!” she cooed, petting the girl’s hair again. “Oh, what games we’ll have now, what fun.”

  A chill stole through the girl that brought about a violent shiver. The way Aislinge hissed fun made her want to shriek and run into the night, to run and run and keep on running forever. The monster that had been her friend looked down at her with wide black raptor eyes. Hungry eyes.

  “You said . . .” she squeaked from a suddenly dust-dry mouth. “You said I could rest. You said once you had it I could sleep.” The word came out of her mouth in a dreamy liquid way, a sigh of utter wonder as though she were speaking of something long lost and magical.

  She never saw the slap, just the blinding flash of colour that comes with sharp sudden pain before she felt the dull thud as she toppled sideways onto the ground.

  “Why do you hurt me so?” Aislinge piped a whining pout. “You don’t seem to appreciate the efforts I go to in order entertain you. Are you not entertained, little pet?” Her slim, delicate little foot took the girl in the stomach with a force that drove her prone form back into the bole of a tree and made her pull herself into a tight heaving ball of agony. The girl-faced demon flipped her limp dirty blonde hair over her shoulder and let out a long, disappointed sigh. “No matter, you’ll appreciate me as I deserve soon enough.”

  A strange sibilant hiss made the girl uncurl her aching body enough to peek out. Aislinge was stretched, all of her dimensions corrupted, as though invisible hands had taken hold and were pulling her like toffee. The bones of her face were so sharp and pointed that it seemed they must burst out of the thin pale flesh that covered them. Her eyes were huge almond-shaped pools of black that bored down into the girl, and a mouth too wide for her head and too full of rows of needle- sharp teeth, writhed and undulated in the making of those strange chanting sounds.

  The girl opened her mouth to scream and choked as she felt something rising deep inside her. Some weight was struggling upward, as though being jerked free. She tried desperately to swallow whatever it was back down, but she couldn’t. It felt to her as though her heart were being pulled out through her throat. Whatever it was filled her mouth, forcing her jaws open wider than they were meant to go. She watched with panicked, tear-blurred eyes as thick tendrils of gray-black something escaped from between her cracked, painful lips. It rose like smoke but moved strangely, as though it were alive, like snakes. She didn’t know what it was, didn’t understand any of this, but she knew to her core that what was being taken was important, and when it was gone she would be gone too.

  ‘Good.’

  The thought brought an inward gasp of horror. She didn’t want to die, not really, even after every torment. She didn’t. She’d only had ten winters. There was so much she hadn’t yet done. She wanted to grow up, to marry, to have children of her own and love them as her mama loved her. But . . . if she died now it would all be over; if she didn’t . . . if she didn’t, would Aislinge ever let her go?

  She watched the looming, drawn-out girl form wreathed in the strange grayness, watched Aislinge consume that which had been hers, and she knew. Once she’d taken all of that, Aislinge would have her forever.

  The light was just a pinprick in the corner of her eye, a firefly dancing just inside her field of vision. It barely registered, utterly overshadowed by her body’s jerking, spasming efforts to hold onto whatever it was that Aislinge was ripping free of her. The little spot of light grew bigger and burned brighter until it shone like a tiny silver star and zipped in front of the girl with the brilliant graceful speed of a dragonfly. A bolt of silver-blue radiance burst from the silver pinprick like lightning streaking toward the darkness around Aislinge. The monster let out a piercing, earth-shaking scream that made the girl burry her head in her hands again. That scream didn’t sound like anger. The girl knew Aislinge’s anger, this sounded like . . . pai
n. Slowly, carefully, she let herself look again, cringing out from the meager protection of the ball she’d rolled herself into.

  The girl blinked and then blinked again, unable to credit what she saw. Aslinge’s stretched and twisted form stood braced against a wall of crackling azure light, like someone trying to resist a gale-force wind, and she was being pushed back. Her wide-spaced feet dug at the ground, cutting a shallow trench as the irresistible force of the barrier drove her slowly but inexorably back, away from the girl. The silver-blue light that hovered protectively in front of the huddled, gaping girl was larger now, and too bright to look at.

  Aislinge snarled something vicious sounding but unintelligible and the azure wall wavered. The grinning malice in her twisted features brought a terrified wail to the girl’s lips. Aislinge brought herself to her full alien height and pressed back against the shield of light. Thin sharp digits, now more talons than fingers, dug into the light like claws into flesh. Showers of sapphire sparks rained as the dark slender form of the girl’s monster rent and cut its way back toward her.

  “You’ve grown strong.” The words came as a hiss, but the voice was deeper than it had been before, and the accent was strange, not like Aislinge’s piping lilt at all.

  The girl blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the strange conflicting brilliances cast the fracturing cerulean barrier and the floating silver sun before her. The wall was nearly gone now, more a thin pane of fractured glass than a proper barrier; gone as well was any semblance of the form of the girl Aisling. The creature that grasped and clawed toward her now was a horror of sharp angles and maggot-white flesh, vaguely man-formed, hairless and utterly without features beyond its overwide mouth brimming with those dread dagger-like fangs.

  “You’ve grown careless.” The voice came from the silvery halo of light and it was hard, strained with effort or anger. “You’re getting lax, messy. You won’t escape me again. Your time is up, Jogah.”