For the last four days Devin sat in the bar trying not to stick their forearms permanently to the sticky top of the table. The beer was flat and tasteless as the decor that looked like it had been dredged from the river and flung careless on the walls. The only thing going for the place was the watered down beer. Most times this would make Devin leave and never come back. But now, it allowed them to keep their senses sharp so they didn’t stare too long at the woven garland of glass bottles hung behind the main bar. The green liquid inside the bottles seemed to glow of their own accord. No one had touched them in the days Devin sat, nursing a beer and eating soggy fries, trying not to worry about their dwindling funds. One bottle would cure all their problems. One bottle would trade for a year’s worth of wages.

They drained their glass. Tonight was the night or nerves would shatter. Devin left and returned when the moon was full and even the screech owls were asleep. Devin picked the lock and snuck like a wayward shadow across the floor. They snipped a bottle from the bunch and slipped it into their pocket. Devin paused, but heard nothing. They slipped back across the room and touched the doorknob as someone knocked their feet out from under them.

“You need to give that back.

Devin looked up into the face of a woman whose hair formed a moonlit halo around her head, but features were obscured by shadows. It was her staff she held against their sternum with increasing pressure, though, that held Devin’s attention.

“I said, give it back.” The woman twisted the tip of her staff harder into their chest.

Devin considered their options. None were good. The woman had gotten a jump on them without a sound so fighting their way out was not a sure thing. Giving up the bottle wasn’t good either, but at least they could try for something else in some other windswept town. Devin fished the bottle out of their pocket and turned it over with a sign. The woman slipped it into her pocket and removed her staff from their chest.

“Get on with you, then,” she said.

Devin stood up and backed up, wary of another attack, but none came. They stopped before opening a door and asked a question, “Why do you keep them out like that? You know how much they’re worth.”

The woman smiled. “In case someone needs one. It’s easier that way.”

Devin frowned. “I need one.”

The woman nodded. “All you had to do was ask.”

Devin’s brown wrinkled, but the woman said no more as she stood as still as the flotsam hung on the walls.

“Could I have one?” Devin asked, feeling the question was ridiculous, but there was nothing to lose. “Please?”

The woman tossed the bottle over without hesitation. One smooth movement created an arch of green light that landed in Devin’s hand.

“Of course,” she said. “May it bring you good fortune.” She turned and melted into the shadows before Devin could call out thank you, but they double-checked that the door was locked behind them when they left and left a mark outside saying the bar was protected to warn the next potential thief to go elsewhere.

 

“They call ’em goblin’s eggs, you know,” Brian said as he dumped another bushel of the egg-shaped squash into the crate. They tumbled and rolled like eggs, but didn’t crack as they settled into a lopsided pyramid.

Sarah rolled her eyes as she spread out the squash so they wouldn’t come tumbling down on some unsuspecting buyer. “You know only the children still call them that.”

“Then what would you call them?” Brian asked as he lifted the picking basket and placed it on his shoulder. It made him look as if his head was the size of a giant pumpkin as she looked up at his silhouette backlit by the sun.

“I call them egg squash, just like the sign says.”

He shook his head. “They’re goblin’s eggs. That’s why they aren’t selling.”

“We sold a whole crate of ’em last week.” Sarah stepped back as a woman began sorting through the squash, intent on selecting the best ones. Sarah looked up at Brian and raised an eyebrow.

He shrugged and walked back to the fields. Sarah lost him in the market crowds as she turned her attention back to the woman who wanted help selecting squash for her meal tonight.

Sarah didn’t believe in child’s tales about goblin’s eggs, but she didn’t take any squash home either. And she pretended not to notice that a few of the squash were cracked and empty as if they were simply shells when she pulled back the tarp from the crate to prepare for the first buyers of the next morning. Only children believed in such things.

The bamboo had stood at the edge of the village for as long as anyone could remember. No one could recall when it emerged, fully formed, in the morning. Stories from the oldest members of the village recalled that when the people went to bed there was nothing but ferns and trees and wildflowers edging the path, but they awoke to the sight and sound of a stand of bamboo swaying in the morning breeze.

No one ever went into the stand to harvest the bamboo. The villagers only used what stalks fell over when the high winds blew down through the valley and caused everything to bend and snap–even the bamboo. Some whispered that the bamboo was enchanted and told stories to keep the children away. Others paid it no heed, though they walked more quickly when they had to travel through it to carry goods to the next village.

Callie couldn’t care less about the bamboo as she sat, hidden behind a scraggly bush waiting for the sun to go down. She had a dare to win and all she had to do was cut off a shoot from one of the tall, waving stalks. Easiest dare she’d ever win. But as the sun set, casting its red light through the stand and causing lines to cover her arms like scars, Callie’s heart beat faster. And as the breeze from the sea caused the bamboo to sway and sound like hundreds of the largest windchimes that chased away demons she’d ever heard, her hands began to shake. When night finally settled like a dark blanket over the forest and the last noises of the village died behind her, Callie didn’t move.

When she finally moved towards the bamboo as the moon cast a long shadow behind her, Callie tried to convince herself she didn’t hear voices in the bamboo. She had a dare to win.

Moira was tired, sweaty, and had two bug bites that were beginning to itch on her arms. She was also terribly lost even though there was only one path through the woods and there was no reasonable explanation as to how she could have gotten lost on a clear day with no possible chance to go the wrong direction. There was only one path.

But by her own calculations, she had been walking for far too long and never remembered seeing towering bamboo or leaves that could double as parasols on her previous walks through the woods. To add to her bewildering situation, Moira now found herself being paced by a duck. She glanced down to her right and the duck looked up, as if expecting Moira to ask it the time or perhaps offer it a treat. The duck disturbed her, but it hadn’t tried to bite unlike the geese that swam in the village’s pond, so Moira simply kept walking.

“I should be there by now. How ever did I get lost?” Moira sighed and wiped her hand across her forehead before frowning at another bug bite on her hand.

“There are many ways to get lost, but that’s not the important question.”

Moira stopped and turned around to face the duck who looked up at her and seemed to shrug. “Ducks don’t talk.” She shook her head. “How did I get lost and go mad in one morning?”

“Everything talks,” the duck said. “The real question is, how are you going to get back to where you were going as clearly this path isn’t the one in the woods meant for you.”

The marsh was beautiful and didn’t stink like rotted leaves as most did. It started in the middle of the forest, where no marsh should be. But it was. The trees thinned out and the  sky opened onto the watery expanse where clouds seemed to dip their toes into the water as they passed through leaving only damp clothes behind.

The only way to cross was on top of a narrow, rotting, rusting boardwalk. No one could recall who put down the ties and nailed the wooden planks together. It had to have been a mucky, tiring job. But it was done and no one in the nearest village was volunteering to restore the planks that had fallen into the water, making it necessary to jump to avoid sinking a boot into the mud and possibly not getting it back.

Martha stood at the edge of the marsh shielding her eyes against the sudden sunlight with her hand. She had to go through the marsh, not on the boardwalk, but through it. She’d dreamt there was someone out lost and her dreams didn’t lie. No one would go with her (even though there were lost person posters affixed to the sides of buildings) and some called her mad (even though they’d come to her for interpretations of dreams late at night when no one would see), saying she’d lose more than her boots out on the marshes. But she had to go.

And as Martha sunk her first foot into the marsh, feeling the ground give way and hearing the slurping sound of her foot sinking, a twinkling light appeared like a candle above the water three feet in front of her. She smiled and took another step as the light led her deeper into the marsh. It might be a trick or trouble or a trap. But she had to go and might as well hope that it would lead her true.

Claire stood in front of the shop with her fists on her hips, glaring up at the broken window on the second story of the shop. This was not what she had been expecting when she purchased–sight unseen–the “quaint, village print shop in need of a new owner, a true diamond in the rough” from the advertisement posted on the printing forum. The seller had said it was a venerable old shop with plenty of business, but that the owner could no longer maintain the presses and wanted to retire somewhere warm year-round. It seemed like good fortune was finally smiling on her.

Now it looked like it was laughing.

Claire pulled out the photo that she’d been sent and held it in front of her at arm’s length. It had to be taken more than a decade ago. She shoved the key into the lock and held her breath as she winced at the squeal of the door’s hinges. When she finally stopped coughing from the dust, Claire gasped. She closed her eyes and opened them again to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. The scene in front of her didn’t change and she began to grin, then laugh as she ran around the shop like a child given a chocolate factory.

An hour later, the soft whir of a flywheel and clank of a turning press could be heard from the sidewalk along with snippets of humming from a woman who’d finally found a printing home and whose fortune seemed to like a good laugh, but ultimately had a heart, too.

I never believed the stone archways were haunted. That was talk to scare the children.

They had stood on the outskirts of my village since the time before records. No one knew who built the arches or why they were there. They weren’t like any of the other structures in our village. The rocks were all wrong. The rocks that jutted out of the hillsides that clustered around our village were sandstone yellow that glowed when the spring sun hit them just right.

The arches were made from dark and heavy stones. Stones that looked like they were frowning as they defied gravity remaining aloft in the archways even after a winter storm toppled many buildings. The stone arches remained.

No one knew where the stories of hauntings came from either, just that they always were. Everyone’s parents told them that they would leave them in the arches for the ghosts if they weren’t good or they hit their sibling or forgot to bring water to the sheep.

But I was no child and I didn’t believe in hauntings. I didn’t believe in many things. So I accepted the challenge to wait through the night in the archways to prove there were no ghosts. They were nothing more than old, mossy stones visited by the occasional bird that landed and squawked to tell me I was wasting my time.

I ignored the whispers that seemed to seep out of the cracks between the stones. Just nerves. Nothing to worry about, even when the sun goes down. I fingered the pendant around my neck. Nothing to worry about at all.

“I hate walking the ridgeline, Dad,” Martin said kicking a pebble on the trail off into the brush with the toe of his dusty boot. “Can’t we send someone else?”

His father looked down at him, shading his eyes with one hand against the strengthening late morning sun. “And who would you have go in your stead?” He didn’t wait for an answer and resumed walking his long-legged gait that wasn’t hurried, but wasn’t slow either.

Martin glared across the ridgeline for  a moment longer before following. He couldn’t send anyone else in his place. It was his duty to walk the ridgeline, just like it was his father’s. Inheritance was cruel that way. It was boring, dirty, and hard–three things that didn’t do much to recommend it. He had wished for any other job, but such was his lot. Walking the ridgeline where every day was the same.

His father halted in front of him, causing Martin to stumble before he was pulled down to his knees on the trail. An overhanging branch scratched at his face.

“What the–” Martin began, but was cut short by his father’s weathered palm against his mouth.

His father pointed two fingers of his other hand at his eyes, then gestured across the ridgeline. Martin followed and gasped.

At the edge of his vision he saw a glinting light, a reflection off something that shouldn’t be. Martin’s heart flipped and his mouth went dry.

“Go,” his father said. “Get back to town and stay below the treeline.”

“What about you?”

“I’m gonna’ get closer.”

His father began moving and disappeared into the brush before Martin could even open his mouth to protest or say goodbye. Suddenly all he wanted was boring. Amazing how wishes changed.

“You can get him out, right?” Edith asked, tugging at Maryann’s skirt as they walked up the hill. “He looks so sad. You’ve got to, please, please, please!”

“Let go, sweetie.” Maryann removed Edith’s hand and held it as they turned up at the fork in the road. “Let’s get there and see what we can do.”

“But you have to fix him!” Edith squinted up against the brilliant noontime sun to look her in the eye. “You just have to.”

Against such pleading, Maryann had always been helpless to do anything but what Edith wanted, whether that was picking berries by starlight because she said they tasted better or trying to free a cougar that she insisted had been tricked into stone. It had been this way since Edith came into the world and Maryann knew it would be this way until she left the world.

Edith stopped walking, yanking on Maryann’s hand. “There he is! Doesn’t he look sad?”

Maryann shaded her eyes with her free hand. The rock formation hadn’t been there yesterday when she’d gone to the pass to trade goods with the caravan. She frowned. It wasn’t good. Not good at all. Someone mettling with her woods.

“You see him, right?”

“Clear as your nose,” Maryann said with a smile she didn’t feel. “Give me back my hand so I can help him.”

Edith let go as fast as she could and stepped back.

Maryann stepped off the path and walked around the rock formation, the shadows forming the poor beast’s face and haunches and even its tail. She came back to her starting point and laid her hand on the beast. “Please let this work,” she whispered too quiet for Edith to hear.

Edith paced back and forth on the path, her feet kicking up bits of rock, worrying her hands as Maryann worked. Just when both had almost given up hope as the sun sank behind the tallest trees on the mountain, Maryann felt a tremble beneath her hand and watched a pebble fall away from the cat’s head.

“Be careful,” the woman said as she passed me on the trail. “There’s something that speaks through the rock up there. I’m not sure if it can be trusted.”

I raised an eyebrow. She didn’t read like someone who heard voices in the woods, but then, I never was a great judge of character.

She looked back up to where the path jogged behind a grove of pine trees and was lost to the shadows then back at me. She sighed and it mixed with the wind. “Don’t pay me any mind, then, but you’ll see.”

She resumed walking and I lost sight of her around the next bend. Shaking my head, I continued walking up the hill and deeper into the forest.

“Never can tell who is mad and who isn’t by sight,” I said to myself as I raised my hand to shade my eyes from the sun that cut across the path in the wake of a fallen tree.

“Isn’t that the truth?” a voice asked behind me. It made me think of rumbles deep in the earth.

I spun around, but no one else was on the path. “Hello?” I asked, feeling at once silly and anxious for hearing voices.

“Hello, indeed. I’m down here, not up there.”

I looked down, sweeping my eyes over the sides of the path and when they came to rest on the face staring back at me from the rock, I screamed.