The Goblin Wood - By Hilari Bell Page 0,2

had had time to go back to sleep before unfolding her fear-stiffened legs. She took two bags of dried meat and let herself out the kitchen door, leaving it wide with a quiet wish that every cat in the village would invade the place.

On her way out the back gate she kicked over the goblin bowl. She flinched reflexively as it tipped, but of course there had been no milk or table scraps in the goblin bowls for months now - no bad luck, likely, from tipping over an empty bowl.

But the fragment of memory she had suppressed earlier swirled through her mind. "It's dangerous to meddle with things like that . . . upsets balances . . . turns nature against you. And besides . . . if she's getting rid of the goblins, likely we hedgewitches wil be next."

Makenna clung to the side of the road where the scruffy bushes promised some cover. It was hard going, hauling the now-stuffed grain sack through the brush. The village was in the center of a vast area of reclaimed marshland. The soil was rich, the lake behind the dike provided sufficient water even in the driest years, and the land was almost completely flat. You could see several miles down the road from the village. Makenna was taking no chances, not now, with her goal so close.

She'd come almost far enough to walk on the road without being seen when a stick, concealed in last year's dead grass, caught her foot and she fell. She lit soft, but she had fallen earlier and skinned her knees - it was the memory as much as the pain that made her breath catch on a sob.

Her arms overflowing with the large, untidy col ection of her mother's spell books, she hadn't even seen the rock that turned under her foot. She was running, so she fell hard, the books exploding out of her arms, sending loose sheets of parchment flying among the wil ows that ringed the house.

"Hide the spell books," her mother had whispered fiercely, piling them into her hands. "They're my life's work, love. Hide them and keep them safe. Use them."

Scrambling on bleeding knees after the notes and fragments of spells, herbals, scraps of granny lore, and even ordinary recipes that her mother not only inherited from her mother, but had gathered from every passing tinker and vagabond hedge-witch, Makenna was stil near enough to peer through the screen of branches when the mob reached the house. They had mil ed uneasily outside the door, some looking down as if to conceal their faces, but she knew them al , oh, yes, she knew them. Including their most recent resident. Mistress Manoc looked sober, except when she forgot to control her expression. Then a smug look twitched over her face and lingered until she banished it.

Makenna heard Goodman Branno's voice raised to shril ness. "Come out, Ardis. You're accused of sorcery. Your power comes from demons, and you know their names."

That had stunned Makenna, for her mother knew no more of demons' names than anyone else in the vil age. In fact, she'd sometimes wondered if her mother believed in demons - or even the Dark One. She could barely hear her mother's quiet voice replying, soothing, delaying them while Makenna got the books away. She'd been told to save the books, so she'd gathered them and hidden them, wasting time she might have spent thinking ahead, finding tools to cut a chain, finding a weapon. . . .

Makenna's stomach was twisting again. Her eyes stung, but she refused to weep anymore. Weeping wouldn't get it done.

She stood and hauled the sack onto the road. She hated these books now, but her mother had told her to save them and she would. They were her mother's life's work - the fragments of knowledge she had snatched up and preserved, despite the church's decree that only priests could possess any knowledge of magic. It had not occurred to Makenna until much later that in sending her to save the books, her mother had been saving her as well. It was easier walking on the road, and she made good time. Better time than she had made that morning, crawling through the bushes on the far side of the dike, striving desperately to get to the long dock that hung over the lake in time.

Now as she drew near the dike, she missed the rhythmic thudding of the pump that started