Had she come for their dinner? Pansy wondered. Admittedly, the woman would not have been the only one, lured in by therich aroma of fat rendered in a honey glaze. A cat-like creature, its coat black as night save for its white belly, had already settled onto its hindlegs beside the largest of the trolls, watching the spit turn with hungry eyes. However, it seemed the woman had a different prize in mind.
She darted in without warning, her pale skin a bone-white blur against the fire’s flickering shadows. A quick snip of her shears, and she retreated once more; now, with a few sprigs of green clutched in her palm, each a perfect match for the trolls’ new bald spots. Not that they seemed to care – or even notice, really.
A witch, then. Collecting ingredients for a spell, no doubt. And though Pansy had insisted the rowan branch Ren had offered her was unnecessary, she suddenly found herself acutely grateful for its presence, pressing her palm over its shape in her pocket. Who knew what else she might encounter this night?
Pansy let out a startled shout as a kite trailing the bleached-white remains of some sort of serpent swooped low overhead, narrowly missing the top of her head before cresting upwards to join its equally macabre brethren in a cackle of clattering bones. How they managed to stay airborne in a cavern seemingly devoid of even the faintest breeze Pansy didn’t know. Goblin magic, she assumed.
“Are you okay?” Ren asked, her shrieks, for once, eliciting concern rather than amusement.
“Fine,” Pansy said, resisting the urge to tuck her hair behind her ears as heat bloomed across her cheeks. She’d covered them for a reason; one rendered all the more salient now that half the market’s eyes were on her – though, thankfully, only for a moment. Her “disguise” was evidently working. “I just didn’t expect… that.”
“Do children in your village not play with kites?”
“Kites? Yes. Skeleton kites? Absolutely not. Though…” Pansy cocked her head to the side, surveying the kites circling overhead anew. “I suppose the bones add an interesting dimension to the whole thing. It’s almost like the skeletons themselves are moving.” A beat. “Is it bad that my first thought was that you could pull off a great prank with one of these?”
Ren grinned, all feral, bright-eyed delight. “Councilor Millwood won’t know what hit her.”
She laughed. “It’s like you read my mind. Anything else we can add to her night of terror?”
“Well…”
Kites, it turned out, weren’t the only thing goblins had outfitted with a skeletal twist, ever-determined to find a use for anything and everything. Pansy should’ve known as much after passing more than a handful of shops selling nothing but bones, all cleaned and polished to perfection. Even so, the sight of several skeleton marionettes, dancing along to the cheery jig that spilled from a strange, box-like contraption, gave her quite the shock.
“Wait… How are they…? No one’s moving them!” Pansy gasped.
“Modified featherflight talismans, I assume. Am I right?” Ren asked, turning towards the especially slight goblin operating the box’s crank.
“Yep!” chirped the goblin in-between ragged breaths. Evidently, keeping the contraption running took a significant amount of effort on her part. “Course, it’s nothing compared to some of the artifices the gnomes put out, but, well, it gets the job done.”
“I think it’s amazing,” Pansy blurted out. “The fact thatyou managed to get them all to move in sync with the music! Honestly, it makes me want to dance myself. Speaking of…” She turned to Ren expectantly.
They blinked at her. “Wait. You want to dance? Here?With me?”
She chuckled. “Who else? Unless some other charming goblin would like to step in…”
The goblin working the crank barely had enough time to blush before Ren snatched up Pansy’s hands. “Fine,” they said, pulling her nearly flush against them. “But I’m a terrible dancer.”
“It’s okay,” Pansy assured them, her skin already warming beneath their touch. “I fully expect to get upstaged by the marionettes anyway.”
And they did. Badly. Ren’s movements were stiff, uncertain. They spent so much time thinking about what to do next that they completely divorced themself from the actual beat; not even the marionettes, with their loud, percussion-like clacks, could get them back on track. And still, Pansy had never had more fun in her life.
She grinned the whole time, giggling as the furrow between Ren’s brow deepened with each mistimed step. Perhaps it would have been easier if she’d led; it would certainly have saved her feet from being trodden upon more than a few times. Yet Pansy liked the way Ren’s hand fitted against the curve of her waist, the way they drew her towards them with every movement, as if that alone was all that mattered.
Granted, she couldn’t deny that some dancing lessons were in order. No way the two of them would be able to keep up with the rest of Haverow at the Flower Dance come spring, at this rate.
Except, there wasn’t going to be a Flower Dance. Not forthem.
How quickly reality rushed to reassert itself, sweeping through her with a baleful chill that not even the warmth of Ren’s hands could thaw. She faltered, stumbling for the first time, her stomach plummeting into the space between her feet.
Ren, taking this as a criticism of their dancing abilities, pulled back with a huff. “I warned you,” they grumbled.
“No, it’s not that,” Pansy said, almost breathless in her haste. “I was just thinking about the future. About Haverow.”
“Ah.”
She winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring down the mood. Come on. Let’s keep exploring. What about that storyteller you told me about? Do you know where they might be?”
Ren shook their head. “We’ll just have to take a look around and see if we can spot them.”
