Dirty Little Secrets

Lodan arrived just in time to see the dark stranger and his shadows disappear through the portal.

Eh? What’s this? he thought. Slowly he circled round the portal to the right, three times. He pulled the silver pennywhistle out of his knapsack and softly began to play a tune on it. With each breath a luminous green mist appeared to come from the end of the whistle, which slowly wound its way around the portal as if tying it up in a glowing green net of knotwork.

As Lodan continued to play the pennywhistle, the magical net and the portal inside it became smaller and smaller, until it was no bigger than a small sack. He picked the sack up and seemed to step sideways for a moment, at which point an observer might say he’d disappeared, yet he merely shifted into another location on the Isle of Dreams… the edge of the Nightmare Forest.

Lodan once again stepped sideways and materialized at the edge of the Nightmare Forest, where he was greeted by a group of goblins. Recognizing Lodan and the mission he was on, the goblins, being an honorable bunch, traded a magnificent hunting knife with decorated scabbard for the magical bag containing the portal.

They jabbered with delight at his acceptance of their trade and scampered off into the heart of the Nightmare Forest with their prize. Lodan chuckled watching them go and stashed the hunting knife in his knapsack. Then he turned himself into a white stag and began the journey home to Áine, making quicker progress than he had on the way out of the mountains. And no one ever saw him pass.

The goblins, in the meantime, began to wager and gamble amongst each other for the magical bag, and late one night one of them snuck off and got lost in the heart of a pitch black bog, where the magical bag containing the portal was dropped.

Áine emerged from the bedroom a few hours later, looking rather dishevelled, but happy. I wish the DreamMistress was here… she’d never believe me if I told her what just happened here. I hardly believe any of this myself… and I was there for it. Áine chuckled, as she made her way to the bath, wincing because she was sore… a good kind of sore feeling, it was.

Lodan was gone for about a week, and in that time Áine kept busy with the chores around the house. The snow was almost gone, and it would soon be time to plant the garden. Each day the sun became a little warmer, and in the afternoons she would take her tea outside and sit in the sun reading a good book.

One day she glanced up to see a white stag on top of one of the peaks, looking down at her. It bugled and then suddenly it shapeshifted into the form of a man.

“LODAN!” she called, and he looked at her and carefully made his way down the slope towards the woman he loved, and their house on the island in the middle of the lake.

“Áine!” Lodan said, smiling, as he reached her and they held each other, “I brought you something.” He reached into his knapsack and brought out the hunting knife he had gotten from the goblins.

Áine liked the knife. It had a carved handle in the shape of a raven’s head, a wicked-looking ten inch blade of highly figured damascus, and a number of small silver runes inlayed into the dark wood near the blade. She looked more closely at them and saw that they were in the Old Tongue and each was imbued with a different kind of magical property. The scabbard was made of polished wood, the same sorts of runes embedded in it, matching those on the handle. The knife would only go into the scabbard when those runes matched. The blade was balanced perfectly and fit into her hand as if it were made for her.

She looked up at Lodan’s face to see him smiling at her. “You got this from goblins?” she asked, a wry smile forming at the corners of her mouth.

“Aye, but I don’t think they made that, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.

“No, I don’t think goblins could read this even if they wanted to… I’m just wondering how they came to have it, and where it came from,” Áine mused. Lodan took it carefully from her hands and attached it to the belt encircling her waist.

“Thank you for the gift, Lodan.” From her kiss, he knew how much she’d missed him. They walked towards the house together, and just before reaching the door, Lodan picked her up and carried her across the threshold. He closed the door behind them with his foot.

Later that evening after he’d told her everything that had happened while he was away, Áine went into the library with her tea. She sat at the desk and took out quill and parchment and began writing…

Dearest Dagoba,

Although I haven’t heard from you, nor seen the messenger pigeon that I sent some months ago, I feel certain you’ve received my other letter and that you are taking good care of the bird, else it would have returned here by now, I’m thinking. Lodan… oh, Lodan is the name of the one who was living out here and we’ve… well, we’re together now (more on that later)… anyway he has told me about the dark stranger he encountered in the Enchanted Forest and about the portal he’d found there. He traded that to some goblins in the Nightmare Forest for a hunting knife for me. It’s an unusual weapon, and one I’m sure you would find most interesting!

We’re planning on making the journey to Akkadia in a few weeks so I can show you the knife then. We plan to be handfasted! Surprised? No, I didn’t think you were, I remember when you wouldn’t read my fortune before I left… you Knew He was out here, didn’t you? I suppose if you’d have told me then, though, things might not have worked out this way, hmmm?

At any rate, I’ll see you when we get there. I just wanted to let you know we were coming. We have lots of catching up to do.

With Love,

Áine

She rolled the parchment up and put it into the leather tube, then went out to the stable and found a pigeon willing to fly and deliver the message. She attached the tube, and set the pigeon free outside, and it flew off in the direction of Akkadia. She hoped the message would get there in time.