Page 26 of When the Woods Go Silent

Why isn’t Ruby afraid of the woods and the night, like other humans? She seems to relish the darkness, come alive in the velvet black of the forest.

What is she looking for?

And how thefuckdid she see me this time, through my fae invisibility glamor? Am I somehow slipping in my power by spending too much time among gobbelins?

The words I overheard her say today run on a loop through my head:I’d embrace the magic and suck it in deep... I’ve never felt at home. Anywhere at all, besides maybe these woods...

I understand that feeling on a primal level, but I wonder if she’d feel the same about magic if she saw my powers. If she got a good look at my true form, the ruthless beast behind thepretty-boy glamor of the gobbelin magic. I wonder if she’d still feel at home in the woods if she knew they were always listening, taking in every word and storing it away in the rings of their trunks.

All those words, trapped in the rings, sliced paper-thin, and bound into the books she reads.

Humans have no idea what hidden magic they hold every day, every time they hold a book. Layers upon layers of words - spells, really. Secrets. Magic. And the only story they remember how to read is the topmost one.

What would this pretty little human do, if I showed her how to see beyond the inky surface?

The idea burrows into my mind as I make my way into the deepest parts of the trees, to a hidden, ice-crusted cave miles from Ruby’s shop. At the edge of the rocks, I kneel and dig my fingers into the moss, unleashing my ice magic and sinking under the ground as it opens like a mouth to swallow me whole.

The magic guides me down, following the frozen paths that Julianna built all those winters ago. Deeper and deeper I slide, pressing through the soil like a stake shoved into the heart of the forest.

Pungent black dirt crumbles around me as I drop into an open chamber, the pebbles and insects and pieces of broken roots chafing away with a flick of magic, leaving me clean and dry. There are gobbelins here to greet me, bowing low in respect and deference to my authority. I ignore them and keep moving, examining each of the blood chambers without a word.

The restaurant is a simple ruse - a honeyed trap for the weakest ones.

These ice-block chambers, filled with sleeping, dreaming humans, are the real reason I’m on Earth.

“The newest ones are settling in well.”

I turn at the gravelly voice and nod to Idris, my first in command. She wears her long black braids only on one side, the other side of her head shaved clean. She’s smaller than many of the other gobbelins, and twice as fierce because of it. Of all the gobbelins I’ve ever met, she’s the only one I’ve allowed myself to fully trust.

“No reactions to the sleeping potions?” I ask as usual, bending over a young human and peeling back the heavy furs to examine his body. The skin is pale and warm to the touch, his blood like a blue river underneath, driven in an endless, enticing loop by the steady beat of his heart.

“None. They continue to sleep well here. You were right not to let them be moved to Haret.”

I give her a knowing look, and she bites back a smirk. Julianna had lost hundreds before, trying to transport them home, and thousands more to undisciplined gobbelins. She never cared about the cost of life, of course, but things are different now. Humans speak to each other with the lightning speed of technology. They see things with cameras that they could never have seen before. Missing people don’t go easily unnoticed any longer, and my mother’s impatience was threatening the entire operation.

My solution works because it’s simple, and that’s how I sold it to Julianna. She doesn’t care that it also lets them live, with less pain under our magic than anything their doctors can access.

“Do you have the samples ready?” I ask, letting Idris cover the sleeping man again as I stride into the next cavern. Dozens more humans are here, and more in the next rooms. We have over three hundred now, hooked to the same plastic tubing they invented, each giving us half a liter of blood per day.

Julianna used to allow the gobbelins to feed at will, and dead humans were an everyday problem. Now, almost none die to violence, and our gobbelin army grows strong with their blood.

Idris hands me a tray of vials, each filled with a mouthful of ruby-colored blood. I unscrew the tops, inhaling the sweetness before drinking them one by one, tasting the quality of my hard work. They’ve been well-taken care of, and the magic bristles sharper and keener in my veins with each swallow, gifting me with the potent strength of human blood.

They’re fools to have forgotten their own power, but who am I to complain?

“When was she here last?” I ask, finishing the last vial. My heart beats like thunder in my ears, and I feel as though I could cut down dozens of fae without tiring.

“Your mother has been in Haret since your visit two weeks ago,” Idris claims, but I know Julianna was sneaking around Clearwater just this week. She has her own methods of coming and going that Idris has no way to see.

“And you’re happy enough here?”

It’s a question I ask her from time to time, but I’m not asking Idris if she’s content living underground in the blood mines. She nods, her black eyes glinting with the promise of violence.

One day - hopefully very soon - the two of us will catch Julianna unaware. Her obsession with fighting the fae costs our people too much. Idris and I don’t care if the fae princes keep Aralia, as long as they let the gobbelins have the Sans Cerre Mountains in Haret, and the deep forests of Earth.

“Long live Magriel,” Idris answers softly, giving the right answer to my coded question. Magriel no longer exists - when the vampires evolved from gobbelins and then the werewolves evolved from them, our homeland of Magriel was crushed and crumbled into oblivion. Gobbelins disappeared, and Haret believed we were extinct.

It was better that way. Easier to survive hidden in the mountains and ice caves if we were nothing more than bedtime stories. Easier to grow strong while nobody was hunting us.

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