The Edge of Strange Hollow by Gabrielle Byrne (best affordable ebook reader txt) 📕

prow with a long pole, raising and dropping it into the water as if he were measuring the depth of the water instead of traveling it. He raised it up, and dropped it down … raised it up, and dropped it down. Poppy watched the water race by as they picked up speed. She could have sworn slender shadows slipped through the water alongside them as they passed.

It was only minutes—though Poppy was certain it was a long way across—until he drove them up the estuary of the Veena river, whose tributaries ran all over the Grimwood. The boat sped along, turning the canopy of trees to a blur, as though time and space were only inklings of their imagination.

They jerked to the right as the river took a different path, or perhaps it was a different river altogether. It curved, veering violently, first to one side and then the other. Poppy and Nula clung together. Nula’s tail was wrapped so tight around Poppy’s ribs that she gasped for air. Mack threw himself on top of Dog to hold them in, gripping the side of the boat.

At one point, Poppy thought she heard a feral scream, and wondered if there were things other than rocks and fallen branches in the water, bucking at their little craft to try to dislodge them.

All the while, the Boatman laughed, the sound growing sharper in her ears—a hundred tiny knives, cutting away her hopes and bravery with each passing moment.

When the boat stopped at last, back at the dock where they had first begun, all of them—even Dog—toppled onto the dock like it was the sweetest of homecomings. Nula and Poppy stumbled to their feet. Dog wobbled after them.

“He took us on the cheapskate’s route.” Nula gulped. “We’re lucky to be alive.” She rose to point a finger at Poppy. “Never again.”

Poppy crossed her heart.

The still air in the wood was already thick with the heat of the day. Huge stands of pale birch scattered through the woods and made it look brighter, their white bark and shivering leaves both beautiful and eerie. Through the trees, Poppy could see that the sun was nearly halfway up the sky.

“Which way to the faeries?” Poppy asked. Mack’s face grew stormy.

Nula pointed. “That way. West.”

Mack had turned away to look across the river into the woods toward Strange Hollow. “When we do go back, we should stay on this side of the river. It will take longer, but at least we won’t have to run from the banshee.”

“You know,” Nula said, swatting a mosquito with her tail. “I’ve been thinking about that banshee.”

Mack raised an eyebrow and led the way, setting a fast pace westward, as if he was eager to get it over with. “What about her?”

Poppy and Dog fell in on one side of Mack, not quite at a run to keep up.

Nula caught up on the other side of Mack. “I’m thinking it might not have been a gravestone.”

Poppy grimaced and slapped a mosquito. “What else could it have been?”

“A passage stone.”

“What’s a passage stone?” Poppy asked.

“That’s not a real thing,” Mack scoffed at the same time.

“It is too.”

“It is not. Maybe they were a real thing a long time ago, but if they were, I don’t think they do what the stories say anymore,” Mack said, pulling a face. “Now they’re just markers. That’s all.”

“Why have I never heard of this?” Poppy nudged Mack and almost tripped over a fallen branch. They were moving so fast, she had to keep her eyes on the ground.

“Nothing to tell.”

Nula’s ear twitched. “My people used to use them all the time—they say. Just because you’ve never—”

“Well, has it happened to you?”

“No, but—”

Mack had never sounded so smug. “Do you know anyone it’s happened to?”

Nula scowled.

“Well, there you go. Not every old story is true. The stones are just really old markers. They have symbols on them. The end.”

Nula turned to Poppy. “You know those standing stones at the edge of the Grimwood?”

“The big ones with the symbols carved in them?”

“Yeah. Those are passage stones. There are stories that say they can take you somewhere else.”

Mack nose-sighed.

Nula ignored him. “Every time you walk past one there’s a chance you’ll wind up in some other part of the Grimwood.”

“Kind of like when someone goes into the fog?” Poppy asked, wondering why she hadn’t read about this in any of her parents’ journals.

Nula shrugged. “I don’t know anything about the fog,” she admitted.

Poppy stopped walking, closing her eyes for a few seconds to try to picture where she had seen the tall stones before. “Hey, wait up,” she called, hurrying to catch up to Mack. “So, that big stone at the edge of the trees just down the valley. Is that one?”

Mack lifted a shoulder. “Yeah.”

“What about all the stones where the kids play?” she added. “Those can’t be … what did you call them?”

Nula had fallen behind. “Passage stones,” she called.

“I don’t know,” Mack admitted, slapping at a mosquito. “Maybe. But there’s nothing magical about them. They’re just stones.”

“Huh.” Poppy had to admit, it did seem pretty unlikely. There had to be at least seven of them right in the valley. Kids played around them all the time, and she’d never heard of anyone falling through one into the Grimwood.

Nula was still talking behind them. “Some of them are really old—especially the ones in the wood. That’s what made me wonder. Sometimes they’re pretty mossy and crumbly, like that one with the banshee.”

“So, are you saying that might be why the banshee’s not in my parents’ journals? That’s why they’ve never seen her?”

Mack slowed down to let Nula catch up. She cocked her head at Poppy. “Is that what I’m saying? I just thought maybe that’s why she was so aggressive—she was there by accident. That maybe it wasn’t her gravestone at all.”

Mack interrupted. “What, like she fell through from somewhere else?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” A wicked grin spread over Nula’s face. She shot a look at Mack. “We could walk by