Runelight Signed Paperback - Aenigma Lights Book 1

• An ancient puzzle box holding untold mysteries.
• A brother’s journal full of letters and stories and maps.
• A haunted ravine.
• Secrets that go back centuries
• An elven wood with plenty of secrets of its own.
• Two women who start out annoying each other but end up nearly friends.
• Dwarf twins. (Double trouble.)
• A mage trapped in animal bodies.
• A quirky, mute gnoblin who can make anything out of anything.
• And, as always, a mismatched band of adventurers who become a found family.

“Do you smell that?” Kate dropped the handles of the heavy wheelbarrow and straightened. The disorienting scent filled the air, and she grabbed the corner of the horse stall to steady herself. Splinters dug into her palm, and the sharp, tangible pain chased away the elusive smell.

The sound of her younger brother tossing straw inside the stall stopped, and she regretted her question immediately.

Evan’s eyes, half covered by his mop of curly red hair, poked around the end of the wall. “Smell what?”

Of course he didn’t smell it. No one ever seemed to.

Although, if anyone were to notice something strange, it should be her ten-year-old brother who was endlessly amused by anything odd.

“It’s…” Kate turned and stepped toward the open barn door, trying to recapture the peculiar scent—one of the few that kept plaguing her. It was like the bright scent of the evergreen boughs her mother hung on the lintel in Midwinter, blended with the smell of the woods after the rain.

Except there wasn’t a pine tree in sight. Nothing but bare oaks and maples covered the hillside next to the barn, their branches dusted with the light green of early spring.

And above them, the sky stretched over the valley in a clear, cloudless blue.

“I cleaned out all the dung, Katria,” Evan declared. “I swear.”

“Not that kind of smell.” Her words were quiet enough even she could barely hear them. “Pines…after a rainstorm.” She shook her head at how poorly that captured it and sniffed again.

It was gone, though, leaving only the warm scent of straw drifting out of the barn.

“Never mind,” she said, but the rustling sounds of her brother working drowned out her words.

She pushed her long auburn braid back over her shoulder and was turning back to the wheelbarrow when a strange sensation prickled at her. She took a tentative step out of the door and stopped.

The whole world felt…off.

The morning air was chilly, but a slight warmth pushed against her cheek from the nearby rows of green shoots growing in the wheat field.

On the other side of the barn, the forested hillside was bright enough that she squinted against it.

Except it wasn’t bright. It was the same bare branches and hints of spring green from yesterday.

She shrank back into the shadow of the barn. Just some trick of the light? The sky was clear, the sun its usual self. Her eyes traced the shape of the bright-but-not bright hill, finding everything about it both ordinary and foreign at the same time.

She peered down at the river running past the end of the farm, and her shoulders relaxed.

The water level was high on the rocky riverbank, churning white and foamy over huge submerged boulders, but the light green current, browned a little from the rush of spring rain, looked completely ordinary.

She soaked in the familiarity of its rapids and ignored the unnatural warmth and brightness of everything else.

A flicker of motion caught her eye from the hillside past the water. A strip of red fabric fluttered from the branch of a dead tree.

She clutched the doorframe next to her.

“Evan!” She stared at the little flicker of scarlet, as though it were another trick that was about to shift back to the usual blue. “A red flag at the mine!”

“Red?” Evan scrambled out of the stall and around the wheelbarrow, skidding up next to her. “What’s Bo doing there? Ma sent him to the market!” He tossed the pitchfork into the corner and ran out the door. “C’mon!”

“Wait…” Kate glanced back into the barn. “The chores…” But the flag was red, and no signal flag in all their years had ever been red. Not from the tree fort near the river, or the rock fort up the hill, or in the months since they’d discovered the mine.

Her feet stayed locked to the floor for a breath before she shoved away from the door and ran after her brother.

Evan was two years younger than her, but his legs had grown like weeds in the past year, and his long strides ate up the distance to the river. Kate stretched her shorter legs to catch up. The wheat field crowded close to the path, little waves of warmth rolling off the rows of green. She pointedly ignored them, focusing on the fluttering bit of red on the hillside across the water.

What called for a red flag? Since Bo had turned sixteen, Ma had taken to sending him on longer errands. “Because he never gets himself into trouble he can’t get out of,” she’d say with a pointed look at Evan. But Bo shouldn't be back yet, and why would he go to the mine alone?

The twinge of disappointment at being left behind was quickly overrun by a picture of him bleeding in the dark of the tunnels, and she ran faster.

Evan reached the rope bridge strung across the river a dozen paces before her. He slowed as he stepped onto the wooden slats, setting the bridge to rocking.

Kate’s foot hit the first plank before he was halfway across. She paused, wrapping her hands around the rough rope that was knotted into a tall net-like railing. It rose above her elbows like a barrier between her and the rushing water, and she gripped it, forcing herself to wait until he was only steps from the far side.

He wasn’t quite off before she started. The wood shivered and shifted under her weight, but she slid her hands along the scratchy rope and used the smooth, rhythmic pace that kept the bridge from swaying erratically.

The rapids swirled beneath her, wild and fast. Pools of rusted green spun between roiling patches of froth. The rushing of the turbulent water blocked out any other sounds.

The cool air over the river blew away the last of the strange heat from the field, and she jumped over the last few slats onto the other bank. There was no sign of Evan, and she raced down the short path that ran along the riverbank.

Her feet pounded around the turn as the trail veered sharply uphill, narrowing until it was nearly choked out by the tall scrubby bushes of the steep hillside. They nagged at her with a barely perceptible warmth, but she shook away the sensation.

A branch scratched against her arm as she ran around the first switchback and caught sight of Evan, rounding the second.

Her legs burned and her breath came fast before she reached the third turn and the black opening of the mine came into view.

“Bo!” Evan shouted, ducking under the thick beam that ran over the entrance.

She reached the mouth of the mine, and the scent of rain-drenched pines swirled past her again. Spinning, she cast a wary look over the valley.

There was nothing. No pines, and definitely no rain.

“He’s here!” Evan called. “He took one of the lanterns.”

Kate pushed away questions about irrational smells and hurried into the mine without needing to even dip her head under the beam. The floor of what they’d dubbed the Entrance Hall was worn nearly smooth, and the walls were speckled with familiar shadows and wooden beams. A half-dozen tunnels wound out of it, disappearing into darkness.

“Bo?” Kate called, her voice echoing back high and frightened.

“Maybe he found a way to see how deep Shadow Grave Shaft goes.” Evan knelt to light the remaining lantern.

“That’s hardly a reason for an emergency flag. What if he’s hurt? Stuck somewhere?” Kate moved to the first tunnel on the left. “Bo!”

“If he were stuck somewhere, he wouldn’t have been able to put up the red flag,” Evan pointed out.

Kate paused. “That’s true.”

“He must be fine, and seeing the bottom of Shadow Grave would call for more than the usual blue ‘I’m at the mine’ flag.” Evan took his lantern to the second tunnel on the right. “Maybe it really is a grave and he found skeletons at the bottom!” He started down the tunnel, and his lantern cast dim golden light on the slats of wood bracing the Western Wing Passage. “Or it’s a pit where goblins were thrown!” He turned around a corner, and the lantern light disappeared

Kate leaned into the second tunnel on the left, straining to see any light from Bo. “Goblins?”

“Goblins!” Evan’s voice echoed slightly muffled from behind her.

The enthusiastic tone in her brother’s voice drew a huff of laughter out of her as she headed toward the next tunnel opening in the dim recesses of the Entrance Hall.

“There have never been goblins in the Wildwood,” she called.

Her brother didn’t answer, and the idea made her pause.

Goblins didn’t smell like pines after the rain, did they?

The tunnel Evan had disappeared into was utterly black, and the silence of the mine settled around her like a blanket. Nothing but dim sunlight filtered to the back of the Entrance Hall, and the mouths of two tunnels gaped open in front of her, thick with shadows and darkness.

What if Bo had found goblins?

In the closer of the two tunnels, a trace of light caught on something claw-like and sharp.

Rocks skittered behind her, and she whirled around.

Instead of goblin teeth, Bo’s wide, crooked smile greeted her as he stuck his head out of the first tunnel. His dark hair stood up on his head, a sure sign that he’d been excitedly running his hands through it. He raised an eyebrow. “What’s got you so jumpy, Ria?”

The familiar nickname was like an extra bit of light dribbling into the mine, and her shoulders loosened.

“Goblins!” Evan came back into view with a grin. “From Shadow Grave Shaft.”

With both brothers there, the Entrance Hall fell back into its familiar shapes.

Kate cast another glance toward the dark tunnel, but the claw shape was nothing but a jagged bit of stone. “There are no goblins,” she said, trying to make her voice firm.

She turned back to Bo, searching him for any signs of injuries. “Why the red flag?”

“Because!” He flashed a smile at Kate that was both nervous and exhilarated. “We’re almost out of time! They could be here at any moment!”

• 736 pages