Publisher's Synopsis
The greenway had named after had had a lot of different names itself down through the centuries. Most reflecting the fears folk had about what type of creatures they were most liable to meet along the green way if they were foolish enough to venture along it. Hobbs Lane had been one of the names it had had in days so long ago now no one could remember them anymore. Hob being an antiquated name for Satan, or Old Nick, or the Devil, nobody used anymore. In those far off days it had often also been called Waylands Way, in reference to Wayland, the Smith, or Volund as he was also called by more learned folk, a god of the Norse people, who had become a devil to those not of that faith. Pucks Lane and Pans Lane were other names it had down through the centuries. Both referring to the satyr whose pipes would summon all manner of nightmarish creatures to follow their call. Elves and pixies, hobgoblins and spirits. Trolls and imps. Sylphs and Sprites and fairies, all were said to 4 have haunted the lane at various times during its existence. And if that hadn't been enough, there was a legend connected with the old Green Way too.
A legend about a girl being kidnapped on her way to her wedding in Shropshire and never being seen again, some time back in the fifteen or sixteen hundreds, or thereabouts. In the garden of Greenaway Cottage, not actually hidden, but carefully positioned so you'd not notice them at all, unless you actually went looking for them, were a brace of reindeer grazing contentedly in the lee of a sleigh which looked as if it had been struck by lightning. Struck by lightning several times that is.
And the truth was that it looked that way because it had been struck by lightning. Struck by lightning several times, in fact. Whilst the two women who lived in the cottage together at that time were riding in it in fact. Rumour had it that the two women who lived in the cottage, who folk took to be sisters, weren't really sisters at all, but aunt and niece, though both their surnames were the same as that of the cottage they lived in; Greenaway.
It was also rumoured that they had brought the sleigh and the reindeer back from another dimension with the help of a third person no longer living with them and had been living quietly together in the cottage at the end of the village ever since. Causing no harm to anyone, as some people were quick to point out in their defence, but arousing a great deal of interest amongst other people in the village none the less.
It was said by those other people in the village, about the aunt and her niece, that people from the other world they'd been visiting and from which they'd returned in the sleigh which looked as if it had been struck by lightning several time, drawn by the reindeer now quietly grazing in the lee of it, sometimes visited them in reciprocal fashion in the dead of night at particular times of the year.
Times such as Lughnasad or Halloween, for example, days which were considered to be generally more magical times of the year than others. Nobody really believed the stories, though, because the ladies didn't look capable of getting out of their fireside chairs even, never mind leaving them and setting off for adventures in other dimensions.
