You know the drill, all rights reserved, this is my stuff not your stuff don’t be a jackwagon.

The warm, tangy smell of the soup embraced Gytha from the moment she opened the door, bringing unexpected tears to her eyes. It was onion soup with wine and beef stock, and no doubt there was a good, crusty loaf fresh baked this morning that would go with it. Undoubtedly, it would be served at the broad table she could see from the door, a beautifully homey, polished surface with fabric covered comfortable chairs that didn’t match.

Just now, there was a fine white cloth upon the table, and a bowl of fruit in the center sending off a pungent perfume all its own. 

If the soup hadn’t made her mouth water, the thought of one of those firm, crisp fall apples certainly would have.

Margery had looked up from the stove as the back door opened, her crooked line of a mouth softening ever so slightly as she extended her hand for the message. “Who’s sent you this way on such a raw day, m’girl?” She peered out the window, as if she would be able to see the thoughtless individual that would send a child out into the wild, wet weather. “Get you to the fire, you have at least long enough to stop shivering whilst we see what’s what here.” The stooped woman deftly relieved Gytha of the threadbare blue garment given the generous name of ‘cloak’. She settled it on a hook for drying the family’s outerwear by the fire as the tiny girl climbed up on the hearth, putting her feet as close to the flames as she dared.

“Priestess, milady. Summat about the winter feasting, if I had to guess.”

The lady of the house made a noise deep in her throat that could have been acknowledgement or disapproval. “Sure they’ll be wanting the extra hands we can chivvy to help. Seems to me sending a little bit of a thing like you out in the weather… ah, well.” Margery frowned at the sealed missive before laying it at the head of the table and turning her full attention to the small page. Eyes narrowing, she began bustling about the kitchen. “Don’t happen to have hard coin about the house, wasn’t expecting a message.”

Gytha’s stomach dropped. There wasn’t much a runty girl in the city could do to earn honest money. Most folk preferred to let the fae runners deliver messages- thanks to being able to fly, they were much faster and able to navigate the teeming streets no matter how many people clogged them.

But the fae didn’t care for flying in the kinds of howling wind and rain storms as the one that was pounding at the windows.

And the fae didn’t know about the paths of the Undercity.

Seeing the little girl’s disappointed expression, Margery began bustling about the stove again. By the time Gytha’s toes and page’s cloak were warm and dry, she had bundled up a small basket, covered with a napkin. “Here, lass, I’ve got my plea in hand, you go on and run this home to your mother, quick like a bunny now. And see you stay there, lassie! It’s too raw for a little bit like you to be about.”

Used to following authoritative voices, Gytha was up and out the door at a trot before the woman could open the door for her. Though she glanced out the window at the lane, all she saw was the wind and rain, lashing against the panes. Poor mite, to be out in a day like this, and no real home to go back to. Margery shook her head sadly as she moved on to the next task, wishing she could banish the child’s weary dark eyes from her mind as easily as wiping the crumbs from the cutting board.

She knew the heels of the loaf wouldn’t be missed today, and she could stretch a soup as far as she needed to. Running a hand over her purse, Margery soothed her conscience in knowing that had she given the child the meager coins due for running a message, it still wouldn’t have gone to food.

“Please, good lady, watch over them. Watch over us all,” Margery murmured.

Going by the tunnels was doubly better today, Gytha thought, avoiding the storm and the people, as well as keeping the basket warmer than it would have been with the thieving winds blowing. It was dark, and smelled earthy and damp, but she didn’t mind. The Undercity let her appear and disappear as she needed to, avoiding the bigger pages who would try to steal her coins or take her jobs. Or just shove her to remind her that she was the lowliest of them all.

They wouldn’t dare come down here, even though they knew about a few of the entrances. She heard them sometimes, telling stories to scare each other about what lived in the dank and the dark. Demons, they said, monsters that would steal your name so that you must serve them before they stole your soul, too. Rapers and thieves, murderers and other unsavory types, too, finding society in each other’s company as the good people of the city would not tolerate them. Sometimes they said that the Swords of Erdu should clean the tunnels out, or the mages should seal the entrances shut, to allow all those unsavory things under the city to rot. Always in a sanctimonious tone, usually by the bigger boys and girls that were merely serving as pages for a season or two before moving on to bought and paid for apprenticeships.

Even running in the dark, Gytha rolled her eyes. As though living in the light made someone better than anyone else. As though the Swords or the mages could even find all the entrances. She’d been running them for years now and was still finding new sections all the time. She turned the last corner before home and instantly her gait changed to the softest tiptoe she could manage.

Mother might be trying to rest.

Drawing the heavy curtains aside, she held her breath until her eyes saw that the thin chest still rose and fell, and Mother’s eyes were open.

The small niche they’d made comfortable with a fine feather bed and as many quilts as they could keep stitched together was the coziest place in the burrow. It needed to be; Mother needed warmth and her lungs would not tolerate smoke from a fire.

The coins that didn’t go to the healers went for the hot bricks they tucked into strips of flannel in the back corners of the niche.

It was the first time in days Gytha had been home while Mother was awake, and she rushed to show her the basket.

“Margery Fishwife didn’t have the coin, so she sent me with this!” Gytha cupped the bottom of the basket and raised her hands, presenting the gift with an uncertain smile. If only it was Mother, and she had this good, hot soup in her to help her to get better and fight off the spirit. Even if it was just for a little while, they could eat together and pretend…

… that everything would be all right again, that they were in their snug little cottage with the warming pot on the hearth. They could pretend, for just a little while, that Mother had made this soup. They could share the feather bed, and Mother would rock her and sing in the lovely soft voice.

The sunken claw emerged into the dim light, snatching away the shielding napkin and casting it upon the floor. The same tangy aroma diffused into the small room, making Gytha’s stomach growl. She’d gone so fast that there was still steam rising from the heels of bread, now makeshift trenchers filled with the pungent onion soup.

“I didn’t send you out for soup,” Mother hissed, and Gytha’s head jerked backward as though slapped. “I need coin to drive this damned thing out!” The basket fell to the floor with an unimportant thunk, and Gytha held her breath as the little apple on top spilled from it. The voice became lower and colder, crooning in a child’s taunting singsong. 

”It won’t matter- find a fortune of coins and all the healers, no one will turn me out when I do not wish to go. But it does so amuse me to watch them fail. It makes the days less dull as I wait for you, whore.” The figure withdrew into the shadows, nestling deeper into the quilts, and Gytha was relieved not to have to look upon her mother’s face while the voice that wasn’t hers spat words at her.

“Those words, they don’t mean anything, little one,” her father had said. “It’s the sick spirit talking, not your mama.” The same words he’d said over and over, rocking his tiny dark haired daughter in his arms and feeling useless. Two seasons after Mother had changed, Papa had gone away, sailing on one of the trading routes to make their fortune or find a permanent cure, he said. It was said the people of the islands were never sick, and surely they knew of some treatment beyond the healers in the city if he could convince a captain to sail there. And so, he left, sorrowful but resolute. He could not bear to watch the bitter end, though he told himself the same lies until he nearly believed them and left.

Leaving an eight year old child to mind her spirit sick mother.

The comfortable cottage where Gytha remembered onion soup for dinner on the hearth turned out not to be theirs, and they were put out within the season. The temples wouldn’t offer shelter to the invalid for fear of the other ill spirits being drawn to them and infecting others. Erdu’s warriors offered their swords, the only cure they knew and believed in, and Gytha and her father had declined, horrified at the grim solution. As for Danu’s temple, they had no cure but prayer, which Gytha had come to feel was the same solution as Erdu’s, just slower. She was still grateful to the blue robed women though, for they offered parcels of bread and broken meats and it was the High Priestess of Danu herself that had given Gytha her blue pages’ cloak.

It was the greatest kindness to be done for the child, keeping her busy earning her bread while the situation resolved itself.  The priestess had expected to see Gytha at the gate to take orders within a year’s time. 

Spirits either gave up and moved on, or clawed the body of the infected to the grave within a year, two years at the most. This was known.

What was not reckoned upon by any was how far Gytha went in search of help and how hard her mother fought the spirit. From mages to witches to healers, the girl sought them out as soon as she had enough coin to tempt them to the Undercity, always hopeful that the next mage or healer or fae would be the one, and the spirit would be cast out. New discoveries were being made every day in the great towers that purported to be the centers of all learning. 

Years passed in this way. They had been four years in the Undercity, four years of Gytha never knowing who would speak when Mother opened her eyes. Four years of spending her spare moments at the quays, watching and calling to the sailors her father’s name, hoping to hear back on the wind that he was homeward bound.

She never had. But those days feeling hope leached away by the salt spray was better than sitting here, waiting for a miracle.

Biting on her lip to keep from sobbing out loud like a baby, Gytha bowed her head and scooped up the apple and basket while shuffling across the floor to a safe distance. She had lived with this spirit long enough to know how best to keep it calm. It was always easier on Mother when the thing was calm. Once, she had seen the scars left on her mother’s body when trying to burst beyond its confines during one of its rages. “I beg thee pardon, my lady. I know if thou couldst but have gone, the coin should have been procured in haste and bounty.”

The eyes shifted, glinting, as though trying to detect mockery. “It is good that you know this, whore’s child. It is good that you show respect, for once I am free, I shall remember those that aided and those that failed. There shall be a reckoning, yes, indeed.” The hissing voice was beginning to drift off, sounding worn and tired, and Gytha held the sigh of relief behind her teeth. 

“I shall have a stronger body, one that wants me and will do my bidding.” It went on, all words Gytha had heard a thousand times before.

“Yes, my lady.” She went to the furthest corner of the room, cradling the bread in her hands, holding onto it as the warmth leached away through her fingers. Just one more thing she could have, but not keep.

Apparently the words did not please the spirit, for it roused from the self pitying rant to become soft and silky, smooth and dangerous. “Perhaps….”

Gytha’s heart began to pound in alarm. She did not dare look into the niche, keeping her eyes on the bread in her hands. It was a long moment, and she could feel the silence growing. It was waiting. It wanted her to ask. She felt it want that from her as a physical tug on her sleeve. It needed her to ask so it could say something terrible to scare and hurt. Gytha knew that was how the spirit kept its power over her. 

And she was powerless. “Perhaps, my lady?”

The spirit laughed, a sound of rusty nails being pulled from rotten boards. “Why, my little darling,” said Mother’s voice, for all the world as if she was going to draw back the coverlet and take Gytha into her arms. The shape in the quilts lunged into the light, face contorted into a death’s head rictus as the demon cackled. “Perhaps I shall take yours!”

You know the drill, all rights reserved, this is my stuff not your stuff don’t be a jackwagon.

The gentle dripping of the clock that marked all the days and nights of life within the massive keep had a character all its own, to those that troubled to listen to it.

Darandur had heard that sound echoing through the caverns for all his life. Sometimes, he felt they burbled with the joys of discovery in the deeps, urging him to follow the winding path of water deep into the stone. It was a promise to guide him home, no matter how many twists and turns the path may take.

Other days, the tempo was a steady, placid thrumming that exhorted him to calm and patience. I have measured millenia in this same way, and I will go on for always and ever, that drip said, and none of Darandur’s problems seemed all that pressing in the sound of that everlasting promise..

On this day, he found himself resting his forehead against the stone of the time piece’s edifice, trying to shut out all of the thoughts and fears racing through his mind, as his stomach burned acidly. Of a mercy, this day there were no other steps or voices, no feeling of eyes following his every move and motion, to be followed by the murmuring, always the murmuring of the Many. No one to call out the delinquency of Darandur to linger here at the dinner hour, when his family must be waiting the meal upon him.

There were many advantages to life in the keep Naradhurn had carved out of the rock at the beginning of all things. Surrounded by the most treacherous mountains in Myskaria, outsiders were not a common sight. As the treasures crafted by the inhabitants were prized and highly sought, a distant and sheltered refuge was what had kept them all safe.

When he was due for his shift, the drops had the insistence of a drumbeat, driving him out into the snows with his spear this grandmother had made for him to stand the watches and march the patrols. Darandur was honor bound to take both his and his grandmother’s duties that they keep their debts paid to the thegn.

Once, and only once, Darandur had suggested that Thegn Barhadnein would understand the challenges within the Durein clan and reduce the tithe. “The thegn has spoken fair to me this past season, and never fails to inquire for grandmother’s health.” He remembered that he had said this with a gentle smile and touch to his grandmother’s hand, rough and aged with the work of keeping them all in homely comforts. 

Without so much as moving his chair back from the dinner table or changing his expression, his father backhanded Darandur from his seat with a cuff that spilled him onto the polished stone floor. His head and shoulder took the brunt of the impact, but he bit his lip on any cry of pain. His mother’s gaze was flinty and she had opened her mouth to speak before Grandmother laid her hand upon her shoulder, her mouth a grim line while her eyes also bored into the patriarch.

Tharandur did not so much as look up from his bowl, but merely went on eating the watery stew, jaws working mechanically. His face was grey with stone dust and lined with weariness, as it always was at the end of a day spent in the damp mines. Tharandur had no touch of Gayania’s elemental gift to coax the precious ores and treasures from the stone. The Durein claim was not as profitable as it had been once, and the hours spent wresting even a meager living from it had taken a toll. 

And all knew he was too proud a man to permit the work of his wife’s hands to provide for his household’s daily bread.

The silence stretched out, unbearably tense as his ladysmith mother continued to glare at Tharandur. Darandur picked himself up off the floor, his face white where his father’s hand had fallen. He carefully kept his eyes upon the table as he resumed his seat, only a slight twitch of his fingers betraying his thoughts. Darandur was the acknowledged scion of the house, having achieved adult status from the time he first paid the family tithe. He would be within his rights to challenge his father, but a quick glance to his mother and grandmother told him this was not the time.

With his forehead’s warmth being leached away by the cold stone, it was too easy to bring the scene that had played out three seasons ago to his mind. As bad as that day had been, he would rather live it a hundred times over than have to walk into the Clan Durein home this day. It was why he was standing here instead of putting his feet on the graveled path that would take him home. 

Grandmother would be there, taking his spear and armor from him, as befit the matron of the house. She would have warm water at the hearth ready, that he might wash before sitting with his feet soaking in and not catch a chill. A hot drink would be in his hand while Grandmother cleaned and oiled his raiment, clucking over any new dings to be repaired during the next rest day.

And, if she were in a particularly good mood, with mother at her forge and father gone wherever it was fathers went, Grandmother might tell him a story.

Over the years, Darandur tried to figure out what made the stories so important, what it was that made it linger in his mind. Maybe it was the overarching tale itself, filled with adventures of a kind foreign to a small boy, safe in the depths of the keep. Maybe it was how the hero broke every rule and every tradition for reasons most mysterious, or the people and creatures met along the way. The hero was young, and wise beyond those years, and people listened when he spoke. Maybe it was the way that the hero always got out of certain doom somehow, and always managed to miraculously save the day.

Maybe it was the way Grandmother’s eyes shone when she looked at him and told him that he was her hero, her hope. It made him feel powerful and strong, determined to do the best he could for all of them.

As all the best stories, it had a hundred different parts, all of which Darandur knew by heart. He had only asked his mother for the story once, only to have her turn away, a little coldly. “I don’t know it, it is not of my kin.” That was all she had to say to cause her son to see again the great rift that they all tiptoed around, never to be spoken of.

It was best that Tharandur never knew the story was being told. While it hadn’t always been an armed truce between them, his father had never been easy in his manner, and considered stories to be a frivolous waste of time. Unlike the fathers of his agemates, Tharandur rarely made time for his son’s education, entrusting it to his own mother as he claimed was the custom of his clan since the days of old.

There was one day his father had taken up a teaching, though, that came unwillingly to Darandur’s mind as he stood, listening to the endless dripping of the clock.

They had been out in the clear air, running the snare line in the deepest part of winter. Normally a duty that fell to the women of the clan, with their more nimble fingers to set the traps, Tharandur had taken it on the rest day so that Grandmother could stay by the fire with a nagging cough. Her thanks had been perfunctory enough to irk the proud man, and he stamped from site to site, Darandur struggling to keep up along the trail his father had broken in the snow.

When they had four rabbits and a fine fat beaver, Darandur asked why they did not turn back to the keep.

His father had snorted, blasting a long plume from under his bulbous nose. “There’s a lesson to teach there, lad.” He used a mittened hand to clear off the next stone overlook bench they came to. “Yes, we have enough meat to eat until the next rest day, or until mother’s cough decides to heal itself. But we also have three more traps set- because you can never count on the luck of traps. Now, we could go back, have our warm drinks, smoke our pipes.” His mittened hand lingered over where his pipe hung from the belt for a moment, then went to his water flask instead, passing it to the boy before taking his own long draught.

Tharandur motioned the boy back to his feet, with a sign that meant to step quietly. Very far inwardly, Darandur groaned to himself, feeling he was being punished in the way that small children do. It was another few minutes of sneaking through the snow before he felt an unwontedly gentle tap from Tharandur, followed by a point.

There, floundering desperately in the snow where their snare should be, was a perfectly white rabbit. It was laying on its side, mouth open and panting, legs having churned the snow in panic. Around the right rear leg was the twine of the snare. As they watched, the wild eyed rabbit leapt back to its feet, pulling and tugging, wildly bucking to attempt to free itself. It was a brief struggle, only this time the rabbit landed on its other side, facing away from the watchers. It turned its attention to the back leg as Tharandur cupped a hand over Darandur’s ear.

“I want you to watch this one,” he murmured. Horrified, his eyes darted between the rabbit, suffering so cruelly, and his father. He wanted to ask why, he wanted to take the spear and put the creature out of his misery, ashamed that he was being forced to do this thing.

This was not a thing a hero would do, he thought miserably as the rabbit lay in the odd, curled shape on the snow.

It was just then that they heard the sounds of the thegn’s hunting party, crashing through the woods heedlessly so close to the keep. They were mounted on study ponies, thick furs to keep them warm, with mead in their flasks, and a stone sledge to drag their kills back over the snow. Darandur’s eyes were wide at the number of deer, rabbits, and even a moose piled up, reading for butchering. The rabbit lay, apparently too exhausted to care about the noise or footsteps anymore.

“Ah, Tharandur!” bellowed out Thegn Barhardnein, his red beard nearly glowing as the sun struck him. “I wish you’d come to join us if it was hunting you wanted this day. I do miss your voice raised in song, the way we used to hear it.”

“Illness in the house, my thegn. Wouldn’t do to spread it.”

“But you do hunt, and on your rest day, too!” The burly dwarf lord turned in the saddle to his companions. “See now, do as the head of Clan Durein does- always takes care of his own!” Darandur noted the expressions of the younger men take on the same he was sure his own had- was there ever a time or a place without old men feeling like they had to tell young men their duty?

“Och, thegn, the beast suffers. Should we not make an end to it?” asked a boy, much younger than Darandur, face betraying his distress, mounted on a fine dapple grey pony.

Why couldn’t I say that to father? Darandur wondered.

Then his father’s dark eyes flashed before he spoke. “I would that you leave it to me, young master. Doing a bit of teaching this afternoon.”

The thegn’s wild brows formed a bridge over the long nose. One of the men of the party, obviously having partaken of a great deal of mead, spoke up, loud and slurring. “Oh, and what might the lesson be? Teaching your lad to do the women’s work?”

Predictably, this caused a derisive shout of laughter from the hunting party. “Nay,” Tharandur said, clipping the word off in the way that told his son to keep out of arm’s length. The sledge passed by the party, and Tharandur motioned to it. “Do you not wish to guard that all the way back to the keep? We did see bear sign this day.”

The thegn frowned down at the pair before motioning the party off to follow the sledge, while keeping the boy on the grey pony by his side. “One can manage all responsibilities when one has the hands to do so. And I would know more of this lesson you teach.”

“Be that as it may, my thegn.” He turned away from the imposing, glittering figure wrapped in all the furs who did not feel the cold nor stamp through the snow. “Look again at that rabbit.”

Afraid of what he was going to see, Darandur turned back to find the rabbit in the odd, hunched shape, facing away from them. It seemed so very still. “Is it… is it dead?” he whispered, feeling as though he had failed the little creature.

“Nay, lad,” Tharandur said, pointing at the almost imperceptible movements around the twined foot. 

“Here’s the lesson- you give even the simplest creature enough time, and they will find a way out of the trap.” Darandur felt his heart leap as he looked back to the rabbit, who had almost gnawed through the twine and was moments from being free.

His eyes darted back to the thegn, who’s face had become a frozen mask.

“Aye, lad,” the thegn said, giving a nod to the boy. The boy flung a dagger from the saddle at the rabbit’s head, striking true. The movements stopped. “So it’s best to take what’s yours while you can. And ensure it does not suffer.” The thegn turned his gaze from Darandur back to head of the Durein clan. “A cruel teacher can lead to a cruel man. Next time, I would that you and your lad join the hunt.”

“As you wish, my thegn,” Tharandur said, and the great man rode away without another word.

Such were the teachings of his father.

His mother’s, however…

From the time he knew ore from stone, his golden haired mother, the Ladysmith Matilda, had welcomed him to her forge to learn what only she could teach of the ways of metal. Within the great keep, it was common for the men of the house to find the metal, and the women to craft it. There were exceptions, and the overriding factor always lay within having a genuine affinity for the work at hand. Tharandur looked askance at the boy’s eagerness to go to the forge when he had to be chivvied to join him in the mine. At this point his son was used to his father’s black moods, with cutting remarks staying clenched behind his teeth, at least in his wife’s presence.

Darandur did not discover until many years later that this, among many other things, had been agreed upon in the marriage contract. Lady Matilda came from the House of Darune, acclaimed amongst all dwarves as the best workers of the ore. 

The dripping of the water of the clock matched the rhythm of his mother’s hammer, a music she had admitted him to and taught him the way of. It made him smile even then to remember his mother’s magical hands that were never still when there was metal to work. Her fingers were thin and graceful, strong and knowing as they guided and shaped the most wondrous of creations. In her youth, it was said that Lady Matilda had spent time out in the world, amongst the elves, and it was true that a number of her designs included the sinuous, interlaced lines that bespoke the grace of those people. 

It was also true that she received many commissions from them, and occasional missives that she did not read out loud at the fire. The gold she received for the work was envied; but Darandur was aware that the Many found her friendships with outlanders to be exceedingly odd.

“Here, my lad,” she’d say, putting a hammer she herself had made into his hands. “Watch and do as I do, and know that metal will bend to you.”

“But this isn’t metal, it’s stone!” he said.

The lady laughed. “It’s the way of life, that stone will break before it bends. And,” she indicated the floor, which was coated in rock dust. “You can see why it does not last. Metal bends to the hands of the skilled, and survives to become something beautiful and new.” Giving the heated stone a sharp tap with her hammer, it split open to reveal shining ore inside, making Darandur gasp with amazement.

Hours upon hours, murmuring as much to the metal as to him as she coaxed the metal from the stone. Then applied all the techniques she had ever learned to shape, temper, and polish into the form she wished it to take. Sometimes she sang softly with words Darandur could not understand, lilting and soothing as lullabies.

It was worth noting that in a society that prized space as each room was carved painstakingly out of a mountain, Lady Matilda’s forge was hers alone. It was on the level with the rest of House Darune’s apartments, not that Darandur was given the opportunity to speak overmuch to those that would consider him family from that side of the tree. He liked being on their level as it was much less crowded, and the shuffling noises of voices and feet as they wended their way about was sometimes so soft it could be ignored. 

He also liked working metal at the forge, though he never felt the magic tingling in his fingers, nor did they cast shimmering lights over the work as his mother’s did. By the time Darandur’s beard reached to his belt, his mother proclaimed him on par with a mastersmith in the outside world.

“I don’t have the spark, though,” he’d said, and the bitter wave of disappointment rose to the back of his throat. Of all of his agemates, he was one of only three that had failed the most recent set of trials. Thirty others had moved on to Gayania’s temple that they might be trained in the ways of the earth’s secrets, while he remained back in the children’s classes.

She gave him a stout buffet on the shoulder, as though he was an equal. “There’s more to life than magic, my son, and there’s plenty of time for it to come if it’s going to. What you know is here,” and she tapped his forehead with one of those slender, delicate fingers. “And here,” she said, prodding at his chest above his heart. “Magic would only make you able to work faster and see the shape more clearly.” Matilda leaned against her workbench, reaching up to insure the blond coronet of braids remained securely fastened. “Too many smiths make the mistake of learning to craft after they have their magic, so they use that as their primary tool instead of what they ought. You will never have that problem, my son.” She reached out and pulled him to her side in a one armed hug, her blue eyes aglow with pride. “That’s the secret, you know. Magic is all well and good, and yes, it can make life easier. But without skill and experience, you’re just waving a crude stick around as though it were a spear.”

That had been after he’d failed two of the three Great Trials.

While work at the forge progressed, within the Clan Durein quarters, the scion’s progress with his lessons was not mentioned. With hope dimming and only one chance for the son of the clan at the trials remaining and the ore from the mine beginning to play out, tension had begun to mount whenever Darandur came through the door.

For a people living in the midst of the earth, metal and stone were the foundation of life. With talk of metal nearly forbidden within the Clan Durein apartments, only the stone remained. And the takings from the mine became poorer. The polished carvings with the device of the clan in bas relief emerged from behind the warming tapestries as they were sold off, one by one. Grandmother had merely lifted her chin and commented that it was good to see the heraldry again, before taking up the cleaning rags to wipe away the endless rock dust while shivering with chill. Evenings that had once been warm with hearty meals and the stories of the day became strained affairs, with the content of the meals becoming poorer and leaner. Teas became weaker and had to be steeped longer, while mead and tobacco leaf disappeared altogether.

Mother said nothing at all about the changes to their lives, not as her golden hair became duller within its braided coronet, not even  as the rosy plumpness faded from her face. She became quieter, her eyes stuttering to Tharandur’s face more frequently to gauge the possibility of a storm brewing.

And it seemed that Father became quieter too, in a way that Darandur found more disconcerting than when he bellowed and swung his fists. 

That was also when Darandur began to realize that he hated the Many. Until then, he’d simply accepted the rules of dwarven society as they were. Safety lay in stone and in numbers, though the council of elders had been talking about the need to found a new fortress over the past few decades. By the time Darandur was a man, the overpopulation of the keep seemed worse than ever before, even though each family would have but one son and one daughter. Always there were eyes watching, ears listening, on alert for anything to be weighed and discussed, where it would ostensibly be found wanting.

Due to both of his parents, Darandur was the special focus of watchfulness. This he would not understand until it was too late to matter. All he knew was the Many had gone from the soft whispers in the long corridors to a nigh unbearable crawling under his skin. He heard the murmurs about his mother, at first speculating that the Lady Matilda grew wan due to the fact that she would finally produce the long awaited daughter of Clan Durein. But as time went on and no swaddled pink bundle was presented, the gossip turned malicious.

Caught herself a disease out in the wide world, I shouldn’t wonder.

Probably lay with the elves what used to come for her wares. Glad they don’t come round here anymore. Unnatural creatures.

Did she already bear the daughter and that’s why she fails to quicken?

Shouldn’t want to marry into that clan after she’s gone. He’s a cruel one, he is.

He’s a poor one, he is.

Tcha! She’s made him that way. New wife with a new hammer would fill their coffers in no time.

Good name, honorable name, and still a vast space to call their own.

Clan Durane cast her out when they wed, though. 

I heard it different, that she wanted the thegn and they made her take him and that she promised never to sit at their hearth again.

Thegn still watches her. 

On and on the rumors went, and if Darandur hadn’t heard them from the mouths of the speakers, the echoes helpfully carried them along the vast tunnels. Those were the times he wished most to stay out in the wide world himself, where there was wind to carry the words away like they’d never been spoken. 

Just memories, he told himself as he stood next to the clock with only its dripping to be heard. Memories that made Darandur shake his head as though they were smoke from the pipe he could clear away as easily. They would not help him, just as tarrying here would not help him.

For this was the day that the scion of Clan Durein had failed the final Trial. The magic did not pulse in his veins, and the song of stone would not sing for him. Darandur spread his hands before him, staring at them dispassionately as his head ached and stomach churned.

They weren’t as slender as his mother’s, and they were more delicate than his father’s. They could wield pick and chisel and hammer and spear for him, but they would never shape steel with the lightest of touches, nor find the ore.

Darandur would be no one’s hero. Just the son of a cruel man.

The clock wept for him as he set his feet for home.

In draft-

Snorting into her mug, Salda glanced at him sideways, looking thoughtful. She was saved from answering by the pitter patter of tiny feet running along the railing. “What in the world was that? Surely we don’t have rats, there’s nothing for them.”

A tiny, indignant scoff.

“Rats slink and hide,” Rippen said, carefully looking away from the railing and keeping his eyes on Salda’s weathered face. “This guest is not like that.” He turned his back on the sea and took a half step away from Salda, letting his arms swing free around him.

This, of course, spilled his untouched tea on the decking and splashed Salda for good measure, but Rippen affected not to notice as he went on. “Those little feet belong to someone…” he paused.

“Slinking and thieving?” Salda said as she flicked the tea off her canvas trousers in irritation.

Rippen hissed. “Of course not! It’s someone who wants to see great adventures that will be told for years to come! Bold and daring, sly and cunning, that’s who our guest is!” He continued to sketch shapes with his wide flung arms in large movements, then paced the deck as though enthused about his topic. “Those that join us will get to see parts of the world unthought of since the Joining! What hardy souls, what bravery, what…” and his voice broke off as he spun, flinging the tea mug over the rail with one hand, and scooping up his listener with the other. “What do we have here?”

The next instant quickly devolved into chaos as Rippen squeaked with a rather girlish sound and flung whatever it was that he had caught but not yet identified at Salda. Salda had had her hair tightly braided as was practical for a lady upon the sea, so while their guest bounced off her shoulder, they ended up clinging to the buckskin vest she wore. Before she could react, it slid down her neck and into the V point of the vest- directly into her cleavage. Instantly Salda clapped one hand above and one hand below, trapping it there.

“Stop!” cried a tiny voice. “Dark dark in here! Stuck stuck, no air! Bold one need breath!” Holding her hands firmly in position, Salda dashed into the pilot’s house and indicated to Rippen to open the shuttered lantern so that they may see their catch.

“Very well, bold one, we’ll let you out, but you need to sit still so we can talk about this. This is a very serious offense,” Rippen said, trying to keep his tone earnest. Salda rolled her eyes before fishing a tiny squirrel out of her underwear. Dropping it to the table with a slight thud, she was still startled by the speed with which Rippen scooped it into an unlit lantern enclosed by glass. No larger than Salda’s finger, it was a deep slate gray with a lush tail twice as long as it was.

And, judging from the way it pounded on the glass with its tiny paws, it was furious at having been tricked not once, but twice in the space of five minutes.

“You gonna let me out now now now now! I call down the wrath of Queenie Meanie on you with all my witchywitchy powers!” The miniscule taps on the glass stopped as the paws were contorting into odd, wiggling arrangements, as though the squirrel was casting a spell on them. 

“Well, you might want to give that thought another think. Though we all respect her majesty the queen, as her servant you do her great injury and dishonor by violating the Sacred Code of the Sea, paragraph 5, line 23 concerning the rights and responsibilities of stowaways.” Rippen lowered his face to the lantern until he was eye to eye with the stowaway in question. “What say you to that?”

“Rights, what rights?” Almost immediately upon hearing the words Sacred Code of the Sea, she had folded her hands to her chest where they washed each other worriedly.

Rippen’s eyes danced with amusement as he looked to Salda, who took up her cue.

“Stowaways got no rights, and everyone on board has to obey the captain.” She also leaned down on the opposite, that the squirrel would be able to see her face, too. 

“Cappy Tanny, old man’s fanny!” The squirrel flung her paws at them derisively before turning its back on Salda, sauntering to the candle holder with her tail held high. “Climber cares not for sea code, Climber is only listening to Queenie Meanie.” Climber sat down decisively, folding the tiny arms and giving her captors a ‘so there’ kind of nod.

They exchanged a glance before Rippen gave a theatrical sigh. “Well, okay then, if that’s how you want to be. Salda, do you want to go and wake Captain Jeran so we can make this little rodent walk the plank?”

The word ‘rodent’ sent Climber the Squirrel into an absolute flurry of rage, rocketing around the insides of the sealed lantern and squeaking unintelligibly before stopping to pound the glass with all her might. “Am not rodent! Not vermin!” it would shriek before going back into frenzied circles again.

“Seems a shame to wake him, what with paragraph 5…” Salda trailed off.

“Line 23. It’s perfectly clear to me, we could just fling the little rat right over the side. We’re miles and miles from shore, so it would… most… certainly… drown.” Rippen carefully spaced out the last words, solemn as a pledge, with a sure nod for each of them.

The movement from inside the lantern stopped abruptly. “Miles? Drown drown?” Climber’s mouth hung open, showing prominent front teeth that did look rather rodent like. The little squirrel’s whiskers quivered so pathetically as she crouched in her sealed lantern, that, for a moment, Salda felt ashamed of them, as though they were bullies teasing a small child.

“Yes indeed, drown drown. You know, unless you want to be like us,” Salda said. “We all work together to keep each other safe so we can get to see all the wonders out there, right Rippen?”

Rippen nodded along, his long blond forelock flapping earnestly into his eyes before he pushed it back again.. “That’s right! We’re going to go see everything there is to see, and then we’ll do it again. We’re the boldest and bravest of sailors. We even know the whole code!”

Over the top of the lantern, Salda mouthed, “What whole code?” at him, only to have him shoot her an eloquently piercing glance. As instructed, Salda shut it.

It had been the right tack to take. Climber was back at the glass, her dark eyes shining, tiny paws out in supplication. “Climber wants to see, too. More than anything. Climber hear about star ship, sneaky sneaky to see. Want to be boldest and bravest. Want to know code, too!”

Tipping Salda a satisfied wink, Rippen moved as though to open the lantern door. “You give your word? We’re all here to work together and keep each other safe, right?” When Climber began nodding so fast he feared she’d rattle her brains, Rippen set her free with his hand down, palm up, for her to step in to. “Alright, let’s shake on it then, and you’ll need to shake with the captain too.”

Solemnly, he held out his forefinger and accepted the Climber’s paw grasping it to shake with a little nod. Then, with a very earnest expression on her tiny face, the squirrel leaped to the table and offered her forepaw to Salda. Something in the way she stood so straight, looking up, her tail stretched out behind her with only the veriest tip of it flicking nervously back and forth. “Well, okay then little one,” Salda held out her own finger, admiring the squirrel that wanted to go see what was beyond the home she knew more than anything.

Once upon a time, in a tower of shining moonstone at the edge of the sea lived a pale lady. No one remembered how she came to be there, it just seemed that she was always there, a glimpsed apparition at the high, high windows. Centuries passed, each with its own story about who the lady was.

In good times, she was a wise goddess who chose to dwell in solitude that she might study all the world. She listened to petitioners from afar and would give her blessing to those hearts she deemed worthy. And the unworthy who dared to disturb her were never seen or heard from evermore.

In bad times, she was a wicked demon who could lure even the most virtuous soul into enslavement at the merest glance. Those that paid the old tower any special mind often turned up missing, never to be seen or heard from evermore.

Truth usually lies in the crumbs of the stories, and any of the tellers know that it must be used sparingly, as spice.

For years beyond counting, the pale lady stayed within her tower, watching the lavender waves of that strange sea crashing against the dark stone her prison rested upon. The stars and moons danced their stately steps in the heavens, all while she observed and waited.

Because that’s what exiles do.

In addition to a few crumbs of truth, every story can be told from at least three perspectives- the one who lived it, the one who watched it, and what actually happened.

A beautiful woman of magic living alone in a tower on a sea of indigo- a smooth, graceful spire with four windows and no doors. As she was never observed coming or going, it’s easy to surmise that the lady was a prisoner.

A very dangerous prisoner, one worthy of such an exile of eons. It would take a brave adventurer to present themselves upon the doorstep and refuse to leave until they heard the voice of the lady herself. But, in time, that’s just what happened.

He came into that part of the land afoot, his face alight with something so pure and simple that it made the people of that place turn their gazes away. His features were of a young boy, but his gaze was of one who knew all things you kept in the deepest part of your heart.

The part you yourself don’t want to admit exists.

At first, he merely sat at the foot of that impossible tower and waited, content to watch the same waves and stars as the lady. For her part, she seemed content to ignore him as she had ignored all other supplicants for the past few centuries. In time, he began to sing in a voice rich with love and longing for her. Songs of enchantresses, of the beauty, grace, kindness and the wonders they worked.

The lady began coming to the windows more often, listening to the lays he sang for her.
The more of her he glimpsed, the more the songs took on descriptions of her face and form.

This pleased the lady, and she favored the bold adventurer with her smiles and glances.

He saw, but wisely directed his smiles inwards only, and kept making music to charm the lady.

How long did it take? No one can say. But of course the day came when the adventurer found himself compelled to climb to the window so that he might hear the voice of the lady.

And of course, of course, his first question was that question we all ask sooner or later.

“Lovely lady of the tower, why are you here?”

White as snow, her laughter was a chill winter wind as it gusted forth. Those slender fingers reached out to hover just beyond the face of her besotted singer. “Dearest one, I but followed my nature.”

His dark eyes dared to gaze upward into her pale ones, begging.

She withdrew her hand and the laughter stopped, though it lingered about her lips and touched those crystalline blue eyes. Leaning down, she whispered in his ear.

“Darling Puck, I have brought about the end of this world, and so must wait for the next one.”

Puck took a deep breath before lowering his dark head to the tile before her bare toes. “As you have called, so I have come. How may I serve you, O Goddess and Queen?”

And now she did lean down and run her fingers through the confusion of curls as gently as a mother would. Such a light touch, and yet the bold lad Puck who had traveled across all the ravaged land was at once powerless and fulfilled beneath it.

When her answer came, it was a whisper. “You, my good fellow, shall carry

It’s a draft… but I wanted to share.

In a tiny fishing village nestled betwixt and between the sea, the forests, and the mountains, there was a solid, sturdy boy named Jeran.

Hair bleached blond by the sun and whipped into a stiff crest by the salt and the spray, barefoot in most weathers, it seemed Jeran had always been a part of NestledbytheSea. And that was almost true. On the rare occasion that there was time for talk, and folk troubled themselves to ask the lad where (or more to the point, who) he’d come from, Jeran would give a lazy, one sided smile. “Might as well say I’m the son of the wind and the waves,” and something about the insouciance of the words, or the way the boy’s jaw set worked the magic of discouraging questioners.

Though he would not give more of his antecedents than that, the townsfolk had come to trust Jeran nonetheless. He seemed to always turn up when extra hands were needed. And so clever his hands were! It seemed there was nothing of the trade of the sea he did not know, whether it was fishing nets wanting mended or a flat bottomed hull wanting tarred. There was no job so dirty, noisome, or tedious that Jeran wouldn’t lend his aid. And always, always with goodwill and thoughtfulness. 

The Widow Carpenter’s shingles were renewed like magic each fall, and wood chopped to get her through the winter. When this had been accomplished, no one knew; it would simply be done once the air got a certain nip to it.

Builder Halron had broken his leg in the busy summer season, and went from a prosperous man to one who did not know what he could barter to feed himself through the winter. The week after the accident, a small skiff of the type that could be sailed by an injured man and several casks of smoked fish turned up at the dock off his porch. 

Whenever asked, Jeran would give his one sided smile and proclaim that he had no knowledge of how these things had come to pass. “Lots of good hearted people in this village, glad to do for one another. It’s why I never wanted to call anywhere else home!”

When they stopped to think about it, not one of the longtime residents of NestledbytheSea could put a finger on just when the boy had turned up. It just seemed he’d always been there, a lanky, tireless blond boy with pretty sea green eyes.

And that was more or less the way Jeran wanted it.

He had come to this tiny village to be a part of a community that took its living from the sea, not only to be a part of it, but to learn everything there was to know about that ever changing beauty. When Jeran was not, to his mind, earning his place within the village, he could sit at the mouth of his sea cave for hours. Watching the waves lap against the rock, the changing colors of the sun and moons reflecting off the waters. Sometimes he’d feel the call of the magic, and slip beneath the surface to feel himself and all the forms of life seemingly suspended in space and time. Resting upon the ocean floor, he’d let the sands trickle through his fingers, and wait.

What he was waiting for, Jeran didn’t precisely know. It was as though he was perched on the edge of the dock, ready to dive into the water, but the perching went on and on. 

And so Jeran schooled himself to patience. He smiled his smile, he helped where he could, and when the waiting became too much to bear, he wrapped himself in the arms of the ocean herself. She always understood him, and soothed him when no other pursuit could.

It came as no surprise to him that when the first call came, he was dozing there in a tangle of kelp. He slept better under the water, as though all the pressure of it held him together and let him hear only what truly mattered.

In his dream, he saw a beautifully curved bow rise from the waves and slice through them, clean as a knife. This vessel rode upon the water, towering above the currents that could swamp the flat bottomed scows the villagers used for fishing and trading wares along the coast. It was gilded by the moon that paid a path to the northeast, dancing with starlight. 

For the first time in his long, long life, Jeran felt a longing deep into his bones. He must stand upon that ship and be carried where the stars followed. When morning came, it found him woolen headed and muzzy. It seemed all he could think of was how the ship had been shaped.  The curving sides that held it aloft in the water would give far better control in the vast open waters, making all manner of voyages possible.

Before the sun was a handspan over the horizon, Jeran found himself at Master Halron’s door, pushing himself in on that good man’s breakfast. While at first sleepily annoyed, there was something about Jeran’s ideas that intrigued him and fired his imagination almost in spite of himself.

“Working the wood to warp it intentionally can be done, I learned that in my time with the elven woodsmiths. Would that one of them were here!” The builder had one of those mobile faces with bushy eyebrows and an overly pronounced, beaky nose that works itself into exaggerated expressions without its owner’s permission. Just now, the dark brows were drawn together in thought as he fetched a stick and began sketching on a sand table under the window’s light, a piece of forgotten toast dangling from his other hand.

“See here, lad,” he said, pointing with the stick after he’d drawn what Jeran had described. “If we drill out the joins correctly and assemble it together like so, tarring the seams well… I think this is what you’re wanting?”

Jeran leaned over the table, for once, smiling with both halves of his mouth. It was a beatific grin that lit his whole face, and suddenly neither Master Halron nor his wife begrudged the break in their morning routine. Before they knew it (and for reasons that were difficult to explain later), they had agreed to help Jeran build his dream. Having their hands seized, wrung in thanks then led to the trio madly capering about the small cottage. 

They could never describe it to anyone but each other, but for the builder and his wife, it would become a long cherished memory.

“The only problem,” wheezed the good master as he tried to catch his breath, “is that I do not have enough seasoned wood on hand for such an undertaking.”

“No problem at all, Master Halron. I shall see to it immediately!” Again flashing that bright grin, Jeran was out the door before another word could be spoken.

The builder’s lady fell into her chair at the small dining table, and hand on her chest. “My word, I’ve never seen the like from our Jeran, did you see the way his eyes shone?” And her smile was almost as bright as Jeran’s had been.

Master Halron laughed, a carefree sound he hadn’t made since he was a very young boy himself. “My dear, I do believe we are about to see a thing that has never been seen before, and it fair takes my breath away.”

As the builder and his wife finished plotting their next steps over breakfast, Jeran’s feet carried him to the furthest part of the village that could still be rightfully considered part of the village. Unlike the paths by the beach that were paved with smooth stone, from the last bend of the path onwards was paved with wood chips.

Banly was a woodcutter that had fallen in love with a local girl while visiting for a trader’s mission who had just never left. He’d found a spot by the forests he so loved, built his wife to be a fine log cabin, and settled in among a people that needed him, but never really understood his fascination with trees. Redheaded (and bearded), squat and muscled with the demands of his profession, he had three sons that had turned out just like him, and two daughters that had followed their mother’s ways to the sea.

When you live in the forest, the demands of the sun are not quite as insistent as when you live upon an eastern shore, and Jeran found the whole family still at table for breakfast. To be sure, it was a massive table and a massive breakfast; Jeran found himself dwarfed by the four burly men with their bristly beards. 

“Master Banly! I have a need for quite a lot of wood.”

The eldest woodcutter harrumphed and glared at this stripling lad balefully. Some people need to build up to the concept of morning, and Banly just so happened to be one of them. He jabbed a finger at his youngest son, then made a shooing motion. Being of a sunnier disposition to greet the day, the boy (who was still a foot taller than Jeran and used to his father’s grumpiness) grinned and motioned Jeran into his seat with a wink.

Once seated, another grunt and point saw to it Jeran was presented with a more than ample breakfast. While it may have daunted him any other day, making dreams come true was apparently appetite building, and the boy fell to the overflowing plate with a will. Only once about half of the contents had been consumed was there another grunt from Banly in his direction.

“Of course, Master Banly, I want to build a ship. A ship of the likes we’ve never seen before, that can go beyond the largest of the waves and cross the sea,” he waved a forkful of eggs towards the general direction of the coast.

Banly made a garumph into his beard, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

“I have no idea, I just know how we need to go about building the ship. There could be anything out there- sea monsters, naiads, mermaids, maybe a new way to see the whole world!” Just considering all of the possibilities made Jeran’s head spin. Always before, he’d been content to watch the world from this tiny corner of it, but as suddenly as he was asked the question (though to be fair, whether or not that was the question is only known to Banly) it was as if the entire world beckoned to him. 

The woodsman stared at Jeran for a long minute, his head cocked to the side as though he strained to hear music from too far away. It made everyone at the table pause, straining to hear what Master Banly heard.

The mistress of the house remembered the moment that Banly had clasped her hand to his breast while they took their vows, and how it had pounded against her knuckles.

The eldest brother’s imagination was fired by this ship Jeran had spoken of, and he could almost see it, as he heard the bite of the axes, thudding into the flesh of his friends. Then the pounding of the hammers that would give them new life out upon the waves, to go far beyond the horizon. He resolved to find the tree spirits that would wish such a fate.

The youngest daughter, though… she had eyes only for Jeran. While most saw a brightness within him, then the kindness that he let flow from him, young Salda saw him standing in the prow of this ship he imagined, ever facing forward to see what came next. Leading with a pure heart, never looking behind him, but ever forward to each new sight and new day. She lost her heart to that mad young man for then and always, and always knew that he would never be more than kind to her.

But her heart was gone from that moment and she followed him on all of his voyages, save the last.

From time to time, there can be a special kind of madness and magic, when inspiration is able to kindle and catch fire amongst a group of folk. So it was that summer in NestledbytheSea once Masters Halron and Banly began working from a dream. Everyone genuinely liked Jeran and respected the masters, and before long, work on the usual summer projects was lain aside that they may turn all available hands to this ship. Those that could follow Master Halron’s sketches guided those that couldn’t, while those that couldn’t swing a hammer lent their backs to help carry the lumber. Those that could do neither of those instead saw to the care and feeding of the laborers. And still others, after an evening’s consultation with Master Halron and Jeran, began work upon the immense sails that would be required.

Hoping to please the dreamer with their gift, the sails began to take form. The lady of the oyster beds had a cousin who traded with the elves on occasion, and offered an exorbitant price that she lay hands on a particular type of oil that would stain the rough cloth a deep blue and seal it against the air. When she showed the other sewers what she had wrought, nothing would do but that the Widow Carpenter’s wedding gown be plucked free of all the beautiful silver embroidery that graced it.

When a young girl expressed her astonishment that the widow was willing to destroy the lovely dress, the old woman smiled. For just that moment in time, the gathered were all able to glimpse the girl she had been when last she wore it. “Child, I had my moment with this, and I could have wished it to have been passed on to a girl of my own. But as that did not come to pass, I would rather the thread shine out to the world than be wasted on just me. And the dress is still lovely to me, as a memory of what was and a reminder of how much further a piece of me and my Merk still go.”

So if there were a few tears that fell as the stars of their sky were stitched upon the deep blue sailcloth, some of them were in hope, and others in remembrance.

All through the summer, NestledbytheSea buzzed from before dawn to very late in the long nights, watching the bones of the dream rise on the beach next to the largest dock. Within two weeks, the ribs were there, two more saw the planks begin to hug around them. A sturdy, spacious cabin was planned for below the decks, with space meant to carry all manner of things. Already, those that plied their flat bottomed boats up and down the coast to trade saw the merits of such a shape for carrying cargo. Their conversations of future hopes made a fine counterpoint to the work of the present during the evenings, and everyone had their own little trove of insight to share.

About three months from the time Jeran awoke from his dream in the grotto, his ship was all but completed. He awoke on the first morning with the crisp bite of fall to see his sails, the beautiful silver starred sky sails being hoisted into the rays of dawn’s light.

There are moments in life that are too perfect for mere words, and a space in our hearts for those sights, sounds, and feelings to be permanently etched. To recall them is to be back, for a little while, in that one time and place, a gift to carry through all of one’s days.

So that moment was for Jeran, the day he set sail in his dream with Salda, her cousin Rippen, and a stowaway squirrel named Climber to see what lay beyond the horizon.

Their journeys would become legend.

If house hunting is hell, moving day has to rate somewhere in the lower regions of purgatory.

Chaos, in a word. With the mess getting deeper with the addition of a seven year old son, hyperactive basset hound, and husband who is convinced, out of nowhere, that he has descended from a long line of professional moving men and knows best.

After the seventh repetition of ‘I know what I’m doing honey’ I finished taping up the boxes holding my dishes and said a small prayer. To whom, I don’t know.. I never heard that there was a patron saint of relocation.

My distant consolation was the fact that we weren’t going through all this torment for yet another undersized overused apartment. No, we’d finally found the perfect little jewel of a house, with a price that we couldn’t have resisted.

“It’s almost too good to be true,” Bart had said a few dozen times as we’d walked over the house, and a few dozen more as we hung in the limbo of making offers. By the time the offer had been accepted, he shut up, though he claimed not to be as superstitious as I am, I know that he didn’t want to tempt fate.

By midafternoon, the cap of moving day hit as it began to snow. Frustrated, seeing himself as letting down all that supposed inbred talent and skill, Bart and his helpers hurriedly stored the boxes in the wonderfully spacious garage. I wasn’t especially pleased with this, but I also had no intention of going through to see if my perfect dinner set of 12 had become a somewhat imperfect set of 300 in the snow.

By the time the rushed stacking of the boxes and odds and ends of funiture was finished, the garage had ceased to be an empty cradle, waiting to provide comfort to our vehicles. Instead, it was a tumbled wilderness, where curtains and paintings of questionable taste lurked darkly. A bad start, but I reasoned to myself that not everything can go perfectly; we were already way ahead of the game as it was, and due a drawback or two.

Sleep was peaceful and deep that night, and I can truthfully say that I heard nothing.

I continued to hear nothing throughout the next month, as I slowly began the work of moving the house in from the garage, box by box.

Its funny about the things we choose to hang on to. As I began my slow but sure excavations, I noticed a number of things that didn’t need to be in the house. In my categoric mind, I began planning a yard sale for the first week of summery weather.

It was probably just about March, when the true rainy season set in, that Bailey the Basset got the quills in his nose. “What the hell?” Bart said curiously, and I knew the situation had to be truly dire to have gotten his attention away from the Lakers vs Bulls game. With a sigh, I wiped my hands on the dishtowel and went into the den to find Bart holding one of the quills up to the light.

“Damn dog managed to find a porcupine out here in the suburbs. I didn’t think porcupines even lived in the desert.” He passed the artifact to me, and since I’ve never seen a porcupine, quills off or on, I nodded at it wisely. Bailey seemed none the worse for his attempting maiming, in fact, he was already face down in his water dish.

“Strange though,” I said softly. “It doesn’t really feel like anything animal. It feels almost.. well.. wooden.”

“Would Tony have left a little wooden spear around for the mutt to get into?”

“Be rather hard to stick a wooden spear in your own nose without opposable thumbs, no matter how Tony left it laying.”

Bart shrugged, his attention wandering back to the beckoning glow of the tv screen. “Maybe porcupine quills change to a more dried out kind of texture as they get older. Who knows? I’m not Dr. Doolittle or anything. But you might just keep Bailey indoors more, and tell Tony to watch his toys. Poor little guy was crying,” he finished, rubbing Bailey’s ears absently.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” I said sourly, heading back to the kitchen to find the heroically wounded animal a treat.

When queried with the offending spear, Tony shrugged unknowingly. “Maybe Bailey went to Borneo and found the pygmies. It’s about the right size,” he said, squinting at it and showing me how tall the pygmies ought to be.

“And where’d you learn about Borneo and pygmies?”

“Pauline found ‘em. On the old channel.”

I sighed and sent Tony back out to get into whatever mischief he had in mind for the afternoon. Anything to keep him away from the classic movie channel and the Perils of Pauline!

The next incident was about a week later, when Bart adventured into the dark garage for his soldering iron. After opening multiple boxes and generally making a mess, he shouted for me. Of course, as the woman, I must have some divine mystic ability to place my slender hand on precisely the implement he wanted, even before he told me what he was looking for.

“Bloody hell,” he growled some snappish 45 minutes later. “The damn thing’s just plain gone.”

“What’s worse than that,” I answered, “is that I could swear that a bunch of things have been moved around. Not the big stuff,” I said quickly. “And not the stuff that you were digging through either. But that picture.. the horrible one of the orange sails heading into the sunset. I could have sworn it was all the way against the far wall last week.”

And now it sat, still against the wall, but halfway down it. As though the picture had tired of its exile and was trying to escape into the house. There was also an old coleman camping lantern that had somehow been removed from its shelf, and the matches were missing entirely.

“That lantern was too high up for the kid to reach. And I can’t imagine him taking the matches or moving the painting,” Bart said, shaking his head thoughtfully.

Then the picture crashed noisily over on its side, and Bart and I decided that the soldering iron wasn’t that damned important. Or that we were very much out of shape and a sprint to the door was a good idea. The spookyness of the garage had won out for the day.

That night, the chanting began.

Our bedroom was directly over the garage, or I’m sure the kids would have long since alerted us about the phenomenon. Adults tend to sleep more soundly, and give less credence to the soft night sounds that would immediately get the full attention of a child. I listened to the chants for over a week before mentioning it to Bart, putting it down to some new, interesting perversion on the behalf of the hot water heater.

“No,” Bart said when the subject finally came up. “It’s more like those monks that do the backup for those Pure Moods bands.”

“Monks,” I said meditatively, tapping my nails against the stem of my wineglass. “So you think monks have moved into our garage?”

“I’d rather have monks than mice,” Bart frowned.

“Monkly mice, then? Involved in rites for the glorification of God and garaged housewares?”

Bart laughed, the whimsical laugh of little boys and men that have had too much to drink and too little sleep. “I’d prefer mice monks to rat chanters, dancing around the fire with spears.”

And suddenly, it wasn’t funny anymore.

Picking up the big flashlight, the kind cops carry in lieu of batons sometimes, Bart headed for the door to the garage, then thought better of it. Instead of entering through the house, he stepped out the front door. I heard the grinding whir of the garage door opener, and curiousity overcame good sense.

By the time Bart had begun to step in, I was beside him, peering mistrustfully into the sea of our junk.

I couldn’t have remembered the placement of all those boxes precisely.. and yet…

I could have sworn that Tony’s toy box had been taped shut. Now it was open, contents strewn all over the place. Bart grunted, obviously ready to shift the blame to a boy that wanted just one plaything in a box of hundreds of nearly forgotten toys.

When the light hit the surrounding cartons, even Bart had to concede that Tony didn’t have any reason to disarm the GI Joe’s and rip off their heads. A set of Lincoln logs had been broken into and scattered about as well.

By following the path of debris, we found a small hole in the wall of the garage. I remembered when we had first seen the house, there had been an old deep freeze covering this spot. It had looked old, and awkward to move, so I hadn’t thought anything about it.

Now it looked like I should have.

Shining the light in the hole showed us nothing. The darkness was too absolute for a mere flashlight. Bart straightened, shrugging in what I’m sure was meant to be a nonchalant way. As the beam cast over into the corner by the maligned hot water heater, the shrug turned into a shudder.

For in a tidy little path marking the way to the pilot light, we found the GI Joe heads… mounted on tiny pikes. “They honor the firekeeper,” I murmured softly, drawing a look from Bart.

“They?” his voice came out in a squeak.

“Pygmies. The hole goes to Borneo, really Bart, didn’t you ever watch the Perils of Pauline?” I thought I was making a joke, but the longer we stood there, looking at the precisely placed pikes, heads, and the slightly spooked ‘this isn’t happening to us’ look in each others’ eyes, the less funny it was.

“Humph,” Bart said thoughtfully as he took my hand and tugged me from the garage, very carefully watching all the dark corners. “I always saw myself as a live and let live kind of guy.. what do you say we have a truce over the garage, and always remember to knock? I mean, anything that can mangle a GI Joe like that has to be hell on mice.”

And the garage door closed.

A few nights later, I was tucking Tony into bed. “Mom,” he muttered sleepily, “you left the window open.”

“So?”

“So, if it’s open, the flying spleen eating weasels could get in.”

I started to tell him there was no such thing. And then I had a startlingly clear mental image of pygmies, mounted on flying spleen eating weasels, and shut my mouth with a snap.

I closed the window and kissed him goodnight.

The Snow Maiden

So this little man comes, and spends the deepest part of winter with me, the time when the sun does not shine for days upon days. He puffs his chest and says he is putting together the history of all the fae of all the lands. Then he let me read it, and I scoff at him. 

He is all caught up in the courts and the civilized tradition where everyone is shining and honorable and noble.

I told him to bugger that, to keep his cute and fluffy bunny fae prancing around, he was not telling the story of my people.

Out here, there’s no civilization, no courts, no code of honor. There is the long dark night where you look into the blackness and it looks back at you, the hunt with blood spilled out on the snow, the warm place by the fire for the teller of tales. To survive in this place takes a different view of life, and that has shaped us as fae. Maybe, once, long ago, we did celebrate the light.

Now, we wrap ourselves in the true nature of our home. There is a story we tell the children that they understand, that I now pass to you.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful spirit maiden, made all of snow. Born of an affair between Father Frost and Spring Beauty, her eyes were the deepest blue, her hair so pale it was white, and her skin pale and smooth like ice. Her form was perfect, and to see her was to fall in love with the idea of a woman so exquisitely formed.

It is hard on a girl to be brought up by a crusty, cranky old man like Father Frost, but for most of the year, they made a good home for each other. And in the months that Spring Beauty joined them, how they made the rafters ring with their joy and mirth in one another so that just passing by you could feel the warmth of their love for family.

But even though the little Snow Maiden loved her father very much, without her mother would grow lonesome, and sometimes went down to the river to see and hear the young people playing. 

As different as this place is, the one thing that I think is the same anywhere is young people showing off for one another to try to find a mate. Boys butt heads to show how strong and tough they are, girls watch the boys and laugh that twittering little laugh. Boys and girls join in the hunt, to show what capable providers they are. Then they show off their skills by using all the parts of their kills to make clothes and tools. And when they get tired of doing all of that (or they are no good at doing that), the boys start to sing.

And for reasons I will never understand, girls like to listen to them sing.

The Snow Maiden was no different. During the searing bright days when the air was so cold only fools and children went out in it, she would be perched and watching the far side of the river, straining her ears to hear. And why not? What was cold to a maiden such as she?

In time, Father Frost realized where his daughter went, and his heart was grieved for it. Not just for the loss of her company, but that he knew his child was not like the ones on the other side of the river, and never would be. He knew, as she did not, that they were children of mere flesh and blood. He thought and thought about how to make her understand that while they may look like her, and sound like her, and play the way that she wanted to play, that they were as different from her as the wolf is from the boar.

For a long time, he ignored where his daughter wandered, and his daughter pretended that she was looking to gather things that could not be gathered beneath the snow. They both got used to these not quite lies with each other, and secrets grew in their hearts.

Then, a man and his wife that had no children came into the little village and built their house on Father Frost’s side of the river. When the days were bright, the wife brought her mending out, so she could see it better, she said. But really, she was watching the children as they butted heads and hunted and proved they were the most desired mates while wishing for a child of her own. And always she noticed this beautiful girl that did not play, but merely watched from their side of the river.

For many days, the Snow Maiden fled whenever the wife came close. But the wife had once been a hunter too, and she stalked her prey most carefully. She noticed that the Snow Maiden yearned closest to the river’s banks when the boy named Lel sang. And she did not blame her, for it seemed to her that Lel’s voice was a silver horn blown across the ice and snow.

There is no accounting for the tastes of women.

So the wife began to sing, and while she did not have the silvery voice of Lel, she put all the longing of her heart into her songs. They were songs of a mother to her child, filled with warmth and comfort and love. The Snow Maiden heard them, and longed for her own mother, absent for so many dark months of the year.

That longing led her to talk to the wife in all the ways that she could not talk to Father Frost. Day after day, week after week she came back to the little cottage when she wasn’t listening to the children across the river. The man and his wife created a second home for the Snow Maiden and treated her like a daughter, not understanding that she was a child of spirit, not of flesh as they were.

During a very long, cold year in which Spring Beauty could not come at all, the Snow Maiden finally begged her father to let her go and live with the man and wife by the river all of the time. His heart was sore, both with the thought of losing his unlikely child and with his lack of words to make her see that she would not have the happiness she sought.

“My child,” he tried one last time, “I know that you think you want this thing, that you think living in the town is what you are supposed to do. But I tell you that those people are too different from you, from us. You can live as one of them for a thousand thousand winters, and you will not be any more like them than you are now. I am sorry for your loneliness, my daughter, but this is not the answer.”

I have said the Snow Maiden was made of snow. When snow becomes older, it turns to ice. And it was that ice that she showed to Frost Father when words failed to win her cause, and he was sorry to see it. He had hoped that by having a child with Spring Beauty, she would be more like her mother than him. 

In sorrow, he gave his blessing to the Snow Maidens adoption by the man and his wife. For the first time, she was a part of the little village.

The townsfolk marveled at her absolute perfection, and all praised her tranquility and stillness, like the frozen pond. She was warmly welcomed, and for her part, the Snow Maiden enjoyed feeling a part of all of the life and activity that she had watched from across the river for so long. Sometimes she was tempted to speak of Father Frost that the villagers might know him, too, but it seemed disloyal to the man and his wife that had made her a part of this wider world.

And now she could hear every word Lel sang. For all that the other boys of the town butted heads and hunted and sang their throats raw to impress her, she only heard Lel.

And Lel saw her not at all.

Lel sang only for Kupava.

Now every gathering of people has a girl like Kupava among them– she is a huntress not of prey but of hearts, and makes it her reason for being. Kupava was not at all pleased with the arrival of the Snow Maiden, and it did not matter a bit that Lel sang only for her.

For the boy she had decided was good enough to marry was Mizgir, and she had been almost ready to tell him so when the man and his wife brought the Snow Maiden to the village.

I say almost because she had been waiting for the next crop of boys to become old enough to butt heads over her charms. Truly, my friends, I tell you that the hearts of hunting women like Kupava are a bottomless pit of want.

The situation gave the town something to talk about all through that winter, with the older women who had been huntress in their turn admiring Kupava’s tactics, while the men just wished earnestly that both Kupava and the Snow Maiden would make their choices and retire honorably from the field of battle.

As for Mizgir, he saw no one but the Snow Maiden. He hunted the white ermine in the darkest part of the winter and laid their pelts at her feet that her garments may be trimmed as befit a queen. He carved charms of stone and ivory by firelight in the long winter nights of waking dreams to garland about her neck. He wrote songs of his own and sang them in praise of her.

Coolly, she thanked him for his gifts and songs, but still turned her face to Lel when he sang and would not be distracted from him.

Kupava turned this over and over in her head. When you got right down to it, all of the possible mates were mostly the same… maybe one was slightly faster in bringing down prey, or one sang more clearly. It would be prettier to say that the Snow Maiden’s marked attention to Lel had raised him in Kupava’s eyes. It would be pettier, but true, to say that Kupava took Lel to keep the Snow Maiden from having him in revenge for taking the boy she had picked out for herself.

Truly, a woman’s mind is a dark and twisty place.

On the first day of spring, It all fell to. It was a day in which, cunningly, Kupava lured Lel into going hunting with her. If only he’d known that he was the prey! And yet, both of them found fortune that day, for that very special gift that too few of us find was bestowed upon Lel and Kupava out in those snowy woods.

They found they truly loved each other. 

Now I have lived a long time, and I will go on living a great deal more and believe me when I tell you that this kind of love that they had, it comes maybe once, twice in a hundred years. And when you see it, it lights up the lovers from the inside, as though they were candles that burn only for one another. For some, that light sparks warmth and wonder, and a desire to see everyone with whatever portion of that happiness they can find for themselves. And even if what they find is but a thousandth part of that love, they are content.

Others– it kindled something different.

When Lel and Kupava returned to the village that evening, their hands clasped, aglow with all the wondrousness of true love, the Snow Maiden was troubled.

For her heart was of ice, she could not feel what it was that had the townsfolk turning to one another, all smiles. And with all the bite and hunger of an icy blast of wind from the north, she wanted to feel what Lel and Kupava felt, to have what they had.

Alone in her bed that night, the vision of them and all the village rejoicing with them burned into her mind. She thought of Mizgir in this new light, and knew that she could not feel for him what Kupava felt for Lel. 

She crept from her bed, her heart feeling smaller and colder than ever before. Tears streaked her lovely smooth face, and she wondered if the pain of wanting so much would cause her icy heart to crack. 

Halfway back to Father Frost’s house she had gone, perhaps with dawning realization upon her of what he had tried to warn her from, perhaps because at the end of all things, all little girls want to believe in their fathers to cure the ills of their worlds.

Spring Beauty, denied past her time, was abroad in the land, and heard her daughter’s cries. Embracing her child, she paused in her labors to hear the tale of woe.

With a heavy heart and sadness in her eyes, she gave the daughter the gift she begged for. A garland about her neck that would warm her heart to love was her gift, but it came with a price. The Snow Maiden was, after all, a creature of the cold, it was her nature and could not be spurned. To be warmed from the inside and the outside at the same time would be her undoing. So Spring Beauty admonished her to shelter herself in the shadows of the trees and not to go out into the bright sunshine that would soon spread across the land.

Laughing with joy, the Snow Maiden clasped her mother to her heart. Over and over she thanked her and danced back across the snows with new life, finding all that her eye touched to be beautiful by the grace of love.

All the way back to the village she ran, keeping to the safety of the forest and marveling at all the things she never seen or understood before. She wanted to creep and she wanted to fly to Mizgir’s arms and tell him all the love of her heart.

Now, you remember that I just told you that true love happens maybe twice in a hundred years? Well, when Mizgir laid his eyes upon the Snow Maiden and hers on him, that was the second time in a hundred years that true love blossomed right there in the little village. They ran to each other and embraced in the middle of the town square, that all could see how they felt, and rejoice with them. The power of the moment was so strong, that all the town poured from their cottages to see it. 

Old men smiled at their wives, and the wives reached out their hands.

Young men reached out to touch their wives and their children, remembering the fruits love brings forth.

Children looked on in awe, hoping to one day be so lucky as to find something so special.

Even the sun was charmed, breaking through the clouds to beam down its approval.

In the arms of her beloved, the Snow Maiden forgot all her mother’s warnings. She was so consumed by the power of this love, she ignored her own nature and melted away into nothingness in Mizgir’s arms. No longer constrained to a shape, her spirit swept into the skies, spreading the warmth of passion that had been her death, and the Snow Maiden became Spring Wind.

As for Mirgiz, he never recovered from holding all that he had wanted with all the fire of youth in his arms and watching it slip away. On midsummer’s eve, he chased the Spring Wind into a lake and drowned.

You ask me about the Spring Wind? Oh, she is still here, living with her mother and not realizing that her form is gone. Is it a blessing, that she is always at that moment of perfect beauty in her lover’s arms? Sometimes I think both ways– that she traded a frozen heart for being frozen in a moment in time.

But what a moment in time!

So you see, not all the stories have princesses and happy endings and riches and joy. But still they must be told, that we know of our natures, that we feed them lest we become something that we are not.

If you are not happier for hearing my tale, perhaps you are wiser. It is enough.

The world is a stranger place that we can reckon, and we pass it all by, not as ourselves with how we see us- crooked teeth, laughs that go on too long, the resting faces that say bitch to some and neutrality to others. No, we appear in perfect little rectangles, frozen in time like the wallet sized photographs from long ago school picture days. Like those unwanted cluttery snapshots, we may fade, or take on a patina in certain lights that we certainly did not possess… except when we do.

We think of belonging in regimental fashion, to our family, our organizations, our country- but that is the cheap version to give lip service to when we must fit, must be made to fit, to have something larger than ourselves to look to. That is not belonging.

Those I belong to, I belong to because they keep that little secret snapshot of me in their minds, and I keep mine of them. Little pieces of self in moments that cannot be posed or chosen from a set of proofs to be as perfect as possible. There are people I belong to that belong to me that I see and remember as their most glorious, charming, kind, loving selves. In me I hold my people as being courageous, laughing at all the right parts, and trusting in sharing the burden of their pain to lighten the load. They will never know themselves in my mind, and I will never know myself in theirs, but that lack only makes them the more precious.

I am theirs and they are mine, not in any words that mean what they should mean. I try to throw away whether the words matter, to give shape to the idea of belonging and just enjoy that we belong.

The divine spark in me recognizes and greets the divine spark in you.

The human soul in me that knows pain and weeps, weeps with the human soul in you.

I will wake tomorrow and go about my day, and do the best I can to be a good person. I may not succeed, but if I do in any measure, it is because I meditate on the nature of love and belonging today.

Before the End- Darandur

The gentle dripping of the clock that marked all the days and nights of life within the massive keep had a character all its own, to those that truly heard it.

Darandur had heard that sound, echoing through the caverns for all his life. Sometimes, he felt they burbled with the joys of discovery in the deeps, urging him on around the next bend. It was a promise to guide him home, no matter how many twists and turns the path may take.

Some days, the tempo was a steady given that exhorted him to calm and patience. I have measured millenia in this same way, and I will go on for always and ever, that drip said, and none of Darandur’s problems seemed all that pressing in the sound of that ever onward pace.

On this day, he found himself resting his forehead against the stone of the time piece’s edifice, trying to shut out all of the thoughts clamoring for attention. Of a mercy, there were no other steps or voices, none of the crowded shuffling and murmuring of the Many here.

There were many advantages to life in the keep Naradhurn had carved out of the rock at the beginning of all things. Surrounded by the most treacherous mountains in Myskaria, outsiders were not a common sight. As the treasures crafted by the inhabitants were prized and highly sought, a distant and sheltered refuge was what had kept them all safe.

When he was due for his shift, the drops had the insistence of a drumbeat, driving him out into the snows with his spear this grandmother had made for him to stand the watches and march the patrols. Darandur was honor bound to take both his and his mother’s duties that they keep their debts paid to the thegn.

Once, and only once, Darandur had suggested that Thegn Barhadnein would understand the challenges within the Durein clan and reduce the tithe. “The thegn has spoken fair to me this past season, and never fails to inquire for mother’s health.” He remembered that he had said this with a gentle smile and touch to his mother’s hand, so unnaturally still. 

Without so much as moving his chair back from the dinner table, his father backhanded Darandur from his seat with a cuff that spilled him onto the polished stone floor. His head and shoulder took the brunt of the impact, but he bit his lip on any cry of pain. His mother struggled to rise before Grandmother laid her hand upon her shoulder, her mouth a grim line while her eyes bored into the patriarch.

Who did not look up from his bowl, but merely went on eating the watery stew, his jaws working mechanically. His face was weary, as it always was at the end of a day spent in the damp mines. Tharandur had no affinity for magic, no elemental gift at all to coax the precious ores and treasures from the stone. The Durein claim was not as profitable as it had been once, and the hours spent wresting even a meager living from it had taken a toll.

The silence stretched out, unbearably tense. Darandur, scion of the house, had achieved adult status from the time he first paid the family tithe. He would be within his rights to challenge his father, but a quick glance to Grandmother’s face told him this was not the time.

With his forehead’s warmth being leached away by the cold stone, it was easy to bring the scene that had played out three seasons ago to his mind. It was, he admitted privately, why he was standing here instead of putting his feet on the graveled path that would take him home.

Grandmother would be there, taking his spear and armor from him, as befit the matron of the house. She would have warm water at the hearth ready, that he might wash before sitting with his feet soaking in and not catch a chill. A hot drink would be in his hand while Grandmother cleaned and oiled his raiment, clucking over any new dings to be repaired during the next rest day.

And, if she were in a particularly good mood, with mother resting quietly and father gone wherever it was fathers went, Grandmother might tell him the story.

Over the years, Darandur tried to figure out what made the story so important, what it was that made it linger in his mind. Maybe it was the tale itself, filled with adventures unknown to a small boy, safe in the depths of the keep. Maybe it was how the hero broke every rule and every tradition for reasons most mysterious, or the people and creatures met along the way. The hero was young, and wise beyond those years,and people listened when they spoke. Maybe it was the way that the hero always got out of certain trouble, always saved the day.

Maybe it was the way Grandmother’s eyes shone when she looked at him and told him that he was her hero, her hope. It made him feel powerful, strong, determined to do the best he could for all of them.

As all the best stories, it had a hundred different parts, all of which Darandur knew by heart. He had only asked his mother for the story once, only to have her turn away with tears in her voice. “I don’t know it, I am not worthy to carry it to your ears.” That was all she had to say to cause her son’s tears, dripping with a silence beyond voices into his already growing beard.

It was best that Tharandur never knew the story was being told. While it hadn’t always been an armed truce between them, he had never been easy in his manner. Unlike the fathers of his agemates, Tharandur rarely made time for his son’s education, entrusting it to his own mother as their people had done in the days of old.

There was one day his father had taken up a teaching, though, that came unwillingly to Darandur’s mind as he stood, listening to the timeless dripping of the clock.

They had been out in the clear air, running the snare line in the deepest part of winter. Normally a duty that fell to the women of the clan, with their more nimble fingers to set the traps, Tharandur had taken it on the rest day so that Grandmother could stay by the fire with a nagging cough. Her thanks had been perfunctory enough to irk the proud man, and he stamped from site to site, Darandur struggling to keep up in his footsteps.

When they had four rabbits and a fine fat beaver, Darandur asked why they did not turn back to the keep.

His father had snorted, blasting a long plume from his beard. “There’s a lesson to teach there, lad.” He used a mittened hand to clear off the next stone overlook bench they came to. “Yes, we have enough meat to eat until the next rest day, or until mother’s cough decides to heal itself. But we also have three more traps set- because you can never count on the luck of traps. Now, we could go back, have our warm drinks, smoke our pipes.” His hand lingered over where his pipe hung from the belt for a moment, then went to his water flask instead, passing it to the boy before taking his own long draught and coming to a decision.

Tharandur motioned the boy back to his feet, with a sign that meant to step quietly. Very far inwardly, Darandur groaned to himself, feeling he was being punished in the way that small children do. It was another few minutes of sneaking through the snow before he felt an unwontedly gentle tap from Tharandur, followed by a point.

There, floundering desperately in the snow where their snare should be was a perfectly white rabbit. It was laying on its side, mouth open and panting, legs having churned the snow in panic. Around the right rear leg was the twine of the snare. As they watched, the rabbit leapt back to its feet, pulling and tugging, wildly bucking to attempt to free itself. It was a brief struggle, only this time the rabbit landed on its other side, facing away from the watchers. It turned its attention to the back leg as Tharandur cupped a hand over Darandur’s ear.

“I want you to watch this one,” he murmured. Horrified, his eyes darted between the rabbit, suffering so cruelly, and his father. He wanted to ask why, he wanted to take the spear and put the creature out of his misery, ashamed that he was being forced to do this thing.

This was not a thing a hero would do, he thought as the rabbit lay in the odd, curled shape on the snow.

It was just then that they heard the sounds of the thegn’s hunting party, crashing through the woods heedlessly so close to the keep. They were mounted on study ponies, thick furs to keep them warm, with mead in their flasks, and a stone sledge to drag their kills back over the snow. Darandur’s eyes were wide at the number of deer, rabbits, and even a moose piled up, reading for butchering. The rabbit lay, apparently too exhausted to care about the noise or footsteps anymore.

“Ah, Tharandur!” bellowed out Thegn Barhardnein, his red beard nearly glowing as the sun struck him. “I wish you’d come to join us if it was hunting you wanted this day. I do miss your voice raised in song, the way we used to hear it.”

“Illness in the house, my thegn. Wouldn’t do to spread it.”

“But you do hunt, and on your rest day, too!” The big man turned in the saddle to his companions. “See now, do as the head of Clan Durein does- always takes care of his own!” Darandur noted the expressions of the younger men take on the same he was sure his own had- was there ever a time or a place without old men feeling like they had to tell young men their duty?

“Och, thegn, the beast suffers. Should we not make an end to it?” asked a boy, younger than Darandur, mounted on a fine dapple grey pony.

Why couldn’t I say that to father? Darandur wondered.

Then his father’s dark eyes flashed before he spoke. “I would that you leave it to me, young master. Doing a bit of teaching this afternoon.”

The thegn’s wild brows formed a bridge over the long nose. “Oh, and what might the lesson be? Teaching your lad to do the women’s work?”

Predictably, this caused a derisive shout of laughter from the hunting party. “Nay, thegn.” The sledge passed by the party, and Tharandur motioned to it. “Do you not wish to guard that all the way back to the keep? We did see bear sign this day.”

The thegn frowned down at the pair before motioning the party off to follow the sledge, while keeping the boy on the grey pony by his side. “One can manage all responsibilities when one has the hands to do so. And I would know more of this lesson you teach.”

“Be that as it may, my thegn.” He turned away from the imposing, glittering figure wrapped in all the furs who did not feel the cold nor stamp through the snow. “Look again at that rabbit.”

Afraid of what he was going to see, Darandur turned back to find the rabbit in the odd, hunched shape, facing away from them. It seemed so very still. “Is it… is it dead?” he whispered, feeling as though he had failed the little creature.

“Nay, lad,” Tharandur said, pointing at the almost imperceptible movements around the twined foot. “Here’s the lesson- you give even the simplest creature enough time, and they will find a way out of the trap.” Darandur felt his heart leap as he looked back to the rabbit, who had almost gnawed through the twine and was moments from being free.

His eyes darted back to the thegn, who’s face had become a frozen mask.

“Aye, lad,” the thegn said, giving a nod to the boy. The boy flung a dagger from the saddle at the rabbit’s head, striking true. The movements stopped. “So it’s best to take what’s yours while you can. And ensure it does not suffer.” The thegn turned his gaze from Darandur back to head of the Durein clan. “A cruel teacher can lead to a cruel man. Next time, I would that you and your lad join the hunt.”

“As you wish, my thegn,” Tharandur said, and the great man rode away without another word.

Memories that make Darandur shake his head as though they were smoke from the pipe he could clear away as easily. They would not help him, just as tarrying here would not help him.

For this was the day that the scion of Clan Durein had failed his testing. The magic did not pulse in his veins, and the song of stone would not sing for him.

Darandur would be no one’s hero. Just the son of a cruel man.

The clock wept for him as he set his feet for home.

The Goose Girl and the magical horse that saved her ass

Sometimes, you find yourself in the strangest situations. The story I’m about to tell you is all because I did a favor for that pox ridden, sly witted, shadow tongued knave called Robin Goodfellow, he who serves at Oberon’s left hand and trapped me in a sad, sad state.

Suffice to say without lingering upon the circumstance, for all know that a full day and night could be spent in speculation upon Puck’s antecedents, that I was once trapped in the body of a horse. For two… hundred… years.

It took the first hundred years to regain the power of speech, then another fifty to keep humans from trying to kill me or disenchant me. At long last, I came into a royal stable, and my situation began to look up. Eventually, I befriended a young princess who was, unfortunately, rather fond of having a talking horse that had a bit of common sense about her. She discovered how to break the curse Puck had left on me, and bound it upon me so that once her daughter was settled and happy, I could resume my own natural form and go about my business. 

Well and so, at least it was a light at the end of the tunnel. And I wasn’t completely powerless, so I made sure the girl was decently pretty, figuring she’d get married off faster. 

And sure enough, the princess got to be about that age in which girl people notice there are boy people and vice versa, and a king of the neighboring land asked for her hand in marriage. Within the month, we were packed up, bag and baggage, with the queen reminding me of her promise to me, sealed with a few drops of blood that she placed on a kerchief in the princess’s pocket. 

We set off on a beautiful spring day, the kind of day in which all is inherently right in the world, and it’s a world that you know you won’t have to go about as a horse much longer. I was daydreaming off the lovely clothes I would wear and the meals I would eat and the company I would keep once I no longer had a tail and hooves.

Of course, that’s when it happened, because that’s the kind of cursed luck I’ve had since running afoul of Robin bloody Goodfellow. The princess grew thirsty and asked her one servant she was sent with to fetch her water from the brook. 

The sly creature sniffed and tossed her hair. “Get it yourself, I’m not getting all muddy before meeting the king just because you’re too stupid to fill a water bag.”

I pinned the servant with a steady glare, and spoke to the princess, who was already sliding out of the saddle to quench her thirst. “If your mother knew of this, it would break her heart,” I muttered, for it would have been slightly uncouth to scream, “Slap this unseemly shrew this instant, you coward!”

You know, the way things ended up, I probably would have been better off trying to put some starch in that spine immediately. Ah well, hindsight.

But I didn’t, and she didn’t, and we rode on. 

By midafternoon, the princess was again thirsty and the same disgraceful mummer’s show played out. Only this time when the princess leaned out over the water, the kerchief carrying the queen’s blood (and the realization of all my dreams of being in my own form again) slipped out of the princess’s pocket and was whisked away by the river.

The servant crowed in triumph. “Now that you’ve lost your mother’s blessing, I will no longer be a servant, but a princess.” In short order, she’d stolen the spineless princess’s clothing and climbed upon my back to ride into the king’s castle as his bride. I meekly went along with this indignity, trusting that the king could see for himself who was of royal blood and who was a serving maid. 

And if somehow he did manage to miss it, I would simply take the first opportunity to enlighten him. Truth be told, I was far more concerned about the missing kerchief than any other part of this little misadventure.

Unfortunately, the false princess was brighter than I gave her credit for. No sooner had we entered the courtyard than she demanded I be put to death for offending her. And the true princess, she claimed, should be given the simplest of tasks, for she was lacking in wit. (To be fair, the way her mouth gaped open after the former servant slapped her for speaking out of turn, that part of the story wasn’t hard to carry off.)

The king must have really wanted the alliance, for he took his bride at her word. And you know, I was still pondering the chances that dying as a horse would release me into my own form and let me put things right.

But no. My princess begged the knacker to stuff and hang my head on the wall where she could pass it every morning while she went off to her new occupation of herding geese. 

I swear I’m not inventing this tale. She really just wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

You know what’s worse than being a live horse? Well I’ll bloody tell you. It’s being a damned dead horse’s head who has to say nice things to hopefully bring some sense into the vast, empty, echoing wasteland that existed between the deposed princess’s ears!

So once a day, throughout the rest of the spring and summer, I got a total of about five minutes a day to give gentle, wise advice that equated to ‘stop being a moron and get me out of this mess’. And smell myself as I began to slowly decay. 

Boredom does not begin to describe how tedious this was. I started learning to imitate the voices of others to get the kitchen staff to pick fights with each other. And then I moved on to the stable hands, and though it took a little longer, I picked up the cadences from the gentry. 

That’s when I really got started.

The true princess was just never quite going to get there on her own, you see. Something about not wanting to be killed blah blah blah, yadda yadda. So I started a whisper campaign. In all sorts of voices, just barely able to be heard, I spoke of the goose girl and her beauty and kindness and how she was surely not some simple maid.

Eventually, as summer wound into fall and the flies, thankfully, died down (no pun intended), the king began to look upon the simple goose girl. I made sure her hair was as golden, her profile as nobly pure, and her skin as white as my dregs of magic could make it. 

And, you know, because fighting fair is fighting stupid, maybe I also made the false princess’s voice more like the cawing of a crow, her eyes squinty, gave her the gout, you know, just a few minor inconveniences. If the king’s affections for her had been true, he could have overlooked all of that.

But kings are the damndest people, and it was clear that even a half blind, croaking, gimping wife with an alliance was better than no wife and no allies. 

So… and I want to stress, this was a very long time ago and the reports are somewhat mixed. But it’s probably not a coincidence that right about then, one of her breasts sagged about two handspans from where it had been, and she sort of went bald.

At this point, the weight of the king’s crown was such that he liked to go for long rides with just a few retainers. Because roaming the countryside aimlessly is far better than staying home with your wife when your wife has… issues. 

On his way to the stable early one morning, he happened upon the goose girl and I speaking. “Oh,” I cried loudly, “how your poor queen mother’s heart would be broken to see you thusly, Your Highness!”

That (finally!) got the king’s attention. “Hark, what is it you say, ah, horse?”

I glared down at the goose girl and growled, “Tell. Him. NOW.”

But did she? Nooooooooo. 

Thankfully, the king was a good deal brighter than I’d initially thought. “I would hate to intrude on a private conversation,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking to his toes. He cast a canny glance at me, and I wondered just how much he’d put together of late. “Why don’t I just go along in for my mount and you carry on telling your story like I’m not even here.”

The goose girl dropped a curtsy and held it until the king was out of sight. “Well, Falada, I don’t know why I’d need to tell you the story, you were there.”

If I could have slapped my forehead in frustration, I would have. As it was, there was a long suffering sigh that refused to be contained. “But Your Highness, I would so enjoy hearing it in your sweet dulcet tones and better understand, from your point of view, what adventures we’ve had.”

Have you ever noticed that some people love to talk about themselves? Without a moment’s hesitation, she spilled out the whole sad, sorry tale (or at least the parts she knew, to be fair). 

As she went on (and on and on), I could have slapped myself a second time… if I’d just asked her the right question, she would have been spilling her guts to anyone in earshot for months. Then I had to remind myself that it also would have been a fine way to get the poor girl killed if the tale had come to the false queen’s ears.

The king, of course, took a rather dim view of his queen’s involvement and had her summoned at once. Her appearance was rather a shock even to me- she hadn’t been given leave to don a wig or any kind of underpinnings that could have evened out that whole chestal region issue. 

I almost felt a little bad. Almost.

“Good morrow, wife!” he fairly shouted. “Tell me, if you would, how you were serve justice upon a lady in waiting that betrayed her mistress?”

Peering into the company, the queen was just able to make out the goose girl, and smirked with triumph. “Why, my lord,” she said, very slowly to try and minimize the gravelly, harsh tone, “I should cause her to be put into a barrel studded with nails and dragged through the streets by a team of horses until she was quite assuredly dead.” Sweetly she smiled at my princess.

I wriggled my nose, and the queen’s smile was a little less sweet as she spat out a tooth. Maybe two, it was a little hard to tell from the angle I was forced to observe the scene from.

In a most royal fashion, the king suppressed a shudder and called for such a barrel to be created and brought forth. There was a very strained silence in the courtyard, with no one really knowing what would happen next. With extreme restraint, I managed not to wreak any further havoc upon the queen.

Once the ordered barrell was rolled out, the king ordered his wife to be loaded up and executed in the manner she had chosen. The gasps of shock from the members of the court underlaid the wails and screams from the queen as the deed was done. 

As for the king, he merely gave a curt nod of his head before turning to his chamberlain and asking that the goose girl be taken and offered hospitality fit for a princess. With the faintly disapproving look that seems to be universal to the breed, he did so, with their withdrawal, everyone went to go spread the delicious gossip.

Everyone that is, except the king. Once the courtyard had cleared, and sighed and walked over to lean against the wall I was unwillingly perched on, gazing up at me. “I’m guessing you aren’t really a horse.”

“You’d be guessing right.”

He smiled. “My old nanny told me a lot of stories when I was a child, and promised me that if I was especially observant and clever, I might get to see some real magic in the world.”

I turned my head and lifted a brow. “So how did that turn out for you?”

That got me a laugh. “About as well as it did for you, I think. Since it would appear you’ve been on my side the whole time, and I’m getting my happily ever after, it would seem the least I could do is a few favors for you.”

My mind raced, knowing I needed to not waste any tiny bit of this goodwill but still get everything I could out of this man while he was in a good mood. And how not? As far as he was concerned, he woke up that morning next to a screeching hag and if I gauged the look in his eye right, tonight he’d be bedding down with a beautiful princess. That brought an immediate thought to mind.

“Well, could we start with an actual wedding this time? You know, it’s always interesting to me to meet the families- girls so often turn out to be just like their mothers,” I said, smiling toothily. “Think of what you could have avoided!”

The king coughed into his fist, and it was suspiciously laugh like. “Fair point, but I’m also willing to bet the servant’s mother doesn’t quite look like that.” He stared at me pointedly.

“LIkely not. Do you ever notice that sometimes what’s inside someone just overshadows what’s outside? I think it’s more a case of that,” I said, nodding as sagely as I could, mounted on a wall. “But your people have been through a lot, and a wedding is also a fresh beginning that spreads hope and goodwill!”

“Alright, alright fine! I’ll throw a wedding, and yes, I’ll invite the bride’s family. Anything else?” The king’s tone was less genial now- he really had been looking forward to bedding the goose girl.

I made my next plea as plaintive as possible. “Can you please get me the hell down off this wall? Maybe put my head on a stick or something and get someone to move me around a little? Do you have any idea how damned boring your courtyard is?”

As I’d intended, the king laughed and made it so. I decided it was fair to go ahead and like him- any testiness was kind of understandable considering the ups and downs of his day.

So it was that I was officially invited to the wedding, with the court jester riding on the stick as though it were an actual horse. Normally I would have objected to such treatment as being far beneath my dignity, but I’d seen the seating chart for the reception, and the jester happened to be seated right next to the bride’s mother. 

I think seeing me was something as a surprise, at least, her eyes bugged out rather impressively. “Falada? What in the world…?”

Jerking my nose towards the radiant bride, I growled, “Does she look happy?”

“Um.. err… yes, she does,” the queen admitted.

“Then get. Me. Off. This. Thing!” I snarled.

And that’s how, during the toasts, a dead horse head on a stick turned back into a fairy. We were as discreet as possible, of course. It just wouldn’t do to upstage the bride on her day. I seated myself demurely next to the queen and spent the service wiggling my toes.

Have you ever had the purely indescribable sensation of wiggling your toes after they’ve been hooves for nearly two hundred years?

No, of course you bloody haven’t! I’m the only idiot that managed to be stuck in horse form for that long- I know because I went and looked it the hell up!

I had to wait until I had an appropriate amount of privacy to have a good all over scratch… hands really are just the most amazing things. You can’t fully appreciate them until you’ve had to do a very long time without them.

Graciously, I accepted the king’s offer of the best suite of rooms outside of his own. While he’d been aware that he’d stumbled across some kind of magic, he had no idea that he’d cut off the head of a faery, and was most contrite.

To be fair, I had been awaiting his reaction with a certain amount of glee. If I had been less immediately impacted by how terrible and degrading a curse can be, I might have been tempted to apply one for having my head cut off and mounted on a wall. As it was, stuffed with the choicest delicacies two kingdoms had to offer and a bit giddy with my first cups of wine in I couldn’t remember how long, I chose to let bygones be bygones and accept his and the new queen’s most fulsome apologies.

Even the new queen’s mother had the grace to say that she had been overly greedy for her child and that she should have freed me as soon as she had the means to do so.

But for the evening of the wedding I was nothing but the kindest, gentlest guest one could wish for.

The next day, I sat down all the royals within ready reach and gave them a very stern demonstration of why it’s extremely impolite and unwise to hold leverage over a fae. I must have been very impressive- there was a lot of blanching, pale faces, retching, and out and out fainting at some points.

I think it was safe to say they took my point almost immediately. The reparation offers for all offenses to my person real or imagined were truly gratifying.

Mollified, I lingered in that fair kingdom for a goodly span of time. I had my little princess to think of, after all. While the king seemed like a decent enough fellow, I hadn’t quite forgotten that he’d pitched his first wife into a nail studded barrel and had her dragged through the streets. And yes, you could say that for all her painful empty headedness, I had grown to be a bit fond of the girl.

After the birth of their second child (a fine girl they named Falada that I freely gave my blessing to), I was satisfied that the king meant to mind his manners and went on my way to find that loathsome blackhearted bastard Puck. And yes, I found him.

But what happened then is another story.