Wind

Sun, 17 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The high queen stands at the edge of the high cliff, the winter sun shining silver on her sword. The wind carries the smells of the valley to her, grass and hay and apple-blossoms and goats and the smoke of a hundred kitchens.

Her hair is gray, her eyes are gray, her gown is gray. Her land is green.

She turns and descends the long stairs to her court, there to rest until the evening’s petitioners arrive.

Gela owns a cottage and a goat. On alternate days, she walks to the market to sell the goat’s milk and buy bread and cheese and onions. Sometimes travelers come by, and she offers them a roof and a meal and a bed, which she sometimes shares and sometimes not. In this way she lives.

The goat dies.

She has no family to turn to, and no one will loan money to an unmarried woman going on forty. A bad risk, they say. She tries to sell her cottage, but it is far from town and the soil is no good for anything but weeds. Who wants such a place, they say.

She goes to petition the queen.

(to be continued)

Pensée

Fri, 06 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In the half-light and long shadows of early dawn, a slim figure strides through the woods. Its gait is more graceful than a human’s, and yet strangely coarse for a fairy: direct and efficient, its eyes darting to and fro. It moves suddenly, turning and crouching in a single motion, and in the next instant it is standing again, a purple flower between its fingers. It stands unnaturally still for several long seconds, and then it turns and walks swiftly back the way it came.

John Stitch is not a fool. He avoids the forest at night, when beasts are about, and at dawn and dusk, when fairies are about. But his patients insist on visiting him in daylight, and so he has precious little time to search for medicinal herbs. Still, he is accustomed to his short hours, and they are hardly the greatest danger of his profession.

So it is that he is entirely unprepared for the sudden appearance of a creature not unlike a man, with silver hair and silver eyes, purple-stained lips slightly apart. The fairy – he can be nothing else, despite the daylight – stares at John with an unnerving intensity, like a hawk observing its prey.

“Hail, handsome mortal surgeon; well we meet,” the fairy says. “Who walks within these woods we call our own? I know but little of you, save your trade, and that you came to seek the yarrow bloom.”

“I am indeed a surgeon,” says John, avoiding the question of his name. “You must be a powerful fairy indeed, to read a man’s purpose direct from his mind.”

“No magic that, but observation mere,” the fairy replies with a flicker of contempt. “Your gait was purposeful, direct and swift; therefore you knew your destination well. From there, your purpose follows from your path. I know as well as you where yarrow grows. But come and sit, fair stranger; tell your name.”

No evading this time. He sits where the fairy indicates. “My name is John Stitch. And yours?”

The fairy smiles; the purple stain extends to his teeth. “Sir Hemlock, scout for Queen Titania.”

“You clearly know my business here; what is yours? I have not heard of fairies out in daylight.”

“We seldom venture far beyond our homes, for only twilight yields the bridge we walk. A fairy still on earth past dusk or dawn must there remain ‘til twilight’s next return. I was distracted by a flower’s hue; its nature-given petals are of white, but this was violet as royal silk.”

John can hardly help but be professionally curious. “May I see the flower?”

The fairy produces a flower with three violet petals. Half of one petal has been bitten off.

“I wouldn’t have identified it without knowing it was supposed to be white, but I do know this plant. Its name is Wild-thought, and it quiets demonic possession.”

“I know the virtues of the flower well. But this is something strange, in more than hue; it twists the keenness of my mind around, and bends my thoughts all to a single point. I find I cannot but desire you, though mortal you may be and frail of bone. I gaze upon your brow, your eyes, your lips, and keenly I observe your handsomeness.”

This is somewhat alarming.

“Perhaps,” says John diplomatically, “fairies, not being mortal, have no need to fear for your souls. But humans are bound to obey the laws of Scripture, lest we be be cast into the Pit.”

Hemlock presses his lips together. “I would not send the one I love to Hell, whatever drug was addling my brain. But I could take you to my fairy home, and feed you dates and figs and morning dew, and you would stay forever deathless there. How certain are you that your soul is safe?”

John’s list of crimes is, in fact, extensive. Graverobbing, for instance, is an unavoidable requirement of his profession. He’s always prayed for his sins to be forgiven, of course, but is a repentance truly sincere if he means to go on sinning? This is the true cost of medicine: to do good requires endangering one’s soul.

But if he were to accept fairy food, and live forever in the fairy lands… he would not have to choose. He could answer his calling and heal the sick with no fear of Hell.

He would no longer have to let God stifle his conscience.

“I accept.”

The shadows grow long, and man and fairy slip away together into dusk.

Refraction

Wind

(to be continued)

Pensée