Fall - The Sacrificed Sister of Dawn

(You could see this post as a riddle, the answer to which is a single word.)

(Eos, Aurora or Dawn, one of the oldest Proto-Indo-European Gods)

Cousin to Fire, descendent of wolves, pale twin of Eos, the sacrificed one whose silver bones were spilled to build the gates of dawn, and lie beneath it still.

She is as a guest who is present but did not arrive, and soon shall she be gone but, leave by no door. It is hers to to seal, to conceal, to beguile, to be soft, to transform, to transport, to ware the day, to hold back time by the extending of the gloam.

Her palace rises from the earth, finite yet without bound, a lockless door and a cage without bars. It is the arms of the Otherworld where the sacrificed go and build the mansions of the silvered dead.

To you who would become lost. Who seek what is obscure but not dark. You who have said; the sun shall come, but not the morning. To those who would turn no way and walk no path; ye shall be within her and know it not. A blade shall not wound but by the wind shall ye die. You shall rise towards the sun and be gone.

Those who would go to this place, find the seed of this flower and plant ye a field of them where the sun shall fund them but the wind shall not. Or write ye this verse which, once it is inscribed, she cometh forth, like cut slate or an old sword. Or find ye a certain needle and a spiderweb thread, or a grandmothers hair by which she may stitched.

Fall - The Knights of Gloom

In the gloom they gather and the gloom they rule, lords of the half-closed eye. Snare-hearted men who lost the light but would not serve the dark, branded by sun and star. 

(Beksynski)

No knights of the equator these, their castles ring the utmost north, where they retire yearly for  week-long half-lit days, sending bright factotums into dark and sunlit lands, seeking scrolls of forgotten verse and vases given as funeral gifts to long-dead emperors. 

Only here, at the interstice of time may they thrive for they are sworn to shadow as a whole

and to the court of Mab. Their tents and pennants hung with wooden wind-chimes which make their own music in the still air. 

Here they drink from clouded glasses and dine on slices of pale meats which they skewer with silver forks, served by fae with the heads of whippoorwills and the bodies of upright foxes - dressed in tabards and carrying bras anthophagous carnyx, or by huge snuffling hedgehog squires, or pairs of orphans, one deaf, one blind, or ancient men, their grey beards trailing on the earth. 

Do they even have political views? Their minds like dusty barns with swooping owls. They are desirous of fine China and will meet your eyes in a silvered mirror. Adjacent to death they make congress with beautiful ghosts, their tournaments attended by pale maidens for whose favour they quest. Aye, anything for a dead maid. Why else should killers fear the gloom, and all retire to sunlit lands? 

Thus they hunt. Unmoving, they appear. Knights that gallop not, congealing from mist, etching themselves from branch-shadows, arising from the cambers of dark streams, under moss and willow. Soft-edged knights whose hoof-beats sound like puddle drips, mist beading on their long cloaks of Ungulix fur and Jabberwock skin. Helms capped with cupped hands, tarnished silver owls, leafless bronze trees, gibbous moons, stooped crows or tragedians masks in bronze. Shields picturing thistledown flowers, half-closed eyes, half-open gates, half-drawn swords and half-suns bisected by smeared half-clouds, or infinitely quartered blazons that can never be completely read. 

Their lances quest like tentacles - curling into tree-boles, under doors. The Knights ride lantern mares made of pale light. Fretwork like branches. Pausing in the distance to dismount and fold up their horse like a triptych which they carry like a shield. 

Are they sniffing?

Are they whispering?

But nothing can escape them,

In the gloom.

Perhaps by closing your eyes, pressing the heels of your hands into the ocular gap - producing utter dark - perhaps then they cannot find you. For all that is half-see sings to them; the choir of the occluded. 

Or by holding them in clear, full, un-occluded sight - then they shall cringe and must act knightly, offer war or mercy and make half-lit unbreakable oaths in whispered words like blinded bats. 

They are closing in as the sky darkens and the silver lyre plays, like leaves on slow water, they drift closer, barely seeming to touch the earth. 

As swift as the wind,

Silent as owls,

Gentle as a shave. 

Colourless men lead forward by swords held like tweezers. Swords which quest like hounds, sniff like cold noses, and shift in their hands like weasels. Swords fed on chickens in the night. For these are no earthly knights.

 

 

Six Forgotten New England Monsters

(During the Kickstarter for Queen Mab's Palace I am trying to blog as a much as possible. This will be separated into two streams; Echoing Stars for my dark Science Fiction Posts, and Fall Posts for more fantasy-esque Autumn Themed ones. The first Fall Post was Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands, this is the second;)

 

John Gast

 

1. Old Teak Britches 

He walks by night and by wind for only so will none hear him come. If you are out in the forest by night - listen for him when the wind stills; if every tree ceases creaking but one - and that one stops a little later than the rest, you might still have time, for he is not too close and seeks to hide him approach. Make for the forest edge for he doesn't like to go beyond it. If you hear him swift after the wind, like creak-creak, creak-creak, like footsteps getting faster, its likely too late so you may as well run and don't stop running just because the land is clear for though he likes not to go beyond the green growth and fresh fences, he can still reach beyond them and you might be carried up and away... 

 

2. Shock Hairs Pig Mans Mark 

There was a deal done by night at some time and on one side was a Pocumtok who knew nothing of pigs but wanted some, and a half-Dutch who knew more of them than man should, and on the other was the Devil. In any case the men would have pigs and old Shock-Hair said 'now here is a sign I shall show you two which I gave long ago to a Lady far off, and if you make right the ink and draw right the sign on a man’s hearth, he becomes a pig, and you can make as many as you like, though in return I will take off your spirit till the sun goes black like a coal. These two fools mistook and had the Sign not right, thence, on using it, they made not a pig, but a man-pig, who was neither one nor another. Pigs having wits and men some too, the man Pig caught them both and got the secret out of them and set about trying to get the Sign right, thinking if he could get a Pig done rightly he would be half-way to getting one un-done - which was himself. Those three never could get a Pig done right and likely they are all dead now but the Pig-Marked men are still abroad and still take people here and there to try their Sign. 

 

3. The Chatter Box

 This was an Algonquin maid who wasn't of the usual kind, so no man would marry her, but they feared her too much to say no but pretended to be sick, mad or dead. She got sick of this and said she would go with a white man, which she did, and found a widower. He did not know about the kind of thing she was, so married her, but he found out. From the moment she moved in she would not stop yammering, in English and every other tongue, morning, noon and night and every minute of every hour. This woman didn't even sleep but got up on the walls and onto the roof in the dark, talking and talking. She drove that man mad and he jumped in the river so she went off to marry another, but they got her first, for white men stuffed their ears and caught her and put her hands in chains and her head in a box of rowan wood, which was an old cruel punishment even then. She got away from them but she couldn't get out of of that iron or that box. If you hear her, and you will if she is close, for she is still talking, talking, talking, run fast and run quiet for if she learns your name you will never be free of her. 

 

4. Nantuckets Whalebone Man

 He was made in Nantucket by a whaling man who had seen the last of his trade and by God did he hate whales. He hated that he could hear them still, swimming and free, and he knew whales hated man just the same way/ "White men and whales is like Christians and Indians; it is them or us so we better get killing". Why then did he make the Whalebone Man? Surely for spite alone. he made him from Ivory Bone and dressed him like a Gentleman and paid good money for the whalebone face, giving him smoked spectacles to hide the whalebone eyes, and he set him loose with he last breath as a curse upon the world that wouldn't hate whales the way it should. Now, if you are inland and you see a pale gentleman who walks with a click and if you hear a whales song as if from an ivory flute, but he has no flute to play; leave your doors and windows open, no matter the cold, for if you don't they'll find you drowned in the morning and your house full of seawater which comes out in a flood. (He pipes it down the chimney you see.) 

Michael Ayrton

 

5. The Hessians Hole 

At the time of the war against King George there was a Hessian who loved to kill. He killed when told to and when suggested and he liked it so much that he kept at it regardless, which left him in difficulty. He was out in the night and met an old Indian by the road and was about to kill him too but the old man said don't do what you are thinking and I will give you a hole you can put anything in and take where you like. Well that's just what I need said the Hessian - you show me and I'll believe it. So the Indian showed him the hole and said here is the cat gut to sew shut the hole and only it can so be careful with it, and take care a second time to always leave it not quite open or it will get loose, and it’s as hungry as you are. And he unsewed the hole and there it was, deep as you like, and the Hessian said very good then and kicked the Indian into it and sewed it up and carried it off. Then he just killed who he wanted and put them in the hole. But it came at one time the call to battle for Washington was coming and we better kill that man, and he was busy at the hole so sewed it shut but caught the cat gut with his spur and rode off and started fighting. The hole was loose and came for him. he was fighting and stabbing and found himself going missing, part by part, though no blood flowed. It was the hole. Soon all that was left was a spur and a long cat-gut thread. That hole is still around, you can listen for the Hessian and Indian still in it and still arguing over who gets what to eat. 

 

6. The Southrons Mill 

There is a Mill that moves through the night like an owl and the earth like a worm. It is always working and never in the same place twice. A Southron made it. This was in the years before the war between the States. He came north slave hunting, saying they get cold in the woods and slow down, though he never seemed to catch any, but he built that mill which made candles that gave a strange light. Then the war between the states took up and his fortunes fell and it seemed people started going missing here and there and the old mill took up thundering away all night with bright clear candle light shining out. The women got to talking about that Mill saying 'Did you ever work there?' 'No?' 'How about you?' Well it seemed no-one worked at that mill or ever had so up went a good many one night to talk to that man and pound on his door. Up he popped. "You won't have my Mill and no-one will for my investors won't allow it!" Then that Mill just burrowed into the soil like a mole and swam through the earth like a whale and was gone.

 

 

The Kickstarter for Queen Mab’s Palace has hit its goal and is still on! More artistic goals coming soon!