Rook was acting restless again. He sniffed the aire to every quarter and leaned side to side, listening for something that Meda couldn’t detect. The woods seemed silent. He knelt down to stroke the tall shaggy dog’s one blue-tipped ear, honing in on his mood and senses. Through Rook’s nose he smelt the leafy decay under the light cover of snow, tramped dry fern fronds under their feet, the acrid scent of a walnut tree close by. Somewhere to the fore a martin had gone through earlier, somewhere to the southeast an owl had left the bloody, fluffy remains of a pigeon. Something was coming and going across their path, far above, but nothing tangible enough to name, and it was driving them both to distraction.
“Let’s go on,” he whispered, “only let me know what this is you sense before it falls upon us, as I have no hint of it myself.” Meda relied on the dog’s senses, his own were the senses of a water creature, and would never adapt to the forest, however much he wished it sometimes. In a gesture of precaution, he held his left palm to the soil, his right opened to the sky, pulled them both equally to meet over his chest, and asked a warding. They moved on.
In contrast to Rook’s white and blue spotted coat, Meda’s hair was black as a crow feather and curly as a mountain sheep; in the right light it shone a purple irridescent sheen. His almond shaped azure eyes were always squinted, some opined this resulted from much time near the borderlands, where the light was never steady, some said it might be from looking inward, back to his ocean home, for far too long. His devotion to his lord was blinding, though, the one that had scooped him from the drying tidal pool and breathed the Breath of Toradh into his spirit. If he never lived under the waves again, it hardly mattered, this world was filled with the duty he craved, the experience he must have to fully live, and if his lord ever went back to his own childhood home, he could always go with him.
The cool aire was refreshing, the river held thin shelves of ice out from the banks over the rippling middle of the rocky, crystal clear stream. He felt the passage of the minnows beneath the surface, the spirit of the stream dancing over the stones. This was his element, and it was always comforting. They drank and moved on. Following it to the river west would bring them home to the halls and companionship, which they longed for, as they had both been out afoot for over two turns of the silverlight. It had been a long endurance to crouch in the trees of the north easterly border, to listen to the evil and watch the destruction going on with that tribe of demons. Senfossa the scribe, his instructer in the ways of this world, forbade him to refer to their actions as ‘evil’ or ‘demonic’ but that is what it was. To speak it aloud in quite those terms was forbidden, on the Law of Return, but he couldn’t retrain his mind from the knowing.
Everything he had seen over the border was destruction. The trees were being felled, the soil upturned, the creek that ran down to the valley farther east had been dammed with soil and was running rank with filth and debris. These people had built fires simply to rid themselves of piles of branches, had hunted down the red deer and boars, once even a horse, for food…as an alf that was too much to contemplate – and they’d left the carcass, entrails and bones in heaps. When the foxes and vultures came down to feast, they too were shot and skinned; it was too much. He had killed many of the men wandering across the border, thrown their heads back toward the closest firepit to be found as a warning. But the trees, the fields here, scorched flat, with rude buildings thrown up and stores of weapons being stacked in them. It was all too much. Nothing prepared him for the horror of it, it would take a long winter of work to rid his heart of the vision of it. He hoped the Lady of the Owls was in hall, she could help erase anything.
The footpath soon began to widen, the lights of home glowing in the trees, and at the river’s biggest bend the flat expanse of grassy lawn was flooded through with light issuing from the hall.
Not thinking of anything but a drink and a soft seat near the central fire, they rushed through the curve of the entry and beheld the vast leaf-shaped room quieted and hushed for day’s-rest. Meda took a deep sigh, shrugged off his bow and quiver, said a prayer that the peace of this place should reside in his heart forevermore.
The walls were two to three stories high, built of upright timbre between living trees, the roof an septaganol network of round beams, meeting near an open centre, the ceil a thatch of branches and marsh grasses. Veiwed from the curved foyer, one saw a second story running along the north and east wall, a very long and narrow staircase, the steps carved of a creamy shell material flowing up to its landing hallway. Those were the lord’s rooms. Below, the floor was an expanse of smooth marble-like shell from wall to wall, with a sunken centre around the central fire that was large enough to accomodate two hundred or more. There were provision rooms far off the back wall, and shuttered windows open at the second story level. Seats and cushions and rugs were strewn everywhere around the centre, a long silver bench on the west side of the fire that was the high seat of their world shone with shell and pearl and aquamarine from the sea. Weapons, mostly bows and ivory and bone handled silver blades, sheilds and musical instruments were always stacked on the edges, it was all one could do to step around and over the occupants’ belongings. But no one here ever worried for their possessions, and no one ever refused to share what they had, no matter how seeming precious.
He walked to where the lord’s hirth were casually seated, quietly drinking and speaking amongst themselves, and bowed to one knee. “My Fair Ones, Rook and I have returned for the winter. Mighty glad to be in your company again,” he smiled, and Rook walked ceremoniously down near the basalt ringing the fire, curled himself up, and yawned in agreement.
Shotha, the smith, bowed his head in turn, “A pleasure to see you whole, Med, a pleasure.” Shotha’s head was white, by choice, his hair long to his belt and straight as a leg-bone. He had the eyes of the majority tribe here in Barri, slanted, glowing bright spring-leaf green, the green of his family line, the Beech. His voice was calm and low, and as he had been trained by the Dhjinn in blades, he’d obtained a peculiar level of respect amongst them. Anyone willing to dwell in the south desert hills and suffer the lack of moisture for more than a fortnight’s messenger’s run was worthy some respect – and he had stayed for nine seasons, learning the long curved blade and the short thrown spikes, the bronze darts, and the slicing wire. He scooped a bowl of golden wine from the basin behind his shoulder and gestured for the weary young man to sit.
“We won’t speak on your gatherings until the next day-light, you feel the need for rest.”
“Much appreciation my lord,” Meda replied between swallows. Being a child of the ocean, once a sea-urchin, a stay in the deserts to his mind was more than miraculous, and he held Shotha in pure awe.
The Van to Shotha’s left was from the far, far east, he had come in seeking asylum long before Meda’s time, after the First War. He was small and slender as an aspen branch, betraying no hint of the giant’s blood in his lineage. He’d left his mountain home feeling betrayed and bewildered by the aliances formed after that war, and had been present to watch the Giving of Hostages, or as it was referred to in this land, the Great Theft, as it happened. The bards told of his heart breaking at the sight, of his wandering in the northern forests for time out of mind, alone, confused, wildered, until a chance encounter with a troop of Aesir women sought of him his allegiance, and his glamour broke. Startled by circumstance he had run west, and did not stop until he crossed the river and was found by the Free Horses. It made for a beautiful song, and the women loved singing it.
Of them all, he was most eccentric in his tastes, not to say every individual in the realm wasn’t unique in her or his own way, but of the hirth he appeared most concerned with materials. He was inclined to working with stones, the Elder voices of his homeland, and bore wristlets and collars and pendants and earrings worked in titanium and red gold, glowing with rare gems and crystals few knew how to name. He could prophecy for those who walked Above Stone, if they called on him, and he was very inclined to aide them when they did call. If he were ever found absent for a spell, it were more than likely one of his trips Above.
“Tavani-ela, where is our Lord this eve?” Meda asked him, quietly.
“He sleeps in the Tree,” Tavan replied with a hint of dismay, “we had hoped for a song….”
“Could the Elder on your rod give word to my lord’s crow I am arrived back?”
“Aye, of course,” Tavani-ela replied pulling a long hollow rod of copper from his coat, where an unpolished violet blue gem was mounted in gold. In day light it was clear blue as the Flame, in the evening light it was violet as the petals of hare-bells. He closed his eyes over the stone, paused, then looked up, acknowledging the thing done.
Someone was swirling hazelnuts in a bronze bowl, picking their favourites, someone was laughing quietly over a game of shells-and-spines. Someone was harping in a far corner for his mistress, and her voice was twining in and out of the smoke in a double voiced harmony like the rumbling of snow falling from a hillside. Meda’s eyes closed in sleep.
“He is very weary, it must be worse then we imagined this late in the season,” offered Ket, another of the hirth and also a native like Shotha, though of the Birch. “When spring opens I’m afraid, my brothers, we too shall be sitting on the borders, watering our eyes on the Aes refuse.” He turned to Shotha, “Why didn’t you mention the lord’s delayed absence?”
Shotha sat his silver bowl on the hearth stones to rewarm it, “I’m not inclined to open a box of moths this late into a long day’s-night, especially to a weary-head like Med. How am I about to tell it? Has anyone a course to offer that the telling not come to a blindness?”
A darker figure, sitting up a level from the hirth and out of the line of Meda’s sight, sighed, “I’ll tell him myself, I understand it well enough.” Shotha lifted his bowl again and held it toward the speaker in acknowledgment. The two shared a knowing exchange of eyes that everyone could see and understood. The dark figure was a lord of Dhjinn, biding his time on the same sleep that had held them all in stasis this autumn. His eyes too were almond shaped, dark, matching the dark curly hair that fell over his shoulders and his dark smile. He had paced the hall, flown the woods, ridden to the western shores twice, gone into the deep Southeast and sought answers in the lands of his fathers, and now was sitting silently chewing his honey based hallucinogins and tapping his black staff, twisted like the horn of an antelope, to tunes no one else could hear.
“We will be forced before this very silverwane to marshall down on Wide River, we all know. Be prepared when he awakes, I’ve seen the flight down, it will happen swift as a falcon’s fall,” Tavani-ela spoke in an urgent rush of words. He was always afraid of over speaking or seeming to presume that no one else had the oracle of foresight as he, though in the hirth he was granted duty of the thing and left to carry the burden. All the elves had a form of prescience, most had memories spanning aeons of time. But the others also had enough else to manage, and this was his particular gift, let him spin it, they thought, and they had each told him so. Though they may all have foresights of their own, his came from the mountain Elders, the stones, a rare connection to the timeless wisdom gathered through eons from the moment of creation. They made his vision and voice unique, and at times profound. He waited for a response, and when none came but the nodding of heads in acknowledgement he fell back silent.
The voice of the singer in the back of the hall had stopped, she had fallen asleep in her lover’s arms. The smell of honey and smoke comforted and warmed. Groups of alfar and vanir were scattered here and there, communing in very hushed and softly melodic whispers. An owl in the rafters chortled and winged his way through the western window. Servants were carrying fabrics up the stairway with faint swishing noises. Everyone was on the point of sleep.
The Dhjinn stood and crept down to the bottom level near the flames. He circumambulated it with his staff nine times, then sat to the south, near Tavani-ela’s side. “Let me tell you this line of vision from the eyes of the flames, my brothers…there is a spirit in Ddaer, held there for reasons no one yet understands…and there is a parting of ways between the order as it has stood since the Hostage time, between the Aes and themselves, and it will usher in a new era, not only Above Stone but here, in Annwn. Your lord my brother has found his heart again. Let not Aes nor kin of lava nor kin of storm, nor any action we might make, sway the direction nor outcome. You shall have patience for strange occurances, and patience for new ways forthcoming,” he spoke in a way of en-chanting, “You shall hold steady through the storm…” his strangely low yet sweet voice drifted off, and the hirth as a group fell asleep at his whispered command, “Now take your rest together.”
The flames awakened at his hand signal, throwing light over the entire sunken area of the floor. “I can’t hold it off or stop it, brother, I am not allowed to even see it for what it is. What is it?” he wondered, then mumbled, “Damn this tangled up mess….”
Thoughts from Ing's Grove 