Post by Liessel on Mar 18, 2024 13:03:13 GMT -5
It was a week and a half after Liessel and Temmis posted her list at the Twin Bells that she would return to the Knightsbridge House and find a telephone message taken by Cog. As the automaton had taken it down, it read: Temmis Ashbroom rang at (he recorded the time) and left the following message: At your next visit, ask after a letter at the bar if I'm not at the hall or on the hill.
Liessel had gone out that day for a walk through the park. With the weather turning cooler she found that staying out in the sun was slowly becoming less and less burdensome while in the layers of all the cloth the women of London wore. Still, no jacket was needed just yet, and her parasol still came in handy to create enough shade to enjoy the day by.
Her path had taken her through the park, though, and down a few streets that were littered with shops of just about every kind. By the time she had returned to the house, a paper cone of fish and chips in hand, Liessel had a new knife in her pocket, to replace the one she'd lost in Kilkare, and a new bottle of ink for her pen.
On coming into the house she was greeted by the mechanical man, and the message was given over. Her last words to Cog as she handed the remains of her lunch to the automation were "Do not worry about dinner, Cog. I'll get something while I'm out."
And then she was gone from the house again. With a cab called, and her course set it wouldn't be too long before Liessel was descending the steps of the great hall at The Bells and asking at the bar if Temmis was there.
It was late enough that the Twin Bells was starting to have arrivals. More than that, the weather was nice enough that most people were outside on the hillside, seated on blankets, drinking and having supper in informal splendor. No one "worked the bar" most of the time, but that was the surest place in the evenings to find someone who was slightly more officially involved in the practical workings of the guildhall than the average person. Tonight, it was a girl who could barely see over the bartop, and she thought for a moment before telling Liessel, "I think he's on the hill, with the Dame."
Liessel's answering smile was quick and warm as she said, "Thank you," Before taking her leave and heading for the doors. Stepping out of those doors was always like seeing a different world for the first time. It was no different when the hillside was dotted with people sitting out on the grass or gathering in their groups. It hit her the same way every time.
Today, as she stepped out her thoughts were vying for her attention. She should go and see her father first. She should let him know she was there. But the excitement in her, the hope that Temmis' message meant good news, had her sweeping the hillside for any sign of him or Lady Ashbroom instead.
Most of the hillside was bare of trees and flower beds. Just grass on the bald until about halfway down toward the foot of the hill, with nearly every level space claimed by blankets and braziers. The sun was still bright, and the air was warm, so no fires were lit, but as soon as Liessel stepped out, she would see a pair of diminutive shapes in the air, crystalline and colorful, flitting on blurred wings down to one of the first trees in the distance below. Following their flight would quickly enough draw attention to one of the silhouettes down there, which was abnormally larger than all the others.
Those were Temmis Ashbroom's great shoulders, his mop of hair. Unmistakably.
"Thank you, Little friends," She breathed, regardless of whether they had actually been there to guide her or not their presence, and their path, had done the job anyway.
She wove her path down that way, carefully winding herself around those who had placed down blankets. Coming away from the evening gathering, and as she got closer to the tree and the tree-shaped like a human, Liessel looked for signs that he might have been otherwise engaged before saying, "Hello, Temmis!"
Temmis lounged on a blanket with four other people, one of whom was Dame Ashbroom herself. So when Liessel called her hello, several heads turned, and two sets of eyes showed instant recognition. Temmis sat up the quicker and smiled. "You got my note? Greatmother says she'll take you to the Tor when next she goes."
"I got the message you left with our machination. He said to ask for it if you were not here," Her smile was wide as she answered, and then she was looking toward the Dame and tipping her head forward, "And thank you, Lady Ashbroom," While her right hand lifted and placed itself against the breast of her dress, her fingertips laying over the pulse of her heartbeat.
Every now and then it still struck her, the idea that Amrilaine had been a girl when the Vikings had come to England. It hadn't settled when Temmis had first said it but after she had been told, and it had time to sink it, Liessel found it astounding! The thought came to her, just then, as she gave her thanks to the Lady, "I greatly appreciate it."
The Dame smiled at her. She'd recovered significantly since the trials of early August, and her white hair was back in a loose bun. Her agelessness had slipped just slightly since then, and she did look a little older than she had. The energy was there, but no longer seemed to be holding her outside of time. "I did not know the names," she told Liessel, breaking easily from whatever the previous conversation around the empty brazier had been, "but I think White might. And if not White, and her kin, then I've another idea yet. Have you ever been to Scotland?"
Missus White, she remembered, if by name only. "Missus White. She is watching over the -- ah -- king, isn't she? And no, Ma'am. I've not set a foot past England's borders beyond returning to my home to see to matters there. I have heard, though, that it is a beautiful country."
"That is her task, indeed," the Dame agreed. "I know that Aurelia may have shared with you something of her dismay over that fact, but Missus White is older than I. Born even before my own teacher was. If anyone left knows the names you brought to us, it would be her, or a friend who yet keeps watch in the north."
"Is --" Liessel's smile fell a little bit. She had no problem going to The Tor to see Missus White. She had no issue with going to Scotland if she had to. What was a concern was enough to make her thing twice about agreeing to this, "Does the king still sleep? I was rather -- vulnerable -- to his presence before, while he was awake."
Her gaze broke away from Lady Ashbroom to settle briefly on those who were sitting on the blanket with her and Temmis. It wasn't trepidation about revealing anything about Arthur, but there were alarm bells trying to pull her back from revealing something like that about herself in front of people she didn't know. But she gave it away, anyway, and blinked once before focusing back on the Dame.
The three others who were there had gone respectfully quiet while the Ashbrooms spoke.
All three of them were fairykind.
Two of them Liessel had seen flying down the hill, though their forms had grown to human-sized since then, and their clothing was gossamer--and not clothing at all, but filaments of their wings wrapped about themselves somehow. The third was a stick-thin creature that looked like it might have been male if it was anything at all, and he had a green-grey tint to his skin, from the tips of his pointed ears to his bare toes. His clothing wasn't fabric either, but a blanket of rust-colored leaves.
The Dame said, "He sleeps. And he is not in the part of the Tor that we would visit. He is through it, and beneath it, in a sacred cairn. You have nothing to fear."
Her relief came out as a soft fall of her shoulders and a little nod of her head as she found herself looking back at Amrilaine, "That is, very much, a mercy. When will you be going next -- I hope it is not too ill-mannered of me to ask, but I would like to prepare my father so that he is aware of what I am doing on behalf of our people."
"Not ill-mannered at all. I have a guest coming this evening, but tomorrow after dusk I will go." Amrilaine considered the rest of what Liessel said. "I have not yet spoken myself with your father, I'm sorry to say." She looked to her "grandson," but just as soon back to Liessel. "Has he expressed an interest in this history that has been lost?"
--Tomorrow after dusk --
She would be ready.
Liessel gave a small nod considering for a moment, herself.
"He asks questions," Her brow drew inward, pulling at and wrinkling the mark on her forehead, "But I am not sure yet just how much he comprehends what few answers I have been able to give. I don't think he is completely understanding of the evidence for the possible link that has been found."
"I myself am very curious about this," said the ancient woman. "I saw those times, with these eyes. Not the building of the circle, but the times when Temmis tells me you believe our folk... became your folk. There was more motion in those days than there is now; I do not think anyone knew the whole of that which moved here, and passed through. I would say that Veleith should know, of all of us, but I think it could be that he has gone mad with all of this. And perhaps had gone mad before."
"Temmis said you had been very young, then. It would be very interesting to see if any links can be made with what you remember of that time, and what we may find out of my people." Her brow had eased as she listened, and again she found herself nodding to Amrilaine's words. Concern edged itself into her reply, though, and she found herself trying to recall if she had seen Veleith on her way in. "Is Veleith not doing well these days?"
Liessel still stood. Everyone else lounged, now, but Temmis, who had straightened up with her arrival. He frowned in response to her question, but it was the Dame who said, "What is Veleith if he is not quite Veleith? What is Veleith, if he guards us not?"
Her hands folded together, her arms at length and shoulders relaxed as she shook her head slightly.
What was Veleith?
"I do not know, Lady Ashbroom. I think I barely understand what he would be as himself, fully, if at all."
"It's no solid truth, that, is it?" the Dame said, moving to her own right on the blanket. "Sit down with us. There's room. No need to stand apart."
"It does not seem so, but I know so very little about beings such as him that I feel I speak through my own ignorance when I say things like that." Liessel answered as room was made. With the invitation open, Liessel's hands parted so that she could draw her skirt back and slightly up away from her feet so it would not be in the way as she lowered herself down onto the blanket with a quiet, "Thank you, Ma'am."
The others made room, as well, including Temmis, but for now they kept to the quiet. Whatever Amrilaine herself was now, the Once-Warden clearly still held authority in the eyes of the people of the Bells. As Liessel sat, she was saying, "He's no longer what he was. The Cup has changed his fate and perhaps his nature. It has never had the courtesy to detail exactly what changes it makes, but the power behind it has a wisdom. --Or we would not have cherished it. What we do with what changes are wrought has always been telling. But Veleith is lost. I say 'mad,' but you know these beings like him are always a little so anyway. Even when it is a gentle madness. By our measure, of course, one would have to be so to lie still under the earth for eons, or to be buffeted about on the winds for the same."
"One of my companions speculated that, perhaps, it had made him more human. But the last time I spoke with him, he did not seem any more human to my eyes. Subdued, yes. Lost, I think is a good way to put it." Her brow pulled inward again as she searched for what words she would have used to describe Veleith based on the last time she had seen him, "Sad, too -- Lonely, perhaps, but less so after he had found himself in the company of Ilarilin's daughters."
"He was a great guardian, once," the Dame told her. "Heard and saw much in his time. Mad or no, if he emerges, he may know more than any about the coming of your own peoples' Guardians, and whatever happened that may have borne folk from here to there. --Without him, there are few left that I can reliably contact who I think might know. We--our kind--write matters down sometimes, but those others don't always see the point of that. It would help now, though, would it not?" She laughed.
"It certainly would," Liessel agreed with a small smile, and a tip forward of her head, "Information like that would prove to be priceless in situations like this," There Liessel paused, her smile easing back a little, "You said 'if he emerges'. Where has he gone?"
"Our Friends say he's in the earth again," Temmis said, finally speaking up. "West of here, in a bank of the River Mole."
What was he doing there? Resting? Trying to come to terms? Letting himself get more lost? Liessel's wonderings continued as she looked up toward where Temmis was, her head tilting back so she could see him from where she sat. Then came something within that string of rambling thoughts that slipped from her mouth the way that all stray thoughts could, "I wonder if there will be a mountain."
"My dear?" the Dame asked curiously, gently, tilting forward and cocking her head.
"It was something," Liessel lowered her head, gave it a minor shake as if to clear up the butterfly wings of her thoughts as they crowded in too closely, "that he said when I came with the others to get a card reading done from Mister Larrow, so that we, my friends and I, could get a better view of my home, and the condition of my father as he had been at that time. Veleith was there, and Miss Webber had asked him what he was. I do not remember, exactly, what his answer was -- but it was something about a mountain."
The Ashbrooms both smiled a little, and for the first time one of the fae--one of the ones with her wings wrapped about herself--said in a voice that came like twenty whispers: "He would never have lasted if he'd had to be just one thing."
The Dame glanced her way with a nod, and said to Liessel, "It would be a great shame if a being like Veleith passed without a single tear shed from the world, but perhaps that is not what will happen. If he would be a mountain, here in Surrey, I should think it a great honor for those of us on his slopes." She let that thought sit for a moment, and then asked, "Do you believe that you can find what you're looking for? That the knowledge still could exist?"
The gossamer-winged creature got a smile from Liessel but it dimmed quickly as she turned her attention back to Amrilaine. If Veleith were to pass -- she knew in her heart with that statement, that should it happen and should she know, she would certainly be one to shed a tear for the Warden of the South. But it would be a great honor for a mountain to grow in his place, blessing the countryside.
"I think it is possible," Liessel said after a moment, the weight of the previous moment's thoughts still sitting on her shoulders, "If there are beings who remember those times, even if the knowledge is not written, there is a chance however small it might be. I think that chance is worth chasing."
"I heard a little of what transpired, from Adam," the Once-Warden told her. "Do your Guardians not speak? Can they not?"
"To tell you themselves?"
"It is not so easy," Liessel said softly, "They do not communicate in words so much as they do through emotions: feelings and sensations. When I could call them forth, I had to interpret their meaning for myself. My training as a Sister allowed for that, but it was still quite difficult, and it took a great deal of my energy to do. Getting something as detailed as a history out of emotions, I was not so skilled as to reach that depth of understanding. An older Sister might have been able to, one with more experience than I, but none of them are -- well, Giessler made certain that the last of us standing were herself and me, and she is not one I would ever trust for something like that. I would not trust her for anything. Anyway, my connection to them is not as strong as it had been before we saw to the situation in Harroway. I can no longer rely on them the way I had before. I do not have that in me anymore so I cannot ask now."
"Was it always so?"
Dame Ashbroom listened through to the end, but her question pertained to Liessel's first thoughts. "Was the communication always in this form? All the way back to when your evidence suggests they had some contact here?"
"I wish I could say, but that is part of the mystery I am hunting. We took very little time to research what history was there in the temple before we left Harroway in favor of returning here, to England," Liessel told Lady Ashrboom, and those who lounged on the blanket with her, as well as the towering form of Temiss, "I have hopes of going back once my father is well enough to see what else we can get from the information that had been locked away there. In the meantime, I thought I'd start my search from this side of that connection. Though, with that in mind, we have seen no evidence to suggest that communication had been otherwise back then."
"I thought it might offer us a clue--but speculation such as that is useless, I suppose. Best to see who remembers." The ancient woman looked thoughtful for a long moment. "Many times I've wished for my teacher's counsel on recent matters. I wonder what Gwydda would have had to tell you. She was the wisest of us, the most powerful, and born long before me."
"Temmis mentioned Lady Gwydda to me when I had first come to him asking who I could talk to about this. I must admit," She felt her smile grow a little, "That I had been --awed -- to find out your age, and that Gwydda was far older still. Is that common among Wardens? To be so long lived?"
A sudden sway of amusement as the fairies leaned toward each other. The skinny one with the green-tinted body laughed a little. Dame Ashbroom glanced at them, smiling a little herself, but her aside was for Liessel: "They think it's very funny. Our talk of age. Any talk of age."
"I have tried," said one of the winged ones, "to imagine what a straight line feels like."
"The strangeness," said the other.
Amrilaine grunted a laugh and shot Liessel a sly sidelong look. "It is a linear idea, and not for them. But for us? For me? I suppose it is for me, or will be, though my 'straight line' has wandered considerably. --To answer your question, it is a matter that Wardens exist with. First, from duty. Then, once duty is spent, as the power fades away." She showed teeth suddenly, in a lopsided smile. "It takes its time about it."
Liessel found herself looking between the two Fae, trying to pick out features that could define one from the other by habit. They had their obvious differences but there could be subtle ones, too, just as there could be with any humanoid face.
They were long lived beings, themselves. Some of them, she knew -- most of them, actually, were ageless.
The grunt and laugh from the Dame pulled her away from trying to pick up the little details she was looking for about the Fae. "It sounds like an extraordinary experience. How did you come to be a Warden, if you do not mind me asking that is?"
There were differences there, but in a sense they were differences of attitude more than of feature for the two who had flown down the hill ahead of Liessel and then grown to nearly her own size. One had hair swirled back higher, but it was the same odd bronze color as the other's hair was--odd, because it was bronze, but a catch of the light with a turn of the head or a laugh could make it seem, for just a blink, to be a rich and viridescent peacock green. The way that one with the wilder hair had wrapped her wings was likewise looser, less interested perhaps in mimicking clothing.
Dame Ashbroom's lopsided smile softened, eased away, her gaze turning a little distant. "I dreamed. Long ago. When I was a girl."
"You dreamed, and were made a Warden through that?" She found herself leaning forward slightly, toward Lady Ashbroom, her hands falling to the caps of her knees where her fingers curled around the natural curves of her joints were they were hidden beneath the fabric of her dress, "What was it like?"
"I'd fallen asleep beneath a rowan tree," the ancient woman told her. "I dreamed that it told me to walk south, that I would meet my life there, and know it when I saw it." She sat back slightly, that distant look fading a little, and she chuckled. "I saw Gwydda in that dream, but not Gwydda as she was then, as she was when I met her. I saw her as she was when she died. She watched from up in the branches."
Rowan tree.
What did she know about Rowan trees? What could she remember from the research she had done with the Flynns over the plants and trees found around Stonehenge?
Wisdom, courage, and protection. That was the symbolism of the tree. The leaves were frail looking, but the berries could be eaten.
"The tree sent you to her, or she sent you from the tree to find her?"
She found herself wishing she'd have had the forethought to bring her notebook and pen. That she was without it now had her regretting running back out the door the moment she had gotten Temmis' message.
The Dame laughed. "You don't believe the rowan tree sent me, as I said? This, after you saw Mother Blackthorn with your own eyes?"
"I do," Liessel felt her cheeks warm, "I mean, I believe it is possible. Only that you said that you saw Lady Gwydda there sitting in the branches, watching. I had the thought that, maybe, it had been her message but the tree speaking it."
Temmis watched this, as the fae did. He must have heard this story before, his cheeks plump and rosy with amusement.
His many times great-grandmother shook her head. "I have it from Gwydda herself--though it took many, many years before she would dream the dream that I'd already had. She'd flown into the branches as a wren and perched there before she was herself again, and she overheard the conversation between the rowan and the girl-who-was-me."
"That must have been very strange," Her own cheeks were still showing their own rosy hue as she spoke, "Things like that were more common, then?"
"Things like what?" The Dame regarded Liessel frankly, her brow having started to arch at the sound of Liessel's first statement. Temmis huffed a laugh, but otherwise stayed quiet.
"--Talking -- trees." Liessel answered, a glance going toward Amrilaine's companions, "Dreams like the one that led you to finding Lady Gwydda."
Dame Ashbroom smiled at Liessel and for the moment simply waited.
"Things like that are still very new to me," She told the Dame with a small thoughtful frown. A lot of things were still new to her, but she continued, "Their possibilities are still a little disconnected from their realities in many ways. My people have stories of talking earth, and sky, and the White Mountain who could speak at one time but no more has a voice. But none of these voices have been heard in my time and these stories are taken at face value only. They are spoken to entertain children and to give them some sense of where we had come from."
"And yet you speak to beings you tell me communicate via emotion and not words," the Dame pointed out, ignoring a wry little laugh from the fairies who were taking all of this in. "Fascinating, isn't it, how some very strange things can be so normal they're nearly forgotten, because they have a category to fit into, while other very strange things remain so until they likewise have a slot into which they can be neatly filed."
The Once-Warden winked gently, though, her teasing smile of the kindly sort. "I would say in answer to your question that such things were not perceived by everyone every day, but you have to understand that you cannot look at me today and assume that I was just exactly this back then. Or that this land was. Or that our people were. Or that even the air was. All things have shifted, from the very great to the very minuscule, and the measure of normalcy is a very slippery thing. No history can be both objective and accurate at the same time."
Liessel had listened well, a small glance shifting back toward the Fae only at the sound of that little laugh. They would find something like this amusing, she knew. Their entire lives were part of a world that existed within different boundaries than that of humans. It had different rules.
"Such is the course of flowing life," Liessel's head tipped forward just slightly, "You had to learn how to hear them, just as I had to learn how to hear the Guardians. Just as the land had to change, and with it changed the people. And the trees still speak, though my ear is untrained to hear them --" Did that mean the mountain did as well, and what of the earth and the sky? That question lingered for a moment, and was then replaced by the sight of the twining branches of Blackthorn saplings standing tall in the lush background of The Garden, and of Mother Blackthorn who was a giant all unto herself causing her to swiftly tack on, "Most of the time, that is."
"No learning required," Dame Ashbroom told her quietly. "Perhaps a matter of being the right person, in the right state, at the right moment, in the right place." Leaning back, she smiled slyly. "Other things required learning, however, certainly. I became a Warden by hearing, by heeding, and by presenting myself to those who could recognize me from a past that would not be past for them for some time to come." She considered Liessel. "What I know of you is that you come from a place not here, and that you have met Aurelia, who may yet be Warden here, not only Warden over all, and that you have friends who have some skill of some magic, that you have tangled with fae, and hollowed-out men, and with the likes of Veleith and Castilan. You might best make sense of all of these if you let your image of them weave when they are weaving, bend when they are bent, and wander when the straight and simple does not suffice."
Her attentive ear listened, and her watchful eyes watched as she took in the way that Amrilaine looked as she spoke. That was habit, but not an unkind one. She was paying attention.
She let those words sit, giving them the space to settle within her, "Embrace the fanciful, then, and let it work its own sense of logic where logic of the more mundane fails." She felt like that was missing some point of what Amrilaine was trying to tell her and felt herself frown even as she finished speaking.
It played on Liessel's face, and Temmis said softly, "Greatmother. It's not like that anymore. You can't teach something that's not so true any longer." Protectively, to Liessel he added: "Don't feel bad, Miss Erphale."
"Oh, pish," Amrilaine said, waving a hand to bat Temmis's concern away. "I can teach anything I want. It's not that it's not true. It's only asleep."
The frown was let go with the shake of her head and a gentle hand raised toward Temmis, "It is alright, Temmis," Liessel said, her quiet voice slipping in behind Amrilaine's, "I do not think it is a matter of it not being like that anymore. I think it is that I am only not in the practice of being aware of it." Her frown was back, but it a different sort and more thoughtful than her previous one, "If I am still enough, here, and in a few other places, there is a current -- like a -- a heartbeat, or a flow, that I can become aware of. I am not sure if it is just being aware of the life that fills this place, and other places, or if it is something else -- something deeper and belonging to the land itself. I don't even know if that has any bearing on what we are discussing. I can only think that it could be because I have no other way to define it."
"It could be, indeed. I would ask you why you think you--and others, to be sure--feel it only in certain places, when it should be the whole of the world?" The Dame and her tone lacked all signs that this was any sort of serious test. It sounded idle enough. Still, who could say? The ancient Once-Warden hosted faekind every day and every night.
"For me, personally, I would say that it could be my training that makes me aware of it in this place, and in those certain other places. I was trained to work in the quiet, to be aware through that quiet. I cannot feel it in London -- or, rather, I haven't been able to yet --but London is busier. It is louder in what fills it. This place, and the other places that I have felt it are more quiet, able to hum in a way that feels like it is far more natural than what London offers. My home -- Harroway -- was like that too, humming with that feeling."
As she spoke, Liessel tried to reach for that feeling in the hope that it might help deepen her attempt at answering the Dame. It was there, but just out of reach. She wasn't still enough. She wasn't being quiet enough.
Dame Ashbroom's interest was in the way she watched Liessel, clear-eyed as a hawk. She'd been gravely hurt not long ago, assaulted by the same forces that had attacked the Bells and its people, but like Temmis she had some help. Perhaps the same help being coaxed toward Horran Erphale, at least in part. Some ageless strength had returned to her, no matter what she claimed about the end of her days, or fading power. "Tell me what you sense. Tell us. --and don't be hurt by the laughter of our friends, here. They mean no harm."
Watching Liessel, the Once-Warden, Temmis, and their companions there on the blanket would see Liessel draw in a breath, letting it fill her lungs before she released it slowly and closed her eyes. Before letting herself settle she hesitated.
She had done this a few times before, but not while in the company of others at The Bells. Her thoughts settled for that brief moment on thoughts of what would be seen in her when she did this? Would it be any different with others watching, people that she barely knew?
But she had done blessings for strangers. She had given glimpses to people she had barely known before. This would be alright. She had to tell herself that, because for some reason doing it right then and there felt scary in a way that it hadn't before.
She took another deep breath and settled those thoughts. There were beings here who were far more powerful, and far more strange than a young woman who had once been a priestess of the Guardians.
Liessel sat still, and let herself grow quiet, as she had always done before. The sounds of conversation that flowed down to where they were from up on the hill as the visitors to The Bells enjoyed their evening filled her ears as it had before. The more she listened, the more she relaxed. The more she relaxed, the more she could feel. And then there it was. The beat of the place.
Softly, slowly, Liessel shifted her right hand and laid it down against the blanket by her side. She let herself feel it for a moment before speaking, "It is like a pulse, gentle. Almost like breathing. It is not still, but it is steady and there is a flow to it as if it contains its own sense of life. I can feel it so close to my own awareness of my own life, but it is not a mirror. It is both a part of me, and not."
"Why the 'not'?"
That did not come from the Once-Warden, that question. It came from the spindly wingless fairy that looked like a puppet made of sticks under green fabric.
Inclination had her wanting to open her eyes to focus on the Fae, but that would make her connection to what she was feeling tenuous. She breathed out again, letting that impulse go with it. "Because it is almost in tune with my own, but like a note that is slightly off key. I can feel the beat of myself, the flow of myself, and I can feel the flow of this -- so close, so nearly the same, but just slightly different."
"Why different?" the fae pressed, drawing his skinny legs in folded, so he could lean in.
The Dame looked at him and asked, "Would you have her be you, Iddar?"
"I don't understand the space. Like too many furs," said the fairy, Iddar. "Muffling."
The smile that came to her was very slightly hooked and sideways. She listened to Amrilaine speaking to Iddar and folded her hand into a light little ball there against the blanket before lifting it and placing it back on her lap. "I think, perhaps, it is that language cannot convey something like that so cleanly." She let the feeling go before opening her eyes to look toward the spindly limbed Fae that had spoken, "At least, no language that I possess."
"That, too, some would say is a change," Amrilaine noted thoughtfully. "A change long developing in us. For a time, the cure was poets. Do you believe me? Poets and singers. Bards who found words where words were not. I was tickled by a sense of your friend Adeline's lineage being of that ilk. An old, old line of keen-sighted madmen and madwomen."
"She is rather good with her words," a small nod was given, "It would not surprise me if she inherited something from them in her talents. If only I was so blessed, then perhaps I might be able to better address the difference for your friend as it does sound as if someone with those abilities would fare better in this than I."
Iddar said something quick. It wasn't English, but something more birdlike. The Dame laughed a little and through an amused squint said, "The Folk have always enjoyed such people--whether they had a lineage of it or not. To sit in the glow of them. When first I met her, I suspected that might be why Castilan would go to such trouble for her as to come here and try to persuade me to keep her. --Though it seems he's not fae after all, but something else altogether. In any case, you can see how it might attract, the ability to say the unsayable. With verse, with song, with the deep words of the heart. For many fairies, those are the only languages they know in common with us, and without them between us the world can be a very silent place."
Liessel heard Amrilaine, and nodded, but she didn't answer right away. There was something beneath those words, the meaning behind them. She'd been to The Fens, and while it was a bordering place it was still touched by Fae deeply. What she had seen of the beings there, and how they were drawn in by Felix's singing and the games that the Flynns had played. "Harmony." She wound up saying softly, before her thoughts landed her back onto that hillside with Amrilaine, her great-many-yeared-grandson, and their Fae companions. "It is harmony. The delicate balance between differing things -- well, not differing -- but two strands of the same song as they glide so close together. Like two voices singing in two different keys but coming together so perfectly they flow as one. Because it isn't just the words, it is also the emotion behind it and the imagery that such things bring to mind. It all works together in harmony."
The Dame laughed a little. "For the bard, do you mean?" she asked curiously.
"Yes," Liessel laughed a little bit herself, "And for me. That word I was struggling with -- how to describe to Iddar," A small glance was sent the Fae's way in acknowledgement, "what I was feeling -- it was harmony. The way a well sung, well played, song can pull you in and make you a part of its own story -- the verse of the poet who can speak to the heart and coax from it such feeling until the words become your own. You are part of it, become woven into it, and carry it with you and so you feel and are enveloped by those emotions, and that story, because the harmony within those things is also within you."
Amrilaine's eyes glittered, but Iddar grunted and trilled something unintelligible. "It is a changed place, indeed," the Dame mused, but nodded to Liessel. "What you've described is not only the realm of bards, but was mine, too, under that rowan. The bards, the poets, those who dwell outside of certain expectations, we might say, held on long, as a group, and for a time the world benefitted from them as one of the last reliable groups of true translators... once translation was needed at all."
"They are not so readily needed anymore, the bards and poets, and others who do not follow those certain expectations," Liessel said with another small nod, her hands coming together and folding lightly against her lap, "The world, or rather, the people in it are not the same and do not need the same things as they did then. It is so sad that something so beautiful has become so -- faded."
"Are they truly not needed, though?" The Dame asked.
Temmis's head came up. He wore a frown, watching his ancestress's face.
She reached down and picked at the grass poking up along the rumpled edge of the blanket they all sat upon. "Some would call this new world pale. Some would call it empty."
"I think it is just different things that are needed now. People change, societies change be it through war, or just the flow of life, and so their needs change with it. The songs aren't the same as what used to be sung, the poets do not dream the same way. Connection to the land is not the same as it had been, because things have changed. But there is still purpose, it is just not what it used to be. Or, it might be the same but just look different."
Liessel drew a breath and let her eyes skate out across the vision of hillside that surrounded them, "And the world -- I do not think it pale, I do not think it empty. It is just -- searching -- for ways to be with all the changes that have happened."
"Greatmother...." Temmis said it low, warningly, warily.
She glared at him and he said no more. She said, "You speak as though there's nothing to be done about it. It is simply a great wide wave, and we must ride it and make-do. And you speak of the world as if it is one of us. A thing that searches and strives. Static. Hung among stars."
The warning from Temmis was what held Liessel's tongue after Amrilaine had spoken. She was trying to gauge, trying to decipher if an unknown line had been crossed by what she had just said.
At length, the young woman from worlds away gently shook her head, "If I have offended, it was not my intention."
"Oh I know that," the Dame said swiftly, waving a hand. "I suppose the world is for you and all those born now only what it should be."
"How would we know summer, and all its warmth, if all we knew was the coldness of winter?" Liessel asked after a moment, "How would we know Spring, if all we knew was Autumn? My eyes have been opened, Lady Ashbroom, by events I would have never thought possible while living in my tiny life locked away in the temple. My world, for me then, was as large as a room and no bigger than that because that was the world I was given. This world," She said, looking around and making a gesture with her right hand to encompass the whole of the hillside and all that was beyond, "Is so much bigger than that room I had occupied, and there is so much more to see. But it is still only what I have right in front of me. Knowing that there is more to it, that there should be more to it, does not give the "more" definition. In that regard, my eyes are still closed, and I am but blind to what is on the other side even if I can feel it with my hands and taste it on my tongue. I do not know the shape, or form, that it should be taking."
"Very prettily said," the Dame said softly. "If any of this were about 'knowing' in the sense you mean it." She drew in a breath and shook her head. "Enough of that. I'll bring you with me when I go to the Tor. Bring a gift for White, and bring an offering for her waters of a coin or a leaf from a plant you've tended yourself."
Enough of that.
I'll bring you to the Tor.
In a move that was rarely seen in the company of others these days, one that she had made a habit of suppressing while out away from the comfort and confines of the house she shared in Knightsbridge with Aurelia, or the walls of Flynn and Flynn, Liessel lifted her right hand to touch it to the mark that lay in hidden wait beneath the brim of her hat. It was a thank you, and a soft relenting. An answer to Amrilaine's Enough.
"What type of gift would be suitable for Missus White?" Of leaves, Liessel had plenty to choose from. This other thing, though. She did not know White enough to fashion a guess for herself.
"She's not much interested in modern inventions," the ancient woman told her with something like the easygoing air she'd carried before. "Not much one for reading. It does not have to be a wealthy gift."
After a moment, Liessel nodded, "Thank you, Lady Ashbroom, I believe I know what I will be bringing for her. Does -- she take tea?"
"Ha!" The Dame's sudden laugh mixed in with smaller chuckles from Temmis and their other companions. "She does not, in fact, to my knowledge take tea," Amrilaine said, "though she does accept seeded fruit."
Her smile in the face of those reactions was hesitant, but it did find a way to solidify itself into a real expression by the time Liessel was nodding again and saying, "Then, I am sure of what I will bring her. Thank you, Ma'am."
A nod was what she got for that, but the Dame was not done. "I've called upon a friend of mine to make her way here to see what more can be done to bring your father's strength back. She should be here by the new moon. We've told him to expect her, and I've told her to be very gentle indeed."
The motion she had made before was made again, her finger rose to the brim of her hat. This time they also drifted lower to settle against her chest, over her heart, "Thank you Lady Ashbroom," She said again, "The care he has received here has been most generous and kind. I would wish to reciprocate what you have shown to us, if I can, all I would need to know is what I might be able to offer in return for it."
"Nothing for now, but perhaps there will come a time when we might be in need. Much has changed for us in a short time. --But here: go see your father. Return tomorrow near sunset, and we will go."
"Then, all you need do is to ask," Liessel said as she pushed herself to her feet, rising from where she had sat on the blanket. As she stood, she made the motion again, hand lifted to the brim of her hat, while she took in the Ashbrooms, and then the Fae, "Thank you, all, for allowing me to interrupt your afternoon. I hope your evening is a pleasant one."
Liessel had gone out that day for a walk through the park. With the weather turning cooler she found that staying out in the sun was slowly becoming less and less burdensome while in the layers of all the cloth the women of London wore. Still, no jacket was needed just yet, and her parasol still came in handy to create enough shade to enjoy the day by.
Her path had taken her through the park, though, and down a few streets that were littered with shops of just about every kind. By the time she had returned to the house, a paper cone of fish and chips in hand, Liessel had a new knife in her pocket, to replace the one she'd lost in Kilkare, and a new bottle of ink for her pen.
On coming into the house she was greeted by the mechanical man, and the message was given over. Her last words to Cog as she handed the remains of her lunch to the automation were "Do not worry about dinner, Cog. I'll get something while I'm out."
And then she was gone from the house again. With a cab called, and her course set it wouldn't be too long before Liessel was descending the steps of the great hall at The Bells and asking at the bar if Temmis was there.
It was late enough that the Twin Bells was starting to have arrivals. More than that, the weather was nice enough that most people were outside on the hillside, seated on blankets, drinking and having supper in informal splendor. No one "worked the bar" most of the time, but that was the surest place in the evenings to find someone who was slightly more officially involved in the practical workings of the guildhall than the average person. Tonight, it was a girl who could barely see over the bartop, and she thought for a moment before telling Liessel, "I think he's on the hill, with the Dame."
Liessel's answering smile was quick and warm as she said, "Thank you," Before taking her leave and heading for the doors. Stepping out of those doors was always like seeing a different world for the first time. It was no different when the hillside was dotted with people sitting out on the grass or gathering in their groups. It hit her the same way every time.
Today, as she stepped out her thoughts were vying for her attention. She should go and see her father first. She should let him know she was there. But the excitement in her, the hope that Temmis' message meant good news, had her sweeping the hillside for any sign of him or Lady Ashbroom instead.
Most of the hillside was bare of trees and flower beds. Just grass on the bald until about halfway down toward the foot of the hill, with nearly every level space claimed by blankets and braziers. The sun was still bright, and the air was warm, so no fires were lit, but as soon as Liessel stepped out, she would see a pair of diminutive shapes in the air, crystalline and colorful, flitting on blurred wings down to one of the first trees in the distance below. Following their flight would quickly enough draw attention to one of the silhouettes down there, which was abnormally larger than all the others.
Those were Temmis Ashbroom's great shoulders, his mop of hair. Unmistakably.
"Thank you, Little friends," She breathed, regardless of whether they had actually been there to guide her or not their presence, and their path, had done the job anyway.
She wove her path down that way, carefully winding herself around those who had placed down blankets. Coming away from the evening gathering, and as she got closer to the tree and the tree-shaped like a human, Liessel looked for signs that he might have been otherwise engaged before saying, "Hello, Temmis!"
Temmis lounged on a blanket with four other people, one of whom was Dame Ashbroom herself. So when Liessel called her hello, several heads turned, and two sets of eyes showed instant recognition. Temmis sat up the quicker and smiled. "You got my note? Greatmother says she'll take you to the Tor when next she goes."
"I got the message you left with our machination. He said to ask for it if you were not here," Her smile was wide as she answered, and then she was looking toward the Dame and tipping her head forward, "And thank you, Lady Ashbroom," While her right hand lifted and placed itself against the breast of her dress, her fingertips laying over the pulse of her heartbeat.
Every now and then it still struck her, the idea that Amrilaine had been a girl when the Vikings had come to England. It hadn't settled when Temmis had first said it but after she had been told, and it had time to sink it, Liessel found it astounding! The thought came to her, just then, as she gave her thanks to the Lady, "I greatly appreciate it."
The Dame smiled at her. She'd recovered significantly since the trials of early August, and her white hair was back in a loose bun. Her agelessness had slipped just slightly since then, and she did look a little older than she had. The energy was there, but no longer seemed to be holding her outside of time. "I did not know the names," she told Liessel, breaking easily from whatever the previous conversation around the empty brazier had been, "but I think White might. And if not White, and her kin, then I've another idea yet. Have you ever been to Scotland?"
Missus White, she remembered, if by name only. "Missus White. She is watching over the -- ah -- king, isn't she? And no, Ma'am. I've not set a foot past England's borders beyond returning to my home to see to matters there. I have heard, though, that it is a beautiful country."
"That is her task, indeed," the Dame agreed. "I know that Aurelia may have shared with you something of her dismay over that fact, but Missus White is older than I. Born even before my own teacher was. If anyone left knows the names you brought to us, it would be her, or a friend who yet keeps watch in the north."
"Is --" Liessel's smile fell a little bit. She had no problem going to The Tor to see Missus White. She had no issue with going to Scotland if she had to. What was a concern was enough to make her thing twice about agreeing to this, "Does the king still sleep? I was rather -- vulnerable -- to his presence before, while he was awake."
Her gaze broke away from Lady Ashbroom to settle briefly on those who were sitting on the blanket with her and Temmis. It wasn't trepidation about revealing anything about Arthur, but there were alarm bells trying to pull her back from revealing something like that about herself in front of people she didn't know. But she gave it away, anyway, and blinked once before focusing back on the Dame.
The three others who were there had gone respectfully quiet while the Ashbrooms spoke.
All three of them were fairykind.
Two of them Liessel had seen flying down the hill, though their forms had grown to human-sized since then, and their clothing was gossamer--and not clothing at all, but filaments of their wings wrapped about themselves somehow. The third was a stick-thin creature that looked like it might have been male if it was anything at all, and he had a green-grey tint to his skin, from the tips of his pointed ears to his bare toes. His clothing wasn't fabric either, but a blanket of rust-colored leaves.
The Dame said, "He sleeps. And he is not in the part of the Tor that we would visit. He is through it, and beneath it, in a sacred cairn. You have nothing to fear."
Her relief came out as a soft fall of her shoulders and a little nod of her head as she found herself looking back at Amrilaine, "That is, very much, a mercy. When will you be going next -- I hope it is not too ill-mannered of me to ask, but I would like to prepare my father so that he is aware of what I am doing on behalf of our people."
"Not ill-mannered at all. I have a guest coming this evening, but tomorrow after dusk I will go." Amrilaine considered the rest of what Liessel said. "I have not yet spoken myself with your father, I'm sorry to say." She looked to her "grandson," but just as soon back to Liessel. "Has he expressed an interest in this history that has been lost?"
--Tomorrow after dusk --
She would be ready.
Liessel gave a small nod considering for a moment, herself.
"He asks questions," Her brow drew inward, pulling at and wrinkling the mark on her forehead, "But I am not sure yet just how much he comprehends what few answers I have been able to give. I don't think he is completely understanding of the evidence for the possible link that has been found."
"I myself am very curious about this," said the ancient woman. "I saw those times, with these eyes. Not the building of the circle, but the times when Temmis tells me you believe our folk... became your folk. There was more motion in those days than there is now; I do not think anyone knew the whole of that which moved here, and passed through. I would say that Veleith should know, of all of us, but I think it could be that he has gone mad with all of this. And perhaps had gone mad before."
"Temmis said you had been very young, then. It would be very interesting to see if any links can be made with what you remember of that time, and what we may find out of my people." Her brow had eased as she listened, and again she found herself nodding to Amrilaine's words. Concern edged itself into her reply, though, and she found herself trying to recall if she had seen Veleith on her way in. "Is Veleith not doing well these days?"
Liessel still stood. Everyone else lounged, now, but Temmis, who had straightened up with her arrival. He frowned in response to her question, but it was the Dame who said, "What is Veleith if he is not quite Veleith? What is Veleith, if he guards us not?"
Her hands folded together, her arms at length and shoulders relaxed as she shook her head slightly.
What was Veleith?
"I do not know, Lady Ashbroom. I think I barely understand what he would be as himself, fully, if at all."
"It's no solid truth, that, is it?" the Dame said, moving to her own right on the blanket. "Sit down with us. There's room. No need to stand apart."
"It does not seem so, but I know so very little about beings such as him that I feel I speak through my own ignorance when I say things like that." Liessel answered as room was made. With the invitation open, Liessel's hands parted so that she could draw her skirt back and slightly up away from her feet so it would not be in the way as she lowered herself down onto the blanket with a quiet, "Thank you, Ma'am."
The others made room, as well, including Temmis, but for now they kept to the quiet. Whatever Amrilaine herself was now, the Once-Warden clearly still held authority in the eyes of the people of the Bells. As Liessel sat, she was saying, "He's no longer what he was. The Cup has changed his fate and perhaps his nature. It has never had the courtesy to detail exactly what changes it makes, but the power behind it has a wisdom. --Or we would not have cherished it. What we do with what changes are wrought has always been telling. But Veleith is lost. I say 'mad,' but you know these beings like him are always a little so anyway. Even when it is a gentle madness. By our measure, of course, one would have to be so to lie still under the earth for eons, or to be buffeted about on the winds for the same."
"One of my companions speculated that, perhaps, it had made him more human. But the last time I spoke with him, he did not seem any more human to my eyes. Subdued, yes. Lost, I think is a good way to put it." Her brow pulled inward again as she searched for what words she would have used to describe Veleith based on the last time she had seen him, "Sad, too -- Lonely, perhaps, but less so after he had found himself in the company of Ilarilin's daughters."
"He was a great guardian, once," the Dame told her. "Heard and saw much in his time. Mad or no, if he emerges, he may know more than any about the coming of your own peoples' Guardians, and whatever happened that may have borne folk from here to there. --Without him, there are few left that I can reliably contact who I think might know. We--our kind--write matters down sometimes, but those others don't always see the point of that. It would help now, though, would it not?" She laughed.
"It certainly would," Liessel agreed with a small smile, and a tip forward of her head, "Information like that would prove to be priceless in situations like this," There Liessel paused, her smile easing back a little, "You said 'if he emerges'. Where has he gone?"
"Our Friends say he's in the earth again," Temmis said, finally speaking up. "West of here, in a bank of the River Mole."
What was he doing there? Resting? Trying to come to terms? Letting himself get more lost? Liessel's wonderings continued as she looked up toward where Temmis was, her head tilting back so she could see him from where she sat. Then came something within that string of rambling thoughts that slipped from her mouth the way that all stray thoughts could, "I wonder if there will be a mountain."
"My dear?" the Dame asked curiously, gently, tilting forward and cocking her head.
"It was something," Liessel lowered her head, gave it a minor shake as if to clear up the butterfly wings of her thoughts as they crowded in too closely, "that he said when I came with the others to get a card reading done from Mister Larrow, so that we, my friends and I, could get a better view of my home, and the condition of my father as he had been at that time. Veleith was there, and Miss Webber had asked him what he was. I do not remember, exactly, what his answer was -- but it was something about a mountain."
The Ashbrooms both smiled a little, and for the first time one of the fae--one of the ones with her wings wrapped about herself--said in a voice that came like twenty whispers: "He would never have lasted if he'd had to be just one thing."
The Dame glanced her way with a nod, and said to Liessel, "It would be a great shame if a being like Veleith passed without a single tear shed from the world, but perhaps that is not what will happen. If he would be a mountain, here in Surrey, I should think it a great honor for those of us on his slopes." She let that thought sit for a moment, and then asked, "Do you believe that you can find what you're looking for? That the knowledge still could exist?"
The gossamer-winged creature got a smile from Liessel but it dimmed quickly as she turned her attention back to Amrilaine. If Veleith were to pass -- she knew in her heart with that statement, that should it happen and should she know, she would certainly be one to shed a tear for the Warden of the South. But it would be a great honor for a mountain to grow in his place, blessing the countryside.
"I think it is possible," Liessel said after a moment, the weight of the previous moment's thoughts still sitting on her shoulders, "If there are beings who remember those times, even if the knowledge is not written, there is a chance however small it might be. I think that chance is worth chasing."
"I heard a little of what transpired, from Adam," the Once-Warden told her. "Do your Guardians not speak? Can they not?"
"To tell you themselves?"
"It is not so easy," Liessel said softly, "They do not communicate in words so much as they do through emotions: feelings and sensations. When I could call them forth, I had to interpret their meaning for myself. My training as a Sister allowed for that, but it was still quite difficult, and it took a great deal of my energy to do. Getting something as detailed as a history out of emotions, I was not so skilled as to reach that depth of understanding. An older Sister might have been able to, one with more experience than I, but none of them are -- well, Giessler made certain that the last of us standing were herself and me, and she is not one I would ever trust for something like that. I would not trust her for anything. Anyway, my connection to them is not as strong as it had been before we saw to the situation in Harroway. I can no longer rely on them the way I had before. I do not have that in me anymore so I cannot ask now."
"Was it always so?"
Dame Ashbroom listened through to the end, but her question pertained to Liessel's first thoughts. "Was the communication always in this form? All the way back to when your evidence suggests they had some contact here?"
"I wish I could say, but that is part of the mystery I am hunting. We took very little time to research what history was there in the temple before we left Harroway in favor of returning here, to England," Liessel told Lady Ashrboom, and those who lounged on the blanket with her, as well as the towering form of Temiss, "I have hopes of going back once my father is well enough to see what else we can get from the information that had been locked away there. In the meantime, I thought I'd start my search from this side of that connection. Though, with that in mind, we have seen no evidence to suggest that communication had been otherwise back then."
"I thought it might offer us a clue--but speculation such as that is useless, I suppose. Best to see who remembers." The ancient woman looked thoughtful for a long moment. "Many times I've wished for my teacher's counsel on recent matters. I wonder what Gwydda would have had to tell you. She was the wisest of us, the most powerful, and born long before me."
"Temmis mentioned Lady Gwydda to me when I had first come to him asking who I could talk to about this. I must admit," She felt her smile grow a little, "That I had been --awed -- to find out your age, and that Gwydda was far older still. Is that common among Wardens? To be so long lived?"
A sudden sway of amusement as the fairies leaned toward each other. The skinny one with the green-tinted body laughed a little. Dame Ashbroom glanced at them, smiling a little herself, but her aside was for Liessel: "They think it's very funny. Our talk of age. Any talk of age."
"I have tried," said one of the winged ones, "to imagine what a straight line feels like."
"The strangeness," said the other.
Amrilaine grunted a laugh and shot Liessel a sly sidelong look. "It is a linear idea, and not for them. But for us? For me? I suppose it is for me, or will be, though my 'straight line' has wandered considerably. --To answer your question, it is a matter that Wardens exist with. First, from duty. Then, once duty is spent, as the power fades away." She showed teeth suddenly, in a lopsided smile. "It takes its time about it."
Liessel found herself looking between the two Fae, trying to pick out features that could define one from the other by habit. They had their obvious differences but there could be subtle ones, too, just as there could be with any humanoid face.
They were long lived beings, themselves. Some of them, she knew -- most of them, actually, were ageless.
The grunt and laugh from the Dame pulled her away from trying to pick up the little details she was looking for about the Fae. "It sounds like an extraordinary experience. How did you come to be a Warden, if you do not mind me asking that is?"
There were differences there, but in a sense they were differences of attitude more than of feature for the two who had flown down the hill ahead of Liessel and then grown to nearly her own size. One had hair swirled back higher, but it was the same odd bronze color as the other's hair was--odd, because it was bronze, but a catch of the light with a turn of the head or a laugh could make it seem, for just a blink, to be a rich and viridescent peacock green. The way that one with the wilder hair had wrapped her wings was likewise looser, less interested perhaps in mimicking clothing.
Dame Ashbroom's lopsided smile softened, eased away, her gaze turning a little distant. "I dreamed. Long ago. When I was a girl."
"You dreamed, and were made a Warden through that?" She found herself leaning forward slightly, toward Lady Ashbroom, her hands falling to the caps of her knees where her fingers curled around the natural curves of her joints were they were hidden beneath the fabric of her dress, "What was it like?"
"I'd fallen asleep beneath a rowan tree," the ancient woman told her. "I dreamed that it told me to walk south, that I would meet my life there, and know it when I saw it." She sat back slightly, that distant look fading a little, and she chuckled. "I saw Gwydda in that dream, but not Gwydda as she was then, as she was when I met her. I saw her as she was when she died. She watched from up in the branches."
Rowan tree.
What did she know about Rowan trees? What could she remember from the research she had done with the Flynns over the plants and trees found around Stonehenge?
Wisdom, courage, and protection. That was the symbolism of the tree. The leaves were frail looking, but the berries could be eaten.
"The tree sent you to her, or she sent you from the tree to find her?"
She found herself wishing she'd have had the forethought to bring her notebook and pen. That she was without it now had her regretting running back out the door the moment she had gotten Temmis' message.
The Dame laughed. "You don't believe the rowan tree sent me, as I said? This, after you saw Mother Blackthorn with your own eyes?"
"I do," Liessel felt her cheeks warm, "I mean, I believe it is possible. Only that you said that you saw Lady Gwydda there sitting in the branches, watching. I had the thought that, maybe, it had been her message but the tree speaking it."
Temmis watched this, as the fae did. He must have heard this story before, his cheeks plump and rosy with amusement.
His many times great-grandmother shook her head. "I have it from Gwydda herself--though it took many, many years before she would dream the dream that I'd already had. She'd flown into the branches as a wren and perched there before she was herself again, and she overheard the conversation between the rowan and the girl-who-was-me."
"That must have been very strange," Her own cheeks were still showing their own rosy hue as she spoke, "Things like that were more common, then?"
"Things like what?" The Dame regarded Liessel frankly, her brow having started to arch at the sound of Liessel's first statement. Temmis huffed a laugh, but otherwise stayed quiet.
"--Talking -- trees." Liessel answered, a glance going toward Amrilaine's companions, "Dreams like the one that led you to finding Lady Gwydda."
Dame Ashbroom smiled at Liessel and for the moment simply waited.
"Things like that are still very new to me," She told the Dame with a small thoughtful frown. A lot of things were still new to her, but she continued, "Their possibilities are still a little disconnected from their realities in many ways. My people have stories of talking earth, and sky, and the White Mountain who could speak at one time but no more has a voice. But none of these voices have been heard in my time and these stories are taken at face value only. They are spoken to entertain children and to give them some sense of where we had come from."
"And yet you speak to beings you tell me communicate via emotion and not words," the Dame pointed out, ignoring a wry little laugh from the fairies who were taking all of this in. "Fascinating, isn't it, how some very strange things can be so normal they're nearly forgotten, because they have a category to fit into, while other very strange things remain so until they likewise have a slot into which they can be neatly filed."
The Once-Warden winked gently, though, her teasing smile of the kindly sort. "I would say in answer to your question that such things were not perceived by everyone every day, but you have to understand that you cannot look at me today and assume that I was just exactly this back then. Or that this land was. Or that our people were. Or that even the air was. All things have shifted, from the very great to the very minuscule, and the measure of normalcy is a very slippery thing. No history can be both objective and accurate at the same time."
Liessel had listened well, a small glance shifting back toward the Fae only at the sound of that little laugh. They would find something like this amusing, she knew. Their entire lives were part of a world that existed within different boundaries than that of humans. It had different rules.
"Such is the course of flowing life," Liessel's head tipped forward just slightly, "You had to learn how to hear them, just as I had to learn how to hear the Guardians. Just as the land had to change, and with it changed the people. And the trees still speak, though my ear is untrained to hear them --" Did that mean the mountain did as well, and what of the earth and the sky? That question lingered for a moment, and was then replaced by the sight of the twining branches of Blackthorn saplings standing tall in the lush background of The Garden, and of Mother Blackthorn who was a giant all unto herself causing her to swiftly tack on, "Most of the time, that is."
"No learning required," Dame Ashbroom told her quietly. "Perhaps a matter of being the right person, in the right state, at the right moment, in the right place." Leaning back, she smiled slyly. "Other things required learning, however, certainly. I became a Warden by hearing, by heeding, and by presenting myself to those who could recognize me from a past that would not be past for them for some time to come." She considered Liessel. "What I know of you is that you come from a place not here, and that you have met Aurelia, who may yet be Warden here, not only Warden over all, and that you have friends who have some skill of some magic, that you have tangled with fae, and hollowed-out men, and with the likes of Veleith and Castilan. You might best make sense of all of these if you let your image of them weave when they are weaving, bend when they are bent, and wander when the straight and simple does not suffice."
Her attentive ear listened, and her watchful eyes watched as she took in the way that Amrilaine looked as she spoke. That was habit, but not an unkind one. She was paying attention.
She let those words sit, giving them the space to settle within her, "Embrace the fanciful, then, and let it work its own sense of logic where logic of the more mundane fails." She felt like that was missing some point of what Amrilaine was trying to tell her and felt herself frown even as she finished speaking.
It played on Liessel's face, and Temmis said softly, "Greatmother. It's not like that anymore. You can't teach something that's not so true any longer." Protectively, to Liessel he added: "Don't feel bad, Miss Erphale."
"Oh, pish," Amrilaine said, waving a hand to bat Temmis's concern away. "I can teach anything I want. It's not that it's not true. It's only asleep."
The frown was let go with the shake of her head and a gentle hand raised toward Temmis, "It is alright, Temmis," Liessel said, her quiet voice slipping in behind Amrilaine's, "I do not think it is a matter of it not being like that anymore. I think it is that I am only not in the practice of being aware of it." Her frown was back, but it a different sort and more thoughtful than her previous one, "If I am still enough, here, and in a few other places, there is a current -- like a -- a heartbeat, or a flow, that I can become aware of. I am not sure if it is just being aware of the life that fills this place, and other places, or if it is something else -- something deeper and belonging to the land itself. I don't even know if that has any bearing on what we are discussing. I can only think that it could be because I have no other way to define it."
"It could be, indeed. I would ask you why you think you--and others, to be sure--feel it only in certain places, when it should be the whole of the world?" The Dame and her tone lacked all signs that this was any sort of serious test. It sounded idle enough. Still, who could say? The ancient Once-Warden hosted faekind every day and every night.
"For me, personally, I would say that it could be my training that makes me aware of it in this place, and in those certain other places. I was trained to work in the quiet, to be aware through that quiet. I cannot feel it in London -- or, rather, I haven't been able to yet --but London is busier. It is louder in what fills it. This place, and the other places that I have felt it are more quiet, able to hum in a way that feels like it is far more natural than what London offers. My home -- Harroway -- was like that too, humming with that feeling."
As she spoke, Liessel tried to reach for that feeling in the hope that it might help deepen her attempt at answering the Dame. It was there, but just out of reach. She wasn't still enough. She wasn't being quiet enough.
Dame Ashbroom's interest was in the way she watched Liessel, clear-eyed as a hawk. She'd been gravely hurt not long ago, assaulted by the same forces that had attacked the Bells and its people, but like Temmis she had some help. Perhaps the same help being coaxed toward Horran Erphale, at least in part. Some ageless strength had returned to her, no matter what she claimed about the end of her days, or fading power. "Tell me what you sense. Tell us. --and don't be hurt by the laughter of our friends, here. They mean no harm."
Watching Liessel, the Once-Warden, Temmis, and their companions there on the blanket would see Liessel draw in a breath, letting it fill her lungs before she released it slowly and closed her eyes. Before letting herself settle she hesitated.
She had done this a few times before, but not while in the company of others at The Bells. Her thoughts settled for that brief moment on thoughts of what would be seen in her when she did this? Would it be any different with others watching, people that she barely knew?
But she had done blessings for strangers. She had given glimpses to people she had barely known before. This would be alright. She had to tell herself that, because for some reason doing it right then and there felt scary in a way that it hadn't before.
She took another deep breath and settled those thoughts. There were beings here who were far more powerful, and far more strange than a young woman who had once been a priestess of the Guardians.
Liessel sat still, and let herself grow quiet, as she had always done before. The sounds of conversation that flowed down to where they were from up on the hill as the visitors to The Bells enjoyed their evening filled her ears as it had before. The more she listened, the more she relaxed. The more she relaxed, the more she could feel. And then there it was. The beat of the place.
Softly, slowly, Liessel shifted her right hand and laid it down against the blanket by her side. She let herself feel it for a moment before speaking, "It is like a pulse, gentle. Almost like breathing. It is not still, but it is steady and there is a flow to it as if it contains its own sense of life. I can feel it so close to my own awareness of my own life, but it is not a mirror. It is both a part of me, and not."
"Why the 'not'?"
That did not come from the Once-Warden, that question. It came from the spindly wingless fairy that looked like a puppet made of sticks under green fabric.
Inclination had her wanting to open her eyes to focus on the Fae, but that would make her connection to what she was feeling tenuous. She breathed out again, letting that impulse go with it. "Because it is almost in tune with my own, but like a note that is slightly off key. I can feel the beat of myself, the flow of myself, and I can feel the flow of this -- so close, so nearly the same, but just slightly different."
"Why different?" the fae pressed, drawing his skinny legs in folded, so he could lean in.
The Dame looked at him and asked, "Would you have her be you, Iddar?"
"I don't understand the space. Like too many furs," said the fairy, Iddar. "Muffling."
The smile that came to her was very slightly hooked and sideways. She listened to Amrilaine speaking to Iddar and folded her hand into a light little ball there against the blanket before lifting it and placing it back on her lap. "I think, perhaps, it is that language cannot convey something like that so cleanly." She let the feeling go before opening her eyes to look toward the spindly limbed Fae that had spoken, "At least, no language that I possess."
"That, too, some would say is a change," Amrilaine noted thoughtfully. "A change long developing in us. For a time, the cure was poets. Do you believe me? Poets and singers. Bards who found words where words were not. I was tickled by a sense of your friend Adeline's lineage being of that ilk. An old, old line of keen-sighted madmen and madwomen."
"She is rather good with her words," a small nod was given, "It would not surprise me if she inherited something from them in her talents. If only I was so blessed, then perhaps I might be able to better address the difference for your friend as it does sound as if someone with those abilities would fare better in this than I."
Iddar said something quick. It wasn't English, but something more birdlike. The Dame laughed a little and through an amused squint said, "The Folk have always enjoyed such people--whether they had a lineage of it or not. To sit in the glow of them. When first I met her, I suspected that might be why Castilan would go to such trouble for her as to come here and try to persuade me to keep her. --Though it seems he's not fae after all, but something else altogether. In any case, you can see how it might attract, the ability to say the unsayable. With verse, with song, with the deep words of the heart. For many fairies, those are the only languages they know in common with us, and without them between us the world can be a very silent place."
Liessel heard Amrilaine, and nodded, but she didn't answer right away. There was something beneath those words, the meaning behind them. She'd been to The Fens, and while it was a bordering place it was still touched by Fae deeply. What she had seen of the beings there, and how they were drawn in by Felix's singing and the games that the Flynns had played. "Harmony." She wound up saying softly, before her thoughts landed her back onto that hillside with Amrilaine, her great-many-yeared-grandson, and their Fae companions. "It is harmony. The delicate balance between differing things -- well, not differing -- but two strands of the same song as they glide so close together. Like two voices singing in two different keys but coming together so perfectly they flow as one. Because it isn't just the words, it is also the emotion behind it and the imagery that such things bring to mind. It all works together in harmony."
The Dame laughed a little. "For the bard, do you mean?" she asked curiously.
"Yes," Liessel laughed a little bit herself, "And for me. That word I was struggling with -- how to describe to Iddar," A small glance was sent the Fae's way in acknowledgement, "what I was feeling -- it was harmony. The way a well sung, well played, song can pull you in and make you a part of its own story -- the verse of the poet who can speak to the heart and coax from it such feeling until the words become your own. You are part of it, become woven into it, and carry it with you and so you feel and are enveloped by those emotions, and that story, because the harmony within those things is also within you."
Amrilaine's eyes glittered, but Iddar grunted and trilled something unintelligible. "It is a changed place, indeed," the Dame mused, but nodded to Liessel. "What you've described is not only the realm of bards, but was mine, too, under that rowan. The bards, the poets, those who dwell outside of certain expectations, we might say, held on long, as a group, and for a time the world benefitted from them as one of the last reliable groups of true translators... once translation was needed at all."
"They are not so readily needed anymore, the bards and poets, and others who do not follow those certain expectations," Liessel said with another small nod, her hands coming together and folding lightly against her lap, "The world, or rather, the people in it are not the same and do not need the same things as they did then. It is so sad that something so beautiful has become so -- faded."
"Are they truly not needed, though?" The Dame asked.
Temmis's head came up. He wore a frown, watching his ancestress's face.
She reached down and picked at the grass poking up along the rumpled edge of the blanket they all sat upon. "Some would call this new world pale. Some would call it empty."
"I think it is just different things that are needed now. People change, societies change be it through war, or just the flow of life, and so their needs change with it. The songs aren't the same as what used to be sung, the poets do not dream the same way. Connection to the land is not the same as it had been, because things have changed. But there is still purpose, it is just not what it used to be. Or, it might be the same but just look different."
Liessel drew a breath and let her eyes skate out across the vision of hillside that surrounded them, "And the world -- I do not think it pale, I do not think it empty. It is just -- searching -- for ways to be with all the changes that have happened."
"Greatmother...." Temmis said it low, warningly, warily.
She glared at him and he said no more. She said, "You speak as though there's nothing to be done about it. It is simply a great wide wave, and we must ride it and make-do. And you speak of the world as if it is one of us. A thing that searches and strives. Static. Hung among stars."
The warning from Temmis was what held Liessel's tongue after Amrilaine had spoken. She was trying to gauge, trying to decipher if an unknown line had been crossed by what she had just said.
At length, the young woman from worlds away gently shook her head, "If I have offended, it was not my intention."
"Oh I know that," the Dame said swiftly, waving a hand. "I suppose the world is for you and all those born now only what it should be."
"How would we know summer, and all its warmth, if all we knew was the coldness of winter?" Liessel asked after a moment, "How would we know Spring, if all we knew was Autumn? My eyes have been opened, Lady Ashbroom, by events I would have never thought possible while living in my tiny life locked away in the temple. My world, for me then, was as large as a room and no bigger than that because that was the world I was given. This world," She said, looking around and making a gesture with her right hand to encompass the whole of the hillside and all that was beyond, "Is so much bigger than that room I had occupied, and there is so much more to see. But it is still only what I have right in front of me. Knowing that there is more to it, that there should be more to it, does not give the "more" definition. In that regard, my eyes are still closed, and I am but blind to what is on the other side even if I can feel it with my hands and taste it on my tongue. I do not know the shape, or form, that it should be taking."
"Very prettily said," the Dame said softly. "If any of this were about 'knowing' in the sense you mean it." She drew in a breath and shook her head. "Enough of that. I'll bring you with me when I go to the Tor. Bring a gift for White, and bring an offering for her waters of a coin or a leaf from a plant you've tended yourself."
Enough of that.
I'll bring you to the Tor.
In a move that was rarely seen in the company of others these days, one that she had made a habit of suppressing while out away from the comfort and confines of the house she shared in Knightsbridge with Aurelia, or the walls of Flynn and Flynn, Liessel lifted her right hand to touch it to the mark that lay in hidden wait beneath the brim of her hat. It was a thank you, and a soft relenting. An answer to Amrilaine's Enough.
"What type of gift would be suitable for Missus White?" Of leaves, Liessel had plenty to choose from. This other thing, though. She did not know White enough to fashion a guess for herself.
"She's not much interested in modern inventions," the ancient woman told her with something like the easygoing air she'd carried before. "Not much one for reading. It does not have to be a wealthy gift."
After a moment, Liessel nodded, "Thank you, Lady Ashbroom, I believe I know what I will be bringing for her. Does -- she take tea?"
"Ha!" The Dame's sudden laugh mixed in with smaller chuckles from Temmis and their other companions. "She does not, in fact, to my knowledge take tea," Amrilaine said, "though she does accept seeded fruit."
Her smile in the face of those reactions was hesitant, but it did find a way to solidify itself into a real expression by the time Liessel was nodding again and saying, "Then, I am sure of what I will bring her. Thank you, Ma'am."
A nod was what she got for that, but the Dame was not done. "I've called upon a friend of mine to make her way here to see what more can be done to bring your father's strength back. She should be here by the new moon. We've told him to expect her, and I've told her to be very gentle indeed."
The motion she had made before was made again, her finger rose to the brim of her hat. This time they also drifted lower to settle against her chest, over her heart, "Thank you Lady Ashbroom," She said again, "The care he has received here has been most generous and kind. I would wish to reciprocate what you have shown to us, if I can, all I would need to know is what I might be able to offer in return for it."
"Nothing for now, but perhaps there will come a time when we might be in need. Much has changed for us in a short time. --But here: go see your father. Return tomorrow near sunset, and we will go."
"Then, all you need do is to ask," Liessel said as she pushed herself to her feet, rising from where she had sat on the blanket. As she stood, she made the motion again, hand lifted to the brim of her hat, while she took in the Ashbrooms, and then the Fae, "Thank you, all, for allowing me to interrupt your afternoon. I hope your evening is a pleasant one."