Post by Liessel on Apr 22, 2024 13:29:23 GMT -5
She wanted to tell Adeline that she wasn't certain about any of this, none of it at all. But it wasn't entirely the truth, so it went with the wind. Liessel was sure of what she was there for. Whether the tree would hear her, or not, whether it would choose to speak, was a different matter. Company, or no company.
Liessel looked toward Adeline and gave a small nod before dropping her bag at the edge of that shadow they'd stepped into. "Should I -- just try saying hello?"
The branches formed such a wall, the lowest of them hanging so heavy, that it was a knot of shadow, and could just as easily have been a woodsman's cottage for how the limbs hid a hollow, with a few irregular places large enough for a person to stoop through. Here, in this dimness, the ears and the skin had more to tell about what lay in that darkness than the eyes: that sense of motion, of a hundred birds or more, drew a sense of it as a shape, a void, a little hideaway embraced by the yew's own arms.
"It is up to you?" Adeline guess. "I don't really know. I am as clueless in this as you are."
It was like a cave made of wood and leaves, that little hollow. Liessel found herself hunching down as if it would help her avoid becoming entangled in the mass of branches and birds, which there seemed to be a full world's worth of, that crowded in overhead.
She considered the dark trunk of the tree. It was twisted with age, and not as solid as any oak she had ever seen. This trunk seemed to be made up of several different parts for it was shaped.
After a moment, she moved forward and reached out to brush her hand against its bark lightly, "Mighty Yew, would you grace us with your voice tonight?"
When Liessel passed under the branches, and the moonlight was blocked, the birds above her, large and small, became silvery and ghostly, and were shaped like hazy children arrayed on large heart branches, and tiny fingerlings all around, hints of their own pockets of moonlight catching at their hair and their shoulders and in their eyes. Every one peered down at her.
If Adeline followed, she would see the same--
Adeline did.
She started up at the birds and could only think of Zephyr. Without even putting thought into action, she raised her hand up into the air, offering a perch should one wish to fly down to them.
She had stepped into the shadow of the tree, her intentions arrested as the moonlight was blocked out. The birds were not birds at all, but perhaps they still were and were only just showing their forms as children of the tree?
Adeline reached her hand up for one to perch upon if it so chose, and Liessel brought her right hand up to her heart in salutation.
They seemed to be made of moonlight, all of them. "Please," She spoke to them all, "allow us entrance here. We would like to speak with the warden of these lands."
The ghosts that had been birds, or the birds that now appeared as ghosts, peered down curiously at them, but none of them moved from their perches. And more were still arriving. Out of the moonlight they came as birds, transforming in shadow into little phantoms.
"Why are you here?"
It came from the trunks. There were several of those, even if they were ultimately all one, and where there had been only black before, suddenly there was a being there, not child-sized, but comparable to Liessel and Adeline.
It, too, had a ghostly glow to it. It was half old man and half old woman, the right side a tunic and hose and worn leather shoes, and the left side a loose dress that went to the ankles. They were seated there, peering at their visitors, right side bearded and left side wrinkled but free of hair.
Very slowly Adeline lowered her hand. Ghost birds did not need her as a perch and she felt a little silly keeping her hand raised up.
The arrival of the ghost froze her breath for a second. The shock like an icy fear that she forcefully mastered while giving a little nod of encouragement to Liessel.
The voice came from the tree, not from above. It took half of a second for that to sink in, happening within the span of time that a slight flinch took to her shoulders as the sudden sound of it caused a minor start from the once-priestess. Her eyes dropped, finding where the specter sat.
For a moment she couldn't move, not even with the nod of encouragement from Adeline. Her mind had to catch up to the fact that something was there where there had been nothing before but a tree. Perhaps it had been there, though, and she had just not had the eyes to see it.
Liessel blinked into motion, repeating her greeting for the phantom settled at the base of the twisted trunk of the tree, "I was sent by the Ladies Ashbroom, and White, to make a request of you. I brought to them some names -- ancient names from long ago -- they did not know them but said that you might."
"I know many names," said the half-man, half-woman phantom, "and the Yew knows more. I guard here." The eyes went upwards, to the branches. "We guard here, and we dream together, and we commune." It took its time studying Liessel, and then Adeline, and only eventually added: "If you wish to retrieve names, what will you trade for them?"
Liessel was watching the phantom as the phantom studied her. Consideration was given before she said, "Stories for names, or names for names. Would that be sufficient?"
"No buck? No sea-spun amber? No firstborn child? No thread spun from the hair of the first maiden in the world to have yellow hair like yours?" The trunk of the Fortingall Yew could be seen through the ghost that called itself guardian of this place, wherever there was a deep darkness within their shape.
Quietly, Adeline dug into her Flynn kit to retrieve a smooth pebble. It was a little thing, with a jagged tip that almost brought its shape into a triangle and pure white.
"I have with me a stone from a different world." She offered to the ghosts. "It was in my boot during one of my trips and did not realize it's existence until I returned home. It is a little piece from another world that is like ours but not. There is nothing like it on this earth that I know of. Will you make a trade for it?"
Liessel had only just begun to kick herself for not even thinking about a trade. It seemed obvious now that she was standing there that, of course, there would be a trade. She had been about to answer when Adeline spoke up, offering the stone.
She looked Adeline's way, offering a silent thank you by means of a small smile before putting her attention back on the specter.
The half-this-half-that ghost did not reach out, but let Adeline reach in, and they didn't make a move for the pebble until it was over their mismatched lap. The physical pebble was held neatly in the ghostly hand, visible through fingers as they turned it over. "What is the name of this rock's home? What is its fate?"
Careful. She had to be careful. Cyrus' words of warning whispered in her ear.
"Harroway." Adeline answered. "And it's fate is that of every planet. It spins and turns as ours does. It is also the world my friend has come to ask about. Do you accept our trade?"
Liessel drew in a breath as the name of her world was given. She was shoring herself up, readying herself for whatever the answer might be. Half of her was ready for rejection.
The stone was still in hand, the eyes that were the same in the halves of faces that were different had not left it.
One of the ghosts from above--looking like a full-grown person--said something without sound, mouth moving, and that caught the attention of the Yew's guard as if it could hear what Liessel and Adeline could not. It looked around: other ghosts were speaking, too, without so much as stirring a leaf or making a whisper.
"We like meeting this stone, and we like the taste of its fate." The guard nodded thoughtfully. "You may go below. But you," they said to Liessel, "are Wylarith the Moon, and you"--now measuring Adeline--"are Syrefi the Guidestar, and this is how the Yew will call you tonight, and only tonight, until the sun rises, when you must ask for new names if your business keeps you beyond."
"Is this a safe passage then?" Adeline asked.
Because she needed to know.
Because someone taught her the importance of asking those questions.
What she found herself looking at, really, was no specter. It wasn't a large, and ancient Yew tree, or branches full of ghostly forms that crowded together as they looked down over what was happening beneath them. It was a set of scales that Liessel knew she barely understood. Practical knowledge was far different than knowledge read from a book if only because it could be faster learned.
She found herself, also, looking at Syrefi the Guidestar thankful, again, that they had happened to meet up in Edinburgh. Liessel stayed quiet, though, giving room for Adeline's question to be asked and answered. She did, however, give the specter a nod of her head as a quiet understanding of the instructions given.
"We remember White and Ashbroom, though never together." The half-and-half ghost regarded Adeline. "We'll devil you not, and keep your trade here at the root." The colorless eyes slid to Liessel and back again, the phantom taking its time in consideration.
"You want names from the Yew. My advice has three heads: One that eats, one that sleeps, and one that kisses. The one that eats says names are spirits, snared by teeth but never rent. The one that sleeps says names are memories, the fur-lined den that warms in winter. The one that kisses says names are hearts, called close and never banished. Tell the Yew which you seek, and remember that you chose."
Three heads. That was a riddle that Liessel did not need much time to solve at all. "Thank you," she said to half-and-half specter, "For your advice. We will take careful consideration before making our request."
"Do you know the answer?" Adeline whispered lowly to Liessel with a worried back and forth look between the spectators and the young woman.
The spectators in the branches did not move, but the bit of root upon which the half-man-half-woman sat pulled itself up out of the earth in a great loamy splitting, and curled aside, the guardian spirit staying astride it as it yanked itself partly loose. The wound its motion left in the earth was pitch dark, and smelled of evergreen and earth. The sound of its shifting continued: a soft, clumpy kind of sound, hitting at clots of earth falling down a passage. The ears would feel the depth, deep inside Liessel's skull, and Adeline's, the sound of the opening going hand in hand with a harder-to-name sense of a yawning space underneath.
Did she know the answer? A moment ago, yes, she believed she had the answer formulated. But the root pulled up, splitting and curling into an opening that led into a chasm of darkness.
What she had, then, was not a grasp on what might have been the answer. What she had was a silent prayer that floated, detached, through her head as she found herself staring at the darkness that waited for them:
Guardians guide us. Please, light our way.
There was yew bark to hold on to, and roots. The feet, descending, found not soft disturbed earth, but roots that moved into place as far more uneven steps than those that had but recently carried Liessel down and down and down to Missus White.
The scent of yew and earth would close around her.
In the dark, she would go under the yew--
--and find that the wild cast of the trunks above was mirrored below. Her hands would find trunk there, even as ground level was left behind and above her.
Liessel looked toward Adeline and gave a small nod before dropping her bag at the edge of that shadow they'd stepped into. "Should I -- just try saying hello?"
The branches formed such a wall, the lowest of them hanging so heavy, that it was a knot of shadow, and could just as easily have been a woodsman's cottage for how the limbs hid a hollow, with a few irregular places large enough for a person to stoop through. Here, in this dimness, the ears and the skin had more to tell about what lay in that darkness than the eyes: that sense of motion, of a hundred birds or more, drew a sense of it as a shape, a void, a little hideaway embraced by the yew's own arms.
"It is up to you?" Adeline guess. "I don't really know. I am as clueless in this as you are."
It was like a cave made of wood and leaves, that little hollow. Liessel found herself hunching down as if it would help her avoid becoming entangled in the mass of branches and birds, which there seemed to be a full world's worth of, that crowded in overhead.
She considered the dark trunk of the tree. It was twisted with age, and not as solid as any oak she had ever seen. This trunk seemed to be made up of several different parts for it was shaped.
After a moment, she moved forward and reached out to brush her hand against its bark lightly, "Mighty Yew, would you grace us with your voice tonight?"
When Liessel passed under the branches, and the moonlight was blocked, the birds above her, large and small, became silvery and ghostly, and were shaped like hazy children arrayed on large heart branches, and tiny fingerlings all around, hints of their own pockets of moonlight catching at their hair and their shoulders and in their eyes. Every one peered down at her.
If Adeline followed, she would see the same--
Adeline did.
She started up at the birds and could only think of Zephyr. Without even putting thought into action, she raised her hand up into the air, offering a perch should one wish to fly down to them.
She had stepped into the shadow of the tree, her intentions arrested as the moonlight was blocked out. The birds were not birds at all, but perhaps they still were and were only just showing their forms as children of the tree?
Adeline reached her hand up for one to perch upon if it so chose, and Liessel brought her right hand up to her heart in salutation.
They seemed to be made of moonlight, all of them. "Please," She spoke to them all, "allow us entrance here. We would like to speak with the warden of these lands."
The ghosts that had been birds, or the birds that now appeared as ghosts, peered down curiously at them, but none of them moved from their perches. And more were still arriving. Out of the moonlight they came as birds, transforming in shadow into little phantoms.
"Why are you here?"
It came from the trunks. There were several of those, even if they were ultimately all one, and where there had been only black before, suddenly there was a being there, not child-sized, but comparable to Liessel and Adeline.
It, too, had a ghostly glow to it. It was half old man and half old woman, the right side a tunic and hose and worn leather shoes, and the left side a loose dress that went to the ankles. They were seated there, peering at their visitors, right side bearded and left side wrinkled but free of hair.
Very slowly Adeline lowered her hand. Ghost birds did not need her as a perch and she felt a little silly keeping her hand raised up.
The arrival of the ghost froze her breath for a second. The shock like an icy fear that she forcefully mastered while giving a little nod of encouragement to Liessel.
The voice came from the tree, not from above. It took half of a second for that to sink in, happening within the span of time that a slight flinch took to her shoulders as the sudden sound of it caused a minor start from the once-priestess. Her eyes dropped, finding where the specter sat.
For a moment she couldn't move, not even with the nod of encouragement from Adeline. Her mind had to catch up to the fact that something was there where there had been nothing before but a tree. Perhaps it had been there, though, and she had just not had the eyes to see it.
Liessel blinked into motion, repeating her greeting for the phantom settled at the base of the twisted trunk of the tree, "I was sent by the Ladies Ashbroom, and White, to make a request of you. I brought to them some names -- ancient names from long ago -- they did not know them but said that you might."
"I know many names," said the half-man, half-woman phantom, "and the Yew knows more. I guard here." The eyes went upwards, to the branches. "We guard here, and we dream together, and we commune." It took its time studying Liessel, and then Adeline, and only eventually added: "If you wish to retrieve names, what will you trade for them?"
Liessel was watching the phantom as the phantom studied her. Consideration was given before she said, "Stories for names, or names for names. Would that be sufficient?"
"No buck? No sea-spun amber? No firstborn child? No thread spun from the hair of the first maiden in the world to have yellow hair like yours?" The trunk of the Fortingall Yew could be seen through the ghost that called itself guardian of this place, wherever there was a deep darkness within their shape.
Quietly, Adeline dug into her Flynn kit to retrieve a smooth pebble. It was a little thing, with a jagged tip that almost brought its shape into a triangle and pure white.
"I have with me a stone from a different world." She offered to the ghosts. "It was in my boot during one of my trips and did not realize it's existence until I returned home. It is a little piece from another world that is like ours but not. There is nothing like it on this earth that I know of. Will you make a trade for it?"
Liessel had only just begun to kick herself for not even thinking about a trade. It seemed obvious now that she was standing there that, of course, there would be a trade. She had been about to answer when Adeline spoke up, offering the stone.
She looked Adeline's way, offering a silent thank you by means of a small smile before putting her attention back on the specter.
The half-this-half-that ghost did not reach out, but let Adeline reach in, and they didn't make a move for the pebble until it was over their mismatched lap. The physical pebble was held neatly in the ghostly hand, visible through fingers as they turned it over. "What is the name of this rock's home? What is its fate?"
Careful. She had to be careful. Cyrus' words of warning whispered in her ear.
"Harroway." Adeline answered. "And it's fate is that of every planet. It spins and turns as ours does. It is also the world my friend has come to ask about. Do you accept our trade?"
Liessel drew in a breath as the name of her world was given. She was shoring herself up, readying herself for whatever the answer might be. Half of her was ready for rejection.
The stone was still in hand, the eyes that were the same in the halves of faces that were different had not left it.
One of the ghosts from above--looking like a full-grown person--said something without sound, mouth moving, and that caught the attention of the Yew's guard as if it could hear what Liessel and Adeline could not. It looked around: other ghosts were speaking, too, without so much as stirring a leaf or making a whisper.
"We like meeting this stone, and we like the taste of its fate." The guard nodded thoughtfully. "You may go below. But you," they said to Liessel, "are Wylarith the Moon, and you"--now measuring Adeline--"are Syrefi the Guidestar, and this is how the Yew will call you tonight, and only tonight, until the sun rises, when you must ask for new names if your business keeps you beyond."
"Is this a safe passage then?" Adeline asked.
Because she needed to know.
Because someone taught her the importance of asking those questions.
What she found herself looking at, really, was no specter. It wasn't a large, and ancient Yew tree, or branches full of ghostly forms that crowded together as they looked down over what was happening beneath them. It was a set of scales that Liessel knew she barely understood. Practical knowledge was far different than knowledge read from a book if only because it could be faster learned.
She found herself, also, looking at Syrefi the Guidestar thankful, again, that they had happened to meet up in Edinburgh. Liessel stayed quiet, though, giving room for Adeline's question to be asked and answered. She did, however, give the specter a nod of her head as a quiet understanding of the instructions given.
"We remember White and Ashbroom, though never together." The half-and-half ghost regarded Adeline. "We'll devil you not, and keep your trade here at the root." The colorless eyes slid to Liessel and back again, the phantom taking its time in consideration.
"You want names from the Yew. My advice has three heads: One that eats, one that sleeps, and one that kisses. The one that eats says names are spirits, snared by teeth but never rent. The one that sleeps says names are memories, the fur-lined den that warms in winter. The one that kisses says names are hearts, called close and never banished. Tell the Yew which you seek, and remember that you chose."
Three heads. That was a riddle that Liessel did not need much time to solve at all. "Thank you," she said to half-and-half specter, "For your advice. We will take careful consideration before making our request."
"Do you know the answer?" Adeline whispered lowly to Liessel with a worried back and forth look between the spectators and the young woman.
The spectators in the branches did not move, but the bit of root upon which the half-man-half-woman sat pulled itself up out of the earth in a great loamy splitting, and curled aside, the guardian spirit staying astride it as it yanked itself partly loose. The wound its motion left in the earth was pitch dark, and smelled of evergreen and earth. The sound of its shifting continued: a soft, clumpy kind of sound, hitting at clots of earth falling down a passage. The ears would feel the depth, deep inside Liessel's skull, and Adeline's, the sound of the opening going hand in hand with a harder-to-name sense of a yawning space underneath.
Did she know the answer? A moment ago, yes, she believed she had the answer formulated. But the root pulled up, splitting and curling into an opening that led into a chasm of darkness.
What she had, then, was not a grasp on what might have been the answer. What she had was a silent prayer that floated, detached, through her head as she found herself staring at the darkness that waited for them:
Guardians guide us. Please, light our way.
There was yew bark to hold on to, and roots. The feet, descending, found not soft disturbed earth, but roots that moved into place as far more uneven steps than those that had but recently carried Liessel down and down and down to Missus White.
The scent of yew and earth would close around her.
In the dark, she would go under the yew--
--and find that the wild cast of the trunks above was mirrored below. Her hands would find trunk there, even as ground level was left behind and above her.