...and it becomes clear to Us, as We gaze upon this horizon of Undoing, that our tradition of upright leadership with the vision to carry out thy boldest dreams must continue....
Perhaps you can imagine my surprise, for I was as surprised as any. In fact, I might humbly suggest that I was more surprised than most. I certainly hadn't been informed. I wasn't ready in the least. But she spoke thus:
... In recognition of this need, and that tradition, We name our heir apparent Sir Cian of Dank Corner, Knight of the House Eilenud. In title, in goods, in deed, Sir Cian hath earned his Glamour, and earned the respect of this Household....
And thus spoken, the entirety of my world turned upside down. I am no champion Soothsayer; I can confess this with a fairly limited amount of chagrin. But I could feel the weight of Omen building in these words, and it made my liquid bones shiver to hear the words pronounced.
I tried, then, to take comfort in the formality of it all, but it didn't help. I tried to take comfort in knowing that it would be some time before this Foreseen Undoing, but that helped just as little as the formality. I very nearly fell into a puddle like old Marvin was wont to do when he got nervous. And no sooner did the thought cross my mind:
... From his tender start as a Childling crawler, we have wondered and watched as he flowered like night-blooming jasmine beneath the tutelage -- sometimes strict, sometimes vibrant, sometimes hard, and sometimes gentle -- of Marvin the Minsky's vision for the crawlers. We watched as this childling came of age, proving that the sluagh could be more than the flitters in shadows some paint them to be....
It was true that Marvin trained me, and true that his tutelage was as variagated as life itself. But this other....
I suppose my Chrysalis was like a blooming. I was a little past seven, just coming into the second grade. It was October, and the winds had already started. My mother sent me to school -- I was walking, it was only a few blocks, and neighborhood wasn't quite so bad back then.
I know that I'd seen, before. Spoken to the shadow who lives in the attic, for example, before my parents told me that that wasn't possible, that the shadow didn't exist -- but when I was walking to school that day, I was walking with my friend Ralph Nemitz, and he made some joke and right there I... I don't know what happened, exactly. Something hit me. I think something hit me, but I don't remember, for sure. I just remember staggering back, and falling. And reaching out with my tongue, reflexively, catching my lunchpail as it fell.
Ralph was just standing there, staring, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing, and I pushed myself back to my feet, looking back down the street (what hit me?) looking up the road (what hit me?) staring at Ralph just as incredulously. "You knocked me over!" I shouted, but I whispered. I couldn't shout? He broke me....
"I did not. You just fell down! And you caught your lunchpail!" Ralph seemed a little confused why he thought that was especially noteworthy before simply announcing, "You're strange!" and taking off at a run for the school.
I was convinced Ralph did it. It ended our friendship; we feuded bitterly over it for nearly two weeks. But our feud was only partly about that, for me. For me, the vaster, more strange part was the clothing I wore, suddenly, the way I couldn't speak aloud; how my fingers stuck to walls, and I could see in the dark; how I could wriggle my way into a teeny tiny little space that nobody else could get through. These things were disturbing to me; the sights, sounds, and flavours all bursting around me: these frightened me. I thought I was in fact disturbed, that I was losing it.
I was fortunate, in more than a couple ways, that the pooka I met, Sally Monroe, wasn't the only one I met. It was Samuel Thompson, the boggan who now maintains household affairs? He was in one of my classes. I think he felt sorry for me, especially after Sally was continually assuring me that I was in fact going completely crazy-eight bonkers.
It was Samuel who introduced me at court, and I suppose ... well, jasmine is just flattery, but I can see where the simile might have some grounding. I was really quite lost when I was brought into Elsbeth's presence. I felt compelled to walk a certain pattern, even to take a knee. People were talking, Samuel was saying something. I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I couldn't stop myself just the same from piping up. "What's going on here?" It must have sounded more than a little panicked, because Baroness Elsbeth did pause to explain.
Still, I came a long way once Marvin took me under his wing, and it was a long way I had to come. Blooming, perhaps, because it was like a continual opening to my fae nature. But I think I object to the floral imagery. It wasn't like that at all.
... In a time when information was more vital than the very Glamour which feeds our winsome souls, Cian of Dank Corner proved to be as outstanding a resource as his mentor, Marvin the Minsky. In a time when tensions rode high and hard, Cian uncovered clandestine plots, elucidated upon the conjecture which had led us to the pass whence we stood....
It was at about this time that I began to realize that perhaps I was trapped by my own successes. I hadn't seen it the way Elsbeth clearly did, and a nervous glance around the room explained that she wasn't the only one who felt that way. The nuggets of truth were embellished in a manner no pooka could hope to equal; the Baroness' political motives lay beneath layers and layers of subterfuge. This I was certain of, but also I was certain that her embellishments did not detract from what I had done.
I suppose that most don't think much of childlings. I know I don't, and haven't for more years than I care to confess to owning; a childling is more often a nuisance to step around than a boon. I suppose that I can extend that general principal to encompass all fae and even the mundanes, too, though, so perhaps I should be careful about generalizing my feelings upon my audience.
Still, few think much of a childling beyond the childling's play, regardless of how studious or serious the child might be. To suggest I was more serious or studious than others might also be to misrepresent things. But play for me was work for many; speaking with ghosts and spiders, creeping along the roofs of the city, peering into windows and listening to the hum and buzz of people on the street: these were entertainment to me.
When a group of wilders, anxious to outstrut one another, got to speaking, things would fall from such loosely-held lips, the sorts of things that gained respect for an enterprising young sluagh. Marvin -- sweet Marvin -- he never understood how it was that I managed to find out so much, so fast, where he, the wiser and more experienced by years, had not even been able to uncover the rumour among the Motley that blamed us for the Haymarket.
"They believe it was a rock thrown by one of the vassalage," I had reported, "or, alternately, that we have membership among the police forces which were in attendance." The news shook the court: had we but known that when the hostilities started, five years previous, how many lives might have been saved? These skirmishes have been so expensive....
Later, when I provided a list of the young rakes who had been present at the scene, garnered from a repeated and continual cross-referencing of those who appeared to be most hunted, and the few rivulets of information I had been able to glean over High Tea -- when I provided that list, I took on a second Oath to my liege, this time taking it on with a Ban beside it.
It hurt, to speak those words: "As the grave is silent, so mark my tongue, that thy secret may fade from the common memory as if it never were." It hurt because it seemed so opposite the very quality within myself which set me apart from those Marvin referred to as 'the dismal lost, the true crawlers', the Unseelie sluagh who peppered the Motley and seemed to be taken for the example of the whole when other Kithain got to considering us. It seemed, in short, to be counter to my aim, insofar as my aim was to prove that some sluagh were worthy courtiers.
Elsbeth has never been short of vision, and never short of empathy, either. She saw the pain painted across my wan features and spoke softly in response: "Eiluned is a House of secrets, Cian of Dank Nook. Eiluned trades in secrets as some trade in crafts, others blood, and some stalwart few valour. Eiluned is a House of secrets, Cian, and today, as my Squire, you are initiated into it."
The surprise was as stark then as it is now. Perhaps moreso; Marvin was never titled, and my titling, at 11, signified the end of my apprenticeship already. In some ways, that was a fortunate thing; Marvin himself was Undone and slain in a back alley one rainy November night later that year. A new mentor would have been hard to adapt to, and Marvin, being sluagh, was really the only fae in the Household able to attend to my instruction.
Still, surprised or not, freed of apprenticeship or not, Elsbeth gave me title on that fine May afternoon. I was nervous then, but not so nervous as I am now. After all, then the only duties I had were to Elsbeth, the only responsibilities to act upon her whim. I was without vassalage, a condition which has, to this day, suited me rather well. Perhaps in time I will grow accustomed to my retinue, but for now I find it unnerving....
... Titled before the first of his Wilder years, adopted into Our own House, Cian continued to prove himself an asset to the Barony of the White-Kissed Surf. First in uncovering the betrayal which saw his mentor slain with cold iron, Cian demonstrated a talent for investigation which accentuated his already not-inconsiderable collection of information-gathering talents. In retrieving the cold iron used to commit the crime, he further demonstrated that his gathering abilities were not simply limited to information....
Now here a prevarication which might even slip past pooka lips. My 'investigation talent' was really nothing more than the information gathering which I'd already been praised for, and perhaps even substantially less....
Discovery wasn't exactly difficult. It took some time, but some slight experience with High Tea eventually paid off. It was over mouldy biscuits and a slightly-watered cup of mud that one of my kin from Joliet expressed some surprise that I did not already know.
"That was Jimmy the Knife," she whispered, wide eyes even wider in the gloom of the little room called Dank Corner. "I didn't think cold iron was called for, though!"
I didn't understand, but when Marianna explained about the rules of the war in the shadows, crawler to crawler, Seelie to Unseelie, I came to understand. And I came to understand her hesitation with respect to cold iron, and came to a more perplexing problem yet, a conflict between my loyalty to my brethren in the shadows and my oath of fealty.
"Eiluned is a House of secrets." The words floated back, unbidden but welcome relief from the puzzle; reason was not as important as resolution, and I need not explain the rules and art of the shadow war to communicate the guilt of Jimmy the Knife. So I both did and did not.
Few Kithain beyond those of us who crawl can match our talents as unseen eyes, and fewer still can match our natural talent as breakers of house. Still, I coaxed a pair of trolls to come with -- Stevedore Winslow, the former Thane, and Ricky of the Vast Lake -- and I brought Suzanne, a dove pooka who tumbled into Bedlam only a few years later. We descended upon Jimmy's second-story flat, Suzanne and I from above, while Stevedore and Ricky took up positions in the alleyway.
As fortune would have it, Jimmy was not at home, and it took Ricky and I several minutes to finally locate his cache of weapons -- knives, mostly, though he had a short-bladed sword as well -- and in it, the teak case which carried the cold iron dagger he had employed in Marvin's Undoing.
Retrieving the dagger was enough to exact revenge. While Jimmy may or may not have been of the Motley, Elsbeth claimed domain over the part of the city he was living in, and possession of a cold iron weapon was a punishable offense. When Stevedore took his squadron of infantry to bring the man to trial, he tried to bolt, and died as he fled. Four months later, he was found by one of the Motley and re-invested with Glamour, but he felt the sting of the blow.
The dagger was hurled into Lake Michigan.
... As the years wore on, our wilder sluagh proved time and again that the information of the crawlers was invaluable, and that others ignore it at their peril. But information seems to be a staple of the sluagh, and Cian of Dank Nook has demonstrated so much more ability. Recall when our brethren and fellow Household members were falling to an Unseelie foe, and Squire Cian investigated the deaths, with much the same alacrity as the Minsky affair was handled. This time, he not only uncovered the creature responsible, but turned the same creature into an unlikely ally....
Again, she stops just short of outright fibbing. Oh, certainly, I did investigate. I used every channel I had at my disposal, but could only come up with further rumours of death. It was really by accident, walking between the sites to ken what I could about the places these people died, that I stumbled upon Tinny.
When I first saw him, he was little more than a shadow, but my eyes see well in shadow, and he appeared spiderlike to me. I stretched out my mind and my hand to embrace him, to see if his web had seen anything such as might provide a clue. When he responded, it was unlike anything I'd felt before -- and as frightening as it was frightened.
Tinny was in fact the killer, which gave me pause immediately: I could see the image of him thrusting his mandibles into the chest of Thomas of River Bridge, exploding the young satyr's breastbone in a spray of bone fragments and blood.
I readied myself to fight when the images came flowing across, but it was the fear and unhappiness expressed alongside it that made me hesitate. I curled down against the wall as Tinny began to relate his tale, and the two of us traded visions of a death spider's life for visions of a humble crawler's existence for the rest of the evening.
Before it was done, we had a pact, of sorts: I would take him hunting, through the Dreaming and the world of Flesh, for creatures upon which he could gorge himself. He, in the meantime, would refrain from slaying any more of my kin without explicit permission.
I never really understood why these terms seemed so agreeable to Tinny; I would have suspected that once I showed the spider to the Freehold's Trod, he would cross into the Dreaming and never return. I suppose, though, that even a death spider has need of a true friend now and again.
Ironically -- or perhaps not so ironically, as much as it is incidentally -- the keeping of this new pact -- and friendship, I suppose -- ultimately shed light upon what happened to me that fateful day in October, when I accused Ralph of knocking me down.
Our little hunts wandered all over the Near Dreaming, looking for wild beasts to feed my chimerical companion. We found them in plenitude, allowing us plenty of time to range widely and select our prey carefully.
On one of these trips, I was knocked down. Forcefully. Splayed out, just as before, though this time I had no lunch pail to catch with my tongue. I stared at Tinny, who was a good fifty yards off, pursuing a chimerical quail with all eight legs scampering madly. I stared around me. If not for a whispering, rustling, tittering laugh gusting down the trail, I don't think I would have known what to think.
But the laugh did come, and the shape I began to discern there started to firm up: a whispering, rustling, bouncing shape of air. Tinny was off in the brush somewhere, twitching wildly as he fed upon the dying breaths of the quail. I, meanwhile, stared at this curious shape. When it spoke, it was like a gasp of air, as breathy as my own whisper. "Hello, again, brother fae! You the slow one are sloshing full of blood today!"
If I had stared mute before, now I was outright shocked into silence. The memory came wheeling back, this time with a small cloud of air whorling down the street, half unseen by childling eyes unaccustomed to Glamour. This was the same, then?
"But," I finally breathed, in a voice so soft it could not possibly be heard. Frustration rose against my chained voice, something I'd not felt in months.
The whorling cloud laughed again and whorled off as Tinny returned, the carcass of a quail dragging behind him. Tinny was confused when we communed; he had heard nothing, seen nothing. Myself I seethed frustration; I was certain I would never understand what had happened.
That wasn't true, though. It wasn't immediately, but soon after, when I took Tinny hunting, that Essasho, the Parosemes who'd gone and bowled me over twice already, came past for a third try.
I would be lying if I said I was any more ready for it this time than the last two.
Still, our colliding ways led to conversation, and soon Essasho was speaking volumes to me, teaching me the secret ways of the Primal forces. Tinny mostly just hunted, rather bored by it all.
For many years, much of our living consisted of just that: Essasho (and sometimes one of his Gloam friends) would come talk with me about the ways of the walking meat, and teach me a little bit about the ways of the deeper world. Tinny would hunt.
All cycles must eventually evolve, however, and change eventually came upon this one as well....
... Later still, as his wilder years began to give way to the early signs of grumpiness, he pursued the thief Rogard into the Dreaming when Rogard betrayed the Household and stole the Thorn with intent to cast it off....
Now this has surprisingly little of the embellishment to it. I suppose the heroism in this particular case may indeed be genuine; I certainly maintain that the horrors I confronted when Rogard took a shortcut through Madness Realms -- those horrors were quite frightening enough in their own right to merit quests of their own, nevermind the quest to retrieve the Thorn.
Still, I did pursue, and Essasho called out a few of his gloam friends to help, and eventually, nearly a full day later, we caught up with Rogard. The nocker was winded when we caught up with him, and the motorized trike he'd been riding to that point was collapsed in a veritable heap around his feet. He was swearing vehemently, but to little effect; when the crew of us came into sight, he turned to flee, but I knocked him flat with a slap from a cantrip.
We retrieved traitor and Thorn that day, and I earned a knighthood for it. But she seems to imply that somehow I intended to do it, and really, it was more like an accident: I saw the nocker snatch the Thorn and run for the Trod, and I followed. No valour, no brave setting out upon a quest: I simply took off after a thief, just like any other of Elsbeth's vassals might....
... As a Knight of the Household, he has served us all with humility and good grace. His information nourished our court and kept us in time with the society at large. His talents led him into countless exploits of valour and kinship, lending support where he was able and offering his strengths where they were useful....
I suspect that she means that I didn't do much of anything once I got my Knighthood. That's the way I read it, at least, and she's probably at least partly correct. I spent the majority of that time mastering the arts which I'd been taught, or coming as close to mastery as I'd known anyone to come. I spent much of that time studying with Krug, one of the gloams Essasho had introduced me to, mastering the art of Primal.
But she's right, I really didn't do nearly as much as I could have during this time. It was mostly just me peeking into cubbies for childlings on a quest for a lost ball, or digging up the dirt on a wilder's sworn enemy in the Motley.
... Not four weeks past, he reaffirmed himself once again, rising up against the great serpent which boiled from the Lake and plucked kithain at play from the beach. Standing on the beach's shore, he flung the might of the Earth's forces at the creature, rending it repeatedly....
Now here I must contest that her embellishment has taken something away from the actual task. Truth, I did as she said, but how I did it is so vastly different from how she describes.
For example: she speaks of the serpent which sprung from the lake, but you've little idea how much effort it took on my part to ascertain that the tales the Childlings told of a sea serpent were indeed correct the correct tales (it was not, as some suggested, an enormous bird, or as others insisted, a great big redcap riding a water pony).
That done, it took still more effort to find enough circumstantial effort to the contrary to persuade Elsbeth that the simplest way to end the threat was to retaliate directly upon the Motley. Someone had started a rumour that the serpent was crafted by nockers loyal to Zoe as a counterrumour to the earlier counterrumour that the serpent could not have been directed by the Motley since it was in fact a serpent, which in turn had originally meant to dissuade the perpetual cloud of suspicion that anything which attacked loyalists must necessarily be from the Motley.
I confess that the rumourmongers had above-average founding for their claims. The serpent, after all, only attacked fae of the Household. Motley members would be spared, without fail. It took some doing, and some not inconsiderable bits of ingratiating myself to other sluagh for prized pieces of trivia to convince Elsbeth not to rise to the bait, if in fact it were bait at all, and not mere happenstance. "It also passes over the more Unseelie of our own," I whispered admonishingly. "It seems to simply have a cultivated palate, and not a mission."
Eventually, she was persuaded enough that I was allowed to accompany the childlings to the beach when they went to swim. Under the less-than-optimally watchful gaze of a pair of satyrs with pheromone troubles, the youths would play in the shallows of the lake, the older children keeping the younger in close. A few of the Motley's children straggled in as well, keeping their distance, and a veritable herd of mundane parents, children, and miscellaneous lollygaggers would show up. For three weeks, nothing; I was nearing the end of my patience, though the stares my heavy clothing and brooding looks drew from the swimmers had begun to fade with regularity.
Then it did spring forth from the water; a long, sinuous neck with a pointed head; beady eyes stared out above a pointed beak with nasty, gnashing teeth. Several of the childlings screamed, and the satyrs looked on in horror as the serpent writhed in closer.
I nearly fell into a puddle. It was huge; much larger than I'd led myself to believe, and those teeth were as long as a troll is tall! Somehow, shakily, I managed to dig out the phial of curdled milk, and I poured it carefully into the bowl I'd been carrying with me. Eyes like saucers, I watched as jagged cracks appeared along the flesh of the serpent. It screamed. Oh goddess how it screamed, and the mundanes were staring at all the frightened children on the beach.
I felt the glamour peel off me like sloughed skin as the cantrip burst through me again, shredding the serpent's flesh a second time; I reached in my pocket for the purple rubies of dross Elsbeth had entrusted to my care. The creature was looking around, peering down at the beach as it bled, seeking its assailant. When its eyes settled upon the curious crawler with the fistful of glamour, it sprung.
I saw it happen, but still am uncertain how it happened; the stones turned to dust in my hand, sifted through my fingers as sand blown on the breeze. The air crackled, seeming almost gauzelike in its filmy haziness. I could hear screams, see childlings moving in slow motion, but around me buzzed the glamour of a million fae souls: dreams fluttered living about me; I could taste the essence of Rapture in the air -- and the serpent came to pieces. Literally: big messy gobbets of flesh spewed across the beach, jagged shards of disemboweled serpent spattering messily across the sand.
I was still shocked as the sand rained through my fingers. I was shocked when the trolls arrived and began herding the childlings back toward the Oak Terrace; shocked while Tinny gorged himself, shocked as I was led numb and bereft of glamour back to the freehold myself.
... As warrior, as sage, as protector, Sir Cian of Dank Corner has earned his title and his place, and has earned the responsibility to show this Household into its next generation.
Truth or not, falsehood or not, it did come as a surprise. A crawler, the Baron? It seemed anathema to the very memory of the sidhe. I was surprised, and I felt as if I was being overvalued.
I felt that way right up to the day I swore fealty to the Count. I think I still feel that way, a bit. I'm not sure that will ever change.