Dream Weavers: The Spells of Raven Inkwell (chapters I-IV)

[charletha]

I am a creator. I have visited many worlds. The old saying is true, a world is merely a stage. In my occupation I get to see them from all sides. I’ve applauded admiringly from the audience and humbly bowed, joining hands with the actors. I have gone behind the red curtain and helped carry off the sets: skies, forests, continents, and beings. I’ve carried worlds off into deep space. Tossed a galaxy down a vaporizer, a black hole. Cast a realm years ahead through Time tunnels.

I’ve lived many lives since I was born. I’ve lived among creatures of every oddity. Nothing is strange to me anymore. Nothing excites me. New can not describe all that I have seen, heard, smelt. Neither does old. Everything that is-was-and has always been.

I have been called many things because I have been.

Alchemist. Batwing. Bunyip. Byrne. Centaur. Cancer. Countess. Death Dealer. Deer Dancer. Euphogean. Fang. Filker. Fungus. Gansas. Human. Hyalac. Isthmus. Ilker. Iodum.And the list goes on.

But it seems to me the most befitting name is the one that the Ethers give to my kind. That is Dream Weaver, because we bring our thoughts to life. My power comes from the Great Animator, the one who gave Time the power of impermanence, who also gave Life the power of existence, and Death the power of destruction. I am not alone. I have two sisters and nine brothers. The twelve of us live apart. We were born to different mothers, some in different worlds, and have always lived separately. The story of Dream Weavers is a long, winding tale, perhaps someday I will find the time to sit and write about the many worlds and many ways of dream weaving, but later.

This tale is the short end of my long beginning that will explain about what I do in my spare time, away from the tangled business of world building. My hobby, if you will, is collecting fairy tales. Long tales. Short tales. Happy-ending tales and tragedies. Curdling stuff and wild things. I find them, re-write them, and professionally age them. There’s not much difference in how I make my tales than how I make my wines. Both are full of spirit, rich, colorful, and the Strange Ones that visit my house say that I am a featherpen. And that is a great compliment, as Featherpens are thought to be the finest writers really anywhere. And I do mean, anywhere. But the Strange Ones are no strangers to exaggeration. I was more honored when I met a man who had been dead many years and languishing beyond the Living Wall in the realm of Waste. He somehow succeeded in finding a way back into the realm of the living by losing himself in one of my stories. Of course, that meant he had to leave his body behind. Like all new arrivals, he had to stand in the Reincarnation line to be reborn and on a good day that line is a thousand years wait. But the man had inhuman patience. Eventually, he was reborn as a stray kitten-if he had been reborn in the same form he wouldn‘t have remembered what happened to him at all-and he devoted most of his life as an adult cat to finding me, just to say thanks.

It was a starry night that he came into my yard. A gleam of luck was about him, though I doubt he could see it. He could not remember his old human name, but he introduced himself using his feline name, which was Shadow and his four lovely cat sons’ who came with-Ashy, Gray, Salty, and Snow, who were all lighter than their father-licked my nose politely to thank me also. I tried to look into their eyes, but I could only look at them. Which was reason enough to believe that the four of them were only on their first lives. No one thanked me more than his wife, a pristinely white, fluffy Persian who curled up in my lap and allowed me to stroke her luxurious fur reversely and comb my fingers through her heavenliness. Before meeting Shadow, I thought my stories were merely something I did to please myself. I never thought them useful. Or given to purpose.

It was Shadow who encouraged me to open my first tale tavern. I named it in his honor, the Shadow Inn. Now there are forty-eight Shadow Inns under my management in the Kingdom of Agnon. They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner at any time of day the customer chooses. A Shadow Inn is a little bit hotel, a little bit restaurant, and a little bit winery. Most have vineyards attached to them. Some have swimming pools. A few have elaborate gardens. They all were built with wide and long porches that are lined with rocking chairs. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served at anytime of day the customer chooses, but tales are only told at dusk when they are most magical. A bottle of my good wine is always handy. But you wouldn’t want to get carried away with spirits-be it of wine or of story. The intoxicating effects are gentle, but still intoxicating.

When I was first approached by my friend, who is now my editor, I told him that my tales, like my wine, were not recommendable to the very young or those with fragile minds. My editor has assured me and reassured me, that the published tales have been revised so that they exclude any harmful, hypnotic, or overtly magical material. That they are acceptable for readers of all ages was my goal. And I proceed with complete faith that that goal has been responsibly achieved.

II

A long time ago, when I was on just my first life-that of a girl named Raven Inkwell-and still just an ordinary child spilling over with that stuff most grown-ups call make believe and fae people call magic, my mother bought me a diary for Christmas. It was one of those secret diaries that came with a locket and a tiny key. Very cute and confidential. Exactly the sort of thing a girl my age wanted. That was the year I turned 9, which is the most powerful year of human childhood. It is the time when a child comes to a crossroads. They are given two ways to choose to go. Choose this way or the other way, but they can only go one way.

We will consider both.

One way is simple dirt road. Smooth and flat, a person can almost look down it and see right to its end, which is the safe way to go if you don‘t want the things jumping out at you. If you don’t like surprises, good or bad. This first road is the one too take. You can tell the people who take this road. They are the ones who hold a steady job and have good credit. They are the one’s who get loans and know how to bargain. They are the ones who pay attention to what is in fashion, they are always fashionable. They are the ones with savings and investments and a good retirement plan. These people are always very concerned about how they live and where they live and how long they live. These are the people who chose the flat and smooth path, the one that goes straight, so that a person can always see what’s ahead of them.

Now let us consider the alternative.

The other way isn’t a road at all. It is an opening, an exceptional place in the thick, tree line where no shrub, or tree, or vine decided to grow. Perhaps an animal made it. Or maybe a boulder once rolled that way and knocked everything back into the trees. Whatever happened, there was a gash there. An opening. But that was all. You know the people who take this way. We pretend that Luck is responsible for what happens to them. They are lucky millionaires or the unlucky homeless. They are luckily, happily married for decades or unlucky in divorce. They take risks. They wander. Because for them there was no road. Once, it was wisely said that, “not everyone who wanders is lost.” Which is true. These are the people who live. Despite everything else. But it is not always the way to glory. And it is not always a happy ending.

The difference between the two ways is a personal one to make. But nevertheless, at 9 years old, usually that is the time we begin the journey.

I chose to take the smooth and flat way. I might as well explain up front that I changed my mind before I had gone too far. But at first I wanted to be like most girls. Back then most girls I knew were toting diaries. That made them more interesting and popular. It was trendy to be obsessed with the business of getting, keeping, and revealing secrets. A girl was relevant then. Only mature girls were thought to have secret diaries. It meant they were doing something they everyone else would want to know about. And that made them the envy of other girls. Envy was the game. The goal. To be envied was what I wanted.

So of course I’d decided early on to be a part of this secret society too. I was thrilled when my mother had given me exactly what I needed to join-a diary of my own. But from the moment I laid my hands on its pink quilted cover and frayed its inch thick stack of rose colored pages, and unsnapped its metal lock, the diary became my harshest critic. That pink little book taunted me, its pinkness was almost a blush for my childish ways and the fact that a child like me didn’t keep secrets. A child like me. A child.

I felt the blank pages. How smooth they were! How utterly silky. Crisp and clean. So unbelievably blank. One could tell they had never been pressed on by anything. Nothing had ever touched those pages before me.

How terrible it was that I had nothing to write about.

Sadly, my life had nothing material to keep under lock and key. As the sun went up and down, I went up and down to bed, and seemingly nothing important happened in between.

Christmas break went, I’d played tether ball a hundred times with my older brother Rory, and finished another Jungle Coloring book from the dollar store. Mother often bought our supplies there. We weren’t poor, but weren’t above anything either.

I’d outgrown some of my old clothes and gone shopping for new ones before school, but one mustn’t put those things in a secret diary. Probably every 4th grader in Unction was doing that.

Soon it was time for school again. I carried my empty diary on top of my books like a trophy. I tried to feel superior to the girls who still didn’t have one. But whenever someone asked- “do you want to be my key master,” which meant, “do you want to share secrets,” I stuttered, “no, thanks….I’m K-K-Keri Wisserman’s key master.” To this day, I still don’t know why I chose Keri. Her beauty had made her an instant celebrity and not just with the students. Teachers did they’re share of worshiping too.

She had the aquamarine eyes of a mermaid, heart shaped lips that wrapped around pearly teeth. Thick, long, buttery hair that flounced over her shoulders and back like a golden fleece. She was thin, tall, and always smiling. I thought that was very artificial. How could someone smile-always?

Artificial or not, her sunny presence worked on people. They followed her movement like flowers follow the sun. The follow-up question, which was not so much a question, to my claim of being Keri Wisserman’s key master was always-“Prove it!”

At first, I couldn’t.

But then people started to snigger and make fun of me and those days I was not a very good girl. I was average. Common. Too ambitious. And hardly capable of enduring any form of humiliation, whether I deserved it or not. Ashamedly, I began a rumor purportedly from Keri Wisserman’s diary, that she was secretly dating a boy named Travis Medley. That seemed almost true, since every girl I knew had a crush on Travis Medley, including Keri. W.

Travis was a soccer player and developing child actor. He had done a bit part in one commercial that made him famous in Unction. He had dark, floppy hair. Light brown eyes. And a face reminiscent of a young Leonardo Di Caprio. Very pretty indeed, for a boy his age. He might have grade A looks, but he was a grade C in every other respect.

Travis had no personality. He hated school and loved sports. But as much as he loved sports, he continued to be a grade C soccer player and just barely made the team that year.

The other boys teased Travis because of the attention he got from girls. They called him a softie-wuss-pretty boy-Nancy, and so on. 4th graders can be brutal.

All those things put together made him just as much of a school house celebrity as Keri Wisserman. For awhile people were just whispering, doubtfully, about them being a “thing.” Then something happened to stir the ashes. Keri and Travis were allegedly caught talking, alone, behind the gymnasium. That did it.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before she or he found out what I had said. Miraculously, the lie took 2 weeks to catch up with me. But finally it did catch up. I was eating alone, as usual, when my picnic table was suddenly covered in shadows, four to be exact. Keri Wisserman and her gang crowded round.

Her minions included a giantess named Dana, who glared down at me from a cloud of frizzy black hair. She was a star gymnast and only attended school about 4 months out of the year. But when she did attend she was always at Keri Wisserman’s side like a Siamese twin.

“I‘m going to make you eat more than that sandwich Ink-spot.” Dana said. She raised her boy-sized fist at me. Before I could say anything, like, “just try it and see what I do,”….she did. My shoulder was throbbing and there was a lump rising right in the place where Dana’s fist had landed. My body lurched sideways on the bench.

Then a scary thin girl with copper, Shirley temple curls scratched at my face and pulled my braid like it was a jump rope. Scalp bruised and a swollen arm, I slithered under the picnic table. I stayed there just long enough to catch my breath. Which was almost impossible when I was that angry.

But after a moment I wasn’t quite puffing. Like a mad badger I scrambled out on all fours. Before I had stood to my full height, Dana swung on me. I ducked and pounded a solid blow to her stomach. Dana seemed more stunned than hurt.

Chunky Angelina Mayes tried to crack me over the head with her binder. I ducked again and swung wide. I waylaid Angelina and the skinny-curly one, but Dana was not so dazed anymore. She spun me around and socked me in the eye. I didn’t even feel it, my adrenaline was too high. I lunged at Dana like a linesman in the NFL. We toppled over into the grass. We settled into a flurry of arms and legs until the Monitor arrived.

When we were finally separated, I looked like a clown. My hair was sticking straight out in tightly curled screw shapes. I could hardly see out of my right eye it was so swollen. Dana the Amazon was annoyingly unchanged except her shirt tail was hanging out the back of her skirt and the bits of grass in her hair.

The Monitor calmly reached in her pocket and withdrew a notepad. She wanted to get our names first, and then everything we knew about the fight.

The three girls accused me of being a “chronic fibber.” We all four, talked at once to the Monitor, whose eyes bounced between us with something like irritation and intrigue.

Finally Keri said sweetly, “Miss Collins,” that was the Monitor‘s name, “Inkwell‘s at fault. She‘s been telling stories about me. I called her a liar and you know I never call people names. She tried to hit me. But Dana and the rest of the girls came to my defense. I‘m sorry for calling her a liar. That‘s a bad word. But its true of her and she started all this.”

The Monitor nodded negatively at me. Of course she believed Keri W. completely.

“Since you’re the only one who didn’t throw a punch Keri, you’re cleared. The rest of you come with me.” We followed her in a single file line to the office. Referrals were handed out swiftly to each of the brawlers. But I was the only one who received an afternoon in Detention too. “Clearly, but for your actions the incident would not have occurred.” the Monitor said, accusingly.

My only response was to blurt out that Keri was a liar, but that didn’t do anything to help my case. Then those girls started spreading rumors about me. Really truthful ones. Like my diary was a fake. What a turnaround of events!

I was more eager than ever to find something material to feed the diary. I had began to have nightmares that someone would steal it from me and find out the truth. That it really was a book of empty pages. But no matter how hard I tried to find the fourth grade boys in Mrs. Blanton’s class not-boring, not-ugly, and not-stupid, there was no denying the fact that they were all of those things and more.

I didn’t steal. I didn’t cheat. There was nothing to fess up. No crushes. No rebellion. Nothing. I was as interesting as a brown paper bag.

The entire semester went by, the girls in my class, led infamously by Keri Wisserman, were spreading the news that my diary was just a prop and I was no better than Michelle Beaver who not only didn’t have a diary, but didn’t have enough money to buy one. Mean stuff like that gets the most laughs from the peanut gallery in class. Before long people were saying I’d stolen someone else’s diary and inventing mean rhymes like:

“Little Miss Inkwell

Sat on a carousel,

Spun herself round,

Fell on the Ground,

Cried Like A Baby,

Wah! Wah! Wah!

How bout that!”

When that happened Mrs. Blanton had a fight on her hands during fifth period.

Of course getting into fights at school doesn’t go in a secret diary, it goes on your permanent record and the school year ended before I could find one material thing to write about.

By summer break, I hated my secret diary. It had ruined the happiness that comes naturally to a young person. It used to be I could lay in the sun with my eyes closed and imagine I was on Mars and my scarlet eyelids was the scarlet atmosphere of the red planet. But since my secret diary turned into a common joke, I suddenly just felt hot and sweaty when I laid out.

Being disgusted with everything had become my constant state. And everyone around me felt uneasy around me. My brother Rory said thanks, but no thanks to tether ball and I just didn’t care for coloring books anymore.

Some Saturday morning that summer when I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling fan and feeling miserable on purpose, I got fed up. I grabbed the diary off my nightstand and ran downstairs, and stamped into the kitchen where my mother was in the act of making my favorite desert, banana pudding, but that didn’t stop me from being miserable either.

“I have no use for this,” I confessed, slamming the pink little book on the kitchen counter. My mother looked vaguely at what had landed next to her pudding bowl.

“I thought you wanted a diary more than anything-” she said, her fingers were busy laying banana chips on top of a generous layer of pudding.

“I did want one, but that was before I knew it was going to be so much trouble. Look,” I flipped through the empty pages, “nothing. I don’t have anything to write about. I don’t have any secrets-I don’t have friends, or skirts, or crushes, or anything those other girls have.” Then for some reason, perhaps because she didn’t seem to be taking the emergency seriously, I turned the blame on my mother. “This is your fault. You never let me do anything.” Again, mother looked vaguely at the book and then her dark eyes looked down at me. Mother had emotional eyes. It seemed that there was no feeling she couldn’t communicate through a gaze. I felt her sensitive reassurance when she looked at me. But that only made me cry.

“What happened to the girl who used to play outside by the lake and find all sorts of secrets. You found a golden pocket watch and when I asked you where you got it from you said it belonged to a mermaid.”

My eyes rolled automatically. “I must have been a baby then,” I said, “not to know that mermaids live in the ocean and not in lakes.”

“It was just a little while before I bought you that diary,” my mother said, her hands were greasy from banana slices and gooey from vanilla pudding. “You make everything so complicated when its not really. Writing isn’t easy for most people. Like anything, it takes practice, even if you‘re just keeping a diary. My mother bought me a diary when I was your age. I never had any secrets either, but that‘s because I didn‘t know myself very well. After awhile I began to learn things about myself that other people didn’t know. If you just write, something will come to you eventually. It may not be what you’re expect, but something will come.”

I couldn’t believe my mother would say that after everything I’d been through, but even though it didn’t sound useful, I felt different. Less miserable. The pudding looked good to me, almost delicious even and later that day, I apologized to Rory for being moody and we played tether ball. Then toward the evening I went out into our yard and sat down by the lake. It was that time of day when the gnats are too tired to bother anyone. When the sun is almost the color of a butterscotch candy. I sat down in the crisp grass, it was spongy and relaxed at the end of the day. A lemony smell scented from our lemon tree.

Out of the hedges that grew along the lake’s edge, a skittish, but curious looking rabbit emerged. I will say up front that her name was Hyfa and she was the reason I chose a different path.

III

Hyfa was just a girl, like me. She was a bit of a show off too, like me. We had the same sort of black curling hair that stuck straight up on our heads. Well, Hyfa’s curls were actually a little tamer than mine. And we had the same slightly slant, almond shaped, brown eyes. We were both browned in color, like the crust on sliced bread. Then of course our features differed by species. I had full lips. Hyfa none. She had long ears and my ears were smallish and pinned close to my head. She had a small forward forehead and I had a high, broad forehead. My nose was bulbous, to my regret and Hyfa had a small nose, the sort that never kept still.

It wasn’t the first time I saw Hyfa, I’d seen her racing back and forth along the lakeside before. She was full of gusto. I assumed her home was in the hedges that grew behind my house. Instantly, I wanted her for a pet, but that was before I knew anything about natural laws or the sovereign rights of animals in that Kingdom. I was not yet aware of my powers or my responsibilities as a creator. I was still an average girl.

However, I do recall that when I looked at Hyfa that evening, Keri Wisserman and secret diaries were the farthest thing from my mind. For the first time in four months I felt like Raven Inkwell again.

Hyfa looked positively bewildered, as if she did not expect to find herself suddenly so close to a human and bounded back into the bushes.

Somehow, I felt the same, bewildered way. That I shouldn’t be so close to a wild animal. The feeling had a very different effect on me than it did on Hyfa. I felt privileged. As if I was being accepted, and exceptionally accepted, into a secret realm. I started to believe again that there were strange worlds locked behind a secret door in my back yard, perhaps under the grass roots or deep in the tangled closet of shrubbery growing alongside the lake.

Later on in life, when I was much older, I learned that a troll lived there, deep underground, even under the lake floor and the door to the tunnel he used to go back and forth from our world to the underworld was nestled in the shrubbery behind my house. But I was lucky enough never to find it.

Still, I think there must have been some kind of magic growth spell radiating from it.

The front yard used to turn twiggy and brown every winter, while the grass in the backyard stayed green all year round. The growing spell was so strong, you could plant an apple core overnight and the next day find a bright green sprout curling out of the ground.

And mother, who talked dollars and sense all the time, even she admitted that the backyard was ‘touched.’ She made a garden in the right corner of the yard and all year she grew whatever her heart desired. Beans were her favorite. She had more bean recipes than the National Southern Cook Book. But no amount of magic kept the moles away. In fact, it seemed to attract them and other garden pests. Later on, I found out magic was like that. As the strength of a spell increases, its power of attraction increases. Hence, mother had an awful time keeping the garden pest free.

The third time I met Hyfa, was on a day when I was shifting dirt in the bean garden, looking for more mole holes to flood or an actual mole to hit over the head and bury under our lemon tree. Moles weren’t like rabbits to me, but rather rats and one doesn’t feel guilty about getting rid of them. We lived in Florida, so most days it was hot and steamy, especially in the summertime. Even more especially around noontime, and it happened to be that.

I was sitting on a dirt patty, sipping a can of lemonade, when a brown and reddish lump moving through the garden caught my eye. I was very good at tiptoeing, so I grabbed my spade and tiptoed around the border up to the thing. When I was close enough to hit the thing over the head, I raised the spade, but before I could strike a pair of long, white teeth reached out and snipped a green bean pole.

Those were not mole teeth. They were too long and too dull. I cleared my throat sharply and a pair of slant brown eyes rolled up at me. Hyfa, it was. She had grown a bit in the last week or so since I ‘d seen her last. She stood up on her trembling hind legs. And I could hear her thoughts, as if she were speaking aloud:

“Beg your pardon, missus. I don’t mean to intrude. Please don‘t squash me, I‘m only a year old after all. We children make awful mistakes, but we don‘t mean anything by them. Its plain ignorance in me that made me get into your garden.” Hyfa‘s big, glossy eyes looked dollishly up at me. Her hazel cheeks jiggled, she wiggled her nose curiously. I know she was afraid. I could hear the fear in her voice. But that wasn’t why she didn’t try to make a run for it. We had a connection. It was not very strong. Just enough to catch our attention.

She sniffed at me. “You smell like sunshine.” said Hyfa.

My heart jumped with delight. It was the greatest compliment anyone had ever given me.

“Its because I lay out so often.” I explained, lowering the murder weapon.

“Its wonderful.” Hyfa complimented, sitting back on the tuft on her bottom. “I hope you’re not still meaning to use that.” Her big eyes rolled warily to the spade in my hand. Guiltily, I ploughed the spade into the ground. Its wooden handle stood up like a gravestone.

“Never. I thought you were a mole.” I said, nervously. One doesn’t speak with an animal for the first time without having a little extra gas in the stomach. It was Hyfa’s idea that we go walking. I remember belching along the way.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Not at all. Gas pain hurts. Moving around a little gets rid of it. What’s your name?”

And then I told her, Raven Inkwell. She liked it. But I liked her name better. I remember we argued about that. We crossed four backyards. I walked on the side closest to the houses so that Hyfa was less likely to be seen. I didn’t know it then, but it was dangerous for us to talk openly. We might be caught by the Pryers, and they didn’t like any real talk between people and animals. It was their job to keep the secrets of magic secret from humankind. Not that I knew anything about Pryers then. The reason I walked on the side closest to the houses was because I wanted to shield her from dogs.

“Are there other’s like you? I mean, are there other talking animals?” My voice was almost a whisper, a wisp. What we were doing was dangerous. I didn’t know why or of what danger I should be afraid of, but I felt it. Just the way you can feel people glaring at you.

It helped that Hyfa knew a little more than me. She looked up at me and slowly shook her round head, lifted a black fuzzed paw to cover her mouth-and nose-then we continued on quietly. We crossed into more backyards behind more houses. Unbelievably, not one dog was on the loose that day. I wanted to tell Hyfa how lucky she was, but she had motioned for me not to talk. I didn’t want her to desert me. Animals are far more sensitive than humans. Later, I found that the word “sorry, doesn’t translate in their language. However survival has many complex meanings.

Locket lake was shaped like a long “U” and we were approaching the openness. The place where there were no backyards or houses, where the hedges grew wildly. I looked around. We had come to the end of the west side of the lake and were facing the openness. Behind the openness, a field of wheat like grass swayed invitingly. I looked down at Hyfa, I had a question. Could I ask?

She nodded positively.

“What makes the grass sway like that. Its not windy.” I looked at the field. The grass continued to sway back and forth like a troop of ballerinas stretching before a dance.

“That’s my home. We have long tunnels underground. Sometimes we use the roots to make things, like root beds, which are so much softer than ordinary earth beds. There are a lot of swing sets too. And well ropes. And bell ropes. And woven root walls.”

“But won’t the grass stop growing if you take the roots.”

Hyfa looked at me with one of her big ears lifted and the other falling over her shoulder.

“We don’t take them anywhere. We recycle them. We stretch them to make them longer and recycle them underground. We’re careful not to tear the roots we use. Unless we want Root Soup. But the only time anyone is allowed to make Root Soup is Mossmas, which comes once a year. We need the field to hide our homes and give us cover to escape from our enemies. The soil is so good because we have been enriching it for many years. We have several gifted agriculturists in our clan.”

We turned into a lightly covered spot in the hedges. The place I sat was a little dugout. Hyfa settled herself in the way rabbits do, by tucking her feet and legs under her soft belly. Sunlight made funny shadows around us. Like someone had thrown dark confetti. I was so curious. I probed Hyfa tirelessly. Question after question after question. Luckily, Hyfa was curious like me. She understood what it was like to want to know something so bad you get cross-eyed and tongue-tied and brain freeze, all at once.
After a long time explaining, and sometimes re-explaining, we started getting to know one another and we each found out there was more to ourselves than we ever thought. Hyfa told me that I was very popular in her kingdom. Other animals had talked to me before, but I didn‘t listen. Then she beamed. And I understood. Hyfa had done something her peers could not. She had gotten me to listen.

I was well known throughout the neighborhood as the “Person Girl Magic Runner.” I could understand the person-girl, that’s just mixed up semantics that came from English being a second language. The true language of animals is “Tree Tongue,” which is the oldest language on Earth. Everything speaks tree tongue except humans.

During my difficult lessons I discovered that one doesn’t need a tongue to speak tree tongue, instead the mind is used in a sort of telepathic way, but if you know any telepaths they will tell you it is no where near being telepathic.

I do know that telepaths hear in the same way they speak, while speaking tree tongue and hearing tree tongue require two entirely different methods. In other words, the brain is using different pathways. But that’s a lot of verbal nonsense. The part I didn’t understand immediately about the name I was given, after I began to understand tree tongue, was the Magic part. The runner had to do with my reputation. I did run. Everywhere. And fast. Even my human friends called me Cheetah.

Hyfa had to explain a lot of things to me I wasn’t near smart enough to get. Things like aura, specter, and “glowing.”
“I glow?” I said, uncertainly, disbelievingly.
“Yes! You’re glowing right now.” said Hyfa, then she wiggled her nose. “I can’t see the glow, it’s a magic thing. But I can smell it.”
We talked a long time, until the dried peach light of the sunset became colorless. There was not a sky, but a heaven of blue mist. It was that time when pale stars flecked across the atmosphere and the moon looked like a piece of peppermint with the stripes sucked off.
That’s when Hyfa twisted her nose. She was sniffing again.
“Listen,” she looked up at me with her slant, dark eyes. ” Its story time.”

I wondered if she had realized that with a sniff instead of her ears, which were limp with the pink parts turned into her head.

“I’m going to tell you a tale now that Father told me. This is a magical tale. Tellers have to be very selective about who they tell it to. I‘m not supposed to tell it to people, but you aren‘t really a person. Are you?”

I didn‘t answer. That was a question for the ages. Not for a nine year old Raven Inkwell on her first life. Thankfully, Hyfa continued.

“Things that glow are different altogether. They don‘t belong to any species.”

Oh.

“If I tell you this story it will help you. It will make you stronger-more magical. But it will help me too. It will make me braver and wiser. And only the brave, wise ones become chiefs in our clans. My grandfather is a chief. And so is my father.” Hyfa seemed to tremble. “Everyone expects me to be one too.”

“Oh,” I said, apologetically. I knew what it was like to want to be something you’re not.

“You can‘t tell another person about this story or me. Not ever.” said Hyfa, and she squinted her brown eyes and wiggled his nose at me in a sensitive way, despite the fact it was probably the most serious face she’d ever made I mistakenly laughed.
“This isn‘t a joke!” she fumed and gathered her feet in the triangular way rabbits do just before they bounce off. I apologized as quickly as I could speak.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m completely serious. I would be honored to hear your story.”
“Well its not my story,” said Hyfa, squinting. “Its “A” story.”
She settled herself down again.

And the story she told me I’ll never forget. For years, and years I wanted to tell it to other folks. But it’s too long and sometimes boring and it just seemed like there was too much to it. And besides, I could only tell it to magic people, the ones that glowed.

And magic people detest long stories-fairytales are short for a reason, you know.
So instead, I kept it to myself. I wrote it down on Leaf paper, which keeps the words written on it from ever fading. I rolled it and put it in one of those tube boxes they use for scrolls…until something happened that made me take it down.

IV

There was a meeting in a high, magical place. Only very important, magical people are allowed to go there. It’s a place I’m not important enough even to come and listen, let alone speak. But thankfully, I sent a letter to someone who is and in that letter I asked permission to share my story with un-magic people. And of course, as you might have guessed, since you are reading the tale now, I got my approval.
There was only one stipulation. Some of the story had to be written in tree-tongue. That part, you won’t be able to read, unless you know tree-tongue or happen to be a “glowing,” person yourself. With that in mind, I will now proceed to tell the tale told to me as a little boy. It is one of the very first fairytales to ever be passed down in the oral tradition. It comes from a high elf who had many children whom he entertained by telling them bedtime stories. From his house a dwarf maid took it and from the dwarf kingdom it fell into the hands of the wood faeries. Somewhere between the wood faeries and the trees, trolls got a hold of it and injected frightening parts. The story was altered so many times before it got to the lay magic folk, who also added parts, that if Hyfa’s father had ever had a chance to tell it back to that high Elf King he would not have recognized his own tale. But that’s the magic of storytelling.
A story becomes something more than a beginning, middle, and a happy ending. The story takes on a life of its own. That’s what makes it magical and dangerous. One has to be careful, especially those of you familiar with tree-tongue. Such magic stories are always getting longer, older, and stronger. They hunger for life. If you’ve never hungered for anything then it may be that you don’t understand the danger of reading this tale, but if you’ve ever longed for something, no matter how impossible or unlikely it was to get, you understand the danger.

Here are a few safety tips:

Never read by the light of a full moon…

Avoid reading alone, near snapdragon flowers…

Try not to fall asleep on the pages…

Never recite any of the tree tongue words out loud…

I repeat, try not to fall asleep on the pages!

A good friend of mine, who is also a fine practical magician, placed a binding spell on this fairytale, a final precaution. My last warning is that you enjoy this tale, though it is very long and some parts will make you yawn and fold the page (whatever you do don’t fall asleep on the pages). Stories have a strange, indescribable nature. They can be proud. They can be vengeful. You do not want to mock a story, better to think of it like a philosophical joke that goes right over your head.

To demonstrate, I will tell you what happened to me once. You know I’m in the business of storytelling. In that business I run into an awful lot of stories from all over the severed realms. I’ve heard heavenly ones, hellish ones, Elfish romances, and heroic faerie ballads, almost every sort that ever existed. I say almost because nothing can ever be done completely in living realms.

There was one little children’s story called Gelf Horn that I didn’t like. I felt it was too short and too sing-song to be worth what it cost me and in my buyer’s remorse I pawned the little story to a sheefa. As I turned it over to the sheefa the pages let out a grief stricken sigh and I knew why.

Sheefa’s are terrible storytellers. For a story to be told in their mangled, maniacal, gutter-throat language would be like passing through a barbed wire fence, then falling in a lake of fire. It was torture, pure and simple. But I was so disappointed in the story of Gelf Horn that I sold it anyway.

That same night I had a bad dream. I dreamed I was little Kim, the shepherdess from the Gelf Horn, and I was running sideways in the air from the grim axe-wielding Gelf Horn that eventually lopped off her head (the Gelf Horn story is very sad, just one of the reasons I didn’t like it). When I awoke the next day my neck felt sore, but I thought it was because I was twisting in my sleep trying to duck the troll axe, and went on with my day as usual.

Like most people, I only floss when I really need to and for lunch I had a plate of stringy beef stew. Well, when I went to the mirror to floss I had to raise my head in a way that stretched out the skin on my neck. That’s when I noticed it. At first I didn’t want to believe…the old un-magical side came out in me and I tried to think of all the ways I could have cut myself, but there was no reasonable answer for it. The sensible magical person inside of me put the false, rational hopes away. Looking at the fresh scab on my neck I knew what had happened, the sharp edge of a scythe had managed to just slit the skin open.

I had been inside the Gelf Horn tale the other night, running for my life across the foggy hilltop in a Gaelic land. It took me 3 months and a quarter of a year’s income to get rid of the Gelf Horn, during which time I imbibed potions to keep me from falling asleep.

You see, stories seep into your subconscious even when you don’t like them. Even when you think you’ve forgotten them. They are still there. In some way, each time a story is read it is reborn, living inside of us.

That’s my final warning to you, dear reader. The Elf King gave it to the realms, Hyfa’s father gave it to him, Hyfa gave it to me, and now I give you, the Tale of Prince Mansur and the Gargoyle, Izz al Din.