CHAPTER TWO

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

They built his castle high on the cliffs overlooking the Sea of Darkmarine. It was built at a record pace by hands that would take devotion to its limits. It was said that its towers reached high into the sky to embrace the love of Grecolus and that its walls stood solid against the hate of Damaleous. When completed, the Peasant King moved in with his wife and attendants. He would often come out to look down on the city and his people, of whom he had once been a member and now over whom he ruled.

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The dwarf entered a tavern called The Quarter Pony a few minutes after midnight. He was of average height for a dwarf, about four feet tall, and had the stocky build typical of his race. He had the customary dwarven round face with red cheeks and a protruding brow and nose. But unlike the traditional dwarf, who wore his beard as long as possible, this one had his light brown whiskers cut very close to his face, like the moss on a tree stump. He was dressed in a green tunic and tanned leather pants. A brown cloak fell from his shoulders to his boots and on his head he wore a broad-brimmed hat. At his belt was sheathed a short, thick sword in a jeweled scabbard, and on the middle finger of the hand resting on the sword’s pommel was a slim gold band.

The dwarf walked up to the bar and heaved his heavy frame up onto a bar stool. The three quiet patrons gave him a quizzical look but soon turned their attention back to their glasses. The bartender wiped the bar down in front of the dwarf. He was a tall young man in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his large biceps. His blonde hair was long and tied together in back with a red band.

“What’s your poison?” the bartender asked in a clear and unhurried voice.

The dwarf did not answer him right away. He looked for an odd moment or two into the bartender’s face, almost as if he recognized the young man. Shaking his head, he muttered something to himself and quickly lost the look of familiarity.

“A cold mug of ale will do for my throat, my boy,” the dwarf said in a low tone of nearly fluent common tongue. “But I also require your indulgence in answering a few questions about this part of the world.”

The bartender arched an eyebrow. He had not expected such an eloquent manner from his stout patron. Most of the dwarves that came in from the nearby mines were proletarian folk who, by and large, drank more than they spoke. But, of course, those dwarves were dressed in grimy rags and had dirty faces behind their long beards.

The bartender poured a mug of ale and set it before the dwarf. “Ask away,” he said. It was about as eloquent as he got.

The dwarf took a long drink from the mug. He looked both ways down the bar and leaned closer to the bartender. “Would you happen to know where I might find a man named Roy Stonerow?”

The bartender chuckled. “You know,” he said quietly. “If you had asked anyone else in this town that question, they would probably have led you to an open mineshaft.”

The dwarf smiled. “I doubt I would be that gullible.” He took another drink of ale.

“Well, whatever,” the bartender said. “I do know where he is.”

“Can you take me to him?”

A door behind the bar opened and through it came an aging man with a small wooden keg held on his right shoulder.

The bartender spoke to the man. “Otis,” he said, “I need to help this gentleman find his way. Can you tend the bar for a while?”

Otis nodded. “Don't be gone too long.”

The bartender walked through a swinging gate in the bar and the dwarf hopped off his bar stool. The pair left The Quarter Pony and the bartender led them down the street. The dwarf stared up into the night sky as they walked on in silence. Soon they came to a small red house. The bartender stopped at the front door, knocked loudly twice, and opened the door.

“Roy?” the bartender called out as he and the dwarf walked down a dark hall to a single lighted room at its end. “I’ve brought someone who knows your name.”

The bartender and the dwarf entered the lighted room and found a middle-aged man sitting in an overstuffed chair with a massive tome in his lap. His hair was black and cut short. His face wore a charcoal-colored van dyke beard and his eyes were steel gray under a furrowed brow. He was dressed in a red v-neck tunic with black cuffs and collar, black trousers, and red houseslippers. The room itself was a library of sorts, the walls lined with heavy bookshelves and the floor richly carpeted.

The man in the chair let his eyes fall upon the dwarf. He slowly smiled. “Nog Shortwhiskers,” he said. “It is good to see you again. How did you find me?”

The dwarf called Shortwhiskers pulled up a chair and sat down. “It wasn’t easy, Roystnof. After that last adventure, you really dropped out of society.”

“Roystnof?” the bartender asked.

“The name I used in my career before I settled here,” Roystnof said to the bartender. “I told you about those days and my companions. This is the dwarf I associated with.”

“Associated, he calls it,” Shortwhiskers said sarcastically. “We would go out and nearly get ourselves killed for gold and treasure, and then we would, ah, we would…” The dwarf trailed off strangely in the middle of his comments and gave the bartender another odd look.

“Have we met somewhere before?” Shortwhiskers asked the bartender.

“No, I don't think so,” the bartender said.

“Nog,” Roystnof said. “This is a good friend of mine here in Scalt. His name is Gilbert Parkinson.”

“Parkinson?” Shortwhiskers said, his tone of voice indicating that he did not believe it for a second. “No, his name’s not Parkinson. I don’t know how it’s possible, but Moradin strike me dead if his name isn’t Brisbane.”

Brisbane and Roystnof exchanged glances.

“How do you know that?” Brisbane asked the dwarf.

“Gil,” Roystnof said. “Nog knew your father. He must have recognized the family resemblance.”

Brisbane looked intensely at the dwarf. “You knew my father?”

Shortwhiskers nodded. “And your grandfather. Finer men I’ve never met.”

Brisbane pulled up a chair of his own and studied the dwarf’s face and hands. He looked to be a man in his forties. “My grandfather?” Brisbane asked, puzzled. “But how can that be? You look so young.”

Shortwhiskers smiled. “We who live under the mountains may not see as much of the sun as you humans do, but we are generally given more opportunity to do so. I am a hundred and sixty-three years old.”

Brisbane was astounded. He had only known one person who had ever met his father—his mother—and no one who had ever known his grandfather. Here was a dwarf who claimed to have known both. “Tell me about them,” Brisbane said, his need to know sudden and clear in his voice.

“Sometime,” the dwarf said, “I will tell you all I know about them, which is much indeed. But for now, more pressing matters are at hand.” He turned to the wizard.

“What has happened?” Roystnof asked.

Shortwhiskers cleared his throat and sat back in his chair. His feet came off the floor and he swung them absentmindedly as he spoke. “Two weeks ago, Roundtower and I caught a rumor in Queensburg. It told of a forgotten temple standing at the source of the Mystic River. Surely exaggerated, this rumor told of uncounted wealth awaiting the brave souls courageous enough to face its keepers. I can’t speak for Roundtower, but I never claimed to be brave. Greedy, yes, but not brave.”

Brisbane spoke as the dwarf paused. “Roundtower?”

Roystnof nodded. “Ignatius Roundtower. The other warrior I associated with before I settled here.”

“Associated again,” Shortwhiskers snickered. “Anyway, we suited up and started following the Mystic into the hills. Boring landscape. About one day out, we encountered something that absolutely scared the marrow out of my bones.”

Brisbane nudged closed and Roystnof closed the book in his lap. He took out a pipe, mumbled to himself, and lit the tobacco with the end of his index finger, which had begun to glow red.

“Go on,” the wizard said.

Shortwhiskers coughed into his fist. “Yes, well, we first came upon this low stone wall, which seemed to enclose a large area between two hills. Inside the wall there were plenty of trees and bushes, as if someone had made an oasis amidst all that barren rock and soil. We spotted some fruit trees and, already tired of our dry rations, hopped the wall to get some fresh fruit. We went to the nearest tree and Roundtower pulled down some fruit for us. We were just eating the fruit and taking in the scenery when…it happened.”

“What?” Roystnof asked.

Shortwhiskers swallowed hard and looked first at the wizard and then his young friend. “Roundtower called out my name. He was about thirty feet away behind some bushes. ‘Nog,’ he says. ‘Look at this—’ I turned as the words stuck in his throat. He stood frozen for a moment, with one finger pointing ahead of him, and then he slowly turned dull gray in color. Not just him, either. Everything he wore drained all its color away and became just like granite. In less than ten seconds, he looked like a statue someone had chiseled out of a slab of rock. And still he did not move.”

Roystnof and Brisbane only stared at the dwarf.

“I crouched down beneath the branches of the tree I was standing next to and looked in the direction Roundtower had been pointing. It came out of the bushes slowly. It moved like a snail, as if hours were only minutes to it. It was a huge lizard, as high at the shoulder as a large dog, and longer than young Brisbane here is tall. Its scales were dark brown along its back and brightened to yellow in its underbelly. I couldn’t see its head, it was moving away from me, and for some reason, I felt relieved that it couldn’t stare at me. Most freakish of all, however, was that it had eight legs. It gave me plenty of time to count them. With that many legs, I would think it could scamper along like lightning, but it moved so slowly.”

Roystnof nodded and blew a smoke ring. “And Roundtower?”

Shortwhiskers clenched his hands together in his lap and bowed his head. “That is why I have sought you out. I waited until the beast was finally gone. It seemed like hours, but I waited anyway, unwilling to reveal myself to it until I had determined what it had done to Roundtower. Eventually, I was able to get up and move over to him. All this time he had been frozen in place and had remained entirely the color of granite.”

The dwarf looked up suddenly. “He was granite. Vile Abbathor, I knew that before I even touched him. I’ve smelled that stone too often to mistake its scent, no matter how impossible the situation. I could salvage nothing from him. Everything he had carried had become stone as well, and was securely attached to the statue that had once been my friend.”

Shortwhiskers drifted off briefly into silence. “Then I began my search for you, Roystnof,” he said quietly. “I left him standing alone in that garden. There was little else I could do. It took some time, but eventually I was able to track you down. I can only hope you know what manner of creature it was I saw that day, and that you know something that can be done to help Ignatius. He is certainly beyond my power to assist.”

Roystnof quickly got up and went over to a bookcase. He spoke as he chose a book from the shelf. “I believe I do know what manner of creature it was. I have read of it in the years I’ve spent away from you, my friend.”

Roystnof came back to his chair with a slim book in his head. “It is called a basilisk, and it has the power to turn men to stone. It accomplishes this by merely gazing at its intended victim. If that victim meets the creature’s gaze, as Roundtower must have done, he will actually turn to stone.”

Shortwhiskers was staring intently at Roystnof, listening carefully to every word he said. Brisbane was doing much the same but, unlike the dwarf, who was hopeful at the wizard’s words, Brisbane was somewhat fearful. Shortwhiskers had already asked Roystnof if he knew of anything that could help this Roundtower. If Roystnof did, it would mean only one thing to Brisbane. Roystnof would be leaving Scalt to administer this help.

“Can anything be done, Roystnof?” the dwarf asked.

Roystnof looked at Brisbane when as he answered the dwarf’s question. “Yes. I know a spell that will return Roundtower to his own flesh.”

“Thank Moradin!” Shortwhiskers exclaimed as he rose to his feet. “I knew you would know what to do, Roystnof. I just knew it. You always got one more trick up those red sleeves of yours, don’t you?”

Roystnof and Brisbane were exchanging glances. Brisbane got up to leave suddenly but Roystnof detained him with an outstretched palm. Brisbane obediently sat down.

“Nog,” Roystnof said. “I will need some time to prepare this spell tonight.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Shortwhiskers said. “I understand. I’m beat anyway. I’ll go back to the inn and get some sleep. I’ll come back in the morning and we’ll head out. Okay?”

“That’s fine,” Roystnof said.

Shortwhiskers looked about himself to see if he was leaving anything behind. “Tomorrow, then.” He extended a hand to Brisbane and the young man promptly shook it. “Nice to have met you, son. Someday we’ll sit down and I’ll tell you just what your name means.”

Brisbane smiled. “I’d like that.”

Shortwhiskers patted him on the back, said a final farewell to Roystnof, and left the house.

Roystnof sat down and put the slim red book he had taken off the bookshelf on the low table in front of Brisbane. “Take it, Gil,” he said. “Open it and look inside.”

Brisbane picked up the book. On the outside it looked ordinary. It was bound in featureless red leather and was perhaps fifty pages thick. Brisbane opened it and met a blank first page. He began to leaf through it and recognized the magical writings that filled the rest of it. Some of the twisted and arcane runes he could understand from the lessons he had stopped years ago, but most were beyond his comprehension. He continued flipping through it and glanced at the page numbers as they went by. Fifty, one hundred, one hundred fifty, two hundred. The book isn’t this thick, Brisbane thought as he kept paging through three and four hundred. He looked up at Roystnof.

“There are seven hundred and twenty-six pages,” Roystnof said. “All of which I have magically slimmed down to exist in the space of fifty or so.”

Brisbane shut the book with a snap and handed it back to Roystnof. The wizard put the book back on the table.

“Gil,” he said. “When I came here six years ago, I had boxes and boxes of books that I had collected over my travels.”

Brisbane took something out of his shirt pocket. “I know,” he said. “I carried them in.”

Roystnof smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you did. Those books were filled with magical information. Spells, magical research, summonings, curses, component enhancers. It was a treasure trove of knowledge.”

Brisbane rubbed the thing he had taken out of his pocket between his thumb and fingers. It had a slim silver chain that hung down between his knees.

“In the past six years,” Roystnof continued, “I have gone through those books. Page by page, paragraph by paragraph, line by line. And I have consumed and understood nearly all that I have seen. My abilities must have increased a thousand fold.”

Brisbane looked sharply into the eyes of the wizard.

Roystnof indicated the red book on the table before them. “All of this knowledge, Gil, all of this power I have set down in this book. It contains everything the other books in this room have taught me, and a few things these books have enabled me to teach myself.”

Brisbane only rubbed the silver medallion in his fingers.

“The time has come,” Roystnof said, “For me to take this book and see what I can do and attain with it. I must go with Nog to help Ignatius, yes, but after that I must continue with my travels. Scalt is a nice town, but six years is too long for anyone to spend in it.”

“I’ve been here for eighteen,” Brisbane said. He did not want Roystnof to go and he suddenly decided that if that was the way it would be, then he meant to go with his friend.

“Gil, I want you to come with me.”

Brisbane almost dropped his medallion.

“The time has come for you to continue your training. Although it has been a while, I doubt you have forgotten a single thing I have taught you.”

“I haven’t,” Brisbane said.

Roystnof smiled. “But, it is your decision. If you feel you should stay, I will understand and wish you well. I am sure Otis will want you to stay, and if you feel you bear any obligation to him, perhaps you should stay. But again, it is you who must decide.”

Brisbane fastened the clasp of his medallion behind his neck. The silver pentacle rested in the space between his collar bones, below his Adam's apple and above the swelling of his pectorals. He thought of how upset Otis would be if he left with Roystnof. The elder Parkinson still instructed him in the knightly virtues and the holy words of Grecolus, but Brisbane had only been studying these to avoid a conflict for years now. He had lost most, if not all, of his faith in the benevolence or even the existence of Grecolus and the evil Damaleous. The only proof he had was the existence of magic, which he had been taught was the tool of the Evil One. But Brisbane no longer believed that either. Roystnof worked magic and he was not evil. Or if he was evil, then the concepts of good and evil were not absolute, and were subject to interpretation. The more Brisbane thought of these things, the more confused he became.

Brisbane then thought of his mother and the wishes she had had for his life. If she were still alive, he was sure he would be traveling to Farchrist Castle to appeal to the King to start his formal training to become a Knight. He would have done it if she had asked him to go but, somehow, with her gone, it didn’t seem as important. Her last words to her only son had been about loyalty, and staring at Roystnof’s red book of magic on the table before him, Brisbane realized that he felt more loyalty towards his wizard friend that he ever had for his mother’s dream.

“I will go with you,” Brisbane said finally, and he lowered his head, feeling somewhat ashamed.

Roystnof put a reassuring hand on Brisbane’s knee. “The choice is made, my friend. Go now and sleep a dreamless slumber. I will fetch you in the morning.”

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I took this one on a recent extended family vacation, thinking it would provide an entertaining distraction when needed. Several of my relatives, upon seeing the book in my hand, commented on how much they had liked it, and how “good” it was.

It was not good.

It’s fine, I guess. But I suspect that it suffers from a number of translation errors, seeing how it was first published in Swedish and under an entirely different title -- Men Who Hate Women.

Here’s my favorite.

“Yes,” Blomkvist said without hesitation. “Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat -- where do I get these metaphors from? -- but he confessed to all the crimes he had committed.”

Dafter than a syphilitic polecat. At first, I thought that perhaps that was something like a Swedish idiom -- something that made some kind of sense in that original language and its cultural context -- but which had no accurate or meaningful English translation. You know something like “he’s batting a thousand” translated into a language without baseball as its cultural content. Because “dafter than a syphilitic polecat” doesn’t mean anything in English, at least it doesn’t mean anything that any random group of English speakers could agree on.

But then there’s that parenthetical comment. Where do I get these metaphors from? Parenthetical but not in parentheses, simply set off with em dashes, as if the character actually said these words out loud, bracketed by a pair of vocal pauses. Maybe he did? The character is, of course, an author, and evidently based on Stieg Larsson himself. Therefore this seems to me like another of those tiresome situations in which an author is writing not to impress a reader but, frankly, to impress himself. 

So, it’s not a translation issue. It’s just bad writing.

And then there’s this:

Berger thought that the book was the best thing Blomkvist had ever written. It was uneven stylistically, and in places the writing was actually rather poor -- there had been no time for any fine polishing -- but the book was animated by a fury that no reader could help but notice.

This, of course, is not narratively written about the book the reader is reading, it is written about the book that Blomkvist ends that book by writing, but it might as well have been written about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, since it seems that sum that work up pretty well.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER ONE

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

They called him the Peasant King. His name was Gregorovich Farchrist and he grew up in poverty. When he was twenty-one he organized and led the rebellion that shattered the old regime to ashes. After the monarch had been hung in the street and his body had been fed to his dogs, after his manor house had been burned to its foundation and it ruins smashed and trampled into the earth, the peasants had carried their leader upon their shoulders and had named him their new King. The day was called the Day of Vengeance and the calendars started over again at Farchrist Year One.

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Gil’s mother died five days after his eighteenth birthday. Her death left him alone. His father had died before Gil had been born and, although Gil knew who his father had been and what position he had held, Gil did not know the circumstances of his father’s death. His mother had never talked about it and Gil had learned at an early age not to ask.

Gil’s mother had thought her son needed a male role-model to emulate as he grew, so when Gil was two, she married a man named Otis Parkinson, a somewhat wealthy tavern owner. Until after the wedding, Otis, like the rest of the small village of Scalt, knew nothing about Gil’s father and who he had been. But Gil’s mother told Otis the whole truth on their wedding night so Otis would know how to properly raise his stepson. Her fondest and most secret dream was to see her son attain the same position his father had held, as well as his father before him.

Gil respected his stepfather during his childhood, but he never felt any great love for him. Otis raised Gil to be virtuous and to place personal honor before all else. His education included a deep devotion to the god Grecolus, who made him and all the world. Gil was to lead his life in goodness and purity, and to preserve the sanctity of all such good life. Although it was necessary for him to accept the name of Parkinson as his mother had, Gil was told not to be ashamed of the name with which he had been born.

Gil accepted all he was taught and he held it dear to his heart. He was young, but he could feel it strengthening his budding soul. All he was taught seemed so right to him. The world was a beautiful place in which he played an important role. His love for his creator kept him alive and his faith in himself kept him strong.

When Gil was twelve, he met Roy Stonerow. The man came to town in a horse-drawn wagon and moved into a recently vacated house down the road from Otis’ tavern. The cart had been bulging with his possessions, all of them covered by a red tarpaulin. Roy Stonerow had been a young man of twenty-four when he came to Scalt that day. His hair had been black and he had worn a full beard that dipped an inch below his chin.

Gil had been playing outside when Roy Stonerow and his wagon rolled up, and Stonerow quickly recruited Gil and his little friends to help unload the towering pile of goods from the wheeled cart.

The things Gil carried into that house that day astounded him, and would change the course of his life. It seemed that Roy Stonerow was a wizard of sorts, and he had the paraphernalia to prove it. He had boxes and boxes of tubes, flasks, mortars and pestles, bowls and mixing utensils; all with which to create his bubbling potions. Old and yellowed parchment with strange red and black writings were carted off by the bundle, along with stacks of books, some tomes as thick as Gil’s head. Locked chests had filled the bottom of the wagon, which either appeared laboriously heavy and were as light as a feather, or appeared small and manageable but were too heavy to lift.

All of Gil’s friends left when they saw the things to be carried out of the wagon. They had heeded the warnings they had been given about the evils of magic and wizards. Magic was the tool of Damaleous, the Evil One, and those who used it were his servants.

Otis had given these warnings to Gil as well. But as much as Gil knew these warnings to be valid, and as much as he knew magic to be an abomination against Grecolus, the more Gil was fascinated by sorcery.

After the moving in had been completed, Stonerow gave Gil a small pentacle medallion of silver as payment for the help he had cheerfully given. Gil ran home to tell Otis and his mother about Scalt’s newest resident and to show them his new necklace. Otis spanked Gil that day for the first and only time in his life. The older man called the medallion a Token of the Beast and threw it deep into the woods behind their home.

It took Gil a week, but he eventually found that small silver medallion in the underbrush of the forest, and this time he kept it hidden from Otis and his mother. He also kept hidden his visits to Stonerow and the friendship that developed between the two of them over the next six years.

As those years passed, Stonerow told Gil more and more of his personal history. Orphaned at a young age, Stonerow had been adopted by an aging wizard who had passed the rudiments of magic along to Stonerow before he had died when Stonerow was seventeen. Most of the things in the Stonerow’s house now had once been the property of this old wizard.

After his death, Stonerow took to wandering, and in his travels he met up with a pair of warriors, one of whom was a dwarf, and together the three of them had set out on dangerous quest after quest for treasure and power. On the last such adventure, Stonerow had found some ancient tomes of magic, which he had decided to study and master over the next few years. This was why he had retired to the peaceful village of Scalt.

But history was not the only thing Stonerow taught Gil in those ensuing years. Gil quickly and secretly became a student of magic. Stonerow taught him how magic worked in their realm of reality. It was an underlying force inherent to all things in the universe. But it was a dangerous force to control once the user discovered how to employ it. Therefore, Stonerow said, one must not progress too quickly in their study of magic. If so, the user can become a slave to the power and will use it for horrible purposes. It was not the magic that was evil but the mage who has lost control over it.

Near the beginning of Gil’s education, Stonerow gave his pupil a test of his magical force. This would see just how inherent the force of magic was in Gil’s body and mind, and that would determine how powerful he could become through devotion to the craft. The test required Stonerow to cast some low-powered spell, using Gil instead of himself as the medium. Normally, spells were cast by the wizard through himself, using his own mystic force to channel the magic to his desired end. But a particularly powerful wizard could cast spells using the magic of another body, and Stonerow was just such a wizard.

The spell used was a simple light spell, with the intensity of the resulting light indicating the extent of Gil’s potential. The candles in Stonerow’s home were snuffed out and the spell was cast. To Gil’s youthful surprise, the result filled the room with a bright flash of light against which he had to shield his eyes. The master announced that his pupil had significant potential.

As the years continued to pass, Gil progressed slowly in his craft for he always had to keep it hidden. If his mother or Otis had ever found out, it would have been all over. Magic, to say the least, was not popular among the Grecolus-fearing populace, and although no one had any suspicions about Gil, everyone knew what Stonerow’s profession was. As a result, the townsfolk kept themselves as far removed as possible from the wizard and his practices.

Under these circumstances, Stonerow knew he could never prime Gil into the wizard he might one day become. Magic needed one’s full attention and one couldn’t always be looking over one’s shoulder for the accusatory fingers. One night, Stonerow and Gil talked it over and together they decided Gil should give up, or preferably delay, his magical training until he wasn’t so much under the gaze of Otis and his mother.

But now, the lessons and ethics Otis was teaching him were somehow less important to him. Gil no longer believed magic to be the coldly evil power that worship of Grecolus demanded. This was such a basic belief of the devoted—that magic was the tool of Damaleous to inflict his presence upon the world—that without it, Gil’s entire faith began to erode. Stonerow had taught Gil some simple tricks before he had stopped his studies. Stonerow had called them cantrips. They were not spells as such. They were not that powerful, but they were magic nonetheless. Gil could conjure up small insects or make strange noises echo from seemingly nowhere. By his old beliefs, because he could do these simple cantrips, he was a servant of Damaleous and was irrevocably bound for the lake of fire.

Gil had never before had any doubt that this was true. But now that he had met Stonerow and had learned what he had from the wizard, he embarrassingly found his old ideology a bit silly. He was still young and very confused over all the seemingly contradictory information he had received in his short life. Gil had no one to work it out with, either. His mother and Otis could never know about the source of his new ideas, so there was no help there, and Stonerow, who Gil had by then begun to think of as an older brother, offered only his side of the argument. He denied even the existence of Grecolus and Damaleous. As a result, Gil spent his adolescence mired in a bog of spiritual confusion.

He became depressed and spent most of his time methodically going through the chores of his life like a bystander. Otis would often comment on his zombie-like attitude and how he had been neglecting his divine studies. Otis would ask what it was that was bothering him, and offer any help he could provide, but Gil just couldn’t bring himself to tell his stepfather of the turmoil with which he was wrestling.

When his mother took ill, and it became painfully clear that there was nothing anyone could do for her, Gil suddenly realized that he needed to know what had become of his father. He would sit beside his mother’s bed, begging her to tell him what had happened, but she would always refuse him. Gil would keep at her until Otis would drag him away, saying his mother needed her rest.

On his eighteenth birthday, Gil’s mother called him to her sickbed and told him the time had finally come for Gil to know the truth. As Gil already knew, his father had been a Knight of Farchrist and had served under the Farchrist line of Kings just as Gil’s grandfather had done. Gil’s father had thrown himself into his knighthood. His father, Gil’s grandfather, had been killed in knightly service when Gil’s father was only three years old and, from a very young age, Gil’s father had decided to become the most pious and devoted Knight that he could be. Raised with all the strictest knightly virtues ingrained into him, he became a Knight of Farchrist when he was twenty-one under the reign of King Gregorovich Farchrist II.

What Gil did not know, and what his mother now told him, was that a year after his knighting, Gil’s father met and fell in love with Gil’s mother. He had been forced to suppress his love for her, however, because Gil’s mother was a commoner, and it was beneath his station to consort with such a woman. He began to seek any excuse he could find to go into the city so he could see her. They were deeply in love with each other, but both of them understood and respected the strictures placed upon him because of his station.

This situation continued for some time. But on the night King Gregorovich II died, Gil’s father was so saddened at the loss of his lord, he could no longer bear the separation from the woman he loved. He went into the city that night, went to Gil’s mother, and cried out his grief in her arms. She comforted him as best she could, and in a moment of passion, they culminated their lingering love for one another in a fitful burst of lovemaking. When Gil’s father left that night, she was already pregnant with their son.

Gil’s father was wracked with guilt in the ensuing weeks and eventually his knightly disciplines compelled him to confess his transgression to the new King. Gregorovich Farchrist IV, the great grandson of the Peasant King, was astounded. In his opinion, never had the name of Farchrist been soiled so horribly. One of his Knights had coupled out of wedlock with a commoner, breaking the laws of both his society and his god. The King considered the infraction unforgivable, and he quickly stripped the knighthood from Gil’s father and had him escorted from the castle.

In his misery, Gil’s father went to Gil’s mother after his dismissal and told her to leave the capital city immediately. Once word spread of her part in the scandal, the townsfolk, who loved their King and the Knights, would not take kindly to her presence among them. She asked him why he refused to escape with her, why they could not go off somewhere together to spend the rest of their lives apart from the society that would not tolerate what they had done, but Gil’s father would give her no reply. He kissed her briefly on the cheek and left. In the morning, his lifeless and crumpled body was found at the bottom of the cliff on which Farchrist Castle stood.

Gil’s mother had been crying long before she reached the climax of her tale, the tears silently spilling down her cheeks like belongings she knew she could not take with her to her grave. Gil tried to choke back tears himself, but occasionally one would escape him, rushing down his face to stain the fabric of his tunic. Finally, his mother reached out and took her son’s strong hand. She looked at him in silence for a long time before saying that loyalty was the most precious trait a man could possess.

Later that night, she slipped into a coma and in less than a week she would be dead. After her death, Gil would often think about what she had told him that night. He would think about it in the quiet dark of his room, late at night after the tavern had been closed and the rest of the village was asleep. He would think about it while sitting on the edge of his bed, unable to sleep, while gently rubbing the surface of the silver inverted star that Stonerow had given him.

+ + +

This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr is a tease.

Here is what he promises.

There’s no simple way to describe it. I could say that in retrospect it seems that all three of our lives, and those of many others, led inevitable and fatefully to that one experience; but then I’d be broaching the subject of psychological determinism and questioning man’s free will -- reopening, in other words, the philosophical conundrum that wove irrepressibly in and out of the nightmarish proceedings, like the only hummable tune in a difficult opera. Or I could say that during the course of those months, Roosevelt, Kreizler, and I, assisted by some of the best people I’ve ever known, set out on the trail of a murderous monster and ended up coming face to face with a frightened child; but that would be deliberately vague, too full of the “ambiguity” that seems to fascinate current novelists and which has kept me, lately, out of the bookstores and in the picture houses. No, there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to tell the whole thing, going back to that first grisly night and that first butchered body; back even further, in fact, to our days with Professor James at Harvard. Yes, to dredge it all up and put it finally before that public -- that’s the way.

That’s your narrator in the opening pages setting the stage for the players to walk out upon. And that stage is an interesting one -- a thriller, centered on the pursuit of a mysterious (almost magical) serial killer, with a psychological theme that dances on the knife’s edge between determinism and free will, and set in the 1890s, with several historical figures included among the dramatis personae.

And initially, that is very much what it appears that Carr is trying to deliver.

The Kreizler mentioned is Laszlo Kreizler, a fictional creation and the alienist of the book’s title -- a scientist turned investigator that studies mental pathologies and the deviant behaviors of those who are alienated from themselves and society. And he, at least for the time that he lives in, has some very odd beliefs about the true nature of man.

Kreizler’s relationship with James was far more complex. Though he greatly respected James’s work and grew to have enormous affection for the man himself (it really was impossible not to), Laszlo was nonetheless unable to accept James’s famous theories on free will, which were the cornerstone of our teacher’s philosophy. James had been a maudlin, unhealthy boy, and as a young man had more than once contemplated suicide; but he overcame this tendency as a result of reading the works of the French philosopher Renouvier, who taught that a man could, by force of will, overcome all psychic (and many physical) ailments. “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will!” had been James’s early battle cry, an attitude that continued to dominate his thinking in 1877. Such a philosophy was bound to collide with Kreizler’s developing belief in what he called “context”: the theory that every man’s actions are to a very decisive extent influenced by his early experiences, and that no man’s behavior can be analyzed of affected without knowledge of those experiences. In the laboratory rooms at Lawrence Hall, which were filled with devices for testing and dissecting animal nervous systems and human reactions, James and Kreizler battled over how the patterns of people’s lives are formed and whether or not any of us is free to determine what kind of lives we will lead as adults. These encounters became steadily more heated -- not to mention a subject of campus gossip -- until finally, one night early in the second term, they debated in the University Hall the question, “Is Free Will a Psychological Phenomenon?”

Most of the student body attended; and though Kreizler argued well, the crowd was predisposed to dismiss his statements. In addition, James’s sense of humor was far more developed than Kreizler’s at that time, and the boys at Harvard enjoyed their professor’s many jokes at Kreizler’s expense. On the other hand, Laszlo’s references to philosophers of gloom, such as the German Schopenhauer, as well as his reliance on the evolutionist theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer in explaining that survival was the goal of man’s mental as much as his physical development, provoked many and prolonged groans of undergraduate disapproval. I confess that even I was torn, between loyalty to a friend whose beliefs had always made me uneasy and enthusiasm for a man and a philosophy that seemed to offer the promise of limitless possibilities for not only my own but every man’s future. Theodore -- who did not yet know Kreizler, and who had, like James, survived many and severe childhood illnesses by dint of what he reasoned to be sheer willpower -- was not troubled by any such qualms: he spiritedly cheered James’s eventual and inevitable victory.

This book sounds like a lot of intellectual fun -- at least in these early pages. Carr seems to be setting up a battle between free will and determinism, with each philosophy epitomized by one of the characters. For determinism, the alienist Laszlo Kriezler. And for free will, yes, that Theodore Roosevelt, serving in the time period of the novel as New York police commissioner.

But that is not really the novel that winds up unfolding. This theme will occasionally get a spotlight shone upon it, but not in the form of a battle between character motivations, but only in an occasional explanation for Kreizler’s methods in pursuing the serial killer.

From that moment on, he said, we must make every possible effort to rid ourselves of preconceptions about human behavior. We must try not to see the world through our own eyes, nor to judge it by our own values, but through and by those of our killer. His experience, the context of his life, was all that mattered. Any aspect of his behavior that puzzled us, from the most trivial to the most horrendous, we must try to explain by postulating childhood events that could lead to such eventualities. This process of cause and effect -- what we would soon learn was called “psychological determinism” -- might not always seem entirely logical to us, but it would be consistent.

Kreizler emphasized that no good would come of conceiving of this person as a monster, because he was most assuredly a man (or woman); and that man or woman had once been a child. First and foremost, we must get to know that child, and to know his parents, his siblings, his complete world. It was pointless to talk about evil and barbarity and madness; none of these concepts would lead us any closer to him. But if we could capture the human child in our imaginations -- then we could capture the man in fact.

It’s almost as if Carr falls victim to the same clouded thinking he has Kreizler caution the other characters in the play about. Free will -- men choosing to do good or evil -- is such a suffocating psychological frame, that even an author trying to write a novel about determinism is unable to creep out from under its blanketing effects.

Most of his characters in fact rebel against rather than embrace Kreizler’s odd beliefs.

Kreizler sighed heavily, but did go on: “The theory of individual psychological context that I have developed---”

“Rank determinism!” Comstock declared, unable to contain himself. “The idea that every man’s behavior is decisively patterned in infancy and youth -- it speaks against freedom, against responsibility! Yes, I say it is un-American!”

At another annoyed glance from Morgan, Bishop Potter laid a calming hand on Comstock’s arm, and the postal censor relapsed into disgruntled silence.

“I have never,” Kreizler went on, keeping his eyes on Morgan, “argued against the idea that every man is responsible before the law for his actions, save in cases involving the truly mentally diseased. And if you consult my colleagues, Mr. Morgan, I believe you will discover that my definition of mental disease is rather more conservative than most. As for what Mr. Comstock somewhat blithely calls freedom, I have no argument with it as a political or legal concept. The psychological debate surrounding the concept of free will, however, is a far more complex issue.”

Is it frustrating in the extreme for Kreizler to meet emotional assertion with reasoned argument like this. It’s never a fair fight, and only satisfying to those who already assume to hold the high ground. The Comstocks of the novel never change. What greater crime is there, after all, than being un-American?

And worse, frequently Carr seems to forget that his characters are living in the 1890s.

“And would be transmitted through the act of sex,” Marcus added. “So you’re right, Doctor -- sex is not something he values or enjoys. It’s the violence that’s his goal.”

“Isn’t it possible that he isn’t even capable of sex?” Sara asked. “Given the kind of background we’re supposing, that is. In one of the treatises you gave us, Doctor, there’s a discussion of sexual stimulation and anxiety reactions---”

“Dr. Peyer, at the University of Zurich,” Kreizler said. “The observations grew out of his larger study of coitus interruptus.”

“That’s right,” Sara continued. “The implications seemed strongest for men who had emerged from difficult home lives. Persistent anxiety could result in a pronounced suppression of the libido, creating impotence.”

“Our boy’s pretty tender on that subject,” Marcus said, going to the note and reading from it. ‘I never fucked him, though I could have.’”

“Indeed,” Kreizler said, writing IMPOTENCE in the center of the board without hesitation. “The effect would only be to magnify his frustration and rage, producing ever more carnage.”

Seriously. Is this 1896 or an episode of Special Victims Unit? I eventually gave up and read it for what it clearly was -- a modern thriller only wearing period costumes. Only Roosevelt seems to talk in the idiom of the day, probably because he’s a historical figure with well-defined and recognizable patterns of speech. Dee-lighted!

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

The Faerie Knave (1990)

I kept writing stories through my college years -- not for a class but just as a way to explore some ideas and develop a habit of writing. This is the last one from that period -- and based on an idea that struck me in one of my English classes that included Edmund Spenser.

+ + +   CANTO I   + + +

The room was cavernous. Pillars supported the ceiling that arched overhead and they braced themselves in the strips of the polished hardwood floor. A few heavy tables and padded chairs sat amidst the gloom that seemed to permeate the place, and bookshelves dotted the room in a haphazard maze. Books of every size and shape overstuffed these shelves, all blending together in the shadows spawned between the rows. It was a library fit for a king and no man could ever hope to uncover all its secrets in his short lifetime.

To Oona, it was all very frightening. Buildings scared her to begin with, but the dismal dark of this structure put her on the edge of terror. She padded her small bare feet and wound her way through the labyrinth. Her muscles were taut and her little wings stood out and fanned themselves to their fullest, ready to take to the air at any moment. Her pale blue eyes glowed in the darkness.

“Willoughby?” she called out in a whisper of a voice.

She came out to the center of the room where the tables and chairs were and saw a lone figure hunched over in the light of a small candle in the far corner of the room. He sat at a small desk under a pair of curtained windows and was reading a large book.

“Willoughby?” she said a bit louder, her voice that of a songbird.

The figure didn’t move and Oona continued on toward him. She felt the shadows tug at the gossamer wraparound that she wore to cover her nudity. Her body was slight and small, but she had the curves of a mature woman. Her face was that of a child, clean and delicate, and her hair, a pale shade of gray, pulled away from it like a mane.

“Willoughby!” she cried out, honestly scared and afraid of her surroundings.

The wooden chair squeaked as the figure in it turned toward her. The candlelight revealed a middle-aged man wearing spectacles and a stiff brown suit. “Oona,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Oona ran to him. She hugged him as he sat in his chair, standing between his legs and crushing her face against his chest. “Oh, Willoughby!” she cried, silver tears beginning to flow. “Why do you hide yourself away in this awful place? I was so scared!”

Willoughby laughed lightly and put his arms around her, pressing her wings against her body. “It’s my work, Oona. You know that.”

“I know,” Oona said, still clutching Willoughby. “But how can you stand to be in here all the time? This place frightens me so.”

“I know, Oona, I know it does.” He gently pushed her away and held her at arm’s length. He wiped a tear off her child face. “But I have to be here. It’s what I do.”

Oona put her hands on his knees and crouched down, suddenly brightening. “Willoughby! Let’s leave this place forever! Let’s go out to the meadow and live by the light and warmth of the sun. We’d be so happy, Willoughby. Please, let us go right now!”

Willoughby rubbed her small shoulders. “I can’t, Oona. I’m sorry. You know I can’t do that. I have a life outside the meadow and this is it. This room, this desk, these books. This is what I do, Oona. This is who I am.”

“No!” Oona shouted defiantly. “This is not who you are! This place is dark and gloomy and scary. These books aren’t you at all. They’re evil and full of hate. That’s not you, my Willoughby!”

“Oona, please,” Willoughby said. “Don’t say those things. You know how I feel about my work.”

Oona dropped her head. “But I love you, Willoughby.”

Willoughby swallowed hard. “I know. And I love you, Oona. But I must do these things. These books call to me nearly as loudly as your love does. Don’t hate me for that.”

Oona’s head snapped up. “Never, my Willoughby! I could never hate you! It’s these books I hate. They are a sinister mystery to me.”

Willoughby nodded. “I know, my Oona, I know. But to me they give all their answers.”

Oona had no response for that. She placed her cheek on Willoughby’s thigh and hugged his leg to her. He reached down and smoothed her hair like a devoted pet. For a long time the only noise in the room was the sound of Oona’s sniffles. Eventually, she looked up at him.

“Will you come to the meadow tonight? At dusk, when your work is done?”

“Yes,” Willoughby said. “Yes, as always, I will.”

Oona smiled and stood up. “I will go then, my Willoughby. I will go to the meadow and wait for dusk and your arrival.”

“I will be there.”

Oona came forward and kissed him on the cheek. She moved away, leaving one of her silver tears on the tip of his nose. She giggled when she saw it and then came forward again and kissed his nose lightly, spreading the tear onto her lips.

“I love you, Willoughby.”

“As I love you, my Oona.”

Oona turned and ran from the room.

+ + +   CANTO II   + + +

The meadow behind the house was the home of many creatures. Most of them were like Oona, sweet and innocent. They lived there in peace and happiness, flitting about in the sun and bursting with the joy of their simple lives. But the meadow had its dark places, too, back by the trees where the river flowed. Other creatures lived there, less innocent and much less sweet. They were dirty and mysterious and kept mostly to themselves. Creatures of the meadow would never dream of bothering them.

And so the meadow was the home of two kinds of creatures. There were the good ones. There were the bad ones. And then there was Jack.

He stood at the back of the house and met Oona when she came out. His pointed ears were twitching. He couldn’t understand why Oona bothered with Willoughby. He was astounded that she had actually gone into the house to see him.

“Jack!” Oona trilled when she came back out into the sunshine. “Oh, Jack! It was horrible! You were right, all dark and closed off and confining.”

“I told you,” Jack said, taking her hand. “I don’t know how Willoughby can stand it in there. He’s not like you and me.” He started to lead her back into the meadow.

“Wait, Jack,” Oona said. “I have to wait for Willoughby. He said he would meet me at dusk.”

Jack scowled. “Why can’t he meet you in the meadow like he usually does?”

“Oh, Jack!” Oona giggled. “I want to see him as soon as he comes out!”

Jack looked up at the sun. “It’ll be hours before dusk. We can come back. Come on, Oona.” He tugged on her arm.

“No, Jack. I want to stay.”

“But, Oona…”

Oona looked at him sharply and seemed about ready to raise her voice in anger. But her brow quickly smoothed and her eyes sparkled with a new realization. And in that moment, Jack loved her perhaps more than he ever had before. Her beauty, her innocence, her goodness; they crystallized around her like an aura and Jack would have given his hairy feet to be a part of it with her.

“Why, Jack,” she said. “You had something planned, didn’t you?”

Jack kicked at the pebbles.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Oona said, lifting his chin. “We can go and come back if you like. What have you planned?”

“Well,” Jack muttered. “I didn’t really plan it, but I was hoping we could go exploring before it got dark.”

“Exploring?”

“Yeah. You know. Down by the trees and the river.”

Oona chilled. “Why would you want to go there? Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Not during the day,” Jack declared. “It’s nice there during the day. The trees give you shade and you can sit on the bank and watch the river go by.”

Oona’s eyes widened. “You’ve been there before, Jack?”

“Well, yes, Oona. It’s not horrible during the day. It’s cool out of the sun and there’s some soft mud that your feet can sink into. Oona, please don’t look at me like that. I do so want it show it to you.”

Oona grimaced. “It’s just that I’ve heard terrible things about the river and the trees, Jack.”

“Not during the day,” Jack said for the third time. “While the sun still shines on the leaves it’s actually quite nice. Please, Oona.”

Oona looked back at the house.

“You’ll like it more than that stuffy old house,” Jack said. “You can still feel the breeze on your skin in the trees.”

Oona fanned her wings in the sun. “On one condition, Jack. You have to have me back here before dusk. Promise me that, Jack, and I’ll go with you.”

Jack nodded his head vigorously.

“Promise me, Jack. Say it.”

He looked into her eyes and fell in love with her again. He would’ve promised to take her to the moon. “I promise, Oona.”

Oona kissed Jack on the cheek and quickly skipped away before he could grab her. “Well, come on, silly,” she called back to him. “We’ll have to hurry.”

Jack took off after her.

+ + +   CANTO III   + + +

Oona knew that Jack loved her. She knew it because she was a creature of love and knew what it looked like in others. But she loved Willoughby, and could not return her love to Jack. This made her sad, and she sometimes felt sorry for Jack’s attempts to win her favor. Perhaps it was because of this that she went with him to the river. Perhaps she was inwardly curious herself. She did love Willoughby, after all, and maybe her love for someone who lived apart from the meadow sparked her interest in other worlds apart. Maybe you already know her well enough to hazard your own guess as to why she went with Jack. I certainly don’t know, and I suspect that Oona herself wasn’t quite sure why she went with him.

But she did go with him, remember that. They crossed the meadow together, Jack hopping along and Oona flying above and around him—close, but always out of his reach. It took them about an hour to make the journey, and with an hour needed to return before dusk, it left them with a single hour to explore.

Oona landed gently beside Jack when they reached the trees. They loomed over her like giants, forming a border a few hundred feet thick along the bank of the river. The meadow here was greener and the ground was wetter. The sun, on its way down for the night, shone through the trunks to spotlight Jack and Oona as they stood looking at the trees.

“I don’t like them, Jack,” Oona said, taking his hand. “They’re so tall. And look at the grass. The blades are so thick. And there’s no milkweed.”

Jack squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, Oona. It’s still light out. Come on, it’s really nice.”

Jack led her into the trees. He walked ahead of her and pulled her hand along like a leash. Her feet stumbled a few times as she looked up into the dizzying heights of the trees.

Then, all at once, they were in the shade. Jack continued on. There was no grass here at all. Hard, packed earth and moss-covered rocks made up the forest floor. The air was cool and damp, and it brushed up against Oona like a wet tongue. And the trees. The trees reached their barky fingers into the sky, so high it seemed they would fall over at any moment.

Jack stopped.

Oona looked around and found herself on the bank of the river. The murky water churned past her slowly and moaned warnings from its depths.

“You see, Oona. It’s nice, isn’t it?” Jack had his eyes closed and his head tilted back. He was smiling.

Oona was shivering. She had never been so cold before. “Oh, Jack!” she cried.

Jack kept smiling. “I told you it was nice.”

Oona only wanted to fly away but the air felt too heavy. She didn’t think her little wings could fight through it. And besides, there was nowhere to go. The canopy of trees seemed to erase the sky from her world.

“Oh, Jack! It’s awful!” She was breathing hard. “It’s so dark and cold. I can’t breathe here!”

Jack opened his eyes. “What?”

“Jack,” Oona said. “Please, Jack. I am more afraid here than I was in the house. It’s so cold.”

“It’s cool,” Jack corrected. “It’s cool here but that feels good. Sometimes out in the sun, I sweat so, the fur on my legs is so uncomfortable. But it is nice here by the river.”

“No, Jack. It’s cold.” Oona hugged her arms to her bosom. “I feel as though my blood is freezing in my veins. Please, Jack. Let’s go.”

“No!” Jack shouted, his voice echoing strangely off the tree trunks. “How can you not like it here? It’s so peaceful.”

“Jack,” Oona shuddered. “It feels like death.”

“Death!” Jack scoffed. “What can you know of death? Flitting around in the sunshine all the time. The meadow knows no death, Oona. Nothing ends there.”

Oona bowed her head. “Don’t scold me, Jack. I can’t help what I am. No more than you.”

Jack tried to take her hand but she pulled away. “Oona, I’m sorry. It’s just that I was hoping you’d like it here. I was hoping we could come here a lot. Sit here by the river and…well, just come here and sit by the river, I guess.”

Oona looked at the river. It was dark and full of little eddies and churning currents. It rippled past her and made her wonder where it came from and where it was going.

“I’m sorry, too, Jack. But I can’t come here with you anymore. Now, let’s go. Let’s go meet Willoughby.”

“Willoughby,” Jack said. “Yeah. Let’s go meet him.”

Oona came forward and hugged Jack. She was a little taller than he was and she pressed his head to her bosom. She scratched the back of his neck.

Jack was trying not to cry. It wasn’t easy. He wanted so much for Oona to be happy here. There was so much they could have done together. Suddenly, Jack realized where his head was resting and, embarrassed, he pulled away from her roughly.

“Jack—” Oona cried as she stumbled backward. The word quickly turned into a scream as a sickly green arm came out of the river and held fast to her ankle. Oona tripped and fell face first into the mud. She gave a final cry and the arm dragged her into the river. She dipped beneath the surface and was gone.

Jack stood on the bank and called out her name.

+ + +   CANTO IV   + + +

It took Jack a long time to decide what to do. He knew what had happened. Oona had gotten too close to the river and a river hag had nabbed her. The hag would take Oona down to her lair and eat her for dinner. He considered diving in right after her, but he knew that hags had special magic to keep their lairs hidden. He could swim around for hours and never find it. And it wouldn’t be long until the sun went down and the river got really nasty.

He decided he couldn’t do it alone. He needed help, and needed it quickly if he wanted to save Oona. He couldn’t go to any of the meadow creatures. Not now. They would never come here so close to nightfall. Oona or no Oona. There was only one person who could and would help him. Willoughby.

Jack hated to ask Willoughby for help, but Oona’s life was on the line, and no matter what Jack thought of Willoughby and his books, he would likely know what to do.

And so Jack ran, as fast as his fur-covered legs would carry him, back across the meadow and to the house. The sun seemed to race down to the horizon as he ran, mocking him with its speed. No time, Jack. You have no time. It’ll be dark before you get back and it’ll be too late for Oona. She’ll be gone and it’ll be your fault, Jack. Your fault.

“Willoughby!” Jack screamed as he saw a figure come out of the house. He stood in the final rays of the sun and Jack charged up to him and grabbed his hand. “Come on, Willoughby, we’ve got to hurry, come on!” He started pulling Willoughby after him.

“Why, Jack? What on earth is the matter?”

“Hurry!” Jack exclaimed. “I’ll explain on the way. Oona is in terrible danger.”

That was all it took. “Oona!” Willoughby said. “What have you done, Jack?” He was standing his ground while Jack desperately tried to pull him along.

“A river hag got her!” Jack shouted as he broke from Willoughby and took off in a full sprint. “Hurry! We may be too late already,” he sang out.

Willoughby broke into a run after him. His longer legs should have closed the gap between them easily, but Jack was a creature of some magic, and he did not follow all the laws of men. As he ran, Willoughby called up into his mind all he had read about river hags; their characteristics, their protections, and their appetites.

They were creatures spawned from the violent forces of the river they inhabited and were tied to the currents magically and physically. They could not leave the confines of their aquatic home, and this fact evidently pained them deeply, because they held a jealous hate of all life that was free to wander about the earth.

They had powerfully inbred magic at their disposal, which they could use to hide their lairs and assume watery or bodily forms. The lairs themselves were usually underwater air-filled chambers, to which they brought their victims to torture and eventually eat.

Willoughby thought of the horrors that Oona may have been suffering at that very moment and his heart leapt into his throat and made him run even harder. Damn that Jack! If anything happened to Oona, Willoughby vowed to strangle the life out of Jack himself.

But Willoughby knew he would be able to save Oona if he only got there in time. For he knew the river hag’s secret. Each hag was a child of the river in which they lived, and each took her name from that river. This river’s name was the Little Menomonee and with it, Willoughby could call the hag forth and command her to do as he instructed. He would shout the hag’s name from the riverbank, and when she appeared to him, he would command her to release Oona unharmed. And then he would command the hag to leave the river and destroy herself.

But for now he ran. He pumped his legs frantically and kept his eyes on Jack’s torso, bobbing fifty feet ahead of him.

+ + +   CANTO V   + + +

Oona slowly came back to consciousness, leaving the blackness behind and embracing pure terror. She found herself chained, wrists and ankles, to a cold wet stone wall in a small dark underground cave. She was nude, her gossamer wraparound nowhere to be seen, and her wings were crushed painfully between her warm body and the cold wall. The cave she was in was small and the walls of it seemed to glow with an eerie pale green light. Directly opposite her stood a podium, as if someone was going to deliver her a speech, and on the podium sat a massive dusty tome, opened somewhere in the middle.

The hag entered the cave from a passageway on the right. She was a bent and crooked creature, foul and misshapen, her features a grotesque parody of human. She was large, her humped back nearly scraping the cave’s roof, with impossibly thin arms and impossibly long fingers. She made her way to the podium and began to study the book.

Oona was terrified. This cave was a hundred times more confining than the house had been. There, she had had Willoughby for company. Here, a demon she knew nothing about. Oona tugged at the chains and remembered how she had run freely from the house.

“I’ll get to you in a minute, my little morsel,” the hag screeched in a voice like gravel. “I have to find the right spells to torture you with.”

Torture! Oh, why did she ever let Jack bring her to the river? Oona began to cry.

The hag looked up. She had a smile plastered on her grim face. “No, no. Don’t cry, my little morsel. Not yet. You do not know what sorrow is, yet. I will show you what real pain is.”

“What do you want from me!?” Oona cried out, gray tears streaming down her face.

“I want what I fear you cannot give me,” the hag said, seeming to grow behind the podium. “I want your freedom. But since you cannot give that to me, I want you to suffer very painfully,” She stuck a long finger onto a page of her book. “And this will make that very easy for me. This book is the knowledge of the old ones, the ones who were here before your precious meadow existed. They were the ones who washed themselves in the river and in their washing gave me life. It contains many things. Many things with which I have long wanted to experiment.”

The hag looked down into the book and began to chant. Her voice became a monotone growl in words that Oona could not understand. The words had power, though, Oona could feel it growing in the cave, filling up the empty spaces and pushing her harder against the cave wall.

And with the hag’s words came the insects. Large red bugs seemed to scuttle out of the shadows in a never-ending stream, all making their silent way to Oona. They started at her feet and slowly made their way up her legs and onto her torso. They covered her arms and danced about on her face. They crawled about all over her, their sharp little legs pricking Oona in a million tiny places. Oona screamed in terror, afraid of such awful magic, and fought against the chains to wipe some of the horrid insects from her body.

And all the while, the hag’s chanting grew louder and more powerful. Oona’s eyes stared out at the hag, stared out from a body of bloated, wriggling red insects, and saw the hag’s twisted face beaming with joy. The hag switched quickly from dull chanting to vibrant singing and that was when the insects began to bite Oona.

Quickly and everywhere, their little mandibles bit off pieces of Oona’s flesh, their voracious little minds driven by the power of the hag’s magic. The pain was unbearable. Oona was bit everywhere; her face, her arms, her legs, her belly, her breasts, her genitals. Her body was aflame with agony and she threw her head back and screamed the screams of the insane. And as she screamed, a few more adventurous insects crawled inside her mouth and bit her there.

“Little Menomonee…come forth!”

The voice echoed throughout the chamber and the hag stopped her song and cringed behind the podium. Instantly, the insects were gone. Oona looked down at her body and saw the undamaged smoothness of her pale skin. The insects had been illusions. Illusions of dark magic. But the pain, the pain had been real.

“Little Menomonee…come forth!”

It was Willoughby! Willoughby had come to rescue her. Oona began to cry anew, waves of relief washing over her.

The hag eyed Oona dubiously. “You aren’t saved yet, my little morsel. The fool up there knows less than he thinks he does. He is calling me by the name of the river, hoping to bind me to his will, but he is not using the name the river bore when I was created. And that name has been lost to the modern world.”

Willoughby, Oona thought, oh my Willoughby!

“But patience, my morsel. I shall go see what he wants anyway, for I see in your heart he means something to you. If you think the pain you just suffered was severe, I wonder how you will feel as you watch him undergo the same tortures.”

“No!” Oona screamed. “I’ll do anything! Please!”

But the hag turned and left the chamber.

+ + +   CANTO VI   + + +

“Little Menomonee…come forth!” Willoughby called for the third time.

Jack was about to make a biting comment concerning Willoughby’s book knowledge, but swallowed it back when there was a sudden swirling in the center of the river. The regular flow of the stream stopped all at once and the swirl deepened into a fast whirlpool. Out of the whirlpool came a shadowy shape that grew brighter and more defined as the whirlpool spun. Its torso was that of an ugly green woman but below the waist it was a stream of dark water that continuously fell into and fed the whirlpool.

“Ahhrggh!” the hag cried. “What would you have of me, human?”

Willoughby looked over at Jack and raised his eyebrows. “I guess it worked,” he said. He turned back to the hag. “Little Menomonee…release Oona unharmed!”

The hag cried out as if in pain. She waved her arms and Oona appeared on the riverbank, nude with whipping scars all over her back and legs. She collapsed to the earth.

Jack ran over to her. He checked her pulse. He looked up and Willoughby was glaring at him. “She’s still alive,” Jack said.

Willoughby turned back to the hag again. “And now, Little Menomonee…come out of the river and stand on dry ground!”

The hag screamed as if physically struck. Her form began to slowly move towards the bank and her voice cried out, “No, no, no!” over and over again. Willoughby stepped back to give the hag room on the riverbank. Her screams got louder and louder as she approached the river’s edge. Jack had his hands on the breathing form of Oona but his eyes were on the hag.

The hag reached the riverbank and suddenly her motion stopped. But it wasn’t just her. To Jack, all motion had stopped. Willoughby stood like a statue and Oona’s form had gone still under his touch. The wind had stopped rustling the leaves of the trees and the crickets in the meadow had stopped chirping. And in this frozen moment in time, when Jack had his eyes fixed on the hag, he saw the hag’s head turn towards him and smile.

Like lightning, the arms of the hag shot out and grabbed Willoughby by the shoulders. The arms retracted and, just like Oona, the hag pulled the body of Willoughby down into the river and disappeared.

Jack’s hands fell to the ground as the body of Oona vanished as well. He placed his head on the cool mud of the riverbank and began to cry. He could hear the crickets chirping.

+ + +   CANTO VII   + + +

The hag brought Oona to another cave with a strange window on one wall. It looked just like the ones in the house beside the meadow, but it was set into the damp rock of the cave, and looked grotesquely out of place. On the other side of the window was another small cave with no visible exits. Sprawled out in the middle of the floor of this second cave, nude like herself, was the unconscious form of Willoughby.

“Well, my little morsel,” the hag said. “What do you think of my observation room?”

Oona said nothing.

“It’s been a long time since I had a man down here. Are you ready, my little morsel? Are you ready for a lesson in sorrow?”

Oona kept her eyes on Willoughby. “What do you mean?”

“Behold,” the hag said and the air around her shimmered and distorted her image beyond recognition. Oona looked on for a few seconds, and when the form of the hag reclarified itself, Oona thought she was looking into a mirror.

“Now,” the hag said in a voice just like Oona’s. “Listen carefully, my little morsel. You will be able to watch all that goes on in the other room through the window, and watch you will, but your precious Willoughby will not be able to see back.”

“What are you going to do?” Oona asked, horrified.

The hag’s Oona-face smiled. “You will watch.”

In a flash, the hag was gone and had reappeared in the observation room next to the unconscious Willoughby. She looked back at Oona for a moment and smiled, and then turned to Willoughby, shaking him and trying to wake him up.

“Willoughby!” the hag cried in Oona’s small voice. “Oh, Willoughby, wake up!”

Willoughby shook his head and sat up. “Oona!” he cried. “You’re safe.”

Oona pounded her little fists on the window glass. “No! She’s not me!”

Willoughby did not react to her pounding. “Oh, Oona,” he said to the hag, and then recoiled, discovering their mutual nudity.

“Willoughby,” the hag said, capturing Willoughby and hugging him to her bare bosom. “What shall we do? The hag plans to eat us! I heard her say so.”

Willoughby looked around the cave. “I don’t see any way out of here.” He started to get up.

The hag pulled him back down. “Please! I’m so scared, Willoughby, please just hold me.”

Willoughby hugged her. “Oh, my Oona.”

“No!” Oona screamed into the window. “She’s not your Oona! It’s the hag, oh Willoughby. It’s the hag!”

Willoughby rubbed the hag’s back between her Oona-wings.

“Oh, Willoughby,” the hag said. “I do not want to die. I’m not ready to die. Please, Willoughby, help me.”

Willoughby comforted her. “We’ll escape, Oona. I’ll get us out of here.”

“No,” the hag moaned. “It’s too late, it’s too late. I’ll never—” Suddenly the hag pushed herself away from Willoughby and held him at arm’s length. There were tears in her Oona-eyes.

“You’ll never what?” Willoughby asked.

The hag leaned forward and kissed Willoughby on the lips. It was no kind of kiss Oona had ever given Willoughby in her life. It was not a peck, an innocent brushing of lips. This kiss was deep and full, open-mouthed and packed with desire and promise.

Oona stood behind the window, cold as stone.

The hag broke the kiss and buried her face in the curve of Willoughby’s neck. “Oh, Willoughby,” she cried. “Make love to me. Please, Willoughby. I want to make love before we die.”

“No,” Oona mumbled on her side of the glass. “No.”

Willoughby was looking down on the hag’s Oona-head and was doing nothing else.

The hag was kissing and nibbling on Willoughby’s neck. “Please, Willoughby, make love to me now.” She placed a delicate Oona-hand between his legs.

Oona was only saying ‘no’ over and over again, but in her mind, the words were flying. Don’t, Willoughby. It’s not me. It’s the hag. How could you? Even if it was me, how could you do such a thing at a time like this? Can’t you see it’s not me? Can’t you see? Are you blind? Do you know no more about me than that?

Willoughby and the hag said nothing more to each other. They kissed again and this time Willoughby kissed back with a passion that must have been brewing for some time. His large hands roamed all over the hag’s nude Oona-body, and the hag kept her Oona-hands where she had originally placed them, but now grasping, squeezing, and stroking.

Oona watched it all with a face lined with woe. Tears fell down her cheeks and she kept mumbling ‘no’ again and again, as if the word had the power to stop what she was witnessing.

Is that all there is? Willoughby, is that all there is in your love for me? Is this all you have wanted to do? This ugly, painful, mortal, human thing? Is that all?

The hag pushed Willoughby down on his back and crawled on top of him. She straddled him with her slender Oona-thighs and gently lowered herself down.

“Oona,” Willoughby moaned. “Oh, Oona. I’ve wanted to do this for so long.”

The hag began to rock back and forth, taking more and more of Willoughby into her. “So have I, my Willoughby,” she said. “So have I.”

“No!” Oona finally screamed at a pitch to break glass. “No, Willoughby! How can you believe that is me? How can you want to do that to me? Oh, I hate you! I hate you, Willoughby!” She pulled at her gray hair, hoping to rip it out.

Her eyes bulged out of her head as she watched the spectacle before her. She could not turn away from it. She did not even think to. She watched Willoughby reach up and caress the hag’s Oona-breasts. She watched Willoughby’s muscles tighten and his skin sheen over with sweat. She listened to Willoughby calling out her name to the hag in the throes of passion and she thought she could smell the rising of their sexuality through the glass. And with each escalating sensation she witnessed, Oona’s hate for Willoughby and the hag who had shown her what he really was grew to a burning antipathy.

The hag was bouncing up and down furiously on top of Willoughby, her Oona-head thrown back and her Oona-eyes wide with ecstasy. Willoughby’s body suddenly shuddered and with his climax, the hag let out a piercing screech in her own gravel voice and suddenly reverted to her own grotesque form. Willoughby opened his eyes, shut tight in the convulsions of orgasm, and beheld the horror impaled upon him. Before he could react, the hag dug with her green claws into Willoughby’s abdomen and began to draw out his organs.

At last, Oona could watch no more. She fell to her knees and clamped her hands over her eyes. She screamed but she could not drown out the sounds coming from the observation room; the howls of Willoughby’s pain and the squeals of the hag’s delight as she tore the man apart. They seemed to echo in Oona’s head endlessly, until Oona thought she could do nothing more than go mad. To dig at her small ears with her fingernails until they stopped hearing the awful sounds from beyond the window, and then to claw out her own eyes to stop the images of what she had seen.

But at last, the sounds stopped. Oona became aware of her hot forehead against the cold stone floor and she quickly looked up. The hag stood before her, her green and bloated body streaked with Willoughby’s blood and gore. The hag held one of Willoughby’s organs in her bony hand. It was small and made of sinewy muscle.

“Well, my little morsel,” the hag said. “How did you enjoy your small lesson in sorrow? Did you learn anything about what sorrow really is? Hmmm? My little morsel?” The hag smiled and took a bite out of Willoughby’s heart like it was an apple.

Oona put her forehead back on the floor and let her sobs wreak her pale body. Sorrow? Yes, she knew what sorrow was.

+ + +   CANTO VIII   + + +

Jack was curled up in a little ball where Oona’s body had laid on the riverbank. He wanted to make himself as small as possible. He wanted to shrink down and fall out of this world and into the microscopic. His face was pressed into the cool mud and he was crying.

“Jack.”

The voice was warm and familiar.

“Jack?”

Jack looked up, his bright eyes staring out from a mask of filth.

“Father,” Jack said.

“My son,” the voice said. “What has happened that makes you weep so?”

“Oh, Father!” Jack cried. “It’s horrible. And it is all my fault.”

“Has someone harmed you, Jack? Tell me, my revenge will be slow and unpleasant.”

“No, Father. It is I who have harmed others. Willoughby and…and Oona.”

“Willoughby and Oona? Who are they, son? What have you done to them?”

“Willoughby is a human from the house on the edge of the meadow and Oona is a meadow creature. A faerie. And I…it is because of me that the river hag has captured them. I brought them both here.”

The voice was silent for a long time.

“Jack, your voice is tender when you speak of the faerie Oona. Do you love her?”

Jack said nothing.

“Jack?”

“Oh, Father,” Jack said. “How can I lie to you? You have mastered all lies and can recognize each one. Yes, I love her. I love the faerie Oona.” Jack hid his muddy face with his hands.

“And Willoughby?”

“The one she loves.” Jack said through his fingers. “There is no place in her heart for me.”

“I feared this would happen,” the voice said. “You love Oona just as I loved your mother. Oona loves another just as your mother loved another.”

“My mother?” Jack said, lowering his hands.

“You never knew her. I would have given my entire kingdom for her love. She was a faerie as well, and her kind could not love me. She loved another, and spurned me to no end. When I took her, it was against her will and, after you were born, she left the meadow and perished. Have you taken this Oona to be yours, yet?”

“Father?”

“Take her, Jack. If she is what you desire, take her. Take her like I took your mother.”

“Father!” Jack said. “I could not take her against her will.”

The voice was silent again for some time.

“Pity. I see you have too much of your mother in you.”

“Help me, Father,” Jack said. “Help me save Oona, Father. Perhaps I can win her.”

“Do you really love her, Jack?”

“I believe I love her all I can.”

“What can I do to help?”

Jack stood up. “Willoughby said that whoever spoke the name of the hag could control her. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“Well, is the hag not one of your servants? Did she not come into this world through you? Do you not know her name, Father?”

“I do.”

“Tell me, Father! Tell me the name. With it I can rescue Oona and destroy the hag. Tell me her name!”

The voice paused for a third time.

“I will do as you ask, my son, if you promise me two things.”

“What, Father?”

“First, use the knowledge I give you to save Oona, and Oona alone. Do not rescue this Willoughby.”

“But why, Father?”

“Can you not see? He is your rival. If you rescue him you will never have your Oona.”

Jack bowed his head. Could he do that to Willoughby? He hated him for the place he held in Oona’s heart, but could Jack just leave him to be eaten?

“Must I, Father?”

“Yes, Jack.”

“What is your second condition?” Jack asked.

“After you have rescued Oona, take her as I took your mother.”

“Father!” Jack might be able to meet his father’s first condition, but he was sure he would never be able to meet the second. There was nothing that could make him take Oona against her will. Nothing could make him rape her.

“If you do not agree to my terms, Jack, I will not tell you the name of the hag, and your Oona will die.”

Jack began to cry.

“Jack, it is a simple thing to do.”

“Must I, Father?” Jack whimpered.

“To save her, yes. I thought you loved her.”

Jack cried into his hands for several minutes. Finally he wiped away his tears and looked up.

“Tell me the name, Father.”

“Do you promise to do as I ask?”

Jack bowed. “I do.”

There was a long pause. Jack looked up at his father.

“Are you lying to me, Jack?”

Jack swallowed hard. He felt very uncomfortable.

“No, Father.”

The voice spoke to name of the hag.

+ + +   CANTO IX   + + +

The hag had left her alone. She had brought Oona back to the cave with the podium and had chained her to the cold stone wall. And then the hag had left. At one time, Oona would have been pleased with the solitude. At one time, Oona would have wanted to be away from the hag as much as possible. But that time had passed. Oona now wanted the hag to come back. She wanted the hag to come back and do to her whatever it was she was going to do and get it over with. Oona wanted the hag to torture her. Oona wanted the hag to kill her. Oona wanted to die.

The hag had been right. That was the worst part. Oona had not known what sorrow was. The sadness she had felt when Willoughby was working with his books in the house and she was out in the meadow missing him was nothing compared to what she was feeling now. She had been such a child then. Now, after the things she had witnessed, she didn’t think she could ever be a child again.

What was it that Jack had said? What did she know about death? Jack was right, too. She and the rest of the meadow creatures had no idea about the darker parts of the world. Their lives were filled with the warmth of the sun and the love of the meadow. They knew nothing about death. They didn’t even know how much there was to learn.

Oona’s body hung limply from the chains, still nude and growing paler in the eerie light of the cave. She closed her eyes and saw on her black eyelids the forms of Willoughby and the hag fornicating. She opened them again and saw one of the red bloated insects crawling around at her feet. It was sick and alien-looking. She decided to watch it instead of closing her eyes again.

“Well, my little morsel. Are you ready for another lesson?”

Oona raised her head and her neck moved as if it was lifting a sack of river mud. She watched the hag, massive and stooped over, enter the chamber and take her place behind the podium. The hag flipped through the pages of her tome like she was looking for a favorite recipe.

“There is nothing more you can teach me.” Oona’s voice was that of a funeral bell.

The hag looked up, her hooked fingers holding places in her tome. “No,” the hag pondered. “I don’t suppose that there is. It seems I’ve gone a bit overboard in your education. Shame. There was so much fun we could have had.” The hag closed her massive book with a thump. She came out from behind the podium and approached Oona. “Well, then, my little morsel, there’s only one thing left to do.”

Oona’s head fell and she refused to look up. The misshapen form of the hag drew closer and closer, her gigantic shadow growing darker and darker on Oona’s pale flesh. Oona didn’t flinch when the hag placed her bony hand on Oona’s breast, nor did she pull away when the hag began to tickle her rough tongue against the curve of Oona’s neck.

“You taste good on the outside, my little morsel,” the hag mumbled into Oona’s ear. “I can’t imagine how your insides are going to taste when I draw them out. I can feel your little heart beating. I bet it will taste just like rotten fruit, like the apples that collect at the bottom of a tree at the end of autumn.”

Oona hung limply from her chains. She was conscious of all the hag was doing to her, but it was as if she had been separated from her body. The cut was not complete, however, for she could still feel the hag’s touch on her skin. It did not feel bad. It did not feel good. She could merely feel it.

The hag was nibbling on Oona’s ear, teething on the lobe like an infant, and occasionally dipping her pointed tongue in and touching the eardrum. She massaged Oona’s breasts with her bony hands, tugging at the small gray nipples in the coolness of the cave. The hag ran one hand down Oona’s belly and cupped her fingers around Oona’s crotch. Still, Oona did not respond.

“What is this, my little morsel?” the hag said as her finger probed. “A virgin are you? I said it’s been a long time since I had a man down here, but it’s been even longer since I had a virgin.”

And with that, the hag forced one of her crooked fingers up inside of Oona, tearing flesh and drawing blood. Oona at last felt something beyond the hag’s mere presence and she brought her head up sharply, wide-eyed, and would have screamed had it not been for the meek little voice that filtered down to them, through the rippling currents and layers of river mud.

“Dooessa,” the voice said. “Come forth.”

It was suddenly the hag who was screaming as she was forcibly torn from embracing Oona. She flew up through the roof of the cave with a whoosh.

Oona’s head slumped forward in the darkness.

+ + +   CANTO X   + + +

The hag thrust up out of the river, levitating above it, her bottom half a waterfall draining back into the currents.

“Ahhrg!” she screamed. “You! Release me, you little troublemaker! I’ll turn you inside out!”

Jack’s hands were clenched into little fists. “Dooessa. Release Oona.”

The hag shrieked and recoiled. The nude body of Oona appeared on the riverbank. There was blood on her thighs.

“There!” the hag shouted. “Now, release me! I have done your bidding!”

Jack went over to Oona and brought her face out of her folded arms. “Oona,” he said. “Oona, can you hear me?”

Oona’s blue eyes were glazed over. “Jack?” she mumbled.

Jack put her down gently. He looked at her nudity and her pale flesh was almost white. The blood on her thighs was like fire compared to it. He turned back to the hag.

“Dooessa. Leave the river and stand on dry ground.”

The shrieks were deafening. Slowly, the hag approached the riverbank. Jack backed up and gave her plenty of room. When the hag reached the bank, still screaming threats, a gnarled leg came out of the waterfall that was her nether half and she stepped onto the mud. A second leg soon followed, and when the hag was entirely free of the river that had been her home for centuries, she gave a horrendous final cry and melted into a green soup that soaked into the mud and disappeared.

Jack went over to Oona, still lying inert on the ground. “Oona,” he said. “I’m sorry. I…I couldn’t save Willoughby.” The words tasted sour.

Oona was trembling. She kept her head buried in her arms. Her voice came out to Jack, cold, aloof, and distant. “Willoughby is dead, Jack. The hag…the hag killed him.”

Jack looked around for something to cover Oona’s nudity. There was nothing. “Oona. Oona, get up.”

Oona lay still as if considering, and then slowly got to her feet. She made no attempt to cover herself in front of Jack. She stood there like a statue, arms at her sides and her eyes dark.

“The hag is dead,” Jack said. “I killed her.”

Oona looked absently at the river.

Jack eyed Oona up and down. He was thinking of what his father had demanded of him. There would be hell to pay, but Jack was sure that he could not go through with it. It was no longer a question of not wanting to hurt her, it was a nagging idea that he no longer loved her, that he had in fact never really loved her in the first place.

Oona looked back at him. “Jack?”

Before, when she could never have been his, he had certainly held a fascination for her, but Jack now wondered if that was really love and whether or not it was really directed at her. He looked at her now, nude, a sight that at one time would have driven him mad with passion, but he felt no stirrings in his heart or his loins.

“Jack?” Oona said, her voice coming back to her own.

And it would be easy. Jack could see that now. He could have done it at any time. Taking her like his father took his mother would have been easy, so easy that the ease almost lent a reason for the doing. But he would not do it. Jack knew he would not do it when he had lied to his father. He would not take her and he would have to leave because of it. He would have to leave her and the meadow.

“Jack!” Oona cried as she flung her arms over his shoulders and clutched him to her. “Oh, Jack! It was horrible! So horrible!”

Jack squirmed out of her arms. “Oona, no, please. You’re safe now, and I must go.”

“Go? Go where, Jack? Come back to the meadow with me.”

Jack turned his back on her and looked up into the night sky through the branches of the trees. “Oona,” he said. “Look at yourself. You’re a mess.”

Jack heard Oona gasp but he kept his eyes on a star he thought he could see through the trees. “Go back to the meadow, Oona. Clean yourself up and forget me and the day I brought you here. Go back to the meadow and learn how to live again.”

“Jack?” Oona said.

“I can’t!” Jack shouted with his back still turned. “Oona, I can’t go back with you. Don’t you understand? It’s the price I had to pay to save you. I must leave.”

“Jack?” Oona said with patience in her voice.

“What?”

“I’ll miss you.”

Jack kept his eyes on the night sky. He heard Oona turn and slowly move away from him. He heard her move across the bare ground and under the trees, and when she got to the edge of the meadow, he heard her slip into the thick grasses and disappear.

Jack wiped his nose. “I’ll miss you, too.”

+ + +   CANTO XI   + + +

The night wind swept through the trees and down the river and seemed to swirl around Jack like an old friend.

“Jack.”

Jack turned around. “Hello, Father.”

“Your Oona bares a striking resemblance to your mother. She was a virgin too when I took her.”

“Father?”

“Yes, my son?”

“I didn’t. I mean. I didn’t take Oona.”

“I know, Jack.”

“You know?”

“Yes, Jack. I know.”

Jack bowed his head. “What is to become of me, Father?”

There was one of his father’s long pauses.

“You have lied to me. What do you think you deserve? What would be fair?”

“Fair?” Jack’s voice was not angry. “Father, nothing that has happened has been fair.”

Jack’s father chuckled. “Did you expect something more, my son?”

It was Jack’s turn to pause. “I guess I just assumed that it would be.”

“You do have too much of your mother in you.”

“I am sorry, Father. Does that count for anything?”

“It can, but I wouldn’t grow dependent on it.”

“Father?”

“Yes, Jack?”

“What is to become of me?”

The voice was silent for quite some time.

“What you told Oona is correct. You can never return to the meadow.”

“Where will I go?”

“With me for now. Perhaps we can find a place for you to fit in.”

“Father?”

“This is your last question, Jack.”

“Did you really love my mother?”

“I thought I did.”

Jack looked down at his hands.

“Come along now, Jack. We must be going now. I’ve many things to show you.”

Jack took his father’s hand and together they went off down the river.

+ + +   CANTO XII   + + +

Life, as it always does, went on in the meadow. The grasses still grew, the flowers still bloomed, the insects still chirped, the birds still sang. The good creatures of the meadow, the faerie folk, still lived amongst the splendor with glee at the warmth of the sun and the gentleness of the breeze. They played in the daytime, free and unhindered by gloom and despair, and at night, tucked amongst the protective blades, they slept and dreamed of things they would do the next day. The faerie folk lived and loved in the meadow, and the meadow lived for and loved them.

All but one. There was one faerie creature, a slender female with gray hair and blue eyes, who would not play in the light of the sun. Though she had pretty wings, she would never fly and would walk anywhere she went. The others would treat her as an outcast, and as she wandered about the meadow, they would flit away and look for another place to play.

She did not mind. She did not miss their company. She felt she was no longer one of them and would wear a heavy black dress on even the warmest day; a dress that fell from her neckline to her feet, covering her wings and the rest of her body.

And it was this delicate little faerie girl who would be found wandering the meadow all day, picking pretty meadow flowers from their living stems, and when nightfall would come and the sky would darken, she would be standing on the cool bank of the river, dropping the flowers one by one into the swirling currents.

+ + +

This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.