Part 2.

Part 2.

THE FEY LANGUAGE
—–

The language of the faerie is not so difficult as one might imagine - the cognates are all around us, in the call of a bird and the soughing of wind through trees. In fact, as I was submersed in their strange and beautiful utterances, I felt something awaken within me, something long-forgotten and now revived. I sat in my cage and listened, and waited. Certainly the language is not so difficult as Basque. I could tell quickly enough that there are two main dialects within the faerie tongue: the low and the high. The Low Tongue is more primal and animalistic, utilizing far more barks, clicks, hoots, and difficult modulations of the voice: simply fiendish to decipher. The high tongue is, however, beautiful. If the Low Tongue relies on the voice of the animals, the High relies on the sounds of wind and waters. It is more closely related to a human language, and I even thought I detected traces of similarity between it and old Welsh or some of the Norse tongues. I quickly discovered the word for human, and little else - conversation around my enclosure was strictly related to me. So I learned the vocabulary of my imprisonment, slowly and haltingly. I had no one to practice with, and Morgana did not reappear. The hulk did only in passing, and the king only arrived a few times more with more high-ranking dignities. For the large part, it was the faerie common-folk who observed me.

 

I had a chance at expanding my vocabulary and my cell early one evening. I was not sure what season it was, only that time had passed. The sun guarded more jealously his seat, sinking only after many long hours of brightness. I thought it perhaps the end of summer.

 

I was slumped at the corner of my cage, silently mouthing and reviewing to myself the faerie words I had learned, forcing my tongue to accommodate their unique sounds. I heard the bare scrape of feet on earth - the faerie move silently - and saw that the King approached alone. I stood, and approached the bars even as he did. He came to a halt and I stood before him, a dragoon at attention, ready for inspection by his lieutenant. He smiled at this, perhaps enjoying my meekness. He spared me the hand gesture, merely nodded briefly. I eyed him, then removed my hands from behind my back, and gripped the roots that held me. My knuckles were white upon them.

“Release me,” I growled in the High Tongue.

The shock was plain upon his face, but he quashed it hurriedly - a useful trait in a sovereign, I’m sure.

“You speak our tongue, human?” he said.

“Some.”

He nodded at this, and quickly said something I could only discern a few words from. I heard human, and then I heard the word “smart”. But I believed the form he used indicated animal-cunning, rather than tree-wisdom. While certainly the faerie respect the merits of animal cunning, they abandon it with their wings.

I shrugged at him, the end of my tether reached. He shrugged as well, appraising me. Then he placed one strong hand around the root that I gripped myself. He concentrated upon it for a moment, and all of a sudden I felt the root vivify beneath me. It was singularly uncanny - what had been previously resistant to all my attempts to destroy it now hung green and pliable, like a vine in mid-summer. He repeated this process with a few more roots, and I stepped through the green curtain. Free.

My immediate instinct was to flee - brain this self-styled king and flee back to sensible life, where there were buildings and warm beds and actual meat, instead of miserly portions of fruit - by God, what I would have given for some of Ms. Hardwicke’s overcooked mutton in that cell. The faerie lord seemed to sense my sudden, murderous intent, and his hand fell to his waist. Stuck within the broad belt he wore was a dagger, which he withdrew. Holding it before him, I put up two placatory hands - escape could wait awhile longer. He waved the knife, which seemed to be carved out of bone, and I followed after him. Passing courtiers stared at me agog, and I strode through them. I felt woefully dislocated, stranded in a shifting sea of insanity hidden away at the heart of an impenetrable forest. Sighing, I followed along. After an exceedingly short walk (it appeared the faerie kept a small camp, and I surmised only a few dozen were present at the location) we reached the same clearing I had seen the king hold court upon. With an almost friendly gesture, he ushered me forward. The clearing was nearly empty, save a few shiftless rogues who lounged upon the grass. I stood unsure of what to do, and the king walked by me and reclined in his throne.

It was a tree-stump, the throne, and carved out of it was a seat. The armrests, such as they were, were high, and the little king planted both elbows firmly upon them, letting his hands dangle over his stomach.

“Human,” he said to me, pointing to reinforce his meaning, “no see faerie. Is death.”

I gulped visibly at that.

“But,” he continued, enjoying my discomfit, “you no death. Yes?”

I nodded quite vigorously at this, you might imagine. “Why?” I asked.

“We have use for you.” He spoke a word I could not grasp, and upon seeing my incomprehension, knitted his brows in consternation. Waving a hand angrily, I took his meaning to be that my utility would be made clear to me at a later date. This was most agreeable to me, so long as ‘no death’ remained the case. Interview over, his large eyes shifted from me - he motioned two courtiers forward, and they appeared at either elbow.

“Cage?” I asked them. They looked positively wounded, the scoundrels, and solicitously guided me to a location near the throne. I stood there, confused, until one of the two removed a pinch of powder from a small pouch at his waist. He stooped down, and I noticed a toadstool grew there, at our feet. He sprinkled the powder over it as a chef might a delicacy, and watched with professional satisfaction as the mushroom grew to staggering proportions like some sort of aboreal souflee. I hopped backwards as the fungus shot up, which they found quite amusing - after having a good laugh, they gestured me to sit upon the toadstool. I hesitated, making sure first that it had no more intentions to grow, and then took a seat. All things considered, it was quite comfortable, though the smell did not recommend it. Then, bobbing their heads, they turned and raced off, as faeries are prone to do. I sat upon the toadstool, bewildered. No impediments of any kind held me to the seat, but upon standing, a hitherto unseen faerie materialized close at hand, a coil of vine in hands. Suspecting such vines could be coaxed to the same sort of unyielding stiffness as the roots that constructed my cage, I sat down abruptly. The faerie nodded at this, and seemed to… fade.

 

The king nodded at the little fellow who had produced my extraordinary seating accommodations, and he withdrew a small flute. Coughing primly like a maestro preparing to perform his magnum opus, he then put his lips to the instrument and played a short melody. This seemed to be a call to court, for bands of faerie began to amble into the trampled grass area, talking amongst themselves. I was of course examined and admired, much like a new painting hung in some lady’s drawing room. I recognized some of the faces, and saw the great mass of the large faerie as he made his way to his apparently customary spot at the right of the throne. And then Morgana entered the clearing. The little piper played another tune, a call to order, and the chattering faeries gradually quieted themselves. The king sat patiently as they did so, since faeries generally disliked being ordered to do anything, even silence before their king. Once the talking subsided there was only the sound of faintly creaking trees. The king stood and raised both hands over his head, palms facing the congregation. They mirrored the gesture, and he nodded.

He then began to speak. Since the king did not bother to use such simple language as he had when communicating with me, I caught only a few words per sentence. I got the impression that I was the subject of discussion, however. He spoke at length, occasionally gesticulating in my direction. The crowd murmured, a general undercurrent of dissent obvious. The king raised his voice, arms waving more fiercely now, eyes ablaze. What once seemed a reasoned discussion threatened to spiral in a riot, and one bold fellow at the back shouted out, hands cupped over his mouth. The king stopped speaking as if slapped, and at his side the large faerie started forward, big hands curled into big fists. The king held a restraining arm before the large faerie, however, and I watched as he struggled to master himself. He breathed deeply through his nose a few times, even as the crowd grew louder and more disputatious. When he spoke next, his voice was eminently reasonable, like a man explaining to his son the simple facts of life. Then he posed the question, and my limited vocabulary informed me it was some sort of call to vote. The faerie roared at this, and started jostling and shoving as they milled about, dividing themselves into two groups, a strip of grass dividing them. I gauged the sentiment of the two groups - the one further from me looked at me with compassion and charity, as if I were a diseased mendicant. The group nearer to me, however, leered at me with ugly grins, eyes narrowed and teeth bared. A few of them jerked a single finger across their throats as they stared at me. I threw a panicked glance to the king, who was watching the assemblage impassively. The nearest group then began to chant a single, ugly word, which I gathered meant “kill”, and worked themselves into a lather. One faerie was so frenzied then he peeled off from the group and began to approach me with short, purposeful strides. What had once been possible violence had suddenly turned to very real danger. I looked at the threatening faerie with the coil of vines who stood beside me - he did not so much as bat an eye. I began to suspect I knew just where he would be standing to vote, if given the chance. The faerie came closer, and edges sharpened and colours became more vivid as adrenaline surged through me. The faerie would not be particularly intimidating if I saw him in the streets of London, I suppose. In terms of size, I still stood well over him, and he could not have weighed as much as myself. But he had the tightly controlled steps of a dancer or a fencer, and the object in his hand was one of some concern: it was a cudgel, with a dreadful amount of heft to it. He drew it back as he neared, like a batsman, and it reached the point where I had to make a decision. Either stand or run, and not much time to consider it.

The decision was taken out of my hands, however. From the corner of my eye I saw the large faerie at the side of the king pounce - he flung himself at the approaching faerie, and he tackled him, blindsiding him. It was an incredible feat of athleticism - the large faerie had cleared what seemed an impossible distance with a single leap, and now he and the smaller faerie were both picking themselves up. They scrambled to their feet like knife fighters, the smaller retaining his grip upon his club even after that tremendous impact. He took a dragging step forward and leveled a tremendous swing at the large faerie’s head. He did not even attempt to dodge the murderous swing - instead he flung up one meaty forearm to meet it, and I heard a great crack as his bone and the wood met. There was an explosion of splinters, and the club broke apart on the large faerie’s arm. He seemed utterly unaffected by the strike, and his arm was still upraised, as if the little faerie had swung at a statue instead of flesh and bone. I remember thinking that even marble might not be able to withstand the force of that swing. But there stood the big faerie, a savage grin upon his face. The little faerie seemed unsure at this point, the broken stub of his cudgel still in hand. But he was committed by now, and so he came at the big faerie again. I, and all the other open-mouthed spectator, quickly saw the folly of this decision. The big faerie crouched slightly, feet apart, into a pug’s stance. The little faerie threw a straight punch, and the big faerie bobbed, dodging under it neater than Tom Sayers himself. What followed I’d never seen in any prize fight - the big one spun, a full revolution, like a hammer-thrower, and smashed his fist back-handed into the other faerie’s ear. The little one toppled like a tree, or would have, had the big one not seized him by the throat.

 

His breathing elevated, he shook the smaller faerie like a doll, and I heard cries from both sides of the crowd. “Berwyn! Stop!” they shouted. The large faerie, Berwyn, regarded the crowd with wild eyes. He then began to speak, punctuating his discourse with savage blows to the unprotected face of the insensate faerie in his grasp. The crowd cried out, but none stepped forward to stop the drubbing. He continued to pummel him as he shouted, repeating the same phrases over and over, utterly divorced of reason.

 

I heard a sharp word from the throne. Berwyn, big fist raised over his head, looked up. The king, eyes sad, was shaking his head. Berwyn growled in disgust, and let the bloodied faerie fall to the ground. He looked at me, stock-still and shocked, then stalked off. I watched him go, wondering if my benefactor might not be more dangerous than my enemies. All around the clearing a deep silence prevailed, and then general chaos reigned. Shouts and upraised fingers were everywhere, like a particularly impassioned meeting at the House of Commons. The king did not deign to quiet any of his outraged subjects, and instead came to me, indicating we should leave. We walked, each deeply involved in our own thoughts: me of safety, and he of rule. They crossed paths, however, so I turned to him and said, “No death?”

He shook his head. “No death.”

I should have felt relief, but it appeared that his mandate was less than divine.

 

THE POLITICS OF THE FAERIE

————————–

 

The boisterous behaviours of the faerie might seem peculiar, and they certainly were unsettling to me, considering I was very nearly on the receiving end of it. But one must understand that the faerie monarchy is nothing like our own. Birthright and bloodline has nothing to do with it, as the faerie have infinite contempt for such a human idea of entitlement. A king in the faerie world must forge his own crown, sometimes through bloodshed. In the entire population of faerie, scattered all across the globe, there appears to be a king for every miserable grove of trees, a self-styled lord for every stream. The court I had stumbled upon was ruled by one of the mightier kings of all faeriedom - his territory was vast, covering much of the western section of the continent. A clannish race, they follow strength and not names, and so if a lack of strength is perceived, a king may foresee a coup in his near future. This is why I threw the king’s court into chaos, for I presented a perplexing problem. On the one hand, the faerie are mightily insular, and human eyes rarely behold their dealings. If they do, it is frequently the last thing they shall behold. On the other hand, I was to play a role in the king’s innumerable plots. So while he had a particular interest in keeping me alive (indeed, I represented a sort of windfall for him), to keep his own throat from being cut he had to strongly consider the interests of his subjects.

 

The brutality of Berwyn was particularly interesting - I discovered through painstaking interview that Berwyn was indeed the king’s son. Berwyn was a fascinating figure in the faerie politics, for he was not cut of the same cloth of his father. He was an atavism, a brutal and gory throwback to the cutthroat faerie rulers of eld. While the majority of the faerie were glad to leave behind the old days of savagery, and his father was widely celebrated, Berwyn had amassed himself a sizable, zealous backing. His retinue were much like him - young, violent, and virulently anti-human. I could tell that before long, the king would lose his ability to reign in Berwyn - the young faerie was becoming more headstrong and impetuous with each day. His motives for protecting me were still inscrutable to me at that point, and would only become clear later.

 

I was taken to court each night by the king, and my presence soon became commonplace. I was relieved by this development, as I could focus more on learning the intricacies of the language rather than worry about the continued safety of my own skin. Night after night I sat, learning as much as I could. But it was difficult, with no guide or reference, and nobody to define or clarify.

 

This difficulty was cleared up one night a few weeks later. I drowsed on the hard dirt dreaming confused half dreams of long forgotten friends and lovers.

 

“Robert.”

 

The voice sounded as if came from the surface world, a summon from the dark waters of my subconscious. I focused, mightily, and it slipped through my hands again. I drifted away, floating in the strange aether of the dreamland.

 

“Robert.”

 

My eyes cracked open. I was disoriented for a moment, lost - the dark realization of my current location came to me in a rush.

 

“Robert.” More urgent, this time. I turned my head, and there she was, sitting at the bars. Morgana.

 

She taught me their language. It was an experience fraught with half-starts and confusions, miscommunications and miscues. I will not bore you with the dreary details of that process. You need only know that I loved her.

 

I say that without hesitation or qualification - my love for her was as clear and immutable as the nature around us - unthinking, deeply mysterious, and everpresent. She would sit on the other side of the bars, and I would mirror her, our shoulders touching, lightly leaning on the other, feeling the charge within the other. Just looking at her, my heart grew enormous, swollen with tenderness, raw with unalloyed emotion. When she spoke, she had a habit of gazing off into the middle distance as she worked through her thoughts, and I could gaze at her without guarding my eyes. In those moments I was enraged at the bars that separated us, at the great distance between our hearts. And yet I kept silent, and nodded assent, taking pains to follow her.

 

I did not know if my feelings were reciprocated, for Morgana had a deep, abiding fascination with all things human. Her interest might have been purely anthropological, as mine was for the great majority of her species.

 

“Tell me, Robert,” she said to me, when my tongue had become smooth and easy with her language, “have you ever loved another?”

 

I sat in silence. There had been a young lady, a long time ago. “Yes,” I answered.

 

She turned her head ever so slightly towards me, her eyes glittering an inquiry. “What is it like?”

 

I drew a deep breath, a whole mass of declarations and endearments and heart-felt oaths struggling to make their way to my tongue. In the end, I simply said, “It hurts, Morgana.”

 

“Hurts? Does it hurt like a cut?”

 

“No. It’s an ache, an emptiness… a missing space that can only be filled by them.”

 

“Your love sounds lonely.”

 

I laughed at that, bitter. “Look at where I am - it is a lonely existence.”

 

Her silence was eloquent, and I stared at my hands, embarrassed. There was a faint rustling, and then her delicate hand slipped through the bars. I enfolded it in my own, that terrible burden of love making her hand heavy in mine.

 

“Tell me about this girl you loved, Robert.”

 

I paused, unsure of how to proceed. Her comfortable silence drove me onward, however. “Her name was Lilith. And for a long time, I could think of no one else. When she laughed… when she laughed it was like a bird escaping a cage, unintended, perfect in its liberation. Do you understand what I am trying to say?”

 

She shook her head in mock woe. “No, Robert. I don’t know what it means to be in love.”

 

I squeezed her hand, faintly, as if to say, “give it time.”

 

Our meetings occurred nightly, as she came to receive from me a taste of the human world, and I to receive ambrosia. My sleep after she left was tormented, her scent and the feeling of her proximity taunting me as I lay utterly alone on my earthen bed. My nights were tormented, but in the day she faded from my mind, only to return with even more stunning force the next evening. Sleep came as a relief, a shroud drawn over my face, hiding her from me. And yet I know she was there, somewhere.

 

When Morgana came to me next, she was running, a breathless grin on her face. I, in an attitude of pristine solitude, with knees drawn up and wrists resting easily atop them, stood to meet her, an unconscious mirroring of her ebullience. We met at the bars, standing perhaps closer than would be proper. She tilted her head up to regard me, and I nearly lost myself.

 

“Come, Robert.”

 

“Where?” I asked her.

 

“It’s festival night.” Without another word she wrapped her hands around the root bars, and worked the same trick her father hand. They turned to vines in her grasp, and I stepped out underneath the open sky.

 

“Take me there,” I said, offering her my elbow. She stared at it with some curiosity. I laughed and took her arm in one hand, showing her where to place it. She seemed singularly delighted by this, and we walked arm in arm. “Is this how the finest ladies walk through the streets of London, Robert?”

 

“Far more gracelessly, yes.”

 

She was silently flattered by the compliment, and so we walked. My feet grew lighter and lighter - I felt at any moment I might take to the sky, my bones hollowed, filled with something lighter than air.

 

We came to the clearing where the dance was in progress. My breath left me for a moment - the place was transformed. Strung all through the trees, glowed faerie lights, like lost stars, faintly lambent, their light setting ethereal fire to a cheek, a smile, a pair of eyes. At the side there stood the band, the little fellow with his pipe and a similarly diminutive band at his back, sawing on delicately crafted fiddles, blowing at strange woodwinds, their eyes focused and distant, in holy communion with that lost place where music is born. The music! It moved like a butterfly, weaving through the dark night sky with scarce contained euphoria. The dancers were all barefoot, small feet floating over the long grass, their legs a blur, their bodies melding and becoming one as they spun and wheeled through space. I stood, intensely foreign at the edge of it, watching the fluid eddies and sway of their motion swirl before me. Morgana looked upon it with joy, then tugged at my hand.

 

“Let us dance, Robert.” I looked at her uncertainly - I was reasonably practiced at the stiff waltzes of the peerage’s balls, but this? This was joy wrought in wild arms and limbs, the ecstasy that erases all imperfection, the thoughtless and unconscious magic of motion, of connection. I was not of this world. She tugged at me again, and her lips twisted upward, her smile mysterious in the light.

 

“Fear not, human - I won’t let you drown.”

 

And so I followed her into the dance, she leading me on into the crush of bodies. As we wended through their frenzied orbits, ducked past their outflung limbs, I felt the rhythm of the dance pervading me, that faerie magick setting my limbs afire. We came to stand at the center of it all, and it seemed we stood in a lacuna, in an enchanted circle that none could enter but us. And we stood there, separate. Slowly, I put out my hands, palm up, an invitation. And with the pace of poetry, her hands slipped into mine.

 

And we danced. I feared I might not keep up with her, but I learned that night that I would follow wherever she went. In the heat of the dance my love for her was set ablaze, white-hot, reforged into something adamantine; I tried to see it within her eyes. In the end, they remained inscrutable. Suddenly, the music halted, and the dancers came to a rest like tops winding down. I looked about, disappointed - and then the band began again, and the dancers switched partners. I lost Morgana, and danced with a new faerie, her hair long and red as a sunset. During those dances, I felt the first mooring come loose. It was almost unnoticeable, but the purity of this faerie world… the streets of London seemed a great distance away indeed. I was just turning to a new partner when a hand gripped my shoulder. I turned, and Morgana was wriggling in between two other faerie. She jerked her head, and we escaped the revelry, breaking through the storm of dancing and into the eerie stillness outside the clearing. Stepping lightly, she lead me into the woods. I followed, mind filled with clamorous thoughts and the faerie music still fading in my ears. She stopped, and I stopped as well. Without looking at me, she raised her arm, pointing at some distant point past the trees.

“Do you know what you can find there, Robert?” She still was not looking at me. I followed her line of sight, into the darkened trees.

“No.”

“Home,” she said, turning to face me. A silent war raged in her eyes. “Your home.”

I received this information equivocally. “What are you saying?”

She stepped closer to me. “Run,” she said.

I looked once more at where she had pointed - my life was waiting for me. All I had to do was flee and reclaim it. But…

 

I took her by the shoulders, and stared into her eyes. “I can’t do that.”

 

“Then you’re a fool,” she said, shaking off my grasp. She fled back towards the music, and I stood still for a moment, torn between two worlds. Then I hurried after the sound of her retreat. The woods were dark, and I might be lost.

 

The word of this encounter reached the king’s ears. I knew not how it did, though I imagined Morgana told him. He came to my cage the next night, and asked me very simply, “Why did you not run, human?”

 

I met his eyes and shrugged, unable to say the true reason. He nodded, accepting my secrecy. “I took one of your kind for a lover once. She went mad, here among the faerie. Humans are rarely fit to live with us. You understand why?”

 

I nodded.

 

“You don’t. Not yet. But you will learn.”

 

He rose from the crouch he had been interrogating me from, and swiped a hand across the roots, knuckles knocking against the wood. And at each contact, they turned green. I stood, and watched with some astonishment as he set about ripping down the vines. Destruction complete, he motioned me outside.

 

“This prison is unnecessary - I suspect you have fashioned one of your own that is far stronger than anything I could devise.”

 

He left me without another word.

 

I was left free to roam about as I so chose after that encounter, and I took the opportunity to take the measure of the faerie people - I wandered among them, pestering them with questions and learning of their daily existence. I regularly attended court at night, and the great meal thereafter. My presence stirred less and less controversy each time, or so it appeared, until I became as much a part of the scenery as the trees that constituted the terrain. Or so I thought - the reality was far more sinister.

 

With mastery of the language, the faerie court became a fascinating stage for intrigue of all variety. One may very accurately understand the nature of a people if they examine what concerns them politically - just as we Europeans are greatly taken with nationalist zeal of late, so too do they fret about the state of the Faerie nation, particularly the territory of it.

 

One does not realize at first just how large the faerie kingdoms can be - much like a single wolf that ranges over a territory of twenty some miles, the faerie sprawl unseen across the landscape. But more and more, humans were appearing in their ancestral forests.

 

The nightly feast was a spectacle in cuisine. I was seated at the head table, well within earshot of the royal family and whoever they were feting on that particular evening. Worn trestle tables groaned under the weight of a cornucopia of food, a verdant hodgepodge of shoots, tubers, fruits, berries, leaves, grasses, fish, and stranger delicacies. I sat beside Morgana and Berwyn, under the pretense of showing the siblings how one ate properly at table. A complete paucity of utensils of any variety made this largely a pantomime act, and Berwyn shook his head as I explained to him the different varieties of forks.

 

“Your hands, human - what’s wrong with your hands?”

I sat back - Berwyn was difficult to gauge in disposition - he was mercurial as a summer rainstorm, transitioning abruptly between blind rage and a bluff sort of good humor.

 

“Utensils are the price one must pay to have the privilege of living under a roof.”

 

“Roofs!” he guffawed. “That’s the problem with your kind - you’ve forgotten what it is to live under the stars. What sort of creature hides in a cave all day?”

 

“They’re not much like caves at all - they’re quite well-lit.”

 

Berwyn waved a dismissive hand. “They tell me the dwarves have quite cheery little rats nests, too. This does not make it an acceptable manner of life.”

 

I cocked an eyebrow at Morgana. She shook her head, tilting a stone cup of spring water to her lips. I reapplied myself to the blueberries, and wondered if Berwyn was telling the truth about there being dwarves. I took a look around myself and found it more and more feasible.

 

The king gave a general call to order. The diners quieted down, and turned expectant eyes towards him.

 

“If I might have a moment of your time,” he asked. It was quite fascinating - it was truly a question among the faerie, and only after receiving a general wave of grudging assent did the king continue. “I should like to introduce our guest of honor this evening - at my right hand is Crose, famed Talent and master of The Unseeing Grove.”

 

The seated faerie stood to be recognized. I had seen him before, I thought. His appearance was certainly unique - he wore an outmoded jacket, in the fashions of the previous century, and of an entirely unorthodox material. Instead of cloth, his jacket was created of matted oak leaves - he looked rather like a bipedal bush, and his bristling mane of twig-like hair only reinforced this impression. His skin was the color and texture of weatherbeaten leather, and his lips were a bright red, perhaps stained from that fine strawberry cordial the faerie were so adept at brewing. His nose was imperious, aquiline, and jutted from sunken cheeks. Most unsettling was the faerie’s eyes. Rather his eye. For one socket was empty, gaping, a shadowy pit. The other eye was sharp as the king’s own, and was the color of new grass. I leaned close to Morgana. “What happened to his other eye?”

 

“His domain, the Unseeing Grove, has a title that is rather… what is your word? ironic,” she said. I asked her what she meant.

 

She drank again, and leaned close as a conspiracy. “He controls the trees, and it is said that eyes hang from the boughs like heavy fruit.”

 

“She does not lie,” Berwyn whispered. “I have seen those trees - unnatural. But those are only the outer trees - no one knows what the inner look like.” I watched the faerie with his intense gaze and peculiar raiment acknowledge the other faerie, and sit down sharply. I forgot about him for a time as Berwyn regaled us with one of his outrageous tales, perhaps more exaggerated than James’ own yarns.

 

Later, as the food disappeared and the kings thoughts turned to rule, he quietly asked Crose what news of the outer environs.

 

“The humans come.” I felt the heat of his words and his gaze on my neck. I turned to see him staring at me, morosely cracking a walnut.

 

“To what purpose?”

 

“One of their… logging camps.” He said it like a curse, and now all the faerie were looking at me, as humanity’s representative. The king, perhaps sensing an opportunity to curry favor with his subjects, cleared his throat.

 

“Tell me, Robert - when does it end?”

 

I set down the leaf of lettuce I was worrying at, and met his eyes. “End? What do you mean?”

 

“This… greed. The rapacity of it all, always taking, destroying, consuming. When does it stop?”

 

I shrugged, defensive. “It doesn’t. It’s a stone rolling downhill, and when there’s no more hill, it’ll stop.”

 

The faerie murmured angrily at this, but I could not stop myself. “What difference does it make? Man was never intended to scrape out an existence at the mercy of nature.”

 

This drew catcalls and jeers. The king drew himself up, and pointed a stern finger at me. “Our people and yours, we are both children of the earth. Only I fear you have forgotten your mother.”

 

This drew approval from the crowd, and king nodded curtly, his objective achieved. I spread my hands helplessly - what is one to do when politicians push you about like a pawn on a chessboard? After dinner, the king beckoned me to his side. I went, reluctantly, and we strolled away from the dispersing crowd.

 

“It was neatly done, I’ll give you that,” I said.

 

He sighed. “Such is the price of keeping the masses happy, Robert. I’m sure you understand.”

 

“Too well.”

 

“You sensed their discontent, yes?” he asked me. I nodded my agreement, and he continued. “This indignance has been growing for months, like a tumor. I fear this new encroachment upon our lands might send our already precarious position to the breaking point.”

 

“You desire peace, then.”

 

“Of course, Robert. Peace is the highest goal one can attempt, faerie or human. I fear my own people have forgotten this.”

 

I idly picked at a nail. “Is that all you fear?”

 

He laughed. “If a sovereign does not fear, he is oblivious - rule over the faerie is a precarious business.”

 

“And yet something must have driven you to accept the burden of that crown.”

 

“This?” He removed the slim wooden circlet from his brow, turning it over in his hands. “Once, I suppose. I was much like Berwyn, in days long past.” I nodded at this, and he stared blankly into the distance. “Perhaps it is a sprite’s object, a sprite’s desire. An old faerie such as myself - I wonder if it is worth it.”

 

“And in the event of a coup, you would abdicate to spare bloodshed?”

 

The king laughed sadly, and carefully replaced the crown on his skull. “No. A crown is not given, Robert - it is taken.”

 

I was silent in the face of such a belief, the bloody glories required to win that crown evident in his eyes. “I’m certain you had another purpose for me aside from bemoaning the pains of the monarch,” I probed.

 

His eyes searched the middle distance, aimless for a moment. “Ah! Yes, I did,” he said.

 

I wondered precisely how old he was - he had the unlined brow and cheeks of all his kind, and it marked them ageless.

 

“Crose has taken some interest in you. He wondered if you might grant him an interview?”

 

“An interview about what?”

 

“That point remains unclear - Crose is quite secretive when it comes to the matter of his studies in the arcane. I trust it shall not be too much trouble.”

 

I agreed, out of curiosity. The king lead me to his personal quarters.