(c) Nin Harris 2010

Millah watched, not without sympathy, as the hapless anthropologist trudged away from her door, his shoulders slumped. He was the third one this week to visit her since the last Ferahian ship arrived on the docks just beyond the Mycologos Protectorate. He would probably be back again tomorrow. She had no idea how or why the Ferahian vessel had picked them up, but, being dedicated ethnographers, they had lost no time in trying to find out more about the city-state. After all, who could resist a multi-ethnic metropolis that had grown around a colony of oversized mushrooms, turned into houses by both humans and non-humans alike? A mushroom colony! How quaint!

Anthropologists who believed they had discovered Faerie were no different from those explorers who had traversed the continents of Asia or Africa centuries past. Millah should know, being one of the more senior members of the city-state who had arrived on Lumen Procellae from Asia, or Africa, or even South America. Somehow, the salient fact of their inherent diversity or their hybrid human population was always overlooked. Somehow, they were always misread as being Continental or even, heaven forbid, medieval!

She remembered a travel-piece she had helped to proof-read by a hippie backpacker, sometime in the late `70s. He had been floundering about the Protectorate, taking instant photographs which were always turning up blank. He wasn’t exactly the smartest human to visit the Protectorate, but he had been rather good-looking in the dishevelled, pseudo-intellectual hippie way that turned her on. Also, she was bored. The backpacker, who was a medievalist by profession in the real world raved in the pamphlet about a “glimpse into the idyllic market places of faerieland”, using various fantastical superlatives. He did not even acknowledge the fact that the proof-reader that he had been happily coupling with nightly for a week was unequivocally a golden brown business woman from South East Asia with a razor-sharp tongue and business acumen enough to have a tiny empire on an island on the edge of the Known World. Her daughter’s father, an addled mathematician who had somehow discovered Lumen Procellae through someone’s unattended laboratory, was no different. He had drifted into her life as dreamily as he had drifted out of it and she was quite sure he had never quite registered the corporeal fact of her existence or the fact that if one did not use protection, even in Faerie, there would be by-blows.

Manfred had ranted about these “wankers who think we’re Fantasy bleeding Island with funny midgets” to her more than once, but she had to admit, they did have a full cast of fantastic creatures, enough to cause cynics to snicker at their predicament. Manfred was one of them. A Tomcatting Fae with the ears to match and a seductive smile to lure the more naive of their female visitors. Some days, just watching the street outside her comfortable home was enough to make her see screaming capitol letters on artfully aged pamphlets. Faerie creatures by the gross! Pirates! Mermaids! Why, even drunken poets, as well. You couldn’t avoid them, or the beatnik artists, or the pretentious performers who quoted Artaud and Brecht as they copulated in dingy cafes. The Mycologos was no different from any place where sentient creatures congregated, actually. They were as much a part of Lumen bloody Procellae as were her sunburnt Ferahian pirates and her Nepalese friends who ran the best confectionary syndicate this side of Faerie.

Detailing the actual and exact racial composition of the Protectorate was a delicate thing. It was also a mess that she wouldn’t wish on any Anthropologist. Not the one who had rang her doorbell earlier, not the one that she had very efficiently taken care of the week before. She had to admit, ethnographers made for the best fertilizers, better than mathematicians or astrophysicists. Her neighbours would be well-fed on her banquets for months as a result of the garden’s yield.

This is a story fragment that is from the Watermaidens novel-in-progress. It no longer fits within the novel but will be reworked into another short story at some point. Consider this the backstory, or supporting scene. A lot of the work I’ve done on Domus Exsulis involves setting up different frames of narration against and behind each other.

(c) Nin Harris 2009

The Arbitrator is in a fuzzy, deep blue bathrobe today, his close-cropped red hair wet as if he has just come out of a bath. He invites me into his home in the South-Eastern Wing of Domus Exsulis, a sturdy retreat built of wood and set atop tall pillars of timber. If I move out of the leadlight adorned doors which open from ceiling to floor, I will be on the hexagonal deck which looks out across the fens to the south, the Mishgalaveri Mountains towards the west. I watch as his eyes widen at how I have changed. I am no longer the voluptuous, dusky-skinned Ferahian scribe and researcher who visited him on odd evenings.

“Yildie, what a pleasant surprise,” he says, a hint of doubt in his voice as he takes my clammy and webbed hands in his big, warm ones.

“More of a surprise than it is pleasant, I am sure,” I say to him, some bitterness and insecurity entering my voice. He laughs, and runs his fingers through my hair, which has grown silky and wild.

“You look like a watermaiden now, my dear, but still you. This is indeed quite amazing. Quite, quite amazing. I have not seen you since the incident with…Conrad. Was that his name?”

“Yes, him.”

I shiver and remove my hands from his warmth, my movements abrupt and jerky. I move towards the leadlight sliding doors and look at the grotesque panel-work on them. They make me feel sick tonight with the scenes of bestial debauchery. I push them apart, the disjointed and rusty protest of the sliding mechanism telling me that I have been too violent.

“Yes, do get some fresh air outside, love. I will be with you shortly. Must get decent for you, mustn’t I?”

Outdoors, the balmy breeze from Alta Exsilii caresses my merling cheeks. It is twilight; I lean my head back against the wood of the wall as I listen to the dragons rumbling overhead. They call still for their queen who is lost in the forest of dreaming. I suppose she would have lost her name as well. Names are a manner in which we lose ourselves, our identities. I say as much to The Arbitrator as he joins me with two full pewter goblets of pinot noir. I accept the proffered goblet, carved with ornate detail and studded with blood-red rubies as he sits down beside me, wearing faded corduroys and a thick black sweater, for it is getting cold. I watch his sharp features and his long, smooth-shaved jaw as his lips move.

“Names are one way in which we can have our selves defined and stolen. But I think what is far more important are the stories behind those names. And this is even more true of storytellers. Why, when you think of it, this entire isle is made up of stories. So, story-theft becomes something so deep, so hurtful that even magic suffers.”

“Story-theft? How is that even possible?”

The Arbitrator taps his nose, carefully and swirls the wine in his goblet.

“I have another ‘name’,” he says, as he lifts the goblet to his lips and drinks. I watch the movement of his throat as he drinks, and still wonder why he fascinates me so, when I know that part of what he does involves being merciless.

“Do I want to know this name?” I ask, not even feigning my apprehension, not even joking about it. He smiles at me a little.

“It is harmless enough. I am the Story Wizard, guardian of a rather arcane cult connected to the craft of storytelling.”

“Since when does storytelling require a Wizard?”

“It does when it is the sacred art of storytelling which goes hand in hand with ritual. There are many storytelling wizards, and then there are Story Wizards, who arbitrate.”

“Go slow, you’re confusing me.”

“One of the things a storyteller learns when he starts is that there are no new stories. And yet, there are new tellings, new variations. But because there are no new stories, proving that there is story-theft can be a difficult thing. This is where magic comes in. This is where I come in.”

The Arbitrator says this slowly as he finishes the last of his wine, I lean towards him, intrigued by what he’s telling me but also by the man himself.

“So a Story Wizard performs a form of magical arbitration?”

I wonder what Freya would think of that, remembering her struggles with both Finora’s and the Orphée’s stories. He smile at me, a questioning expression in his face as he says,

“Precisely.”

I shrug at him, knowing he wants to know what is on my mind, but unwilling to share.

Instead, I ask,

”And this goes back to the cost of arbitration that you’ve told me about?”

He smiles a little; I know he can tell that I am hiding things from him. It is not usually the case between us, but things have changed since I lost my hand. Things have changed in the main Manse as well, between Kieran and me. A particularly loud dragon roars a battle roar. The leadlight panes on The Arbitrator’s doors rattle a little.

“Most storytellers would suffer in silence rather than come to me for arbitration. It involves digging deep into the invisible latticework of stories, appropriation atop of appropriation. It may be that the numen called up to judge the stories may decide that our complainant is a story thief himself or herself. He or she could stand to lose not just their reputation, but their lives. Or worse, sometimes, even the ability to make stories.”

“That sounds rather harsh and unfair.”

He strokes my watermaiden hair and whispers in my ear,

“But nothing is ever fair. Didn’t we already establish this?”

Something about him makes me want to push him away today. And then I realize that this is the first time I’ve seen him since I was maimed by Conrad in the woods. Perhaps, something about him reminds me of Conrad. Or perhaps my watermaiden senses are now rendered nauseous by the warm, meaty smell of human male, even if he is several centuries old and magical to boot. I place the pewter goblet carefully on the polished, hardwood floor, and stand.

“I have to go,” I say. He stands up too, visibly displeased.

“Must you?” He takes my hand, and says,

“I have not told you yet about the storyteller who braved the odds because she felt aggrieved enough.”

I stiffen.

“And what did you do to her?”

My sentence is taut with tension, the implication of power behind his stories had never troubled me before. But today, it does.

“What did I do to her? Why I was quite magnanimous, my dear. I let her go! I did not punish her for being so bold.”

“What do you mean, by that? Was there not a cost of arbitration?”

“There always is a cost. But we found that, like in Hamlet, sometimes there are other ways to trap the conscience of an errant king or storyteller.”

I am riveted, despite myself.

“Will you not say more?”

The Arbitrator smiles at me.

“What, can you not guess already?”

Despite myself I allow him to fill my goblet again with pinot noir.

I have removed Learie’s novella from Lumen Procellae, but have yet to decide on the fate of Kieran’s tale.

(c) Nin Harris 2007

Yildie Speaks:

“So, you’re from the Mycologos, eh?” he says.

His stance is belligerent as he takes in my form, slouched outside the doorway of the House of Exiles. This Ogre loves the people of the Protectorate not, I suspect.

“Born and bred there, sir.”

“If that be the case, what are you doing here? Don’t you people want independence from Domus Exsulis?”

“Not quite, if by that you mean the Caretaker and the Guardian before him have ever ruled us. But they never have. The Guardian was never like that,” I protest.

The Ogre laughs, obviously amused by what he perceives to be my naivety.

“So sure, are you?”

“Very. If she ruled here, the Wild Hunt,” and here I stop, bravado running out; tears choke my voice.

He considers me,

“What have they done?”

“Taken them all. My parents, siblings, all of them. Razed our home to the ground.”

He opens the door wider.

“Here now, why’d they do a thing like that? They normally hunt their prey in the woods. Individually.”

“They’ve become bolder. Venturing into the Protectorate. Some say it’s Jezemiah Irlinus’s doing.”

The Ogre raises an eyebrow, saying,

“They’ve been blaming old Jezemiah for anything and everything that goes wrong in the Protectorate for decades now. Old news. Give the old scarecrow a break.”

I shrug, because I know that Jezemiah’s bad news, no matter how you choose to paint it.

“So? Have you come to report this to the Caretaker? Come in, then.”

I step inside, shivering a little as I pass his immense, purple-hued form. They never had Ogres back home in Ferahia, and my family has not been in Lumen Procellae for longer than a generation.

They used to call it StormLight when I was younger, but now the name has vanished from all the signs, thanks to the Caretaker and his Latin studies. Many resent this, but I remain intrigued. Books and textual obscurities are part of my inherited skills. My father used to be a Librarian in Ferahia, before the sea reclaimed great chunks of the City by the Sea.

The Half-Drowned City is what the Ferahian pirates call it now. And who knows what brought the sea? Perhaps I know, or suspect a little. I have even met her, when I was a child. They’d blame it all on her the way we blame it all on Jezemiah. I have visited with the Sirens of Alta Exsilii often, hoping they would give me hints of what occurred in my homeland. I do not think they like me enough. Perhaps it is because I am not a boy, but a scrawny woman instead.

And so I find myself here, at the house that was once the Guardian’s but which is now run by the Caretaker. I am here out of a desperate hope that he remembers me, for I have nowhere else to go, now.

(c) Nin Harris 1998-2009

It is a little bit like a rumour, this hidden part of the realm.

The vision of it will come to you distorted, the truth blurred by the murky water, the mists and the vegetation. Not unlike the coy downward swoop of eyelashes attempting to hide away the secrets of the owner.

It is slightly repelling, like the damp scent of mould on forgotten books you uncover in a secondhand book store; strayed into like a lost kitten, feeling a vague need to uncover something out of the rubble. It is the feeling that something momentous hovers just out of your grasp, if only you could break past the nausea of your thoughts and fears.

What spirits are dancing in the dappled water? What desires hide from your comprehension – slightly musty from misuse like those books, slightly mildewed from inattention?

It is as exciting as that banned book that you know you shouldn’t have discovered and probably shouldn’t read. But you dive into its depths anyway, no matter how tentative that first step may be.

It repels yet at the same time attracts because it is forbidden – and because it is powerful.

Would you view the lagoon? Picture yourself wrapped in the green foliage that hides it from view, this misty realm at the southernmost tip of this faerie isle.

Picture yourself blinded by curtains of of light interspersed with shadows – feel your clothes getting damp as you wade through the water, the splashing sounds lapping at your ankle, while something feathers the air around your ears, like the whisper of a co-conspirator all. Splash deep into a waiting velvet night of thoughts shoved deep within the dungeons of your soul: unsaid and uncared for, mildewed and sluggish and yet so compelling.

You were so sure they were discarded in distaste from the recesses of your mind weren’t you? The unknown, the forbidden, the unthought of. You thought you had gotten rid of them and clung to that belief as hard as you could. Yes, the earth is flat, a voice whispers mockingly at you now.

Yes, the sun rotates around the earth.

Somewhere within all of us there are winding dark pathways into ripples and ripples of consciousness. Rather like the cool green waters of a mossy lake. Somewhere within those ripples, a long body of scaly green weaves its way towards some unknown destination. The roar of its hurt and pain is yours. Its heartbeat is your heartbeat and it throbs and throbs within your secret soul. Somewhere in the dark, dark night of your consciousness, a wounded beast curls and nestles around its neglected hurts and writhes.

Into the deepest corners of the deepest holes we bury these fears, these insecurities, bury it under leagues and leagues of murky water while priding ourselves on our ability to wade back to the safe, clear shallow waters. How many nights and how many years have we been deceiving our secret selves? How many empty hours have you signed yourself in for?

You blink, and open the pages of a forgotten tome.

I push my hands into my windbreaker, and walk against the frisky breeze coming from the sea. The sea is very comforting, even when it angers onto the reefs with crashing momentum because it seems so normal to me, and believe me, normal becomes strange when you’ve been around some of these kooks here on StormLight. Now, don’t look at me like that! I’m not talking about the indigenes, you know.

No, it’s the wackos who think they’re on to some kind of Disneyland for adults, who traipse about woodland and dell as though the sight of the indigenes would be enough to spark off some deep epiphany that could cure every kind of hurt conceivable. I don’t know who’s selling them that spiel or how they’re getting here, but they are. I don’t know, maybe I’m a snob or some kind of purist, but this place is special! Or it should be. I think I’m digressing a lot here, but you seem halfway decent, and have this air of being an old-time emigre like me, so you must excuse me. Now, where was I?

Oh yes, walking down the beach. The Sea of Exiles is how some of these people have found us. Others tripped in here using not so wholesome means, like acid, or worst. Some never make it back out. But the Sea of Exiles is the main connector, y’know? Sometimes whole ships disappear out of that other world and make it here. That’s when some of the more enterprising indigenes come in, resettling the new arrivals and dismantling the ships. Some of them get back home, except they don’t remember where they’ve been and don’t remember where they’re from. Poor bastards. Some of them stay here, or take one of the portal to other worlds. Me? I’m a bona fide emigre and you’ll find out more how that happened if I don’t digress from this story. Sorry- I’ve never been much of a storyteller.

*

So the waves are crashing and I’m wondering where the sirens are, when I hear the sound of a wood flute being played. I turn around and it’s my friend the faun. I smile at him and walk closer to listen to his song. It sounds vaguely familiar and for some reason that strikes me as a cliche. I listen a little and that I realize why.

“Debussy?” I enquire quizzically.

The faun winks at me, and continues. I lean back against the same rock that he is leaning on, and listen to him play even as I enjoy the sound of the surf and the bite of the breeze. The breeze near the coast is always spunky. It isn’t gentle, even when it isn’t harsh. There always is some kind of bite to it. I think that is part of the reason why I’ve always gravitated towards coastal towns back there, y’know? I used to be quite enterprising as well as inventive. Had patents in everything. You may have even seen me on the home shopping channels a time or two. It got both of my kids through college. Those kids were my achievements too, except they never believed, not like me. Looking at the teenybopper faerie-loving brigades springing up everywhere these days, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Sure I’m cynical but y’know, those believers just irk me. Yes, sorry, I’m running away from the tale again.

As he plays, I notice a pair of slender, webbed hands reaching out towards a huge chunk of protruding reef directly before us and one of those sirens pushes herself up, mother-naked, unless you count that gemlike tail she possesses. She looks straight at our friend the faun, as he plays, and seems to sway in time with the music. I’ll give you this, if I wasn’t straight as a ruler, I’d be attracted to those sirens too, but I’m more interested in the way our friend plays Debussy. So we three kind of are together in companiable silence, except that the siren is separated from us by a stretch of feisty waves. He ends his piece and waves at the siren. I’ve known her for awhile, too. Almost as long as I’ve known him, but he doesn’t know that. She slides back into the ocean again.

*

I shake out a packet of chewing gum I bought off one of the newer emigres and offer him a stick. He takes it and we chew together for awhile.

“Why don’t you react the same way?” he asks me, as he carefully wraps the gum back into its paper casing and places it into the knapsack slung across his back.

“The same way as what? to what?” I ask

“To me, to the rest of us- like the rest of the humans”

I snort rudely.

“Do not be so uncharitable, Millah. Not everyone can be you” he says, smilingly.

” I know- but some of these flakes are unbelievable!”

“Even more unbelievable than our existence? I’ve noticed that about you. You’re never surprised. You don’t try to theorize or explain why we exist. Why is that?”

*

“Well, what’s the use in all that? You’re there, and that’s that. Who’s theorizing about who, now?”

My faun smiles to himself.

“Cardion the Centaur would laugh himself silly over the irony in that sentence, milady,” he says, and bows half-mockingly to me, before continuing.

“You know, you’ve always been a puzzle to us. Sort of a mystery. You just stepped off a yacht here as coolly as though we were a new town you decided to visit. You’ve befriended us, but we don’t seem to be magical to you,”

“Oh, but you are,” I say, and my voice softens.

“But no more magical than childbirth, as painful as that was.”

“No more magical than my first kiss or the first time one of my inventions sold.”

“Why are you here then?”

“What, you think this island is only for exiles?” My eyes fix on him and I smile.

“I’ve had a long, and happy life. I just decided this was the best place to retire. I’m not running from anything. Just wanted to come home.”

“Home?”

*

“I grew up here, you know,” I state matter-of-factly even as I watch his eyes. He stares into mine with intent eyes. Recognition flickers. I smile at him and remove the gum I’ve been chewing. 12 years since my last drag of cigarette and counting.

“When I first saw you I thought I was in Narnia, you know,”

“You thought I was Tumnus the Faun?”

“You’re unusually well-read for a creature of fancy,” I remark, even as I watch his beautiful fingers play with the flute. He smiles at me,

“You’re the little girl the mermaids rescued!”

“That would be me! And you’re much sexier than Tumnus ever was!”
He eyes me.

“How long were you with us?” he asks now, as I breathe in the salt-laced air in content.

“Long enough to call this home- the only true home I’ve ever known”, I tell him, and laugh aloud at the memory of the foolish child I had always been. My memory trails back to the time when I fell out of my father’s boat, enthralled as he was by the singing of the mermaids.

I remember Her, the strange mermaid who cradled me in her arms, floating me upwards as she sang to me. I remember them rescuing my father and me again when we were caught in an angry storm. They had brought us both back here. That was a long time ago, but strangely enough, it seems as though no time has passed at all. Now, I smile and take the Faun’s hand as we stare out at the Sea of Exiles. Life is good here. It is enough, for me to know this.

“So, do you know any Ravel?”

I ask my Faun now. He smiles, and plays for me.

(c) Nin Harris 2003

(From The Guardian’s Journal)

(continue reading…)

(From The Guardian’s Journal)

All around this island is Alta Exsilii – at times covered with mist, others reflecting the rays of the sun in lucent ripples, or undulating beneath a restless moon. Infinite in all her tempests and wisdom, she swirls around us.

I have been drawn to these waters all my life. When I stare out at the sea, it washes clear all thoughts, all confusion. Even when I am far from her, during those quiet, predawn hours when I can feel my soul breathe – I can feel the currents beat within me, point and counterpoint. It is a secret language feathering into my ears. It is my bloodstream , bolstering my painful movements through this heavy air with the knowledge that the secret salt waters of my unconscious lap around my ankle, nourishing me with the sustenance every exile needs.

I often view them while walking down from my home of many names and none.

They guard the reef and ever so often come up to bask in the lightning that brings both beauty and terror to this hidden world. These sirens with their seaweed coloured hair adorned with sea-shells that glint in the sunlight live in the horror stories and most erotic fantasies of fishermen. Their voice, they say is enough to draw you willingly towards your doom. But to me they are a part of the landscape, no less beautiful, no less deadly. And now I breathe in the soul-nourishing air of the beach, redolent with fishy and salty smells in that peculiar combination you can only find here. Anyone who loves the sea and has been too far away from it will know. That precise moment during your journey when the air carries the first whiff of it and you feel the tingle of excitement that tells you are almost there…

A cresting of the waves a few miles away attracts my attention. A grey hump emerges, then disappears back into the waves. A large tail will beat at the waves, causing a huge splash, before disappearing into Alta Exsilii.

It is now time.

Walking into the waves, I will wade till my feet cannot feel the ground, then I will dive – deep down. I feel satisfaction-profound and as intense as anticipation. My body will change as I develop fins, and gills. Slowly as I explore the world beneath the waters – this other world will apprehend me – this Kingdom that lies within Alta Exsilii.