(c) Nin Harris 2010, based on ideas and concepts that form the backbone of The Caretaker’s Tale (c)1997 – the present. All rights reserved.

It is perhaps axiomatic to the point of cliche that beings who would choose to settle in a glade of oversized mushrooms also possess a keen appreciation for strange stories. Was that not how most of them found their way across Alta Exsilii? Exiles dream harder and more fiercely than any other type of humans, because dreams mean so much more to those without a physical anchor. There are bookstores for many different kinds of dreams and obsessions in the Protectorate, but Grisette’s little bookstore was visited only by the most occult and the most covert. She liked to call herself a were-cat, but in truth she was a woman in a catsuit, with an enticing feline mask covering the top part of her face. They were lovingly stitched together by her assistant Lillian, a tiny Cambodian woman who helped her with book-keeping, tea-making as well as costume-making.

The costume-making was a hobby and passion for both of them, and took place after hours, in their shared flat on the bookstore’s second and top floor. They would drink chrysanthemum tea sweetened with rock sugar, and eat delicate, translucent riceflour dumplings stuffed with bamboo shoots and shrimp as well as pao stuffed with mushroom, herbs and chicken, while listening to music playing from a record player. Ignoring the scratch of vinyl and the skips in some songs, they would talk about their literary and occultic acquisitions, gossip about their neighbours, and reminisce, half-heartedly about the lives they had left behind. Grisette herself had escaped servitude as a book-clerk in a branch of an international chain. She could never quite remember the details of how she arrived on Lumen Procellae, nor could she remember exactly how she managed to connive, consolidate and strategize enough to become the most occultic bookseller in the whole island. But succeed she did, and if perhaps she had made one too many bargains etched in her own blood, who could fault her? Was she not helping in the study and advancement of the arcane arts? Was it not partly due to this that major citizens of the Protectorate had succeeded in making this Glade an independent city-state within a storm-lashed isle of dreams?

Commerce was the backbone of every world, Grisette thought to herself, as she pulled the elegant pashmina shawl around her shoulders, feeling a little more on edge today than usual. A pleasant afternoon breeze shivered the lace curtains veiling the open window, but it felt almost wintry to Grisette’s nervous pores. Alas, the werecat was not nearly furred enough to be immune to both the change of seasons or the onset of a very human fear. She had both the pride and the apprehension of being the only bookseller who had actually seen Jezemiah Irlinus’s face. Not that this was something to boast about. Even Lilian, her elegant assistant had no inkling of this, assuming that only the Nepali boys had been given the job of delivering books to his doorstep. Some books were too precious for couriers, however. Some secrets far too dangerous. And perhaps Jezemiah Irlinus was indeed the assassin responsible for the mass murders that had dogged them for nearly a decade before they stopped, shortly after the Guardian had died. Correlation or coincidence? Who knew. But the man that was partially accused of being an Assassin was now the Caretaker of all of them, and yet another just promised her half a million gold bars for the shipment that was due tonight. What could a bookseller do, but comply? And if, perhaps, she knew secrets no bookseller should know, who could blame her for pretending innocence? She understood, better than anyone, that in the Protectorate, no one was truly innocent.

(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.

(c) Nin Harris 2009

Ipede Dwinkum looked at his hat. It was a rather battered old thing, but Waterlily had gifted it to him. You do not throw away a faerie gift. You were permitted or sometimes, even encouraged, to forget it, but you do not throw it away. Not that Ipede would, or could. It was one of the things that connected him to her, even if he could never see her or hear her. He could breathe in the scent of her sometimes, know when she was near him by the quality of the air. He knew it the same way he knew when there were pixies around, ruffling his hair, or trying to pinch his bared, dwarven fore-arms. He placed the dark brown hat reverently on his head of tousled ginger and brown, age having softened and darkened its hue, somewhat. Flexing his body, he settled into a relaxed, fighter’s position and tried to push his way into Nemus Animae. This was the same fight he had with the same barriers for more than a decade, mayhap, even a human century. The same force of pressure kept him out. He had never accepted the geas laid upon him by the Faerie Lord, for daring to love, and even more, for trying to wed a member of the fae nobility. He had never accepted the kind of punishment doled upon him for daring to attempt to rise above his station. He lived with it. He lived with being denied the second sight, but he never accepted that it was for an eternity. The good part of the geas was that any form of tactile contact, good or bad, was buffered by it. He could sense, but he could not be directly harmed. In that sense, the Faerie Lord had protected him. In that sense, alone.

Through the birch trees Ipede’s eyes reacquainted itself with a path, lined with flowering shrubs, leading into the heart of the Grove. He knew there were other things to see and experience there; he had been through it more than once. That was how he had met Waterlily, blundering through the forest like the excited mad young wood-dwarf that he was. Mad Ipede, they called him in those days. Mad, even before he had lost his sanity and became the thing the children of the Protectorate whispered about, as much as they whispered about Jezemiah Irlinus. Mad enough to fall in love with a green faerie lady with star-glistened wings and a glissando on her lips when he made her hum, with a curve to her spine as he made her purr, verdant notes, as lush and as secret as the faerie woods themselves.

Perhaps she was half-mad too, the beloved Waterlily, she of the pastel skin of milk and smooth mosspond green. Perhaps an eldritch insanity was the heat behind her agate eyes, mad enough to accept his rough-as-bark skin into her silken embrace. And thus, he entered the woods and the liquid pastures of the fae dreams, where all things merge into one thing. And thus, he learned to hunger for magic. The sweet perfume of her skin and the musk of fae revelries led him to his profession as a Perfumer, scavenging for ducts and other unseemly things needed to create unguents of potency. His obsession with magic turned him into a Faerie Alchemist. And more. Perhaps too much more. Perhaps he hungered for more than Waterlily’s embrace the night he decided they should be betrothed.

Ipede pushes against the barrier that obstructs him from Nemus Animae, and finds something that causes him to stop. This attempt to access the woods has become, almost a ritual for him. He never expects to win through. But tonight, something seems to have changed. A brief weakness in the pattern that keeps him out. A slight…oversight perhaps? Ipede sets his hat on the ground, followed by the tweed jacket that the Caretaker gifted him with, last Solstice.

He pushes.

*Note: Ravel’s Alborada Del Gracioso was always Ipede’s Song, so here’s a live recording to go with the words

(c) Nin Harris 2009

Every now and then, some of the braver or naughtier children from the Mycologos Protectorate break into the grounds of Domus Exsulis. Their Protectorate was set up, after all, in defiance of The Guardian’s rule. Now, with her demise and with one of their own as the Caretaker of Lumen Procellae, how could they not be even more tempted? Not all the lamias in bedchambers, nor the bogles playing cricket on the lawn or the fighting djinn could keep them away. Not the threat of a wild wolf, somewhere in the rose garden or a shrieking Madwoman who was once a Princess. Not all the foul-smelling purple ogres in the world could keep them away. Particularly not the main, foul-smelling purple ogre who roamed the grounds, looking for intruders. He was rather fond of children, if truth be told, and always felt rather hurt when they ran, screaming away from him. Not the tykes and ruffians of the Protectorate, however. They knew he was an easy mark, knew he would have access to sweets and all manner of treats in the kitchens of the sprawling Manse.

Watch them now as they come tumbling into my kitchen. Watch him sheepishly grin at me as I frown. We’ve been through this several times over the past decade or so. Nothing has changed, really. We may have a new boss, but children will still think of this as the Forbidden Manse. They will still see it as a challenge. They will trip through the polished wooden floors of the main hallway, ooh and aah over the woodcarvings and the shimmer of light reflected off expensive lanterns. They may gape and giggle at some of the paintings. And then, inevitably, the ogre will lead them here, where the smell of spices and baking bread can melt the heart of even the most recalcitrant wizard. And there are sweets of course. Not even the Guardian could have stopped this if she wanted to, but she wouldn’t have. She would have been in the kitchen, and they would not have even known she was there. She would have rolled up her sleeves, made a batch of cookies, another batch of butterscotch, and yet another of coconut candy. Pity she’s dead now, isn’t it?

Or is she, really? Perhaps she’s one of the kitchen helpers over there, perhaps she’s making lamingtons right now as she pretends to glare at the children. Who can tell? Not I! I may have the run of these kitchens, as is befitting a Chief Kitchen Witch, but I can scarcely tell which being wanders in and which wanders out of them. Too many ghosts. Too many sprites. Too many memories of Kitchens past. Only a Witch could work in such conditions. And even I have my moments. I tell the Caretaker he doesn’t pay me enough, and he laughs. I threaten to leave, and he laughs. The next day a cask of some expensive and hard-to-get herb or condiment will magically appear outside my bedroom door. And I am convinced to work for yet another month. But this may yet change. My sweetheart returns from Ferahia next month and he tells me of a new situation vacant there. They are rebuilding the old city which was claimed by the waves. And I’d like to get away from Lumen Procellae, if truth be told. Things aren’t the same on the Isle anymore. Not with the Guardian gone and the Wild Hunt running unchecked. Not with maddened dragons in the sky, daily roaring with anger because their Queen has disappeared into the woods of Nemorosum Somnium.

No, this is not a good time to be on this Isle.

(c) Nin Harris 2007

The Caretaker Speaks:

Late afternoon, and the sky is gradually approaching the color of flax, bright blue merely a memory, for now. Will there be a storm troubling the waves of Alta Exsilli soon? From the big, round window which overlooks the ocean, I can see the clouds. The changing quality of the light shifts the patterns the stained-glass mosaic rim makes on our table. Our hands and the pieces on the chessboard are rendered mysterious. I cannot help but anticipate the further shift in the patterns, when the sky changes robes for the gloaming. I look forward to these minor amusements each day, experiencing each with a bemused sense of unreality, despite the fact that a decade has passed since I first set foot on Lumen Procellae.

It has been a long time since we’ve taken tea together, Ipede and I. And in the past, the meals we shared would be filled with a less picturesque ambience of gloom. The Librarium possesses a different kind of gloom, a solemn, reassuring kind. The girl, Yildie, pours for us, handling the painted china tea set with skill. I have protested countless times against her performing such services. She is not a servant here. She cannot believe me, yet. Nor can I do anything for what’s haunting her eyes and placing furrows underneath. I know the cause. I’ve lived in the Protectorate myself for a long while; I’ve seen the gashes on the walls. So long as the Wild Hunt roams, it will never end, even if all tales of the Assassin have ceased, for now. She is grateful to me, perhaps too grateful. I will have to learn to live with it. People are either embarrassingly grateful to me or curse my interference these days. Part and parcel of the job description, one might say.

Ipede takes a scone from the plate and butters it. I ask Yildie to join us, but she shakes her head and retreats to the corner where I’ve placed a desk for her. I have been most grateful to delegate a great chunk of my paperwork as well as secondary research tasks. It frees me up for the rest of my responsibilities. Truth be told, I’m rather envious. She gets to do all the fun stuff now; I, on the other hand have to make all the stupid decisions, the minor and petty ones that the Guardian tackled on a daily basis. I remember how we cursed and carped at her for it. Ruefulness, would be an understatement.

As is our custom, at every Solstice and Equinox, Ipede and I play chess all afternoon, discussing topics of antiquity. We round up this pleasant, gentlemanly ritual with a sumptuous tea. It inevitably ends when he lights up his pipe and descends into a maudlin stupor. I never question too deeply into the contents of the pipe, merely open the windows and step back a little. Things are different, this time around. Yildie is here now, as well as that terrible woman, Deiranetta. They fill the tranquil spaces of this manse. Also, I cannot help but be reminded of All Things Unresolved when I cast my eyes on Ipede, as well as my new friend, the dragon Hrelgar.

Hrelgar is a little too big in dragon-form to curl up before the fire in the library, and so he has been wearing his human form more often. We can do nothing for his melancholy; no one that we have approached knows of a way to release Erna from Nemorosum Somnium.

The dreaming forest has absorbed her and her child. None can find their way either in or out of that forest. And far worst has occurred. I have traced this state of unrest but do not know where it begins. Which came first, Erna’s refusal to be crowned Queen, or the Wild Hunt? Did the angry Dragons agitate the Wild Hunt, or was it the other way around?

More questions than answers, here. And all I really, really want to do is find out the true names of the places of this island.

We brood over our game. Ipede makes a half-hearted attempt at checkmate by getting his bishop to take my knight. But my adroit castling maneuver saves my king. We pause. I pop a petit four into my mouth and chew as Ipede complains about his new assistant. He is looking healthier these days. He has branched off into a more obscure branch of alchemy, which, although ponderous, is far safer than the dark arts he sought to practice. Perhaps he is finally resigned to the fact that he will never again see Water Lily. This makes me sad. So many things have yet to be resolved, even if a good decade has passed since things were set in place. Some may never be resolved.

I look outside, and imagine I can see far enough into Silva Atra, where Tarme lives. The last time I met her was when I brought Hrelgar to see her. Nothing much to report there, merely disappointment, and the look of promise in Tarme’s eyes. I wish I could take her up on that unspoken offer, but I have this stupid island to run now. It won’t run itself, and I can’t afford to risk my life canoodling with a wolf-maiden in Silva Atra of all places!

An excited squeak interrupts our reverie. It is Yildie, her eyes wild as she waves a book in front of us. Ah, the joys of a researcher. I am envious once again. But, I smile indulgently as she begins to speak. No doubt, some obscure but nonetheless toothsome bit of information from history. Perhaps, it might even be useful in my task of constructing place-names. But wait, her eyes are really big this time, and something in her posture alerts us to the fact that maybe, just maybe, there is Something Big after all.

“I think I may have figured out a way to extract that lady Dragon from the forest of dreaming!”

Hrelgar jumps up from his woebegone posture by the fireplace as she squeaks this out. Ipede merely looks at her with a distracted expression,

“That’s very nice now, dear,” he says, “but I don’t suppose you can find a way for me to see the Faeries again now, could you?”

Yildie’s face falls, but not for long. Hrelgar is clasping her hands now in his and almost screaming questions at her. I follow them to her desk as she begins to lay out a plan of attack. And so, I must leave you now. We have Something Important to Resolve.

Have a Happy Season, every one of you. Do feel free to continue your festivities in Domus Exsulis. There’s a party going on in the Ballroom, and yet another on the moonlit terraces outside. I’ve been told that the rival bogle factions are holding a cricket match out there.

Well, what are you waiting for? Shoo!

(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.

Okoo speaks:

Welcome to the lovely city of Mycologos. I am Okoo, an emissary from the Protectorate of Mycologos, assigned to let visitors know that a major change has occured here. The inhabitants of Glade have formed their own government, naming their city state the Mycologos. The name was carefully chosen to reflect the nature of their home here in Lumen Procellae, and I am sure the city’s resident scholars will be willing to provide you with detailed explanations as to the origin of this composite word.

The history of this hidden Glade is pretty spotty – and not just on the roofs of the Mushroom houses. It used to be an abandoned fairy ring around which toadstools grew. Then, it was gifted to a handful of exiles from other realms, who enlarged it with magic and, much later, alchemical rites. Right now, it has grown to accomodate all the travellers and exiles who made their way here and never left.

The recent troubles we’ve had with the Wild Hunt and less than congenial visitors from the Human Realms caused us to mobilize, and take actions to protect this one corner of the realm which we call home. We gathered in large numbers and made our way towards the Guardian’s keep to petition her. Our requests were:

1. That we be recognized as a city and not the quaint little market-town she has been promoting us as.

2. That we be given the right to protect our home with our own government.

The Guardian was not happy with our collective decision but gave in after we presented our evidence. We are now, however, a protectorate under her behest and are answerable to her for all that occurs. It was a compromise the more timid of us agreed to since she had both the Faerie Lord and the Draconic Elders on her side during the meeting. We do not know what will happen, now that she has disappeared but we hope this young Caretaker guy will leave us be. After all, it was not long ago that he was one of us.

(c) Nin Harris 2004-2008