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.

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.

Left of the Librarium, and slanting somewhat northwards the corridor swerves. The floor is covered with a threadbare carpet of maroon with beige swirls, intricate details lost under years of wear and dust. She pays attention to each dip and swerve in the floor as she walks, her fingers trailing the rough surface of the wall, counting each footstep she makes. Ahead, the triumphant cries of dragons. She does not know yet that elsewhere, trees are battling dragons with their fractured arboreal apparitions of dreaming. She does not know that the Great Dreaming of the trees had been interrupted by a well-aimed, albeit somewhat marred projectile. She only knows that it feels like the world is erupting in chaos about her. You will not perhaps know her as a distinct entity from the other female players within this House of Exiles, but perhaps you might be interested in the details, as she is. The details matter more to her than her own name or whether or not she has a character distinct enough for you to take note. The frayed hem of her favourite dusky rose morning gown reaches past her ankles and worry at her favourite pair of house slippers with every step that she takes. The slippers are embroidered with pansies and trailing leaves on a darker green fabric. Her fingers, dark brown, meddle with the peeling paint on the rough wall as she pads on, swerving downwards, ever downwards. She sees herself thus. A pair of hands, a pair of slippered feet, soft, subdued slapping sounds made against the threadbare, somewhat pungent carpet as she navigates herself through the rabbit warren that Domus Exsulis sometimes resembles. Her hair, frizzy and black, escapes her braid in opposing directions, making her look like a disjointed, ill-put together apparition who strolls through corridors at the break of dawn. A pair of eyes to observe. Ears to listen to gossip. A mind to filter. Lips to be pursed, keeping their own counsel.

She is ignored by the house-imps and the djinn wielding a vacuum cleaner. She reaches the steps. She takes them, one at a time, pausing to look through the cracked windowpane at the sun rising above Nemorosum Somnium. There, a host of dragons congregate, and seem to be swooping into the forest. Moments later, a deafening rumbling sound is heard and her vision feels enveloped by shades of green and deep umber, conflicting with one another.

When her vision finally settles, this is what she sees. A violet dragon, flying upwards to meet the host of dragons. Along with her, swirling shapes in iridescent colors mimic the movement of the wind. The host of dragons surrounds the elegant Himalayan dragon on all sides. With an elegant precision, the violet dragon swoops and plunges earthwards once more, evading their closing ranks. They begin to roar. Moments later she barrels into the sky again, this time above them, with her the host of earth spirits and aerial dancers of the forest. She bugles imperiously at them, a strong, draconic voice that reaches the walls and rafters of Domus Exulis. From her window, the woman in dusky rose watches. As the sun rises higher, this is what she sees: one by one, the flanks of the draconic formation step back. Heads are bowed in submission. The violet Queen sings to them a Hymn of Earth and Sky. The swirling shapes of the forest surround her, for this is a dragon who was also a tree. The woman knows this. Everyone on the island knows this. And now there is silence, for the dragons rumble no more. They have found their Queen, and she has accepted them, but has also subdued them.

The woman in dusky rose ponders what this would mean for the rest of the isle, and if this will bring the Wild Hunt out of hiding. When one wild host subsides, another must rise, after all. This is the order of things. There can only be silence, for a little while before one pattern or another will unravel. Chaos and change. The woman smiles to herself at this thought. It is a quiet smile, with a hint of bitterness. She resumes her journey, left of the Librarium, swerving northwards, towards a room found several levels below where her implements await her. This is all she has for now. Details. Knowledge of other lives. That is all she needs for now.

In Memory of Janet Yanosko Elkins, one of the first and earliest readers of this frenetic, hypertextual web and all souls, friends and loved ones lost along the way, somewhere in the Great Dreaming.

Ackbroll squatted beneath the shadow of a teak tree, watching The Wild Maiden of The Trees as she circled the gradon that dreamt within states. All around them, Nemorosum Somnium moved and rustled. It was a feral force that troubled even the Maiden in all her wildness. It troubled Ackbroll even more so, for he was significantly less untamed. His patron, the antlered one, had warned him of this many moons ago. Now, as the Wild Maiden grew frenetic and urgent, he finally understood. The wind affected even him, the murmuring of the trees bending and shifting his own memories, despite the protection of the antlered one. Ackbroll had been named protector here, even if he could have left, his own sense of responsibility would not let him do so.

The susurration that was the conversation between twigs, the veins of corresponding leaves and the wind created an intricate weave that contained the consciousness of a thousand trees and more. It drowned out the thoughts of humans and animals alike. The susurration had The Awaiters in the trees cackling and hooting, half-wild with starvation and a glee born of both deprivation and power. The madness of the forest had kept away the tourists who provided them with fresh blood, and fresher meat, but had given these malicious protectors of the trees something else. A new strength, a new dreaming. This could not bode well, Ackbroll thought. He sucked at his upper lip and made an irritated sound. There was no help for it, he had to act soon. Timing was everything. No time for elaborate plans here. He took his slingshot, and loaded it with a mangosteen fruit. It was firm, but soft. Firm enough to be used as a projectile. Soft enough not to hurt too much if used. He looked up at the elegant teak tree and patted its trunk in a familiar, affectionate gesture.

“This may hurt a little,” he said to both the tree and the forest.

He eyed the gradon, whom he knew to be the queen of dragons, as well as the source of the disturbance within the heart of the forest. He aimed his slingshot. He fired.

Splat!

“OWW!”

It would have been a loud shout of outrage, had it not hit something other than a very dimunitive target. Ackbroll dropped his slingshot, squinted and then sighed.

“Broke my wing! My wing! Stupid spear-boy!”

Ackbroll dropped to his knees and peered at the Flitterer.

“Weren’t you banished from Nemus Animae?”

“Wing hurts!”

Ackbroll sighed and reached inside his tunic for a small phial. Gingerly, he unscrewed it and dabbed a small bit of moisture on his finger. He moved it towards the Flitterer. She shrank away from him, her pretty face contorting with both distrust and a fastidious expression.

“Smelly finger. Away from me. Away from up-windy-ness!”

She moved backward, even if her pretty little wing of latticed green and silver drooped in a broken, woebegone angle.

“Hold still you silly faerie-thing. I’m trying to fix your wing.”

“Oh. Hah! Fix it good! Or I will bite yon smelly finger.”

Ackbroll laughed.

“Not too smelly for biting?”

The Flitterer made a severely put-out sound.

“Fix it! Fix the broken wing now!”

“Alright! Alright!”

Gently, he dabbed the lotion on the faerie’s wing and watched as it healed itself. Soon it was at a jaunty angle from its companion wing and the pair began moving in rapid motion, lifting the faerie from the ground.

“How came you by that potion?”

The Flitterer’s eyes and antennae whirled with curious attention. Ackbroll shook his head.

“Oh no. You are under someone else’s employ now, are you not? Who are you reporting back to, you little terror?”

The Flitterer beat her wings and would have fluttered out of reach had Ackbroll not, with a swift gesture caught her wings between his forefinger and thumb.

“Outrageous! Remove earth-soiled fingers from my BEAUTIFUL wings!”

“Your pretty little wings obscure a malicious little head. Now, my little green friend, whose bidding do you do, this fine evening?”

“Hairy wolf-maiden! Under her protection!”

The Flitterer pointed in an officious gesture at the amulet she wore. Ackbroll whistled, a soft sound that was drowned by the whistling of the wind that crept up on them, getting stronger, and wilder. She whimpered and even moved closer to Ackbroll. He shrugged at her.

“You’ve ruined my chance to stop this craziness,” he told the Flitterer.

“Did not! How can you stop craziness, anyway?” she asked. Ackbroll looked beyond her to the mangosteen still on the ground. The impact against her wing had not damaged the fruit by much, a mere crack or two from his estimation. Cracks that would create deep maroon rivulets that obscure the soft, sweet white flesh of the fruit. Ackbroll picked it up, and slowly weighed it.

“I need you to stand aside, you silly green thing. We need to wake the gradon up.”

“Will this make craziness stop or worse?”

“I don’t know. Wish I did, but I don’t.”

“Fruit might not work!”

“No, it might not. But she is in a state in-between, the best state to awaken her from. And if she awakens, perhaps the trees will, as well. If this does not succeed, we will try another way. And another!”

Ackbroll aimed his slingshot again.

He fired.

THUD.

Maroon rivulets hit the rough bark of a tree, then the sweet and sour white flesh stained with mangosteen blood hit the gentle thighs of a Nepali woman. Slowly, the confused contours resolved into violet scales. Slowly, the gradon solidified into the curves and spikes of an elegant, Himalayan dragon.

“Oh noooo.” whimpered the Flitterer.

A multitude of roars filled the air as the now silent forest shuddered under the triumph of an army of dragons that swooped downwards towards the trees. Ackbroll even had time to reflect that perhaps this had not been his most well-thought plan. Never before on Lumen Procellae had there ever been such a thing as a war between trees and dragons.

“Slingshot not so useful against dragons now, hmm?” asked a malicious little voice. Ackbroll glared at her before a great green dragon swooped just overhead, and roared loud enough that she squeaked with fright and dove into one of his tunic pockets.

(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.

Somewhere on the grounds of Domus Exsulis, there is a real thicket of thorns and roses. The wild roses remember a tale; a long time ago, a winged One carried his bride to this isle on the back of Zephyr. The roses remember how a bright-browed One was transfigured by the dreaming of storytellers and poets into a green serpent, and later, a beast with the head of a lion and the paws of a bear. She had not pulled a rose, a rose but barely one. When up appeared her bridegroom, who may be elfin, or draconic, or with a pensive snout on his furry face, looking rather confused as he utters the lines that will determine their destiny.

There is, rather archetypally, a werewolf in this garden. He is a man-sized wolf who seems not to care that you are watching him putter around with his gardening shears, or his rake with wicked tines, humming all the while a chanson that has not been heard outside of this isle for several centuries. His snout is grass-stained, his claws adept, but not as adept as the gardening shears that he handles with an almost religious concentration. If you had called him an archetype, perhaps he will laugh, a guttural, wolfish kind of laugh, you understand.

He does not mind his fellow gardener, a highly strung woman with dark ringlets and a voice that rises and falls in the rhythmic cadences of both Italian and English. Perhaps we shall leave them here, where the roses still dream of the God of Love and his bride. For all Roses dream of that first gardener, who let them grow wild in Zephyr’s breeze.

This may also be true in a warmer clime, where rugosa roses will fight with wanton hibiscuses in a balmy breeze. Perhaps here, our Beauty may be clad in a delicate batik sarong, treading softly along the dewy grass and herbs while another gardener, pensive in his tiger stripes, waits to pounce on any who would dare to pull, a rugosa, a melur, but barely one.

You don’t always hear of trees that dream they were once dragons. Still, they may be more frequent in number than dragons that dream they were once trees. Our attention may now focus on a peculiar tree within this dreaming forest of peculiar trees. All trees dream; within a dreaming forest it is hard to tell if a tree is dreaming the dreamer, or if the dreamer is dreaming his or her self into a tree. Our gradon dances between states. She fluctuates; a woman with henna flowers on her bare feet and gold thread lacing her saree. Then, a violet dragon with delicate wings threaded through with lapis lazuli and fine amber light. She has golden eyes that turn to the deep green of the dreaming woods. She has glistening scales that turn into powder-soft mocha skin before resolving into the textured bark of a raintree. Her dreams may carry the draconic roar of a battle-hymn or the voluptuous strains of the South, her thighs shifting and her spine undulating as the ripple of a sitar’s strings accentuate the irregular rhythm of her heart.

Within the dreaming, all things may resolve within a single space.

The gradon isn’t quite sure if she is still a woman, or a dragon, or a tree. She fidgets within this space where she is three things.

Somewhere, just within the perimeters of the forest, a dragon shaped like a man begins to struggle within the captivity of the dreaming. It begins to resolve itself into thorny briars.

Look, we all know this tale, don’t we?

Perhaps it was always about this tale. Perhaps, even now, trees are beginning to dream that they are thorny rose bushes. Perhaps the roaring of the dragons in the sky above may also transfigure. From battle-hymn to the stately pavane of a draconic mating call. It has always been thus. Enclosures must always be penetrated. Dreamers must always be awakened.

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

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.

Yildie liked to visit with the rivermaiden and the kitsune, some evenings. There were times when the Caretaker’s morose moods and the continuous battles between the bogles and the domestic djinn in the hallways drove her out of her mind. Evenings like those were made for roaming, if not the vast and disorganized complex that was Domus Exsulis, then the grounds, or even the forests beyond. But her favourite evenings were with the Arbitrator.

She would climb up the narrow, wooden stairs in the South-eastern Wing that lay beyond the hastily constructed enclosure for the Gaernic Exiles. The South-Eastern Wing had been constructed out of wood and was built on thick, sturdy pillars that had been dug deep into the ground, to counter the occasional flooding of the Mishgalaveri river. Here the Arbitrator lived, a quiet, long-jawed man with black-rimmed eyeglasses, short-cropped red hair and an assortment of colorful quills. He also possessed a cellar of the finest wines on the isle. She did not know why he fascinated her, perhaps it had something to do with the daily fights he had with the notions of justice and honor.

“Is there place for justice in a world governed by magic and dreams?”

She asked him this, more than once. He would often laugh at her as they discussed the many ways justice was and was not a part of their world.

“Everyone feels injured by someone at some point.”

Then, she would ask him if he would have acted the same way as the injured parties if he were in their shoes. He would laugh, shrug and say,

“It’s a fucking nuisance to go through the paperwork I throw at them. It’s my way of providing them with a way out, make the process so tedious they change their mind. Because there is just too much to lose when my brand of arbitration doesn’t work for them. I always hope that will stop them from doing it. But no one does. If it were me, I’d give up. But I’m glad they don’t. I’d be out of a job, otherwise!”

And then he’d wink at her and pour her some more wine, and they would talk, deep into the night. And she would try not to think of the things he never talked about, like the fate that waited for the people who failed at getting what they wanted from his arbitration. Like the price extracted from them by the parties accused of various injuries. Or the price set by the Arbitrator himself. Yildie knew these were things that they would eventually talk about, but she liked him far too much right now to want to think about it.

The next morning, she would have to go back to work, more often than not, with a headache and eyes that squinted over with a hangover because she had forgotten to guzzle down enough water. The Caretaker was never happy when he knew she’d spent the night with the Arbitrator. She sometimes wondered if this was why she kept going back to the South-Eastern Wing. But this too, was something she chose not to question too deeply.