Graynelore

by Stephen Moore

  ‘I see nothing,’ I said, truculently. ‘We have failed so miserably! What is it that you see that raises such a smile, such jollity?’

  Wily Cockatrice turned to me, distractedly, almost as if she had not realized anyone else was standing there. ‘Rogrig! Rogrig – But we have not failed at all.’ She was still smiling.

  ‘Eh?’

  Her answer drew the attention of our whole company, who shifted about, or turned their ears, or took a step closer to hear her out.

  ‘The truth of it is; we cannot restore the Isle…’

  ‘Cannot, could not, will not,’ added Lowly Crows.

  There was an immediate uproar. Raised voices, both real and from the shadow-tongues inside my head, and with them some raised fists too! And a sudden throng massed about the crow and the ancient crone demanding an explanation. Oddly enough, the pair only chortled and laughed the more, while Wily Cockatrice took up her smoking pipe and sucked and blew and sucked.

  ‘Wait! Please…My dear friends, listen to me. I will not play you any longer. It is a simple truth. We cannot restore the Faerie Isle because it is still there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You cannot repair what is not broken. You cannot bring back what has never been lost. It is still out there, just where it has always been; circling our world upon the Great Sea. Only, unnoticed by men…’

  ‘Unnoticed?’ I fumed. ‘Then what – for fuck’s sake! – have we been trying to do all this while?’ Forgive my foul tongue. I was in fear of losing the plot of my own tale. And a man can only take so much faerie slight. I did, at least, restrain my arm and save my hand from the hilt of my sword.

  ‘The Faerie Isle is unseen because the world has lost the ability to see it. Not because it was destroyed by foolish wizards in an ancient war. Not because it has ceased to exist. The wizards destroyed only themselves, but the rest of the world chose to close its eyes anyway, and stopped seeing; believed the ending they were given.’

  ‘But the stories of the Beggar Bards…They all say…’

  ‘Beggar Bard, stories!’ Wily Cockatrice spat the words out as if they were sucked poison. Then, more softly, ‘If only men would truly listen to what they are being told. I know what the stories, say …Rogrig. But you only have to believe that the Isle is there to know that the Isle is there. You do not need a cartful of Faerie Dust to make it appear. You do not need to see it at all…Only, see it if you must, Rogrig! See it if you must!’

  ‘And then, what of the black dust…? Are we only foolish children making castles in the air?’ I asked, feeling no less of a fool, for the question.

  ‘A mark,’ said Lowly Crows. ‘It was a beacon, a signal.’

  ‘And the purpose of the Faerie Ring,’ I asked, ‘if not to raise the Living Isle?’

  ‘First, to set the signal,’ said Wily Cockatrice, ‘so that they would come to us when we were ready for them. And second, so that we might—’

  ‘What?’ I interrupted her, fiercely. ‘Wait! Wait! Wait! They? They, who? Who would come to us? Tell me! Who?’

  Wily Cockatrice eyed me coldly for a moment. She put her pipe to her mouth and drew upon it angrily, made a great show of the smoke. Then, she shook her head.

  ‘Ah…I have said it before. You must not always look toward great age to find great wisdom, Rogrig,’ she said, matter-of-factly, before pointing the end of her pipe firmly at Lowly Crows.

  ‘Why, it is the Beggar Bards, of course,’ said Lowly Crows. ‘The Beggar Bards…’ She turned her head and gave me the rook’s eye.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Eye of the World

  Mountains can be climbed. Questions can be answered and the most difficult of puzzles can be solved. The greatest deeds are not always the most spectacular to behold.

  We were to make one last, earth-bound, journey together. I carefully set Norda Elfwych and her raggedy babbie upon Dandy. The hobb took the imposition most graciously, and bore the load without annoyance. And while Wily Cockatrice, Dogsbeard, Licentious, and Wood-shanks came after us a-foot, Lowly Crows chose my shoulder for her perch. If Earthrise was not such a fearsome challenge in its newly diminished state, it was still a hard-fought climb all the same. Remarkable then, that there was no disquiet at the task or the toll it took upon a company already failing by measures. Indeed there was not a single complaint before we achieved its summit. You see, this time we were not a company journeying alone. The Beggar Bards came after us. Aye, to that very same spot…

  The Beggar Bards: all of them; each and every one, perhaps two hundred or more in number, though they were not easily counted. They arrived always alone, without a companion, and all came in their own time, just as they expected to. That is, the never-time that belongs to a Beggar Bard’s tale, and is not easily reckoned or reconciled by common men.

  They too struggled up that mountain, came upon it from all sides. Found a way. Some, possibly many, travelled in sight of each other. It did not spur them on to a greater effort. It did not shy them away from their task. They simply came on, regardless, and from every corner of the Graynelore (it has so many). They arrived: a-foot, and sitting upon horse and cart, and riding upon their hobbs – until the rising ground beneath them forbad it, and forced them to scramble, often down upon their hands and knees. They climbed steep scarps and came across rock-strewn scree slopes that shifted dangerously beneath them with every step.

  The youngest of them appeared to be little more than babbies. The eldest, among many, was much older even than Wily Cockatrice, the ancient crone.

  And when at last they found themselves upon the summit of the mountain they each did a most simple thing. (After first taking a short respite, either to catch their breath, or to bite upon a piece of bread, or to suck upon a pipe, or to scratch away a needy itch, or to wipe away a lathered brow…Or else to take a moment to contemplate the world now revealed around and about them: from the unknown wastelands in the North, to the Marches in the South, and to the unending shorelines of the Great Sea.)

  And what they each did was this:

  They put their hands inside their cloth and took out a small piece of broken stone – that often flashed with gold, glittered temptingly in the sun – and they laid it down upon the ground. Each stone was left upon exactly the right spot, and met perfectly with the last one placed there; edge for edge, line for line, without a mistake or need of correction. And so the tablet of stone grew and the patterns upon its ancient time-worn face were slowly revealed.

  I felt it was a most sacred deed.

  In all of this, the Beggar Bards did not purposefully look to seek us out there. Their tales were all told…When eyes met, a few lent a cautious greeting; a nod and a sly wink; a discreet bow. Though they did not ask anything of us eight. And we did nothing more than wait there for them all to come. No one of them was needed any more than any other; no one of them could have been done without. If there was never a time when two Beggar Bards came face to face upon that mountain top.

  By chance I recognized Ringbald when he came and left his own precious relic. He stayed no longer than any did. I showed him my hand in friendship and he showed me his in turn, only to turn away, as each and every one of them turned away, and immediately began his struggle back down the mountainside. At that moment, from off my shoulder, Lowly Crows launched herself into the air, and come to Ringbald’s side; she transformed herself once more into the woman in black. In this way, and in private conversation, she accompanied him a little way along his downward path, only to return once more to me…

  And so the thing was done.

  I have seen many things in my life. I have known no greater wonder than this.

  When all of the Beggar Bards had come and gone again, there, laid out before us on the ground, was a stone tablet. Upon it, there was a map. There were markings made for all things living, as well as for all things naturally dead. Around the edge there were words cut into the stone, in a language and of a description beyond any of our knowledge. Everyth
ing was there. Nothing was missed out. The Great Wizard had truly known his world in all its subtle complexity, in all its simplicity too. This was the true Eye Stone. And upon it was shown a Graynelore complete in every form, excepting…

  Excepting, there was a gap in the face of the tablet.

  A single shard of stone was still missing.

  There was, as yet, no Faerie Isle.

  I did not make a great fuss of it. I knew the part I had to play. I put my hand inside my cloth and laid it upon a strap of leather bound to my wrist. I unwound it and drew out my precious talisman. I took off its clasp, threw away the leather thong, and laid the fragment of stone carefully in its rightful position.

  And so, the Faerie Isle was at last revealed to us…without a wish, if not without a Wishard. And where it was marked upon the stone tablet, there it was in truth for our fey eyes to behold – standing out upon the distant sea. We had only to look for it with the right eye, and in the right circumstance, and toward the right spot to find it there.

  ‘How very small it is…’ said Norda Elfwych. ‘How very small and insubstantial…’ She raised her arms, lifted up her raggedy babbie, as if to let it see.

  ‘How miraculous…’ I said.

  An island, floating upon the sea, passing slowly across the horizon…Never still, nor ever wanting to be still. And where it moved upon the Great Sea it moved again upon the face of the stone tablet: the one, a perfect model of the other.

  As I looked upon it, and between the faces of my company, I realized there were expressions of concern.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked Norda Elfwych.

  ‘Well…if the Faerie Isle is indeed found again…does that mean that all the creatures of fey are to return into the world?’

  In truth I did not know. ‘I have never given it any thought,’ I said, carelessly, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And are all faeries, good?’ Norda winced slightly at the use of the word as if it was indicative, but not quite appropriate. (Good and bad are so close together, and yet so far apart in faerie as to be less than satisfactory terms of measurement, if not, quite hopeless.)

  ‘Are all men, good?’ I replied.

  ‘I fear, hardly any at all,’ she said, quite dispirited.

  ‘There is your answer then,’ I said.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said, and nothing more on the matter. Though the memory of that short conversation was, in after times, often to come back to me, if not in this tale.

  Wily Cockatrice had rather more immediate concerns.

  ‘Ah, but then…how are we to get there…across the Great Sea?’ she asked, at the same time, sucking furiously upon her pipe. ‘A wyrm cannot fly home, nor will she take to the water and swim…’

  ‘How indeed?’ said Lowly Crows. ‘Unless, of course, you will make us another wish, Rogrig, and give us a ship and a crew to man her?’

  I paused…did not reply to her at once.

  I was standing at the very top of Earthrise, the black-headed mountain, upon the threshold of a dream. My back was turned firmly against my past. Before me was the Faerie Isle. I was about to find my true home at last.

  I had only one, regret.

  Notyet.

  Her name rested upon my tongue, where it stayed, unspoken. The time for wishes was past, for now.

  I shook my head, gave Lowly Crows her answer.

  ‘No?’ she said, adding, not unkindly, ‘then, I suppose, it will be down to me, again.’ With that, the woman was once more transformed. The sky above Earthrise drew in, and became deep black again. Not with dust, nor yet with cloud, but with a great host of birds, come out of every part of the world, and in a number far beyond our counting. Of course, if we were to wait for as long as it took them all to appear, then my tale, which is fast approaching its desired end, would become far longer than it might, so I will say only this: appear they all did.

  And if there had been a man watching us at a distance, he might have thought he saw a great storm of birds. He might then have imagined there was a dragon in the sky, and a wych, and an elf, and a host of other fey creatures. And among them, strangest of all, he might have seen a man riding upon a unicorn. And it might have seemed to him that, together, they rose up into the sky upon a tide of black wings. And that they appeared to come down again upon a far distant Isle that stood out upon the Great Sea. Only the moment they did, the Isle was suddenly no more and the sea was just the sea, after all. And the sun was shining, and its light ran between the distant waves, and then broke apart, into a thousand points of perfect gold…

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Faerie Isle

  At the end, would you have come with me to the Faerie Isle, my friend, would you have followed me there and seen it for yourself? In truth, there is very little of a tale in peace and beauty and tranquillity. And the place is not so very different from the lands you have already known.

  What I remember best of it is that very first view. Sat upon an enormous shelf of rock, rising out of a broad green pasture, was a pair of magnificent wyrms, lazing together in the sun, their shining scales of purple and red and silver, their great tails endlessly twisting about and about them. There too the living forests, where the dryads and the woodland nymphs stood out to greet us. There too the kelpies frolicking in their blue-green pools. And the trolls, and the bogarts, and the dwarves, seated at the entrance to their dwarven holes, just as the Beggar Bard tales had so often described them. And more, much more, and many: only, these were, truly, as of nothing. For most fabulous of all, out upon their golden pastures was a great host of creatures, moving together in the way of a herd. These were the unifauns; the gentle, the beautiful unifauns…

  And there, upon that wondrous Isle, we eight were to stay a while; and regain ourselves. We were to learn, and to remember what we had once been, become what we truly were, and be forewarned of what might, in later times befall us…

  I stood before the mirrored pool and saw, at last, my own true fey image reflected there.

  Though, we were not, all of us, to remain there forever.

  You see, my friend, there is a bitter with the sweet; a final sadness yet to sully the picture and to stain our hearts a little redder still. For if I was to know the joy and the beauty of a growing child; I was also to know the sorrow of a dying mother. Though each deserved better, of both men and the world…I cannot, no, I will not describe Norda’s final moment (though you would beseech me) for that belongs to her alone. The measure of her frailty was too great to be undone. She was never meant for old bones.

  Know only this: the man’s stone heart did, finally, break, and give her up a tear…

  At the end, Norda called to me from out of the shade, and in her fading shadow-tongue gave me her final farewell:

  You cannot have love without hate,

  You cannot know joy without first knowing sorrow,

  You cannot have wrong without right,

  Nor the light of the day without the darkness of night…

  I understood.

  Epilogue

  Rogrig the Confessor

  It was in the fullness of a summer’s day when I found myself, at last, before the door of a familiar house. I had been a very long time absent.

  I was sat upon Dandy. Lowly Crows was perched upon my shoulder. Licentious, the gigant, ambled idly a-foot, at my side. He carried a young boy upon his back, who giggled lightly for the lark. The child was elfin. Though I knew him for a Wishard; a Wishard out of an Elfwych…My son, whose name was Sarrow. We had been travelling at our ease; I had given Dandy her head, let her decide upon the path we should take. She had, of course, chosen to take herself home.

  There were some new faces among the men, the women, and the babbies who stood out upon the fields, and upon the roadsides, and at their open doors, watching us as we strode past. There was the odd stretch of burnt ground, where, perhaps, a shieling had once stood, or where the mark of an old scourging had not yet quite healed. But little of matter had changed thereabo
uts.

  The bastle-house that had once been my childhood home looked strongly built still. Its walls were solid and unbroken. It stood out under the sun. Someone was at a wind-eye keeping a close watch at our approach. Though, the few men who stood in our path as we came on turned their heads and shied away from us. They were either feigning indifference, or ignorance of who we were. Men, such as us, who were obviously faerie-touched, were never likely to be well received here.

  When Dandy stood up in front of the door, I knew why she had brought us here.

  ‘Old Emma’s Notyet!’ I cried out. ‘Notyet Wishard! I am Rogrig Wishard, also of the Three Dells and born of Dingly Dell. You know me well enough!’

  There was a brief moment’s silence. The face within the wind-eye stepped away into the darkness of the house. Then the door of the house was made ajar.

  ‘Yes. I know you, Rogrig Wishard.’ she said, from out of the dark, and without appearing. ‘And you can piss off! Go back to wherever it was you came from!’

  At my shoulder, Lowly Crows beat her wings furiously, as if to ward off her foul tongue. Licentious turned his head, lifted his great hands in mimic of a shield, and eyed me cautiously. Only to realize I was smiling.

  ‘Are you certain about this?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I dismounted, took the child from the gigant’s back and sat him upon Dandy for safekeeping. Then, with my two companions for support, I stepped into the house, regardless of the welcome.

  This was not going to be an easy meet.

  ‘Will you sit down, will you sit?’ I said. Notyet was pacing furiously across the earth floor before me. I could see her face was red with anger, and already wet with tears. ‘Please…There is so much to tell you. I must explain it—’