* * *

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the mome raths outgrabe

— Excerpt from a poem by Lewis Carrol, which makes far more sense to some then to others

* * *

It was a curious tableau around the fire.There were five of them — a fact which had given the Wizard pause and Leinan a minor heart attack as she saw him pause — but the Wizard had rallied and quickly seated everyone on logs or stones at equal distances from the other.

Well, He seated Leinan, Keimen, Aemon, and he himself shifted to the side. The Forerunner stayed right where she had flopped back down. Pouting.

The Wizard held another skewer of fish over the fire and Leinan, helpfully held a second one. The two children held plates with fish on them which they did not touch no matter how their stomachs rumbled because they were being carefully, carefully polite.

The Wizard hummed because he didn’t really know what else to do and because humming was good naturedly and could be construed as mysterious.

The Forerunner folded her arms and sulked.

* * *

Barnibus, was not quite certain, how the day, which had started in the most mundane fashion possible — washing potions bottles and re-cataloguing sections of the Barnwinkle ancestral library — had spiraled quite the way it had.

First there was one — Hats didn’t count.

Then he had inadvertently empowered a rune in one of his Grandfathers forgotten laboratories, been spilled through an eldritch hole in reality into a quite furiously raging river, and was now in a land of “Fell Doom and Grand Demise” — at least according to his grandfather’s hastily scribbled note.

Then he had encountered the sulking, otherworldly beauty with hair the color of bleached ivory and eyes like thunderclouds, and there had been two, a number which was unfortunately a prime, but at least had been even.

Now there were five.

Prime, odd five… and of course, oddly enough, one member of their group was looking at him as if he’d cheated her out of her favorite desert… which, he supposed he might have.

Fish Feathers! What a mess.

He didn’t say any of this. Instead, he sniffed the air, peered skeptically at the fish slabs sizzling on his skewer and then brightened. “Done, I should say!” At the same time as his stomach audibly rumbled the same thing.

Leinan — Barnibus had made sure to learn everyone’s names — good hosts did that — blinked at him uncomprehendingly, but then picking, up on his queues, lifted her skewer away and smiled wanly at him.

And there was that.They didn’t all speak the same language.

At first, when he had met the Forerunner, he had thought that he had been lucky enough to meet a local who spoke the same language, namely, English.He… was less sure about that now.

When the Forerunner spoke, he understood her clearly. The part that was tying his cap into knots was that the newcomers also understood her, judging by the looks on their faces whenever she spoke, but he, sure as hat-hair did not understand them.And they likewise.

They spoke a sort of guttural language — lots of hard ‘ch’ sounds, and ‘ghu' sounds that came from the back of the throat and sounded like water ‘glug glugging’ out of a water bottle. Not a language that produced the same mouth motions at all. It was enough for him to think that Forerunner wasn’t speaking English either, and that —

'She’s got to be Fae,' Hat insisted breathlessly. 'Only explanation. Explains the tit-for-tat complex and the pouting instead of wholesale slaughter. You invited her in as a guest! It must make the children off limits in some fashion.'

Fae. The Fae hadn’t been seen in any context outside of faery tales and footnotes since… The Wizard pursed his lips and stroked his beard contemplatively… long enough that even Wizard memories were fuzzy on their subject. Demon’s, Fiends, Hell Beasts… Abyssal Creatures… Libraries were chalk full of literature. The Fae though…

'There’s not much to know about the Fae,' Hat continued, in an uncharacteristically helpful fashion — Barnibus thought that last part very quietly. 'Sticklers for deals… blood thirsty savages… stealing children from their cribs… blessing other children with long life… coveting young maidens with long blond hair… passing about heirlooms with devastating magic… The literature is all over the place. The only real points of incidence seem to be the frankly alarming association with the seasons and their fanaticism regarding hospitality. If anything is the key to getting out of this in one piece' —

The children though….

— 'the children in one piece — its that pedestal they stick the concept of hosts and guests on.'

Barnibus harrumphed quietly to himself. That was promising. Guests. Everyone was a guest, except for himself, who was in fact a host. A tidy solution.

'I said that what literature I’ve seen all agree on that point. I sure as Lint and Moth Balls, didn’t say that there was not more to know. Makes you wish we still had a Library to peruse for information, doesn’t it?'

Ah. And there was the snide —

'I wouldn’t have expected one of the Fae to be so spoiled and — '

Hat cut off abruptly as the Forerunners storm-grey eyes flickered his direction.

There was a sound and a frantic waving from the child — Leinan — drawing him out of his revery and he blinked at her. She chattered something and gestured at the fire…. Ah! He had absently allowed his charge to descend into the fire.

He tried to beam in a balmy fashion at her as he quickly jerked his skewer back out and blew out the fire which had started burning on the oil, but his mind was still on — the Fae!

The Forerunner’s eyes slitted microscopically at him.

'Be careful, Barney.' Hat continued more quietly than before. 'If all it took to get the better of the Fae was to invite them places, they wouldn’t scare the wrinkles out of folks underpants. That’s the other thing everyone agrees on. Also —' Hat paused. 'What happens when she leaves?'

* * *

Leinan shivered. Not because it was cold — it was actually uncharacteristically warm when she thought about it, even accounting for the fire — but because….

Her eyes flicked left and her shoulders hunched reflexively.

The monster was pale, inhumanly so, with hair so white it befuddled her imagination. Turning her mind into knots just trying to find something — anything — to liken it to. Even Master Bordenson, the old storyteller, and, Leinan thought, probably the oldest man in the village, didn’t have hair so white. What little he had left, at any rate, and no hair so vibrant!

Leinan thought that even she, aged 15 springs, didn’t have hair that vivid. It looked more present then present, somehow. Realer than real. As if anything in the presence of those white locks became background detail.

All of the monster was like that. The grey eyes of moonlit mist that you could sink into if you were not careful. Her lips, curling just so at the edges, and vividly red, like blood spilled across fresh snow. The curves of her breasts, her hips, her skin, even her clothes — grey like storm clouds, but seeming as black as night against her complexion — looked too perfect.

Surreal. Inhuman. Monstrous.

That last one had nothing to do with her looks.

As if sensing her regard, those grey eyes shifted, catching her’s in a vice grip for a brief moment before Leinan could steal all her will power and pull. Pull and strain until her eyes slipped fractionally away from that grey gaze and caught the fire at her peripherals.Then it was easier.

With the dancing fire in her vision she could regard the creature without being pulled in. And what she saw was Hunger.

So much want. So deep. It was breathtaking to feel even that much and not even directed at her! Aemon. Keimen.

That was who this this demon, really wanted.

Quiet, sincere Aemon, who always looked out for his sister and did his chores and was kind.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Most children weren’t kind, Leinan had observed many times. Most children tussled and stole and bullied, and spoke in ways that Leinan was sure would get them beaten within an inch of their lives if they were but older, and, maybe in a tavern.

That berry that Keimen had handed to the Wizard. That had been from Aemon. He had passed his sister a brace of them that he had found as they ran. Leinan didn’t think the boy had even kept any for himself! How Keimen had kept that last one uncrushed the entire time they were pursued was beyond her.

And Keimen. Keimen was sharp. Most of the villagers didn’t know this, but Keimen could read. Leinan could too, as could most of the villagers, but Keimen had seen barely half as many springs as Leinan had. She could do math as well, and she watched…. You could catch her at it if you paid attention — it was easy not to, due to how quiet Keimen always was — but if you paid attention, you could see her observing the other children, the menfolk and the women, even the elderly going about their business. Watching, assessing. Learning.No one taught Keimen how to read.Leinan certainly hadn’t, and when she had asked Mistress Margaret, the Mayor’s wife and the twin’s de facto mother, the woman hadn’t believed her at first.

Then she’d sworn Leinan to secrecy and threatened her with such a switching she would recall it even in her elder years if she told anyone. There was more than enough uncomfortable strangeness surrounding the twins. There was no need to add this to the mix and risk some drunks start claiming that it was ‘unnatural’.

Unnatural was a stone’s throw away from claiming Fell Gifts or Craft, and the folks of Landsend wanted no part of any of that.

Leinan risked another glance sideways — staying far away from the eyes — and received an open grin in return.Open, friendly even, and toothy.Sharp teeth.

Leinan looked away quickly.Was that why the Monster was here? The strangeness?

Make no mistake, the monster was after the twins. She knew it deep down. She had known it yesterday, in the heart stopping moments when the singing had begun and the fear had set in and she had grabbed the twins and made them run.

Leinan wasn’t clear on how she had known, just that she had. And Leinan knew that if she had just walked away. Wandered off like everyone else who had been out past the tree-line that day, berry picking or foraging for mushrooms or other herbs. If she had left, she would have been safe.

Leinan’s fists clenched as she stared hard into the fire, one hand grasping a skewer of fish from the Whelming river, and her teeth clenched.

Left, and then be surprised later that the twins weren’t with her. “Go back right quick to fetch them and give them a piece of my mind besides! Yes ma’am! They know not to leave my side…”. Her teeth grit.

The twins weren’t from Landsend. That’s what Leinan knew. The story that had been told was that one of the merchant trains that rotated through the village had dropped them off. And by the time the village folk had become aware of the twins, sickly and bedridden as they were, that had been a nigh unverifiable claim. That they had been found off the road somewhere by the merchants and the merchants had dropped them off with Mistress Margaret because she had a big heart. And that part was true! Mistress Margaret did have a big heart, but the merchants?

The Mayor knew where the Aemon and Keimen came from. So did the healer and maybe old, Master Bordenson had an inkling. And Leinan.

Leinan had been with Mistress Margaret when they had found the twins, out in the Werwood one dark and very stormy night.Wet, shivering and blue with cold.

They were not newborns, and besides, Mistress Margaret would have known if any of the women had been pregnant recently.They were just very young.Toddlers, and so quiet that the Mayor, Mistress Margaret, Leinan, and the Healer had all thought there was something wrong with the two.

Two toddlers alone in the Werwood whom none of them recognized.

Two toddlers who did not wail and did not cry, who went home with them and could not remember where they came from or how they got there.

“Take care of them Leinan. I’ll pay three coppers a day, that’s almost two good silver jots a week. But say ne’er a word about whence they came. You understand?”

“I will, Ma’am,” Leinan remembered saying. “I won’t say a word.” And she hadn’t, not even after they had introduced the twins to the rest of the village as Aemon and Keimen.Not when she had started minding them in a more formal capacity and her father had been so proud that she had been grown up and precocious enough to be bringing in silver so young and her brother had been satisfactorily jealous. She hadn’t said a word.

So what if the twins were quiet? Nothing strange about two quiet orphans, right? So what if they acted older than their years? Some children were just different, right? So what if they didn’t play well with other children? So what of the children their age shied away and called them names? Said they were creepy? Children were mean little shits and she’d say that to their mother’s faces if she had to! Nothing strange about that, right?

Leinan had said not a word.

“They are mine. You can’t have them.” Leinan flinched when she realized that she’d murmured that out loud, and she stared hard at the fire. Maybe she hadn’t heard. Maybe the Monster….

“What right have thee to such as they?” It came as a breathy whisper on the breeze, almost lost in the crackling of the fire. “Ne’er by birth, ne’er by blood. How claimest thee they, the children, pray?”

Leinan shook and she stared hard, hard at the fire. Don’t say a word. She thought. You didn’t hear anything. The Monster didn’t speak. Her mouth didn’t move. You heard no —

“I swaddled them. I clothed them. I rocked them to bed. I stood over and taught them and loved them in their mother’s stead.”

“Oh, thee poor child of mortal man, dealt thee fate a wicked hand.”

“Why?” Leinan gasped. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she couldn’t stop. She stared hard at the flames and gasped out — “Why do this?”

“‘Why?’” The monster mimicked. Leinan saw the monsters lips curve into a smirk as sharp as jagged ice “A question from kine? Why granteth thee a boon for free?”

“A boon? What boon? You chased us here!”

And there was laughter, though Leinan could not see the creature’s mouth move at all.

Her skin broke out in prickles. It was a cold laugh, like the wind that had hounded them all of yesterday and tonight. When the monster spoke again there was an echo to it. A resonance that caught the breath in Leinan's lungs and squeezed it. The Monster — sang.

“So forthright, so bold,

  oh, mortal girl, it shall be told.

Thine life was forfeit within this glenn,

  thy knotted soul was fate held then.

The children thy holds so dear and so sweet,

  shall come with me to the land of sleet.

Of snow and ice and darkest night,

  of moon and stars an’ shadow-light.”

The monster’s eye’s glimmered and her mouth quirked into a grin as sharp as ice shards.

“How canst thee think to stay my hand?

  How fairest thee if mine hand to stay?

How canst thee pay for thy demand?

  Thy life’s weight, that I remand,

two children born that I desire?”

The Monster laughed cold and high and still, never moved her mouth. The words carried across the wind, and were heard by Leinan alone.

“An’ with what will canst thee hold this claim, as thee gaze thus at the fire-golden flame? Face thee me, eye to eye, and speak unto me thy heart’s desire.

‘Thy shalt take not these children mine.

My path hast crossed and holdeth this day.

I stand against thee! Thee, an’ all the Fae.’"

Leinan quivered like someone had plucked a bow string and she was the string.Those words — they thrummed, as if they carried with them a sort weight outside the confines of the breeze which carried them.

“Speak girl! And thusly say, Or forever abide what occureth this day.”

“I won’t let you take them. I’ll stop you,” she rasped. Rasped. As if pulling the words from deep within herself, up her throat and coughed out of her mouth.

But, no matter how hard she tried, Leinan could not wrench her eyes from the fire. She could not look the Monster in her beautiful, cold face. As etherial and unapproachable as a lonely mountain peak mid winter, lit by moon and stars and carpeted in shadows.

And a breathy tinkling laugh was her only response.

In desperation she looked the other way, to the man the Monster called a Wizard.

He had saved them, of that Leinan had no doubt. Placing himself in front of them like a hero from Master Bordenson’s tales, the way Leinan could not and jabbering in some foreign tongue she had not heard in her life. Eyes twinkling like trapped stars and a hat so large it blotted out forest on either side of the man’s head.

He was nearly naked, Leinan saw, wearing little more than his small clothes and his slippers — very strange looking slippers — with a bushy black beard hanging low from his chin and down a chest which was almost as hairy as his back. He had his clothes up next to him by the fire drying off, something that made little sense this late in the evening.

If he had needed to wash them, why had he waited until practically nightfall to do so? Otherwise, why dunk himself into the river with his clothes on, if at all! It would have been frigid!

But then, nothing about the man made sense.

Not minutes earlier, she had seen him pull out a stack of plates, of a make so curious and so fine that he could have sold them to lords and ladies for gold on their novelty alone if nothing else. He had pulled them from his robes like they had been sitting on shelves there waiting. His robes! The ones lying limply on a log in front the fire and spread out such that it couldn’t have hidden a barn mouse within its folds.

He had followed it up by pulling out cutlery made from a bendable material she had never seen before and paper! Paper so thin and fine that….

Leinan had seen paper before. It was in books, of which the Mayor of Landsend owned exactly eight of, and woe-betide any vagrant who even mentioned water in their presence.

The Wizard pulled paper out, handed it out, wetted some and tried to clean Aemon’s face where he had gotten scratched by branches… and then thrown it into the fire as if it were trash.

Leinan had almost jumped in after it!

The Wizard… looked to be nodding off… again. His hat was drawn low over his eyes with his bushy eyes squeezed near closing and his hand caressing his beard slowly and rhythmically.

The Wizard… the wizard looked like nobody's hero, and Leinan — Leinan’s hand not holding the skewer closed tightly over her belt knife.

Leinan couldn’t pull her eyes to the Monster. Couldn’t. They wouldn’t move.

‘Thy shalt take not these children mine….’ The words stuck in her mouth behind teeth jaw locked from gritting.

So instead Leinan watched their hero nod off in front of the fire, and she wanted to weep.

* * *

Leinan was staring worriedly at him, Barnibus noticed, as he struggled to pull himself out of what was quickly turning into an episode of Wizardly Contemplation.He shook himself hurriedly, making his hat slide a bit on his head to a muffled squawk from the cloth, and, drawing himself up with all the frayed dignity he had left, raised his skewer in a salute and intoned importantly,

“Ahah! By Moon and Sky. By Winter Frost and Evergreen wood. By that foul river off yonder and by my Hat of wonder!” His Hat’s snickering turned into a sudden cough and quieted immediately. “Dinner is served my very welcome guests! Let us eat and merry-make!”

The Forerunner sniffed sullenly and Leinan stared at him as if wondering whether his hat had one too many kinks in it.

The twins nodded solemnly and dug in.

“I shalt eat not thine cooked meats.” The Forerunner’s nose crinkled in unconcealed disgust . “It doth turn my stomach so.” She grinned thinly at Barnibus as he made to pass a plate with a fish cutlet on it, revealing pointed teeth which gleamed in the firelight. “What have thee for one such as I, Wizardly One?”

Barnibus saw Leinan freeze with a mouthful of fish half way into her mouth and the two twins hunched as one like rabbits suddenly caught out in the light.

Barnibus rallied hurriedly. “For thee” — He coughed — “For you, I have fish fresh caught from the river there.” He quickly traded the plate for one holding a fresh uncooked slab of fish and eyed the diminished pile of filleted steaks. Six there were six left. That was not a bad number… right? What could go wrong with six?

The Forerunner sniffed again, but nodded grudgingly after a moment, and the surrounding members of the campfire party all made noises of relief and one wizard released an “ouch!” — 'Wizards Sigh in Satisfaction not Relief' — as his hat bonked him on the head again.

It felt like the books were getting heavier.