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smokingbootContinuing the story I began before...
‘You need to change your ways,’ said the Hunter to the Moon, ‘You are threadbare from the kisses of moths and other vagrants.’ She took no heed of him and danced on, smiling high over the rathe. It should have been beautiful, this landscape of sugar and night but... he shook his head, admitting the damage to himself. All art of light on snow was ruined, lost in a miasma of blue-grey down. He was not pleased, but he knew no better way to prepare.
Like many of the hedge royalty, he understood form better than essence, and felt it was worth destroying a little scenery to seem so real, to be himself. So it was that his magnificent pelt gave way to a fine navy frockcoat with white and silver embroidery and matching breeches. His hair was black and thick as the dreams of Corvix, his eyes the colour of lemon rind, his tricorn a glory of rapscallion elegance and his boots were ever his boots, and everything a hunter’s boots should be. He had given them extra thought. To have this was worth the effort of the great change, removing all that fuzz from his body and face. He couldn’t mourn it: He was well aware that no-one found it attractive.
His step had changed once (though he put that from his mind) and now it changed again, from the lope of a forest ghost to the stride of a bravado. He approached the tavern all the while practising his sardonic smile. Time enough in the wilds and he had been hunting so very long that many of his bon mots were in terrible need of rehearsal but he really felt he could wait no longer. He needed fire, and a drink and, though he would never admit it to himself, company. The tavern would be full of ready companions, and they respected him there. Or at least, he could make them respect him.
The tavern never changed but waited, welcoming all by the light of firefly and glow-worm. Here under toadstools or wrapped in onion skins sat the hedgefolk whose blessing every witch asks in the stirring of her cauldron, and here too were brews to be found of another sort, wines of hazel and damson, fine mead and metheglin for the gentry, ales for the rougher of taste, milk and water for the pure folk who can abide nought else.
He, of course, avoided such people. ‘Let none so refined come between me and a fine flagon!’ Was ever his cry, and he would sit and stretch his long legs, all booted and buttoned to the thighs, right across the great roots, between the huge blackening chestnuts, daring any to come and make him move his feet. Now there were those not so afeared as to forgo his challenge, but the innkeep always bade them give way, for though his eyes were wild, he was of noble blood, had hunted long and could drink deep: And therefore it was best to let him have his way.
He never knew the landlord persuaded others to stay away. He concluded that they were cravens or lacking in affability, faults never calculated to ease his temper. And so fights would break out and heads would be broken for all the innkeep’s efforts; a lesson, surely, in minding one’s business, and letting others settle theirs.
On his arrival he realised instantly that the night promised naught but decorum unless he worked hard to make trouble, for Phynthoblin was there, all goggle-eyes and unctuous bows. He had varnished a ladybird which now served as a cravat-pin; most inventive. Bugs, sighed the Visitor from the Woods, I know not why the hedge is so full of them. Nor for that matter, why some of them are so fond of me. It’s not as though they don’t know.
Phynthoblin unfolded some of his legs and hopped down towards the visitor before he had even ordered a drink. He has news, thought the Hunter, and to his irritation, Phynthoblin proved him right almost immediately. From his pocket, the courtier waved what seemed like a small wafer of gold, a card whose brilliance was only broken by the carefully crafted whirls and patterns in obsidian dancing across its surface. Writing, the Hunter reminded himself, it is writing. You are no savage, you know a letter when you see it. What a fool this cricket is!
Small glittering hearts fell from the card to the floor. The card shone like light, like joy, like laughter. The Hunter, knowing who must have sent it, decided to ignore it for as long as he could.
‘Your grace!’ chattered Phynthoblin ‘Your grace…I am very honoured, very honoured…’ he waved the card in the air, ‘To present you with this beautiful card of finest, finest, ah –' He wavered as the visitor plucked the card out of his fingers, dipped it in his flagon of red and sucked on it thoughtfully.
‘Blonde,’ finished the Hunter. ‘My cousin has sent me a card of finest blonde.’
He carried on sucking while he tried to think of something disparaging to say, but nothing clever occurred to him. Truly, he had been away too long.
‘Who is it this time? Can he truly be putting us all through this again?’
Phynthoblin gently rescued the card.
‘Your grace hasn’t even looked at it,’ He complained. ‘This one is the loveliest I have designed. And this time is very, very different.’
‘He is going through this whole charade again then.’
‘He is getting married if that is what you mean, your grace.’
The visitor finished off his tankard with a fine slovenly gulp and demanded another, which arrived on the table in quick time.Phynthoblin ordered one himself. The Hunter was never easy to humour, but he was ever more genial with those who did not consider themselves above the common fare. Phynthoblin waited while the silence grew.
‘Why me?’ The Hunter demanded abruptly, ‘Why must I be part of this absurd farce? Am I not busy enough? Why can he not leave me alone?’
Phynthoblin sighed. ‘Because you are his cousin, Your Grace.’ He smiled his bright grasshopper smile.
‘And because the last time, when you weren’t invited for just this reason, you turned up anyway mortally offended and ran off with the bride. His highness wouldn’t want to make that mistake again.’
‘He wants to keep his eye on me.’
‘He wants you to bless his nuptials with your approval rather than kidnapping the bride and devouring her when drunk.’
There was a blank moment.
‘I don’t remember that...and any way...’ The visitor shook his head, ‘It’s all nonsense. That one was pointless. Tasteless and pointless. No artist at all.’
‘We shall never know,’ responded Phynthoblin with a rueful smile.
‘And this cousin thing. How dare he?’
‘Not this again surely, Your Grace...’
‘Yes, this again! Tell me - do that rolling thing with your eyes once more and I’ll sew them on my boots - tell me, do I look like him?’
‘No Your Grace.' Phynthoblin sighed.
‘Indeed not!’
‘And yet,’ the courtier turned his grimace into a smile of sincere ingratiation , 'The similarities between your physionomies are too strong to be denied, the blood of the noble lineage you share -'
‘Do not push me too far, Phynthoblin, know better than to aggravate me. All here is built by his hand, I know that. His and his father’s and his father’s father’s. Do I build? Do I spin? Do you see webs here cast by my hand?’
His voice grew louder. Phynthoblin resisted the temptation to close his eyes under the advancing tirade, ‘Am I a weaver now? Is that what you think I am?’
‘No, no, your grace, not at all.’
‘Not at all. What am I then?’
‘A soldier. A hunter.’ Phynthoblin peeked up at the Visitor’s face to see if it was enough. Not quite. ’You wander alone, you make no home. You hunt your quarry over cold bare stone, and when you bite, you leave no bone.'
‘So then, I weave no webs and pursue my prey, disdaining traps. What kind of spider am I? Answer me, you green and wretched strummer, you hopper at the foot of bards, you mendacious malady of my mind, what kind of spider am I?’
Phynthoblin thought, floundered, decided the issue wasn’t worth it.
‘None your grace. None.’
'And so what has your master to do with me?’
‘Your Grace...’ for a mad moment, the envoy considered complete honesty, looked at the strange glitter in the Hunter’s eyes, and decided against it. The truth must surely become evident when his glamours slip away from him. Thus it works with us all.
The Hunter was famed through the wars. Hordes had parted before him, armies flowing along the earth’s veins had fallen to his ferocity, and he had withstood where others could not.
On his return, however, it was tacitly accepted that he was one of the less stable members of the royal household. This truth, self evident before the war, was accepted and reinvented after as part of the price veterans and their relatives must pay for victory. Nonetheless, for all the monarch’s sympathies to the hero, he would insist on his relative’s attendance. Manners were everything to the Prince of Spiders.
‘This bride is very different,’ said Phynthoblin, ordering another brew for himself and the Hunter ‘She is an artist.’
The chilly light in the eyes of Phynthoblin’s companion had not changed. If anything it seemed more intense than before, and the Prince’s emissary almost felt sorry for those mighty soldiers who had faced the Hunter in his war frenzy. Right now (Phynthoblin rubbed his back legs together in dismay) he seemed almost to be thinking, no, not just thinking, cogitating. It was all going terribly wrong.
‘She is going, of course.’ Phynthoblin chirruped almost without calculation. ‘And she is bringing her pet with her.’
‘The Beloved?’ A shot of darkest red lit the back of the Hunter’s eyes, worse, much worse, and if there had been more room, Phynthoblin would have backed away. Then the Hunter laughed, and the grasshopper relaxed. ‘What, bringing her human loon? My royal cousin won’t be pleased.’
‘It may be why he got the new bride. She is human too, you understand.’
The Hunter looked at him keenly.‘And an artist. You said she was an artist.’
‘An artist or a writer or a dreamer or a loon, you know the sort of thing. And the thing is bringing its axe, an iron axe. So you can see why –'
‘He has never got over that one keeping her little red haired man.’
‘It is a great tragedy. His Highness has never possessed any such jewel of his own.’
‘Too quick to cut them up, that’s his problem. I say, wait til they’ve done something interesting before eviscerating them. But then, I’ve never been married.’
Phynthoblin looked scandalised. ‘Your Grace is being most unfair, most -‘
The Hunter waved him into silence, and sat among the pumpkins, thoughtful. He pushed his drink away, which Phynthoblin regarded as either a very good sign or a very bad one. The noise of the tavern had died down around them, and the pause lasted a long time. Then he stood up, straightened his tri-corn and finished his drink.
‘You can tell him that I will be attending.’ He said. Phynthoblin’s shoulders relaxed perceptibly.
‘Yes. I will attend. Tell them not to start without me. I come, not as his relative, which I find an impudent assertion, but to see his fair lady and wish them both well.’
The Hunter left, and Phynthoblin watched as the figure shimmered, from two legs to four, from four to more, a dark grey figure scuttling among the branches.
‘What manner of spider wanders alone, makes no home, hunts his quarry over cold bare stone, you who bite and leave no bone?’ He murmured. ‘Why, a Wolf Spider, of course.’ And he chuckled to himself, a dry rattling little sound.
Mad though the Hunter undoubtedly was, at least the work was done. He would put in an appearance at the wedding, his deficiencies in etiquette could be kept in check, and in the meantime his fury would be more than a match for her little doll’s axe. The grasshopper’s head began to shimmer and peel as he wrestled with a momentary pity. For you are sick indeed, Cousin, he thought, if so paltry a device as this can fool you.
And he paid for his relative’s drinks, a matter of good form. Cannibal and mutilator he might be, but the Prince of Spiders never ceased to behave like a gentleman.
There are grinding bits and pieces here and there that I do not like. But I'm tired of playing with it, and must let it go before I can edit it with any clarity. Time to stop for now.
‘You need to change your ways,’ said the Hunter to the Moon, ‘You are threadbare from the kisses of moths and other vagrants.’ She took no heed of him and danced on, smiling high over the rathe. It should have been beautiful, this landscape of sugar and night but... he shook his head, admitting the damage to himself. All art of light on snow was ruined, lost in a miasma of blue-grey down. He was not pleased, but he knew no better way to prepare.
Like many of the hedge royalty, he understood form better than essence, and felt it was worth destroying a little scenery to seem so real, to be himself. So it was that his magnificent pelt gave way to a fine navy frockcoat with white and silver embroidery and matching breeches. His hair was black and thick as the dreams of Corvix, his eyes the colour of lemon rind, his tricorn a glory of rapscallion elegance and his boots were ever his boots, and everything a hunter’s boots should be. He had given them extra thought. To have this was worth the effort of the great change, removing all that fuzz from his body and face. He couldn’t mourn it: He was well aware that no-one found it attractive.
His step had changed once (though he put that from his mind) and now it changed again, from the lope of a forest ghost to the stride of a bravado. He approached the tavern all the while practising his sardonic smile. Time enough in the wilds and he had been hunting so very long that many of his bon mots were in terrible need of rehearsal but he really felt he could wait no longer. He needed fire, and a drink and, though he would never admit it to himself, company. The tavern would be full of ready companions, and they respected him there. Or at least, he could make them respect him.
The tavern never changed but waited, welcoming all by the light of firefly and glow-worm. Here under toadstools or wrapped in onion skins sat the hedgefolk whose blessing every witch asks in the stirring of her cauldron, and here too were brews to be found of another sort, wines of hazel and damson, fine mead and metheglin for the gentry, ales for the rougher of taste, milk and water for the pure folk who can abide nought else.
He, of course, avoided such people. ‘Let none so refined come between me and a fine flagon!’ Was ever his cry, and he would sit and stretch his long legs, all booted and buttoned to the thighs, right across the great roots, between the huge blackening chestnuts, daring any to come and make him move his feet. Now there were those not so afeared as to forgo his challenge, but the innkeep always bade them give way, for though his eyes were wild, he was of noble blood, had hunted long and could drink deep: And therefore it was best to let him have his way.
He never knew the landlord persuaded others to stay away. He concluded that they were cravens or lacking in affability, faults never calculated to ease his temper. And so fights would break out and heads would be broken for all the innkeep’s efforts; a lesson, surely, in minding one’s business, and letting others settle theirs.
On his arrival he realised instantly that the night promised naught but decorum unless he worked hard to make trouble, for Phynthoblin was there, all goggle-eyes and unctuous bows. He had varnished a ladybird which now served as a cravat-pin; most inventive. Bugs, sighed the Visitor from the Woods, I know not why the hedge is so full of them. Nor for that matter, why some of them are so fond of me. It’s not as though they don’t know.
Phynthoblin unfolded some of his legs and hopped down towards the visitor before he had even ordered a drink. He has news, thought the Hunter, and to his irritation, Phynthoblin proved him right almost immediately. From his pocket, the courtier waved what seemed like a small wafer of gold, a card whose brilliance was only broken by the carefully crafted whirls and patterns in obsidian dancing across its surface. Writing, the Hunter reminded himself, it is writing. You are no savage, you know a letter when you see it. What a fool this cricket is!
Small glittering hearts fell from the card to the floor. The card shone like light, like joy, like laughter. The Hunter, knowing who must have sent it, decided to ignore it for as long as he could.
‘Your grace!’ chattered Phynthoblin ‘Your grace…I am very honoured, very honoured…’ he waved the card in the air, ‘To present you with this beautiful card of finest, finest, ah –' He wavered as the visitor plucked the card out of his fingers, dipped it in his flagon of red and sucked on it thoughtfully.
‘Blonde,’ finished the Hunter. ‘My cousin has sent me a card of finest blonde.’
He carried on sucking while he tried to think of something disparaging to say, but nothing clever occurred to him. Truly, he had been away too long.
‘Who is it this time? Can he truly be putting us all through this again?’
Phynthoblin gently rescued the card.
‘Your grace hasn’t even looked at it,’ He complained. ‘This one is the loveliest I have designed. And this time is very, very different.’
‘He is going through this whole charade again then.’
‘He is getting married if that is what you mean, your grace.’
The visitor finished off his tankard with a fine slovenly gulp and demanded another, which arrived on the table in quick time.Phynthoblin ordered one himself. The Hunter was never easy to humour, but he was ever more genial with those who did not consider themselves above the common fare. Phynthoblin waited while the silence grew.
‘Why me?’ The Hunter demanded abruptly, ‘Why must I be part of this absurd farce? Am I not busy enough? Why can he not leave me alone?’
Phynthoblin sighed. ‘Because you are his cousin, Your Grace.’ He smiled his bright grasshopper smile.
‘And because the last time, when you weren’t invited for just this reason, you turned up anyway mortally offended and ran off with the bride. His highness wouldn’t want to make that mistake again.’
‘He wants to keep his eye on me.’
‘He wants you to bless his nuptials with your approval rather than kidnapping the bride and devouring her when drunk.’
There was a blank moment.
‘I don’t remember that...and any way...’ The visitor shook his head, ‘It’s all nonsense. That one was pointless. Tasteless and pointless. No artist at all.’
‘We shall never know,’ responded Phynthoblin with a rueful smile.
‘And this cousin thing. How dare he?’
‘Not this again surely, Your Grace...’
‘Yes, this again! Tell me - do that rolling thing with your eyes once more and I’ll sew them on my boots - tell me, do I look like him?’
‘No Your Grace.' Phynthoblin sighed.
‘Indeed not!’
‘And yet,’ the courtier turned his grimace into a smile of sincere ingratiation , 'The similarities between your physionomies are too strong to be denied, the blood of the noble lineage you share -'
‘Do not push me too far, Phynthoblin, know better than to aggravate me. All here is built by his hand, I know that. His and his father’s and his father’s father’s. Do I build? Do I spin? Do you see webs here cast by my hand?’
His voice grew louder. Phynthoblin resisted the temptation to close his eyes under the advancing tirade, ‘Am I a weaver now? Is that what you think I am?’
‘No, no, your grace, not at all.’
‘Not at all. What am I then?’
‘A soldier. A hunter.’ Phynthoblin peeked up at the Visitor’s face to see if it was enough. Not quite. ’You wander alone, you make no home. You hunt your quarry over cold bare stone, and when you bite, you leave no bone.'
‘So then, I weave no webs and pursue my prey, disdaining traps. What kind of spider am I? Answer me, you green and wretched strummer, you hopper at the foot of bards, you mendacious malady of my mind, what kind of spider am I?’
Phynthoblin thought, floundered, decided the issue wasn’t worth it.
‘None your grace. None.’
'And so what has your master to do with me?’
‘Your Grace...’ for a mad moment, the envoy considered complete honesty, looked at the strange glitter in the Hunter’s eyes, and decided against it. The truth must surely become evident when his glamours slip away from him. Thus it works with us all.
The Hunter was famed through the wars. Hordes had parted before him, armies flowing along the earth’s veins had fallen to his ferocity, and he had withstood where others could not.
On his return, however, it was tacitly accepted that he was one of the less stable members of the royal household. This truth, self evident before the war, was accepted and reinvented after as part of the price veterans and their relatives must pay for victory. Nonetheless, for all the monarch’s sympathies to the hero, he would insist on his relative’s attendance. Manners were everything to the Prince of Spiders.
‘This bride is very different,’ said Phynthoblin, ordering another brew for himself and the Hunter ‘She is an artist.’
The chilly light in the eyes of Phynthoblin’s companion had not changed. If anything it seemed more intense than before, and the Prince’s emissary almost felt sorry for those mighty soldiers who had faced the Hunter in his war frenzy. Right now (Phynthoblin rubbed his back legs together in dismay) he seemed almost to be thinking, no, not just thinking, cogitating. It was all going terribly wrong.
‘She is going, of course.’ Phynthoblin chirruped almost without calculation. ‘And she is bringing her pet with her.’
‘The Beloved?’ A shot of darkest red lit the back of the Hunter’s eyes, worse, much worse, and if there had been more room, Phynthoblin would have backed away. Then the Hunter laughed, and the grasshopper relaxed. ‘What, bringing her human loon? My royal cousin won’t be pleased.’
‘It may be why he got the new bride. She is human too, you understand.’
The Hunter looked at him keenly.‘And an artist. You said she was an artist.’
‘An artist or a writer or a dreamer or a loon, you know the sort of thing. And the thing is bringing its axe, an iron axe. So you can see why –'
‘He has never got over that one keeping her little red haired man.’
‘It is a great tragedy. His Highness has never possessed any such jewel of his own.’
‘Too quick to cut them up, that’s his problem. I say, wait til they’ve done something interesting before eviscerating them. But then, I’ve never been married.’
Phynthoblin looked scandalised. ‘Your Grace is being most unfair, most -‘
The Hunter waved him into silence, and sat among the pumpkins, thoughtful. He pushed his drink away, which Phynthoblin regarded as either a very good sign or a very bad one. The noise of the tavern had died down around them, and the pause lasted a long time. Then he stood up, straightened his tri-corn and finished his drink.
‘You can tell him that I will be attending.’ He said. Phynthoblin’s shoulders relaxed perceptibly.
‘Yes. I will attend. Tell them not to start without me. I come, not as his relative, which I find an impudent assertion, but to see his fair lady and wish them both well.’
The Hunter left, and Phynthoblin watched as the figure shimmered, from two legs to four, from four to more, a dark grey figure scuttling among the branches.
‘What manner of spider wanders alone, makes no home, hunts his quarry over cold bare stone, you who bite and leave no bone?’ He murmured. ‘Why, a Wolf Spider, of course.’ And he chuckled to himself, a dry rattling little sound.
Mad though the Hunter undoubtedly was, at least the work was done. He would put in an appearance at the wedding, his deficiencies in etiquette could be kept in check, and in the meantime his fury would be more than a match for her little doll’s axe. The grasshopper’s head began to shimmer and peel as he wrestled with a momentary pity. For you are sick indeed, Cousin, he thought, if so paltry a device as this can fool you.
And he paid for his relative’s drinks, a matter of good form. Cannibal and mutilator he might be, but the Prince of Spiders never ceased to behave like a gentleman.
There are grinding bits and pieces here and there that I do not like. But I'm tired of playing with it, and must let it go before I can edit it with any clarity. Time to stop for now.
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Date: 2004-01-25 09:37 am (UTC)Wow
Date: 2004-01-23 05:51 am (UTC)Gray
Re: Wow
Date: 2004-01-25 09:34 am (UTC)