The Truth of Things Unseen

Fae Tales

Gintas arranged for dinner to be brought out into the garden. A table was laid with creamy white cloth, silver candlesticks, trays of figs, cheese, small dry biscuits and wine. Someone draped a fur cloak around her shoulders. Together, they sat watching the mousehole as it silently pulsed.

One of the servants stepped right over the place where it was, apparently not noticing the awkwardness of the motion. Taliette gasped with surprise, covering her mouth, to hide the giggle, but the servant continued unharmed.

"You can only fall in them if you can see them," Gintas reminded her. "People who can’t see them just avoid them. They’ll walk the most amusing, meandering routes, but if you ask them why, they’ll swear blind they walked in a straight line. Now you know what to look for, you’ll see it all the time."

A servant poured red-gold wine into a pair of crystal goblets. Gintas raised his, and she clinked hers against it.

"Where is my new-laid egg? she mused."

Gintas looked at her blankly, then called for a servant and whispered something in his ear. A few minutes later a soft-boiled egg was set before her.

"There. Now you are a lady," he said.

She inclined her head, met his eyes and took a sip of the wine. It was delicious, it filled her head with summer's warmth and coated her tongue with honey.

She took another sip and felt her head go warm inside. This must be what it’s like to get drunk, she thought. Why did Father never show me this? Her heart hummed at her happily, but there were no words. It had nothing to say.

Gintas sat opposite her, dapper in a cream shirt beneath his customary leather jersey, leaning back in his chair as though all the world belonged to him. Beyond the rose garden, over the wall, was the house with its hundred plate-glass windows. In the distance, she could hear men eating dinner in the barracks. Gintas was rich, and now it all made sense.

"You've made a business of being able to get to places that other people can't," she said.

He nodded, toying with the stem of his wine glass. "As always my dear, you are remarkably perceptive."

"You steal things?"

"That's actually only a small part of it. We used to steal, but after a while, you realise that objects have limited value. It's information, and the alliances that information buy that are my main sources of income now. You want to know what a Duke really thinks of his Lord? Put a chap in the hollow wall next to his bedchamber. There are many applications."

She allowed herself a sly smile.

"Don't!" he raised a warning finger. "Don't just go crawling into any old mousehole you see now, you understand me? You have to check they are safe. Not all of them have exits."

She frowned at him. "You mean, you could just get stuck down there?"

"Everything shifts as it gets older. The earth moves. Buildings are raised up, foundations dug and filled in. These ways would have been made wide for soldiers to march through, and now, as you’ve seen, we need someone thinner. Someone more like you."

"Someone like Jessamy?"

"Jessamy has her uses."

"So what happens to a person if they get stuck?" She affected a casual air, but in her mind she was picturing Jessamy, trapped beneath the weave of the world, wriggling amongst the threads, struggling to free her arms. Maybe starting to panic, maybe crying a little. It was a nice thought.

"Some of the ways come out deep down in the solid rock,” he said. “I’ve had pits dug and found mounds of desiccated corpses sealed up in secret caverns. If you go deep enough, there are lakes of fire down there. Imagine crawling down and down, and when you come out, you tumble into the brimstone. That would be an easy death, nice and quick. Those are the kind ones. You burn, or you starve, and that’s it."

Mounds of desiccated corpses were interesting. Don't smile, don't let him see.

"The ones that kill you are the kind ones?" she said.

"When you play with the weave my dear, there are worse things than death. People get trapped. They take a wrong turning. They get their arms pinned."

"I would have thought they would be bones after a month or two."

He smiled. "My, you are a grisly one, aren’t you? But I have interviewed several such individuals, although the conversations were... difficult. Their clothes were from another era. One of them had two broken collarbones. One had clawed out his own eyes. Scratched the sockets clean of meat. Apparently, they were the only part of his body he could reach. Time is not the same down there. People don’t die. There’s ah... nowhere for the soul, " he gestured with his fork, “nowhere for the soul to go.”

Taliette thought for a minute. "Sounds like a good way to get rid of someone you didn’t like."

"That fact has not been lost on us, yes."

“You’ve tried that?”

“We have mouseholes we keep for this purpose, yes. I would imagine the ends of them are pure hell, stuffed with wriggling people. Sometimes I regret some of the things I’ve done, but one can only do one’s best.”

The servants brought the next course out, thin slices of meat and vegetables, cooked in salted butter so they almost melted in her mouth. She watched in amusement as, one after another, the servants paraded around the mousehole, just as Gintas had said they would, like a line of stupid ants around an obstacle too big for them to conceive of. She was elevated above them now, not just by birth but by capability.

"You told me you wanted to rule the world," she said, once they were alone again. "Did you mean that, or was that just a lie to get me to stay?"

"Heh, you don’t mess around, do you? I approve of that."

"You didn’t answer my question."

"Tell me," said Gintas, and his voice was guarded now. "Are you familiar with the story of Lillidel and Kisme?"

He still hadn’t answered the question. She frowned in annoyance. He wanted to talk about stories now?

"Kisme and the Shadow King? Sure, it's a dumb fairy tale."

"Remind me how it goes?"

"It's just a silly Fae story."

"Indulge me." He steepled his hands and leaned back on his chair.

Taliette cast her mind back to days when her governess had told her goodnight stories before tucking her into bed. She pieced the thing together in her mind, then rattled it off quickly, in the most monotone voice she could manage.

"Lillidel breaks into the evil wizard's castle and steals his magic golden snake. The snake grants three wishes. Lillidel wishes to be beautiful, then she wishes to be rich, but now the wizard is angry. He takes her sister prisoner, so with her third wish, she banishes him from the world. He disappears, and his castle, and all his monsters, but her sister Kisme is in the castle dungeons, and she disappears too."

"What happens to the sister?"

"They find her under a turnip at the bottom of the garden."

"They pull up a turnip for supper, and out she comes. Yes, I suspect that last part might have been added to make the story more palatable for children. It's a true story though, after a fashion. Most of these old tales are."

She stared at him. A moment ago, he had been strong and capable, a man unlike her father, but now he was babbling about children’s tales. It was disappointing. His face was so serious though. She had to suppress a giggle.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. She spoke slowly, separating the words to make sure he heard clearly.

"Because it pertains. There are few writings from that time, but I have some in my collection. You will have noticed my library is extensive. Their real names were Layonidel and Kenderlin. The stronghold was named Cara Llandrell which is now lost. The snake and the turnip are obvious fabrications. Reading between the lines, I believe they may actually have been lovers, not sisters."

"Lovers?" she said. It seemed so funny. "They were girls."

"Don’t mistake your father’s opinions for eternal truths my dear. The world is really much more complicated than you know."

They sat in silence for a minute. A moth drifted by. She watched it spiral around the candle flame, then fall with smouldering wings.

"You know you shouldn’t talk to me like this," she said.

"And why not?"

"Because I was starting to respect you, and now I don't anymore."

She met his gaze, but he didn’t blink or look away. She took a sip of wine and so did he, eyes locked with hers, refusing to back down.

"I have shown you a way to pass between the threads of the world today," he said at last. "Perhaps you might consider the possibility that I know things that you don’t. I have acquired various writings from the time of the Breaking. The old stories say that Kenderlin had a daughter, and that after she was killed, Kenderlin went looking for revenge and was imprisoned. They say that Layonidel somehow opened a hole in the world and cast the Cara Llandrel down into it, but Kenderlin was lost, too. Notice any similarities with your experience today perhaps?"

She shook her head. It was ridiculous.

"You think me foolish," he said, "but there is more. Ask me about the evil wizard."

"Very well. Tell me about the evil wizard?"

"I think he was an Aden."

She snorted, and a little bit of wine came out of her nose. It burned and made her eyes sting. She flushed and hot beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. When she looked up, he was glaring at her stony-faced.

"Is something amusing?" he asked.

The sight of his round, bald, frowny head set her off again.

"An Aden," she laughed, "with wings and a little wand with a star on it and twinkly twinkly little pointed shoes!"

He watched her laughing, and then he chuckled, too. "Do you know, I don't think I've ever seen you look happy before. You're always so contained. Your mother was like that, too."

She composed herself. She wasn't going to talk about her mother.

Gintas gestured over his shoulder, and a servant waiting by the gate walked to the table carrying a long black chest. He placed it on the table and then retired through the arch out of the rose garden. The gate clicked shut behind him. Gintas tossed the garden to the gate, leaving the box where it was, and lowered the latch. They were completely alone.

"You know what I see when I look around?" said Gintas. "I see a world that is full of holes, I see peasants telling children’s stories about a people we have completely forgotten about. I think they ruled us. I think we went to war with them, and in the fight, I think we cut ourselves off from them so completely that even the memories of them became legend. What do you think of that?"

The box still rested on the table between them. She could sense the weight of it, dark and dense. There was something foreign about it, something -- other.

"I think they had power beyond what we can imagine. I think they shone like the stars. I think they rode dragons spun out of darkness, and walked taller than the trees in armour made of some material we cannot imagine. I think we fought them with everything we had and left the world so full of holes there was nothing for it to do but break. I think we carved the world up like a goose," continued Gintas, "and now we live in the carcass, but inside a carcass, there are rich pickings for those who aren’t afraid to get in amongst the bones. Am I right?"

"What’s in the box?"

"I like that about you, so direct. You get right to the point."