The Festival of the Crab had begun. The stars blinked down in omniscient approval, and the festival attendees were eating and drinking in earnest. A warm, evening wind rolled off the sea carrying gulls emboldened by the promise of a discarded treat. The tent flaps fluttered in the breeze, drowned out by overzealous vendors hawking their wares. Tailors and woodworkers promised unmatched quality. Painters sat at their easels. Artisans displayed stained-glass lanterns, clay idols, and fairies crafted out of cornhusks. Carts lay laden with sweet honey rolls and cinnamon bread. The Pecking Maid offered kisses for coppers (Kora saw her earn a silver last year and it made her blush). The Odd Magestic, an ancient fool, performed puppet shows for children. A man with a long handlebar mustache roamed the festival on tall walking sticks. The Dragon, a bald man with a painted pate and no shirt, breathed fire into the air by blowing a mysterious liquid on a torch. Two star-seers blessed the festival with their talents; exotic visitors who claimed they could save you from future misfortunes. One read the stars, the other the tarot. Under ordinary circumstances, Kora would be giddy with excitement. As it was, every movement made her jump and every unknown face belonged to an assailant.
They passed from tent to tent while Gram Heega asked everyone they encountered if they knew of a man named Orison. Nobody had even heard of him until an old salt who hailed from Chrais raised an eyebrow.
“Orison? Haven’t heard that name since I was still charming to the lassies,” he recalled with a peek to Gram. When she didn’t bite, he frowned and continued, “Used Magesty for the Laveriums was the gabble. Drove him mad as a loon, they say.” The Laveriums were the ruling family of Chrais, and thus, of all of Anduir. For generations they were the shining exemplars of Anduiri chivalry and justice. If this Orison worked for the Laveriums, that was a good sign.
“Do you know where he might be now?” Gram inquired.
The fisherman shrugged, “Dead as these carp lyin’ here I’m sure. That’s the way of anyone dares to use Magesty. Up and disappear, certain as the tides. Fishin’ though, that’s an honest man’s work. Make an honest woman out of someone like you I promise. Only Magesty I knows is in the hay,” and he chuckled, as if he surprised even himself by saying it.
Gram scowled. “I’ll have you watch that tongue, sir. I have a young ‘un here.”
“Old enough to know man needs a woman, I reckon,” he countered, sizing Kora up. “Tell truth now, child.”
“Good even’ to you sir,” Gram grumbled back as she led Kora away.
Kora didn’t know all that much about men needing women, of course. She couldn’t help but think back on Mimm’s kisses. No boy had ever kissed her before, and she was reenacting the encounter over and over in her head. She considered herself practical and disciplined. Her father had taught her that. And so, it was distressing how out of control she felt when Mimm had swarmed her. Playing music was liberating, yes, but she worked in concert with the music when she played. She dictated where the music led. She didn’t float off on it, a victim to its unrelenting tide.
“I don’t think we’ll find this Orison here, Booba,” Gram conceded. “We should prepare to set out for Chrais.”
“When?”
“Now,” Gram decided. “No sense lingering here. If this man is dead, we’ll find out in Chrais. I hope, perhaps, we may be safer there as well.”
“Do you believe that?”
Gram sighed. “Safer, maybe. Safe… no.”
“I’d like to say goodbye to… my friend.”
Gram raised an eyebrow. “Who’s this?”
“The stable boy. I met him on my last visit with father,” she said, avoiding eye contact.
“I see. Be quick and discreet. Best he not know your business.”
Gram waited outside as Kora walked back into the stables.
Mimm beamed when he saw her. “Good news! I can have the stables tended during the Crab Dance.”
Kora’s heart sank. She lived for music and dance. The gods indeed mocked her. “I… I can’t stay.”
“You can’t stay?” Mimm looked panicked. “What? … did you… did you tell your father?”
Kora winced. “No.”
“But can’t you stay? How could you miss the dance? You won’t walk the path home in the dark?” He scratched at his nose unconsciously.
“No. I… I simply… I have to go. I wanted to come in and say goodbye.” She smiled sadly.
“What is it Kora? Is it those two men who were here? Are they scaring you? Because I’m deft with a blade! Nobody’s going to hurt you while I’m here, that you can be sure of.” The blemishes on his face flushed as he swore his vow, and for an instant she thought about asking him to join them on their trek to Chrais. She remembered the Folke in the cloaks of thorns and the six-legged dog and reconsidered.
Mimm pressed on, “Is it those two thieves? Is it?”
“It’s… not them, really. I… I need to find someone,” was all she could come up with. “I’m looking for someone and he’s not here.”
“Who?” He reached out and grabbed her hands.
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“How do you know? I talk to everyone who comes through here.”
That was probably true. She hadn’t considered that until now. While she knew she had to be discreet about her predicament, she and Gram had already questioned almost everyone here. “An old friend of my father. Orison.”
Mimm peered at her quizzically. “Are you playing me the fool? Orison? A friend of your father?”
“Yes, that’s what he told us.”
“Orison the Odd?” He was scowling now, feeling ridiculed.
“The Odd… no, it can’t be.”
* * * *
The children laughed again. The story was well known. Sir Bopple, the motley knight, and his talking horse, Hoopsy, fighting over an apple, with Hoopsy outwitting the knight at every turn. The puppet show delivered a steady dose of flatulence and pratfalls designed to delight the youngest of audiences. Kora had seen the children’s performer last year and couldn’t help but laugh, as base as he was. Now she and Gram watched, aghast.
If this base puppeteer was indeed named Orison, it couldn’t be the wise friend of her father who had worked for the Laveriums. Nonetheless, Gram conceded they had to at least talk to him. The show ended in the usual way, with Hoopsy attacking an apple in a manner that sprayed the closest children with a spray of apple peels. This old fool used mangy orange rinds instead of fresh apple peels, but the children didn’t seem to care. He punctuated the puppets’ exit with a pinch of pebbles that burst in a small flash when he threw it on a nearby rock, to the oohs and the aahs of the crowd.
Orison the Odd’s robes were a patchwork quilt of every conceivable color, muted by years of caked-in grime and dirt. He was bald on top with puffs of gray on the sides and he wore round, wire-framed spectacles on the end of his nose with no lenses. A few coppers were tossed into a battered tin cup in what Kora assumed must be a windfall for the puppeteer. She wondered how he kept himself fed the rest of the year.
When the crowd dispersed, Gram approached. “Well performed, sir.”
The Odd picked up his orange rinds without looking up. “Sir. Sir. Sir or cur? Cur or blur? Oh dear, who rhymes in these times? Dearity, dear, dear, what rhymes with dear?”
Gram shot Kora a look before continuing, “I understand your name is Orison? Is that right?”
“Names! Squeezy, squeezy, squeezy. What does the ocean do for a name? Blub, blub, blubbety blub. The beast of eight embraces all the same. Ho friend, wait. Did you not know? I have a name!” he cackled as he poured the coppers from his tin cup into a pocket hidden in his patchwork robes.
“Is that your name? Orison?” Gram pressed.
“Hooooo! What a name. I’m Bopple and Hoopsy, but if this Oooorison earns coppers that’s the name for me. Clink the cup. That’s the tale you’ll get. Clink, clink, clinkety-clink, I plead. Eyes, ears, nose, fingers. Names indeed.” With that, he picked up his puppets and ducked into his tent.
Gram shook her head in disbelief. “How desperate have we become? Let us retrieve Meg and go.”
The Odd Magestic’s tent had a bizarre shape. It looked like a funnel. The base was small enough, perhaps seven feet wide, but the top flared out to about nine or ten feet wide. It was clearly very old and hadn’t been cleaned in years, but the quality of its construction was there, if you looked closely. Working on a remote farm one must be self-sufficient. Kora often darned clothing and blankets and she knew quality material and expert stitch.
“Let me ask him. Once more.”
“Booba, the boy was wrong.”
Kora expected as much. But still… “Let me make sure.”
She pulled the tent flap aside enough to peek in. The old man sat on a dusty blanket pouring water into his tin cup. There was no top to the tent. It was open to the night sky and lit by moonlight. The sides of the tent were covered in white chalk markings: dots and lines, arcs, and circles, connected this way and that. The small crate he used for his puppet stage sat in the middle of the tent as a makeshift table. To one side of the tent, she saw a pile of other puppets: a dragon, a maid, and a faerie amongst them. On the other side lay a pile of rolled up parchments. “Pardon? May I come in?”
“Come back, come back, little lamb. Next show soon,” he called as he waved her away with his hand.
“I’m not here for your show. My name is Kora Smythe.”
The old man became very still. For the first time, he looked up at her. He stared at her for what seemed like forever through those empty wire frames.
“Smythe…” he whispered, as if trying to unearth some eons held secret.
Kora moved into the tent and kneeled; her hope sparked by this reaction. “Yes. Smythe. My father was Gregor Smythe.” Whether it was saying his name, or using the word was, she didn’t know, but the tears came. She knew she ought to be strong now, but there was no fighting it. It spewed out of her in gasps and blubbers. Kora Smythe, daughter of Gregor Smythe. It would never be true again, and yet it would always be true, for however long she might be alive. She wondered what it meant. There was so much she wanted to ask him. So much she wanted to tell him. It was a cruel turn, to make her realize only now how deeply she loved her father. But it was a turn she deserved; she knew. He had forbidden she leave the house last night. She was an ingrate and a fool.
The Odd Magestic sat completely still for several long moments until Kora began to compose herself. Without the steady stream of chatter, and the constant fuddling, he appeared a different person.
“Smythe, Smythe, how I wish I had never met thee,” he said sadly.
“You are Orison, aren’t you?”
“Once. No more. No more. Where Orison once was, only The Odd remains.” It was almost a warning the way he said it. As if he dared her to challenge it. “Speak the Odd or still your tongue.” When she didn’t challenge him, he continued, “Gregor Smythe the immovable. The haughty. Snippety-snap-snap! Still, in the end…” He appeared to check himself. He had never stopped staring at Kora, and now, his eyes squinted as he looked her over. “Nemi the Fox on you, what have you gotten yourself into?”
By moonlight, she was surprised the old man could see the color. “My eyes?”
“Eyes she says! That’s the least of your problems Smythe spawn. You’re glowing,” he pointed out.
She looked down at her hands and body, but nothing glowed as far as she could tell. “What do you mean? I don’t see anything.”
Orison the Odd thought about that a moment before replying, “Of course you don’t, Smythe girl. But I see, see? You had just as well be screaming out, ‘Riches to rival the houses lie betwixt my breasts! Feast! Cackle and feast!’ Fie on your alarum and on your father. Fly, fly little cygnet. Else we’re all killed, or worse.”
“Well, wait, hold. What do you mean? I’m glowing? With what? And who else can see it? And why would anyone care? What is it? Please. You must help me. My father told us we had to seek you out. That you would help.” She was leaning in now. Pleading. “You have to help me.”
Almost a mirror image, he also leaned in as she spoke. His face went flush as he proclaimed, “Yes! Yes, damn the houses, I shall! I shall help you!”
Kora’s hopes soared until, a beat later, Orison’s eyes went wide, and he jumped away from her. “You… I say, you… you’re thorny, thorny, thorny, Kora Smythe.” He paced back and forth as he studied her. “Devious. Any desperate old clod could get lost. Or worse…”
“I have NO idea what you’re talking about!” she snapped. She was tired of trying to follow him. Frustration and impatience won out over cordiality.
He stayed on his feet, as if not to get too close to her. He focused now, and spoke a little slower, as if trying to remember how to speak clearly, “You have been infused with Magesty. Magesty of the Mey Folke. Do you know how?”
“Last night. I… I fell into a patch of purple flowers. They weren’t there earlier in the day. They just appeared. When I did, they died around me,” she explained. “The patch was shaped like a crescent moon.”
“They died?”
“Yes,” she admitted. She wasn’t quite sure why she was ashamed to say it.
“Weaving the fabric of death and rebirth. A bridge. Daughter of Gregor, what do you know of the Magesty of the Mey Folke?” Orison asked, in a whisper.
“My… Gram told stories. Fairy tales, I thought.”
“Wake up little cygnet. Else the hunters mount you on the wall. There are still some in the world who know firsthand of the world of the Folke. Some who are versed in its history and lore. But stories for another time, for I must cast you out erelong. I’m sorry, but it is so.” He stood back from her and held his hand up, as if to keep her at bay.
“Go on. The flowers,” she prodded.
“Yes. The flowers. Smell and be rewarded. Touch and be pricked. There are times when rifts, portals, open between this and the Folke world. Rifts ripped open at times of celestial import. Midsummer’s eve. An eclipse. Rifts often accompanied by a transfusion. Of Magesty. A shifting of energies from their tapestry to ours. These flowers, I believe, were the consequence of such a shift. Somehow, I don’t know how, mind you, that Magesty was transferred to you.” Kora almost sensed a hint of distrust in his voice. As if he somehow believed she orchestrated the whole affair.
She ignored it. “Well, what is it? What is it going to do to me?”
“Yes, well, this is a very good question, of course. But of more pressing concern to you should be, who wants it?” Orison the Odd allowed himself to lean in close enough to grab his tin cup and take a drink of water. “Who desires those purple flowers? The Magesty of the Mey Folke in those flowers. The Magesty that is now clinging to you.” The thought of that made her feel icky. She longed for a hot bath.
“Kora?” It was only Gram, calling from outside the tent, but it gave Orison such a start he dropped his cup.
“A moment,” she called back.
Orison the Odd scowled and shuffled through some parchments and grabbed a piece of black charcoal. “You must purge yourself of these flowers. As quickly as you can.”
“Yes,” she agreed without hesitation. “How?”
“Damn all Smythes! That I should risk all to repay… We shall study how, perhaps. But then you must fly! Years I have toiled convincing the houses that I’m useless to them now and I won’t have that undone. You must never tell anyone what you’ve seen here. Swear on the soul of Gregor Smythe.”
She put her hand forward to shake. “I swear.”
“What are you doing?”
He was looking from her to the parchment now, as if doing a portrait. “The tapestry is a complicated weave, Smythe. Tap into it. Look for patterns. Connections. You’re a beacon, girl. Never have I felt is so easy to mark the patterns around someone. Still, I mustn’t make a mistake, dit-dot-dit, else I read the patterns incorrectly.” He held up the parchment now and looked at it in comparison to Kora. “Yes. I dare say I still have the touch.” Almost as soon as he said it, he caught himself and glared at Kora. “Damn, girl.”
“What?”
He ignored the question and held the parchment up above his head, so that his drawings were facing down, and looked up at them. Kora could see the drawing now and it looked to her like the markings on the walls of the tent. It was all dots and lines, with arcs connected to the occasional circle. He appeared to be looking from the drawing to the night sky, and now Kora realized he had drawn an impromptu star chart.
“There’s much to be learned from the stars and moons, Gram says,” was all she thought to add. She knew she sounded the ignorant peasant girl and regretted saying it almost immediately.
“Mmmm. Indeed,” he replied, distracted. “The Triad is aligned. The Three Cups. They are imminent. The oldest star is crimson now. Beware the elder. The elder represents great danger.”
“What three?” She knew a little of the constellations, from her lessons with Gram Heega, but she didn’t know of The Triad.
“Yes. What three indeed?” He marked his chart again, scribbling glyphs and notes against the night sky. “To be heeded for sure, but not what you need.” He lowered the chart and placed it on the old crate. He quickly unfurled scroll after scroll in his little pile until he found what he was looking for. Another star chart. This one covered with thousands of notes and markings. Kora recognized some as dates. She thought some might be the names of stars, or constellations, but most were completely unrecognizable symbols. Orison the Odd compared the two charts. “The pattern is so strong! So easily read.”
“What does it say?” Excitement and terror poured through her, all at once. Part of her wanted to debunk this old fool for a charlatan, but the other part desperately needed something to cling to. She sought any plan of action she could commit to; however foolish it may sound. For what other choice did she have? If men in thorns could vanish in thin air, why was star-seeing any less likely?
Outside the tent, Kora could hear the musicians start up. The Crab Dance had no doubt begun. Somehow, the beat of the music quickened her heartbeat.
Orison pointed at the chart with a thousand notes. “See, see, see! A coming Chimera rift. Yes. One with a strong alignment to your destiny strand. Quite possibly a chance to purge yourself.” He seemed full of excitement at his discovery and suddenly years younger. “Here. A formation of ancient stones on the top of Lormar’s Hill at the southern edge of the White Owl Wood. Fly there, little Cygnet. Fly there.”
Kora’s heart sank. “The White Owl Wood? That’s at the other end of Anduir!” She had never been farther than Lonely Fort, and if she was being hunted after, she didn’t see how she could travel all the way to the White Owl Wood safely. “Are you sure? Are there other options?”
Orison seemed to size her up. She could almost hear him wondering whether she would survive another day. She wondered too. “There are always other options, young Smythe. But here the stars align. Be at Lormar’s Hill in a fortnight, and let none stand in your way.”
Minutes after being cast out of Orison the Odd’s tent, Kora and Gram huddled by the inn where Kora relayed the story to Gram. Kora expected disbelief, but Gram only listened intently, never showing any signs of challenge.
“The White Owl Wood. That’s far indeed.”
But Kora was having a difficult time focusing on her. Over Gram’s shoulder the Crab Dance had begun. Several festival vendors had been moved to the side to open a grassy clearing at the front of the festival grounds, right outside the inn’s veranda. A crowd of drunken attendees encircled the area, tankards in hand, to cheer on some fool wearing a large Crab costume, a contraption made of balsa wood and red leather that allowed the wearer to snap the pincers open and shut using levers in the arms. The dancer hopped and skipped around the circle and pinched onlookers in a plethora of inappropriate places to the delight of everyone but the pinched, and sometimes even then. The Crab Players consisted of a lute, a fife, and, of course, a drum. The musicians and performer benefited from their mutualistic relationship with the performer emboldened by the music, and the musicians riffing off the comic groping. At the edge of the circle Kora saw Mimm push through. He laughed with the others as the Crab snatched a hat off a merchant’s head and fled with the merchant in hot pursuit.
“But I don’t see as we have any other choice,” Gram continued.
“We almost left without finding Orison. What would we have done?”
Gram raised an eyebrow, “Don’t go down the ‘what might have been’ path, dear. Let’s save our energy for the path before us.”
“I must thank Mimm. Start to ready Meg and we’ll go.”
“Don’t dawdle.”
Kora circled around the crowd until she could sidle up to Mimm.
His face lit up. “You’re still here!”
Kora kept her voice low. “Not for long. But I needed to say thank you. For all your help.”
Mimm looked in the direction of Orison’s tent. “Don’t tell me that old fool was the one you were looking for?”
She knew she couldn’t say too much, but she didn’t have long to consider her response because a pincer had clutched her by the wrist and was dragging her into the middle of the circle. She yanked her arm free and spun around to face her assailant, but the dancing Crab man had already moved onto pulling someone else into the circle. It was a ritual for the Crab to select a few couples to begin the dancing, she now remembered.
Mimm moved in, grabbed her around the waist, and began to spin her round and round. Graceful wasn’t the best choice of words to describe Mimm, but his enthusiasm was infectious. As he capered, Kora did her best to keep up without stumbling, and with each leap and whirl she could feel a release of the immense burden that had been weighing on her. Step-step-turn. The corners of her mouth crept up into a broad smile. Whirl and dip. Her hood fell off her head. Spin spin spin. Her hair fanned out as if trying to break away from her head. Her grip on Mimm’s waist firmed up and she tugged the lead away from him. Step-step-turn. Step-step-turn.
Now that she was leading, she had the wherewithal to look around her. To her surprise the circle was inundated with dancers, and even so, had grown in diameter. Everyone seemed to have been drawn in, even those who were alone were dancing madly to the bang of the drum and the strum of the lute. Young and old alike, all danced with abandon. Somehow, the group’s collective unconscious must have aligned because in a remarkably fluid movement, the dancers broke free from their partners and formed a circle within a circle within a circle, with the middle circle of dancers skipping counter to the other two. The energy of the group swelled in an orgy of hoots and “huzzahs!” with Kora throwing her voice into the lot. She broke free from the group and staggered over to the band where she snatched an extra lute from the grass. An assenting nod from the musician was all it took for Kora to pluck madly while diving into the throng. The crowed hollered in appreciation and orbited her like so many planets caught in her pull. Her play was reckless and poured from her without restraint. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Gram wouldn’t want her to be so brazen, but she didn’t care. If she was going to die, let it be here, like this.
The circles broke and the group began to swap dancer to dancer. Kora put the lute down and soon found herself being passed from man to man and woman to woman. Each time she passed to a new partner, the partner yipped with glee, as if being goosed, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
It was then that she saw him for the first time.
Kora was flung out of the arms of a plump woman who laughed so hard she turned crimson, and into the arms of a boy. She stopped with a gasp as he caught her with unerring authority. In an instant she knew that boy wasn’t right. Although she guessed he was the same age as Mimm, this was a young man who held her now. He was unconscionably good looking. A master artist’s sculpture come to life, with blue eyes specked with yellow and hair blonder than she had ever seen. His smile was accented by dimples that begged to be touched.
Glide-glide-turn. Glide-glide-whirl. How could anyone so young be such a good dancer? Were they dancing or floating? It was effortless. His shirt was bright white cotton with exquisite blue-green trim. Electricity shot through her body, emanating from his hands, hands that somehow held her firm and gentle, simultaneously. They fit. And it felt so right.
Mimm had managed to position himself to be next to receive her, but her young man didn’t comply and despite the hurt look in Mimm’s eyes, she couldn’t make herself break away. Their dancing must have looked as remarkable as it felt because the crowd started to part and give them room. They whispered and pointed with awed excitement. Glide-glide-turn. Glide-glide-whirl-whirl-whirl-whirl-whirl. He spun her so hard and fast that she got dizzy and had to stop and get her bearings.
As her eyes focused, she realized everyone had stopped dancing. The music died. The entire crowd, which now surrounded them in a sea of awed expressions, knelt in a wave, from front to back. An elderly man amid the crowd called out, “All hail Morvan Laverium the Twelfth, prince of Anduir!”
The crowd echoed in reverence, “Prince of Anduir!”
He smiled.