The Phantomwise tarot: a story

A creative writing blog using Erin Morgenstern's Phantomwise tarot deck to watch a story unfold

[phantomwisestory]

Blog Introduction: the Phantomwise tarot as story prompt

I have recently finished a huge creative writing project (Fateheart, my fan-sequel to Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea) and have found myself in need of some real recuperation and recovery in the wake of it. But I've also found my imagination to be ready and rich in a way I don't want to miss just because I don't have one big project to be throwing myself at anymore.

I also recently came in possession of my first deck of tarot cards. It is a deck called Phantomwise, designed by Erin Morgenstern, whom you may know as the author of The Night Circus, or The Starless Sea. In the latter book, a character (Mirabel) says of tarot cards, "they're basically stories in pieces that can be re-arranged." So seemed to make sense to start with a deck designed by the author of the book from which she was speaking.

The Phantomwise deck is beautiful: all greyscale illustrations, whimsical and evocative of a certain blend of innocence and darkness - mystical but with an edge of the folkloric. Figures themed around circus performers and fairytales, with a distinct flavour of Alice and Wonderland. The people in the images are costumed like performers, even when not holding props or caught mid-act. The settings are often murky with darkness and shades of grey from which trees and castles and animals emerge as strikingly as the swords and wands and teacups and pentacles.

The deck is based on the classic Rider-Waite tarot, but I know absolutely nothing about that, frankly. And, I'll confess I'm not much interested in learning.

I'm interested in the cards as Mirabel described them: as moveable pieces to a story. I'm interested in tarot spreads as ways of arranging those pieces in order to lay space for kismet to tell a story. To use them as intricate, moving parts of a story - like the dangling pendulums of a mobile, or the myriad lights of a chandelier. I want to put them in front of me and read them like they're a fairytale.

I've been thinking a lot about stories not as things we think up and build from scratch, but as organic, writhing entities we record for posterity as writers - existing beyond our imaginations, but illuminated by the words we are equipped with as they approach.

I'm also pretty burnt out from allowing one of the biggest stories I've ever encountered in raw form to slam through me and precipitate into its fully realised glory in a very short space of time. But I don't wanna stop writing.

So I've started sitting with these cards. Pulling them out in whatever order feels right. Staring at the pictures not thinking too hard about whether they are symbols or illustrations or just shapes and lines and shades. Letting the story shoot from card to card and link each suggestion into a web that may or may not result in narrative. Maybe it will just be a feeling. Maybe the associations will be arbitrary, maybe I will get no more sense than that, and the senselessness will be the story.

Then the first spread I did last week was so intriguing that it seemed to be politely demanding that I write it. I stared at the cards I'd drawn for a good few minutes, hearing the story in my head, seeing the way each figure connected with each other - feeling the different spaces of one vast, dynamic land in front of me, glimpsing it through these little windows of card on my bedroom floor. It seemed so connected - each card belonging to a distinct and unified world - that I pulled up my notes app and started writing.

I tried to limit it to three sentences for each card, as I had done a pretty ridiculously big spread - just to start to immerse myself in the feel of the deck, to get to know the world they suggested and get up close to the people in that world.

And the language of the world seemed to come readily. The images were vivid, the tableaux potent, the characters mysterious and intriguing and seeming, as they always do when I'm writing, to be pulling me along in their wake.

The chapter's worth of story I wrote up from that reading felt distinctly and truly like a beginning. Unmistakeably. So I titled the notes 'Phantomwise: chapter one', and went to bed. Then this evening I did another reading - a much smaller one - and tried to make space for it to feel like a completely different story if it wanted to. But the strength and unity of the aesthetic sense across the deck rendered that pointless - and I ended up writing chapter two from the cards in front of me. And now I like this project so much I'm making a little tumblr space for it to live beyond myself.

So this is the blog where I'm going to chronicle this creative process, and post the chapters. 'Chapters' should be interpreted as 'readings', by the way. These are tarot readings. But I'm not looking to divine the future, or anything directly personal. I'm trying to see if the cards will tell a story. If there's a way to lean into this position I've adopted in my creative writing of being a scribe, or a conduit, to an entity beyond myself, capturing it and recording is as faithfully as I can as I witness it. And these cards do indeed seem to be absolutely bursting with story. Thanks, Mirabel (or Erin Morgenstern, I suppose. Though I've never met her - I have, however, spent a fair amount of time with Mirabel).

I'm not claiming this is a supernatural art (I'm also not asserting that it's not): I'm actively exploring my own creative writing process using a physical tool beyond myself, dragging the process out of the arena of my own head and somewhere into the space between me and my real world, so that hopefully I can get to know myself better. Which seems to be at least part of what tarot is all about anyway, so that works.

And part of that is going to be chronicling the process here. And posting the stories. I can't guarantee that the story from reading to reading will be the same story - or that it will be coherent, or decent, or good. I'm just gonna post each reading as I write it - with no editing past a quick scan for blaring typos - and no mind as to the coherency or continuity of plot or anything else. I'm just following the rabbit down the rabbit hole and writing up wonderland.

I'll make a master post of Phantomwise chapters and link it here, and I'll probably post short notes separate to those chapters about each draw - if you're a seasoned tarot user, I apologise: I know nothing about traditional spreads or card positions, but from what I can tell of the ethos of tarot, it's as much about your personal relationship with the deck as how you choose to read it - and this is certainly a very fun (and very particular) way to get to know a deck.

Anyway. That's what this is. I'm not gonna box myself into an upload schedule for this either: if I post fourteen in one day, so be it. If I post exactly twice and never touch it again that's fine too. This undertaking is designed to nurture the weary parts of my creative brain and also to aid the discipline and structure of my writing process.

You just get to read it.

Here's a link to the Phantomwise tarot set on Erin Morgnestern's website (check out the art it's gorgeous)

Here's the master post of chapters I've posted so far

Here's my main blog (my name is Boogle)

Any questions, feel free to shoot them my way. No, I'm not planning anything or even really thinking about the story between chapters. They're just kind of happening.

By BoogleBoot

[phantomwisestory]

The chapter six spread

It’s been a while since I did a reading, so I just sat with the cards for a bit, shuffling and turning, glimpsing them as I cut the pack over and over. I shuffled for a good long time - several uninterrupted minutes - cutting the pack and adding to the pile in my hand from the second pile until it dwindled and dwindled down to one card, and that was my first card.

The five of swords - the card which first introduced the man who now has the sword from the watcher. A character I did not think would be very significant, but here he is. That seemed a straightforward representation. And then I drew The Hanged Man after another good few minutes of shuffling, and thought instantly that this card was the second death of the glickerlocks. Not because the person is significant, or because someone else was found hanging - but because the first life taken by the glickerlocks was the man who was found hanged, and this card was placed down next to the first, in a distinct second position.

I hadn’t planned a shape for this spread. I drew the first card and decided then that maybe I wanted five, maybe all in a straight row. My brain is very tired at the moment so I wanted to keep it simple and quick. But then the next card, the chariot, made me smile, drawn after much more shuffling, and then I caught sight of the three of swords - a card I don’t believe I have drawn yet in this story - and really really wanted it to be in the draw. So I just took it from the bottom of the deck. And then took the one directly beneath it as well, which was the sun.

Because it felt significant somehow that I had made a choice, so the three of swords was the end of the row, and then I added as the fifth card the one immediately below it in obedience to the idea that we must sit with whatever our choices reveal. So the sun, the fifth card, was played in the position beneath the other four.

Which is reflected in the language of that card. This chapter was roughly three sentences per card again, but I didn’t sick to it much and not at all for the three of swords, which seems to be a card which is behaving entirely outside the bounds of my own strictures, employing my petulant fancy instead. It wanted to be described in great detail. It was stubbornly insistent on being included in the first place. It wanted to be the end of the row. It wanted more than three sentences, it wanted significance. And it wanted to be literal. Actually Im not sure literal is the right word, but it is fascinating to me that it kind of demanded its way into just being described as is as a vision that the watcher has - as if its imagery is so blunt that it does not in fact represent anything. Also interesting that I was feeling its imposition - the language used for that vision is visceral and uncomfortable - a vernacular of things taking up space they shouldn’t - tumours, engorged, swollen, huge, consumed.

And then I was going to start writing, considering ways in which the sun can be beneath everything. Except as I wrote “phantomwise chapter 6” in my trusty notes app I realised the draw wanted a sixth card, in the top positions above the row of four, complementing the posture of the sun - a position of holding the story, of being context, or scenery, or world-building. So I pulled the top card off the deck on a whim, and there was death.

I’m coming to love death. Which you can see, because it turns out she and the Queen might be a lot more familiar than I had anticipated.

I’ve missed this place.

Boogleboot

--Master-post of chapters here

[phantomwisestory]

Phantomwise: chapter 6

20230323 0015 - 6 cards in total

The young man grips the sword nervously, wishing he had a hand free to fiddle with one of the many buttons of his coat. He looks back down at the shrinking world below him. He has never left the coastal city of Clandestire before: he is not sure he is supposed to now.

The glickerlocks have taken their second death. The life dangles from one world before dropping into the next, and the gleaming star-metal of the glickerlock clamps around the moment of passing, capturing the momentary spasm in the fabric of the universe as one life punches through it. The hole remains open, caught in the contraption, bleeding light from this world into that, bringing the earliest scent of a dragon’s roar from that world into this, glowing beneath the coat of the star-watcher who carries it.

The balloon chariot carries the new bearer of the sword, the Queen’s best sky rider and her gryphon, back over the royal plumes of the dust storm. They are high enough to see the stars. The gryphon keens, adjusting its wings uncomfortably, sad to see the stars so close yet not allowed to ride among them. The sky-rider soothingly scratches at its neck, bare feet planted firm in the basket, wondering at the fire in the heart of the balloon - wondering if it isn’t also a type of star in its own way.

The watcher has given the sword and now returns to her post, moving quickly over large distances the way ideas are able to skip politely over the non-dimension of a flat page edge. in no time at all, she is at the gate before her residence, where she is usually met with the sight of the house at the edge of the world where she keeps her watch, where the void and the next and the deep and all the other words people have for it in all their other languages is usually visible from behind the unstained glass of this world’s last outpost. But the lock of the gate is loose, and the house and garden are all swallowed. The very edges of the world bleed raw, into a startling darkness of infinite depth. The watcher stands in the gate and witnesses the dance, and the dancers part, and in their midst is a vast, monstrous, pierced heart. Not a human heart but a symbol more real than any living organ. The dance of the darkness has brought three swords - or perhaps the same sword three times - to meet in this eternal middle, and over the point of centre grows the heart, sized like a mountain, suspended but growing there in the void, the way the inevitable grows like a tumour in the heart of the future.

The head of every sunflower has turned, and has not had occasion to look away. For the sun has not left this end of the valley in quite an unusual length of time. He has worked his way beneath the threshold of the storm, so that far above him where the chariot rides there are still stars to read for those who need them. He does his valiant best to pour enough light that the dust does not consume every living thing, like the sunflowers, whose adoration beams back at him, though even now they are choking.

And above the castle grounds, in the high tower of the keep, in the heart of Otherlande, death pulls down her umbrella and shakes out her hair, her thighs bare above her boots, below her shorts. The Queen, who had heard her coming, and who even know has felt the second hole punched through the world in her name, looks up and grimaces. But she meets her embrace all the same, and neither woman has to clarify much, as she touches her lips to the Queen’s in a light, familiar gesture of greeting, whether or not the Queen isn’t a little bit secretly pleased that death has come to stay.

By Boogleboot

– Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here

– Master-post of chapters here

– Link to a post about the chapter six spread here

[phantomwisestory]

The chapter five spread

Six cards, drawn in straight succession from the top - five in an arc, then one below, anchoring the others. From left to right, in order of draw, The Queen of Swords, The Page of Swords, The Devil, The Seven of Cups, The World, and beneath them all, the Four of Cups.

Of all the cards I have drawn so far in this project, The Devil is the first one that has scared me. I didn't think this story has an antagonist, but he seems to bold and so intentional, there in the centre, directly above and bearing down upon the Four of Cups below, with its pale colours and its gentle inhabitant. The World card feels so important as well - the Fool herself, standing there holding the world. I'm writing a slightly more detailed rumination on this draw before actually writing its story because it is not speaking to me so clearly.

But I think it is because it is a non-sequential one. I think these are all strings of a memory. I think the card at the bottom, a woman sat against a barren tree, alone on a plane backed by distant mountains, three cups at her feet and one high upon a branch, is the framing of it. I think this one is a little abstract, so I'm giving more details for the cards drawn here so that it is decipherable in the future should I need it.

Ahh I've just figured out that the Devil really is the Emperor but young - the moon is in his eye, even then. Okay I've caught the story. Off we go.

-

Okay, I am writing this more than a month after the fact - I usually write the thinking about the spread immediately after writing the draw itself. But I didn't (for some reason) and then my life fell apart (for some reason) and I am only now returning to this blog and this project and my cards.

I usually write these posts about the cards without detailing which cards specifically have been drawn, because imo there's nothing more boring than reading a list of things you can't look at. But I have also assumed I will always be able to extrapolate which cards I drew from what I wrote, and that a more interesting thing to capture is how I am reading them - what connections I am making, which ones are suggested, which ones become evident in the cards, in the imagery, in the juxtaposition between them all.

I wrote this spread out specifically (for some reason) and I think it was because I knew that whatever I was about to write would be less obviously structured around the cards as a sequence, and instead would draw themes from them which are rendered in a narrative that swirls around them all.

I have been very taken with the relationship between the Queen and the Emperor - the obvious history and affection between them, even from across the valley where everything keeps happening. I think I had been looking in that direction anyway as I sat down to turn the cards, wondering if I could use whatever I was about to draw to press further into their history, to explore what got them to where they are today, in positions of power in related but distinctly separated kingdoms, but joined by some kind of profound bond.

And the first part of this post, which I wrote as I sat with the cards, listening to them, thinking (or rather trying not to think, as is my usual posture with this project), captures a quite interesting process here. Coming face to face with a card which stumped me slightly - which sent a thrill through me as I wondered who I was about to meet - the distinct feeling of something dangerous being revealed, of a shrouded figure entering a place where his true nature is hidden to all except those who dare to look directly at him.

Which is how the card felt, which became the exact scene where he turns up at the young queen's birthday party. The crossing of a threshold, the bold contrast of darkness with light - the lighting of the scene itself unsubtly aping a moral contrast, illustrating a conflict, giving him context and depth and trajectory. I don't know what to call that, but that card created the entire memory. I had the shape and the sense ready, and that card filled it.

I wish I had more language for this process. I wish I could better articulate the way the cards seem to form and inform the story. I am very cognizant of the balance between what I bring to them and what they offer in return, how the imagery and position and figures and implications fill the structures I am already holding when I sit with them. But I am in constant wonder of it.

I am valuing this process more than I thought I would. It is feeding the story-telling part of my brain in exactly the ways I had hoped for. Encouraging the bits of the imagination which are able to build bridges between unassembled signs and symbols so fast that it seems like the bridges were there all along.

I would like the plot to keep going forward, and I think that is probably where I will be looking when I next draw the cards. But I am so glad I got to see some of the story behind these characters, because boy oh boy I am starting to get attached to them.

Boogleboot

--Master-post of chapters here

[phantomwisestory]

Phantomwise: chapter five

20230211 0042 - six cards in total

A memory. A story. Contained in four lives, though one is far removed, high above the others, keeping their part of the story, stretching the bonds which tie it to this tale. They clutch their history to themselves beyond the firmament, in the barren wood above the world, looking down to the warming world. Looking down to the others. Wondering when the cup they hold might fall. When their portion might be drawn back to complete the image.

The Queen of Otherlande: once young, once haughty with promise. Raised well, raised by a good family and attentive masters, raised with a sense of her lineage and pride. A childhood of hard training, of immense satisfaction and achievement. Nurture which distant forces caught with a soured eye and mistook as reason to hope she might be an heir spoiled to softness by the doting security of a kingdom free from peril and a family free from death.

But even as a young girl she knew death. Flirted with her in her adolescence, danced with her as she trained alongside the riders and the watch she was fated to someday lead, the sword that was her birth-right never leaving her side.

And the rulers across the valley raise a son. They sharpen him with vengeance he is coolly disinterested to own. An inheritor to their governance; a curiously quiet, powerful child he was. A few years older than the yet-to-be-queen, and a great deal more silent than the neighbouring sea. A young man who moves well in shadows, who keeps a sharp eye to the stars, looking through the darkness between them as if searching.

The rulers seek the wisdom of the Child King themselves, and the Child King does answer: that this is a son who will subvert, who will kill those on the throne, to restore what is right, and to love what is beloved.

And they agree - he is a fine tool, a devilish young man, an instrument of darkness through which the flaunting, prim and hateful girl across the valley might be caught aside. And they mistake his silence for acquiescence, as they mistake his listening for obeying. They send him to her christening, her coming-of-age celebration. To infiltrate a birthday party where she will be dressed in the gown and lace befitting of her seventeenth year.

He will enter the halls, and mark the people of this kindgom over the way - about whom he has been told so much. Amongst whom he now moves as a spy. He wears his formal suit, his high collar and a top hat. He wears the shadow itself, it seems, and stands with his back to the light of the party.

Bright and alive at the heart of the crowds, laughing and giving her time to those who in this hour become her people, receiving as much attention as she lends, the soon-to-be-queen catches his eye.

And catches the truth in the other eye, too. An eye which is not fixed upon her at all. An eye - nay, a heart - caught fast in a longing, in a feeling she knows well herself.

So she approaches him of her own accord, and in the conversation which moves them beyond the ballrooms and courtyards, through the gardens and early hours of the morning, she levels her accusations.

"You are the son of the rulers of Clandestire. You are the man who will be Emperor. Why do you come here now, as one who wishes not to be known?"

And he tells her what he has told nobody thence: "they think I'm some fate. They think I will do it. I have been sent to seduce you. To take your heart and keep it. So that when the time comes to move against you you will surely crumble. They heard it from the Child King."

And she frees him. She has been wielding a sword all her life - it is no great challenge to her now to cut through this confusion. "Ah, but parents are wrong. Mine, too, sought the Child King, when I was born. And they rejected the Child King's words. But I have found them to be true."

"What did the Child King say of you?" he asks her, beneath the stars, in the shadow of the keep.

"That death would love me."

And she tells him how all her life she has been prepared by her betters to fight off death at every turn. To watch the stars and patrol the skies for it. How they have ruled her life in fear ever since of an untimely death, that pain would haunt her, that her body would break before she could fulfil so much of the hope that has weighed on her heavier than the Child King's words.

"But you think their efforts were in vain?" asks the young man, his country's desires of him left by the wayside in fascination of a young woman who speaks like he does - in disregard of the politics of their positions, in full regard of truth.

"Not quite - I think they're wrong. For I have met death. I met her when I was seven years old. And let me tell you, she loves me truly - she gave me this sword." The queen-to-be laughs, and he watches in amazement as she draws the sword that will scatter the stars.

She speaks to him of death, and he tells her of the moon. She says "I see it in your eye", and he says "you are the first." He tells her that he is not interested in his parents' vengeance. He is tired of the darkness that ruptures their hearts. He has no will to continue the legacy of trysts into which he has been born. For he has fallen in love. More deeply than he ever thought possible. With the moon - the only light for him, the only shining face - the moon, his only kindness in a deepening, blackened pitch.

"Since you have all the stars, I came today to wonder if you might understand that I am in love and cannot - and will not, this I promise you - pursue the path laid out for me."

"I have kept the laughing stars, and they all sing of the moon. I think the moon and death are friends, for does not the moon die every turn? I can introduce you, if you like, but there must be one condition."

The condition she lays out for him is that they two must be friends, and at a handshake, at a smile, they form an allegiance that will not be shaken. She slips him away that night from the party and takes him to the Child King, and death meets them there, and it is the death of all history. For the Emperor discovers what his fate is then - and that the Child King speaks only truth.

For death does know the moon, and slips its hand into the would-be-queen's, and takes him to meet the moon. Death and the maiden ride on one beast, and he rides side-by-side, on gryphons they steal from the sky-riders, who are all still at a party long-abandoned by its central celebrant. The moon is astonished to see starlight come so close, but more moved by the tenderness with which this young man gazes.

Something begins this night. Even the Child King laughs. And the friendships that are forged cannot be broken, though they are kept necessarily quiet. The whole world is held in the palm of a hand as the Child King tells them a tale of the future.

When in three days the young man returns to Clandestire, his parents hail him for a job well done - tales have already reached them from their spies across the way that the young queen-in-training had been seen in scandal, slipping away with a dark young stranger the night of her own christening. That her parents are disturbed by the dreaming she is doing. That clearly his hold upon her is fast.

"Did you earn her trust? Did you capture her heart?" they ask him with foulness in their mouths, and he is easily able to affirm that he did, without telling a lie, without lifting an eye.

And when the war comes, and their move is made against Otherlande, he rises to hear the Child King's words come true, and he fights with the first and most faithful friend he has known in the years since her birthday. The tyrants are overthrown. He kills those in power, and mourns what they should have been when the battle dies down. He stands alongside the Queen in her own right, and takes his place as her neighbouring Emperor. Death is there too, pleased to have helped him subvert an ancient and exhausted grudge. In gratitude for how his heart has spared the one whom death loves most, death admits a request from the moon itself - that it might quit their monthly meetings, and instead take its leave in the gardens of the palace by the sea.

Death is happy to oblige. The moon at first is shy. But the Emperor, a free man, a loved man, a young man, is overjoyed to meet it at last, and the love they find like light between them returns Clandestire to what it always should have been.

And the Child King whispers new words to them both. That the world is held in the arms of a girl. And it will shake and it will roll if she drops it - do not drop it - but even as she lifts it to peer in, like a snow-globe, like a crystal ball - it trembles.

By Boogleboot

– Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here

– Master-post of chapters here

– Link to a post about the chapter five spread here

[erinmorgenstern]

Over a decade ago I painted a tarot deck with black & white acrylic paint in an attempt to re-learn the cards after a long break from tarot reading. At the same time I was working on a book that would eventually become The Night Circus.

Today The Phantomwise Tarot: A 78-card Deck & Guidebook is out in the world and these cards can finally be held and shuffled and read. I hope they have grand adventures.

[phantomwisestory]

The chapter four spread

Warmth is the word. For whatever reason. I felt I couldn’t do this one without a hot water bottle in my lap. So now I have that I am preparing to draw the cards. I am planning in my head a sort of ascending staircase, seven in total, from lower left to upper right, slightly overlapping. And then one card off the end, and then an identical staircase beneath, fifteen cards total. I think I’d like to write this one with a number of sentences per card type structure again. But let’s see what is provided!

An interesting draw - starting with the Ace of Cups, leading up to the King of Swords to finish the first run of seven, the Page of Swords standing alone at the end, the Ten of Wands leading up to the Page of Wands below. Lots of new faces, lots of shades of busy detail. I cannot feel the story so strongly, but I am drawn in by the detail. Death was the fifth card. I had a feeling they would turn up here. I think I might even try a single sentence for each card. See where it goes. I will sit with each one. Study them. Let the cards move the world first.

-

That was an interesting one. Stuck largely to 3 sentences per card until, as last time, I hit some dialogue around the middle of the second staircase. I didn't quite see coming that the young man who had his voice temporarily borrowed gets the sword - ???? I guess we will see where that goes. But that was also an interesting switch in what kinds of cues I was taking from the cards.

This reading was quite literal: the visual details from the images guided the descriptions of the story part which went with each card. Characters inhabiting tableaux, scenery denoted by pictures first and foremost. I am reading these cards as visual and not figurative, largely. Until the chariot, which was simultaneously a hot air balloon and also something else entering the story - the Child King character, primarily.

And then the three-sentence structure went out the window and those last three cards - The Magician, The King of Wands, and the Page of Wands, were all written together in a convergence of characters. The Magician was possibly the most interesting card of this draw: because they themselves hardly appeared at all, though the other symbols on the card very much did, drawing the sword, the cup, the circular pentacle, and even the curtains of the card into play. If the Magician is anyone it is the Child King in that moment, standing alongside the other two, who are glimpsed in another form in those final two cards. But their (the Child King, who does not have a gender I am aware of) presence in this story is strange - it alters it. They are a god, but not - a will above all others, but not. Dead, but not. A profound part of a significant and as yet hidden past for the other two rulers, but also the arbiter of a dark future.

Interesting that at their touch the structure of the story shifted - denied the bounds of my three-sentence drawing, brought imagery back to its mimetic sense, and lifted diegetic barriers of space and time to refigure the final two images on the cards - of a young Emperor, king of his craft, and a young Queen, high witch of hers.

Boogleboot

–Master-post of chapters here

[phantomwisestory]

Phantomwise: chapter four

20230201 2253 - fifteen cards in total

The vines have broken the glass between this room and the end of the world. They creep across a tidy but abandoned table, lifting a stone goblet that is no longer needed. Here, too, the wine has been drunk already, and conversation has turned to action.

The moon, it wonders. It thinks of the view it cannot survey from down here in the palace - a view into other trees - into a forest above the firmament. It thinks of the movement of a sighing cat, wondering if even now it warns - if even now its voice is a light somewhere beyond the stars which no longer permeate the sky.

Since the age of seven she has practised this. She moves faster across the flagstones of the keep tower’s highest rooms, spinning, fighting, keeping at bay all will which would bend the world to harm against its people. The stone is anxiously warm with the heat of sunlight that won’t go away.

But now the Queen needs no willow-wood wand for this kind of ruling. Even as she spins in practice, with quick feet which remember every notch of the dance, the tools of her younger years lie in dust and the tendrils of time. She has long since mastered what she will need, and she draws it into immutable being now.

Ah, the lingering lover waits for her, though. She sits politely, keen (though antiquated, and really, secretly, dreadfully unused) equipment cross her lap as she lounges on the wall of the castle gardens. She keeps a startlingly rounded umbrella plumped into a protective canopy between her and the sun - or mostly her and any tense, disinterested palace personages who might be fumbling past in their urgent desire to stave off the gnawing threat of the inevitable.

But the inevitable is quite comfortable in her knee-high boots, listening to the sounds of her Queen dancing in a room above her, as if she, too, can stem the tide of the inevitable. Death perches in place and lets her hair thicken with the latent dust of the perilous valley storms, dreaming back to the coffee dates and teacups taken on sun-warmed floors, wondering if the Queen will recognise her now. Wondering if a seven year break is too long to pick up where you left off with someone who may fear you as much as love you.

The Queen is not alone in her practice. Across the valley, the Emperor takes a seat, pausing from rigorous training with his regiment. He leans against his sword, thinking of the watcher, wondering if she has found whoever must this time bear the sword, thinking ever of the moon, who even now is at his side, carrying the night like a sleek-feathered darkness.

As she moves quickly, discreetly, through the streets of Clandestire, the watcher thinks of the dancer, and she thinks of the dance. She grips the given sword in her robe and sees like a vision the dancer girl from the deep. She understands that she, now, has become the dance, taking her place in the steps to take this weapon where it needs to go.

A young man whose voice was temporarily borrowed makes his diligent way back through the winding city streets, carrying the bundle of equipment and training paraphernalia back from the beach, frowning as he tries to make a sound. Only a cat responds to his silent queries, giving him a genial sort of hiss as he trundles past, too pre-occupied to notice.

But a door bangs open, and a lady in a gown and corset beckons to him, laughing, drink in an elegantly gloved hand. He finds himself pulled into the party of a low, well-filled room, surrounded by three such corseted women, who tell him they’ve been looking for him. But he cannot splutter back that he has never been looked for in his life, and so they cannot tell him that he is wrong.

The shorter, less cavortious woman who rescues him has a light in her eye, but with her hair up in ribbons and her skirt pleated so he does not recognise her at first as the women who took his voice and his key. In truth he had not noticed the missing key, and does not notice its return now, as she slips it back into his trouser pocket in a back room away from the party, where his attention is mostly dominated by the other creature present. She turns from him, apologising for taking his voice, turning to her gryphon as she explains she needed it only briefly, to allow her charge to speak to her.

“You... you are from the star-watch?” stumbles the man who finds his voice has now returned to him as he stares at the gryphon, preening against her attending hand, a celestial light in its eyes. She laughs. “No, but I attend the Queen, who rules them. The same light you see in my charge here shines from their glickerlocks. Usually I would not take someone’s voice without asking but he was refusing to make the return journey to Otherlande and I had to ask why.” She looks up and both gryphon and rider seem to stare at him from another world. “Well... why?” “Because already the storm is too great to fly over, and nor can we safely fly through ourselves. We must instead hope for passage through in a safer seat.” The man knows she means the balloon which takes its time through clouds, but he has seen the clouds sat fat and heavy in the valley, and finds himself spluttering to warm this creature and her charge, begging them not to attempt such a thing, even in such a chariot.

The celestial chariot, a balloon filled with heat and fire and striped like a week of days and nights, moves of its own free will, like any fire through the heavens. There is no knowing how long such a journey will take, yet the Queen’s sky-rider insists - the urgency of her message is too great. But first she must wait, biding her time in Clandestire, until the balloon is seen again. And it comes again sooner than any would think, emerging from the thundering dust storms in pristine light and dark stripes, bearing much more than any of them know, for it is not exactly guided by nothing - and its will is not exactly its own.

At the anxiously gracious hand of one who watches from a higher firmament, the balloon arrives in a confluence of things. For a moment the story converges around this one man, his voice new again in his throat: the goblet, wreathed by time, falls from the starred world into the deep even as the watcher steps forward from a building, staring at the shadow beneath the lowering basket, and the man there who assists the sky-rider and her charge into the chariot cradle. From the edge between the coastal city and the gorging storm, the watcher presents the sword, and the sky-rider watches in surprise, the importance of her message doubling as she witnesses the assistant man take it.

But from far beyond the valley and from up the hill of the city behind them, the curtains part even now. Both the Queen and the Emperor turn, master of their arts, to see the centre of the starlight, catching the moment the man takes up the sword, seeing each other as if stood either side of a rounded stage. Their eyes meet in the vision, and they seem to each other as they had been all those years ago, each a master of their craft, alike in strength, in arrogance, in goodwill and a readiness to perform. Between them they recognise the work of the Child King, even as their hand lifts the balloon back into the sky. The watcher looks on and wonders. The stars in their rightful places, dance.

By Boogleboot

– Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here

– Master-post of chapters here

– Link to a post about the chapter four spread here

[phantomwisestory]

The chapter three spread

I had the image ready in my head for what I wanted this spread to be: I would draw a central card, intending it to be the figure around which this chapter turns. Then I would draw a circle of cards, placed anti-clockwise around it, starting directly above. Only a few. Five or seven.

I drew five, and was stunned by each one in turn. All cards of either significant figures or cards which have gained significance in the story already - including the craftmaster who was found dead. Both of his cards from chapter one appear. Intrigued by the strength of this draw and wondering who the Empress is (in the top position above the centre), I turn over the next card of the deck in my hand, just wondering who it would have been if I’d done seven instead of five. And there is the Emperor. I stare at him. I draw the next, still holding the Emperor, and he is joined by his lover the moon.

Although I had no plans to draw a ninth originally I peek anyway, half in wonder, half expecting exactly who I see: the high priestess, moon at her feet - the card which gave the moon a human incarnation in the first place. These three do not want to be separated, and they are clearly part of this draw, so I place them to the left of the circle in a fan, and go back to staring at the central figure: The Wheel of Fortune. The spinning void of chapter one, there at the heart of everything.

This is a powerful draw. I can see the scene so clearly in my head - circling around that central, spinning void - another radial structure, centred not as I had planned around a character but around a part of the plot. And each card comes up not in sequence, but as part of a conversation with the Moon and the Emperor, drawn as final context for the rest of the spread, set to the side, together, holding it all in place.

I'm starting to get the hang of how the same card might signify different things in different draws, and equally how different cards might reflect aspects or scenes for a single character. As this project goes on and more and more of the cards play a role, it will be interesting to see how that interplay develops. Maybe some cards will always signify a certain character - certainly the Moon and the Emperor seem to signify themselves, but the card above the central, The Empress, took me a minute to figure out, because I don't think she will necessarily always signify the watcher. But she did here.

I don't think dragons are dragons here, and I'm still excited to find out more about the stars. But the deaths and the glickerlocks capturing star-stuff is lovely. And I am impatient to know more about the Child King and the backstory between them and the Emperor and the Queen. I'm hoping that the Queen will encounter the Emperor next chapter. Who knows. The cards shall tell.

Boogleboot

--Master-post of chapters here

[phantomwisestory]

Phantomwise: chapter three

20230129 0124 - nine cards in total

The moon lifts the hem of its robe and runs up the marble steps barefoot, back into the cooler shade of the palace atrium. The moon’s voice calls softly to its lover, and he steps forwards quickly to take the moon’s pale hands, extended to him from beneath a robe.

“My love, she comes. The watcher,” the moon tells him, looking behind them out into the unceasing daylight from which nothing can hide. He looks out too, holding the moon’s hands in his own, his eyes alert, his posture ready for whatever this meeting shall tell.

Up the palace steps comes the watcher, a sword in hand, her eyes fixed upon the Emperor and the moon, expression serious. She walks slowly, as if heavy with news, or the gravity of now-bending time. The Emperor receives her with a wary eye but a gracious bow, and takes the watcher past his stewards, past his attendants and servants and the people of the court, who look on in awe at their ruler, passing them now flanked by two figures: the High Celestior who since their arrival has not left his side, and the fabled watcher themselves. It is strange company, but these days are stranger.

“Tell us why you have abandoned your post. Tell us, watcher, what you have seen,” says the Emperor, once it is just the three of them in the Emperor’s private chamber. The Emperor sits, the moon at this shoulder, and the watcher sits opposite, each in wrought seats of ancient dark wood, draped in gentler plum silk and cushions. The watcher does not let go of the sword.

“I have seen all there is to see,” tells the watcher. “A void at the centre of all. Swallowing everything, returning nothing. I have seen dancers change their dance, in the deep beyond my bedroom window. And when one of them emerged to give me this sword, I saw the splitting of the firmament. But not by my hand.”

The watcher looks at the moon. “Dear moon, you were wise to concede to your brother. While I am away from my home he will help everyone to see.”

The Emperor laughs as the moon inclines its head. “I should have known you would recognise who you were talking to. There is no hiding truth from you.”

“No,” says the watcher. “There shouldn’t be - except that I cannot see who this sword is for. I have been given it as a courier, not a keeper. I come in part to ask you, Emperor of Clandestire, if you have seen anyone about the land for whom this is a fitting charge. Or you, dear moon, from your vantage point in the sky.”

But the lovers shake their heads, and the watcher nods. “I have watched as the gears which should not turn begin once more to channel startling light. Across the land the turning motion of the void is beginning to churn in the heart of each star. The first life has already been taken by the glickerlocks.”

“What do you mean by this?” asks the Emperor, sitting forwards in his seat, but the moon presses a hand to its breast and gasps:

“My night have been dark, and I have bravely given all the light my brother passed to me to that darkness, but I suspected - I could not see - do you say now-“

“The stars are among the clouds,” affirms the watcher. “But as you must also have seen, the clouds are among us. Their bellies scrape and maw the earth. Their gorging mouths ravage the valley, consuming all - even the light of your brother - and they have brought the stars too.”

“You should know,” the watcher continues, “that the craftsman who was found dead will be the first of ten. Your friend the Queen of Otherlande met with her council and each had their instrument mended by him. I do not know which of the glickerlocks now carries his star-stuff but I have seen that it was for this his life was taken. The star-watch ride forth into the storms, bearing the discs which once formed the spine of the dragon born of the dead Child King.”

The Emperor’s gaze upon the watcher is deep, and he lifts the moon’s hand to his mouth as he listens, as if by kissing its skin he can capture some last vestige of the peaceful, deepening night, where all worries and cares fall away to sleep. No such peace remains in this kingdom save for the touch of a lover.

“And the Child King has spoken from beyond the firmament. This I have also seen.”

“And I have heard it,” says the Emperor, and the moon touches his head like a blessing, like a kiss. “The voice of one I once held beloved. One we lost in such grief. I have heard them speak. Barely hours ago.”

The watcher stands. “The storms of the valley will only worsen. The sun will keep vigilant day over you all, beating time back from your doors, but eventually the void will come here too. I must move quickly. I must find whoever is supposed to wield this sword.”

“I will keep my secret night to listen for you,” promises the moon, moving quickly to grasp the watcher’s hands. They gaze at each other. “I have heard your greetings often,” whispers the moon to the watcher. “I have given light to your garden. I consider you a friend, and I will do what I can to aid you in your hunt for what you cannot see.”

The Emperor stands as the watcher bows gratefully to the moon. “Go. Move though the palace this way, and slip from the back. I, too, will listen among the regiments, to see if it is a soldier who will take the sword that came from the deep. But I will ask before you go: what is the sword for?”

The watcher takes a time to answer, and when she does, the words are heavy with things that are only starting to grow: “the same as it was last time: to once more cleave into pieces the spine of whichever dragon comes now to eat the world.”

By Boogleboot

– Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here

– Master-post of chapters here

– Link to a post about the chapter three spread here

[phantomwisestory]

The chapter two spread

A much simpler spread than chapter one: I told myself I would draw five cards in a straight line. As I draw them one falls out of the pack, face-up, and I place it below the two I’ve already drawn, as if it is going to be the summation of an above four. But then it feels right to draw the final of my original five and deign that fallen one as a rogue, self-inserted sixth card. So I draw one more and place it to the side of the top row of four, in an isolated position. And it is The Fool again. Alice herself.

The card which threw itself into the mix and naturally landed in a summary position was The Hermit, and the first card was the three of pentacles - a very striking card, visually: almost entirely black background, presenting three large pentacles in bold white lines and no other details. And each of the three other cards beside this one were figures from last week’s story. So the meaning seemed clear: there is one thing new in this week’s chapter, and that is the third of the three central figures. And ever, The Fool is at the centre of things - or rather, just off to the right - level with, but distinctly not a part of - the central flow of the story.

The first card I drew presented a very strong suggestion of three - and though there were three obvious figurehead characters from chapter one (the Queen, the Emperor, and the Moon), the moon was actually subsumed somewhat into the Emperor - in characterisation as well as position - as the High Priestess card which answered The Emperor in that first draw brough the moon firmly into his frame of the story as they vacated their own to make way for the sun.

So who is the third figure? I expected an answer from the rest of the five cards, but it rather threw itself at me as I shuffled and drew. And then all three of the remaining five I'd intended to draw were minor figures from chapter one - and I had been thoroughly shuffling for a good while by this point, so this felt significant. In fact it seemed to suggest that this third person was present in some way for all of the beginning of the story. Placed them above and around the setting and the events - perhaps on the same plane as The Fool.

The Hermit seemed to encompass all the rest of the spread, so I structured the writing to reflect this: instead of writing a few sentences for each in sequence, I wrote the whole thing focused upon the card holding all the others, placing each card in the context of the lower one - though The Fool once more is in dialogue with the whole rather than playing along.

Going to be interesting to see how much she turns up.

The Child King at least seems aware of the fool and what role she might play. I like the line 'in pursuit of something stupid, but something good'. It seems at odds with the post-ironic fairytale tenor of the diegesis, but so does that card and everything it keeps bringing to the table.

I'm enjoying this immensely.

And the glickerlocks (the pentacles) are the discs of a dragon's spine?? And the Child King is the dragon?? I think? I have no idea, but that's one hell of an image. Excited to see where THAT goes, honestly. Yes, they are ancient, star-sorting instruments of mystical, almost alchemical function, but they are also parts of a greater, once-living being. Steampunk scraps of a dissassembled god. I wonder what the stars are. They seem to be a lot of things.

We shall have to wait and see.

Boogleboot

--Master-post of chapters here

[phantomwisestory]

The chapter one spread

This was a complicated spread - three cards at the top, in primary positions. Then seven in a row below it. One card drawn as a full stop to that line, isolated in position. Then cards drawn back along the seven in reverse order, placed on top of each card, in dialogue with the original seven. Then the same above - three final cards, resolving the first three in reverse order.

Twenty one in total. The Fool in pivotal position in the centre of the draw.

The main three I draw impress me to begin with anyway, in position to set up main characters: the ten of pentacles, The Emperor, and The Moon. But then as the drawing process comes to a close they resolve in a way that strikes me as so resonant that I decide to write this whole thing you’re reading now: the moon resolves to the sun. The Emperor resolves to The High Priestess. And the ten of pentacles resolves to Strength.

The middle run of seven cards, each drawn in an attempt to begin to get to know the cards - to have so many out that the themes become naturally evident and the recurring markers of this world present themselves readily - being resolved further is also striking. This is a good way to allow narrative to happen: to play an image as a response to another image is to suggest a bridge between the two, and the story seems to step from one to the other.

In this reading the chapter follows a clear structure of a three-sentence (roughly) stanza per card, following the order of the draw. And I roughly followed the format of linking the figures of each card to the card which resolved them - though not always, following instinct as to where the story wished to go.

The Fool is the only card which does not have a resolution, and it feels strangely significant that it is the most obliquely Alice-In-Wonderland figure of the deck, and here it is in the dead centre of my spread, in a position I had already decided wouldn't have a corresponding card; the relationship between the deck and the story is going to be intricate and operative on levels I'm only guessing at now - and so that Alice fool is going to be at the heart of things, clearly. It only seems right to have her as the icon for this blog.

Drawing the sun in answer to the moon was a magical moment for the story. I'm loving this project already. The voices of the characters are startlingly clear, considering how unsure I was about this as a creative writing exercise. But it seems to be working.

I don't know if I will write in this structure for each reading - a short stanza for each card, in order - I think I will follow what feels right, building on creative instinct, or really just whim. But 'whim' is a 'why' short of 'whimsy', and matters just as much.

If a number is mentioned, and a reference to a shape or object is given, you can usually infer the card which has prompted it. In other cases the card might suggest a character. Maybe they will always suggest new characters, maybe the figures on the cards will become roles or postures and scenes for the established characters to inhabit as they pass through the mobile of the story.

I won't declare each card that's drawn, but it should be fairly obvious. Especially if you know the deck - a huge amount of chapter one is just me interpreting the art of the cards. All of my descriptive legwork is being done visually on the cards - as is the characterisation, to a degree. I am playing inference and articulation here. Though it limits anyone reading this to not have those references handy I'm not gonna get in the business of posting all the art here. But the archetypes are fairly classic, I think, and follow the standard suites and figures of the Rider-Waite tarot.

Glickerlocks are pentacles. By the way. So the ten members of the star-watch riding to the castle with their glickerlocks tells you that the card in question is the ten of pentacles. At time of doing the reading I had no idea what a glickerlock was. It just sounded nice. As I did the second reading I discovered what they were. Saw it plain as day.

But you'll have to go read that one.

Boogleboot

--Master-post of chapters here

[phantomwisestory]

Phantomwise: chapter two

20230126 1921 - six cards in total

The Queen of the Otherlande, and far across the valley, by the sea, her dear friend the Emperor of Clandestire - but it is time to introduce a third figure. A third voice who rules and guides the land. The dragon whose spine was split, and each bone disk given, isolated from its greater part, a glickerlocking spinning contraption by which to measure starlight. In the forest that grows from the roof of the world their voice comes now. In that dreamish world beyond the sky they take the form of a pale, featureless human body. Eyes, mouth, the line of a nose unhindered by detail. Reclusive from all the world. Barefoot and wearing simple clothes as colourless as their skin. Hairless, seamless, silent, quiet.

They see the turbulence that grows, they see what the stars are doing. It is time for their voice to enter the story.

They call softly to their friends, in a voice they will remember no matter the years that have passed since the dragon whose spine was split last sang. It whispers to the Queen, it regales the Emperor and his love.

“I have seen your trouble. I know each turn of the dance so far. All these things are a starting rhythm. Do not halt your feet as they step to turn a dance. Each is important - no matter how seemingly small. The man who keeps the swords for the fifth regiment, whose voice and key are borrowed by the Queen’s most trusted servant - his silence will let winds be heard clearly as they arrive to shore, carrying news of what’s beyond.

The dancer whose ribs themselves as ribbons reach back from the blades of her shoulders to keep her to the sea - she has given the sword to the watcher. She will be pulled back into the dance, but her bravery will not be unrewarded. For the blade is gone now, and the differently weighted limbs will spin the deep creatures’ dancing to a new form.

And the winemaster, diligent and careful with the faith placed in him by his Queen, will discern that the glasses were not drunk from, and will preserve the wine by pouring it into a cheaper barrel. And perhaps it is the richness of the wine, or perhaps the strength of the other things which have made those glasses sing, emboldening the flavour, thickening the weight, but every patron who drinks the red wines of that house in the coming weeks will find themselves fortified with a light they will not perceive in full, but may detect in their resilience for what is to come.

My friends, my greatest, closest, lovely friends. In all these long years I have wished to see your faces once more. But now I am struck through bitterly with the barb of my own wish. For see you again I fear I must. I call to you this song to tell you to take heart. To tell you to take courage. And to tell you I shall not let you down when the moment comes. I will fight with you. I will die before you gladly. And my heart will carry most closely the wish that I could spare you a goodbye like the one which split us three when that sword did split the spine.

But it is time. I know you will read it each just as truly. Time to rebuild god. To re-erect a spine. To align star against star and tower light up to pierce the sky itself. This bloodless dragon has lingered above the threshold of the firmament for long enough. The glickerlocks are scattered even now to their right places. Watch as they fall into position. I will return to you. Remember my kinder human face. Remember my fire when it came to you as laughter. Remember our life together, we three, we friends.

I keep you well in my hearts. And I will help you keep your world. I love you each. I see you soon. Rest, if you rest at all, ashore from fear. Fear will bear you nowhere now - all the oceans are upon all their shores, lapsing in terror from the swallowing mire of the deep dancers. The fool enters. And I, once the fool myself, can only follow to meet her. Look for my coming. You see it even now. Know me as I rise. Love me as I fall. Love you, love to you and your all.”

The girl vanishes between the trees, descending down the rabbit hole. In search of something stupid, but maybe something good. And when the trees have done their weeping they are left barren and still. And beneath one, at the far edge of that mysterious wood, where the shifting angles of the strangest world’s borders become visible past the trees, is a creature - pale and featureless, in simple cloth and plain expression. Their hands are clasped as they send their song below. The tree, in courtesy of the dragon whose spine was split, holds a lantern to their prayers, giving them light to read the future by, illuminating a path forward - or really downward, into the wide lands below - that this dragon knows it must take. The third of an almighty three. The Queen, the Emperor, and the Child King themselves.

By Boogleboot

-- Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here

-- Master-post of chapters here

-- Link to a post about the chapter two spread here

[phantomwisestory]

Master-post of Phantomwise chapters

Chapter One - 20230122

Chapter Two - 20230126

Chapter Three - 20230129

Chapter Four - 20230201

Chapter Five - 20230211

Chapter Six - 20230323

Posts on the corresponding spreads here:

Chapter One spread

Chapter Two spread

Chapter Three spread

Chapter Four spread

Chapter Five spread

Chapter Six spread

[phantomwisestory]

Phantomwise: chapter one

20230123 2204 - 21 cards in total

In the castle at the heart of the land each of the star-watch come red faced and ruddy with news, with urgency, seeking their mistress, seeking their sovereign, seeking home in the heart of the kingdom. The flag flies high: the council is in session, and it’s looking like it’s going to have to be a full ten-day affair. Hidden behind her walls, preparing to hold court, the Queen sighs.

The Emperor glances out beyond his borders, considering the winds that do not yet reach the curling smoke of the incense he lights. Here in the deep night they know not to disturb him, though he half wonders how long it will be before the Queen of the Otherlande sends word. He will meet with her gladly when the time comes, but now he waits with yearning to meet with one much dearer to his heart.

On such a clear evening the night does indeed seem deep, and when the moon rises it shines in perfect love for him. It seems to reach the tips of its cradle to his lifting fingers, the only thing between them the branches of the trees, and the silhouette of some sleeping creature there, oblivious to the tenderness of this reunion. The moon whispers to its lover what it has seen of the changing tides, but the Emperor already knows.

Deep in his workshop, the man works his eighth consecutive long night, mending and tuning the glickerlocks of the star-watch. It is not usual for a full ten-day council to take place without warning in the city, and so the craftmaster might have been pleasantly surprised to have so long to tend to the returning watches’ instruments. But neither is it usual for every single glickerlock to have broken in such a way - a way which takes days to fix - a way which suggests that what is coming is beyond any of their divinations.

She has not left the room in years, and has become very accustomed to the view out into the end of the world. It looks as much like nothing as one would expect - usually. Today she has been pressed up against the glass in wondrous horror, beholding something which has not been there before: a deep, vivid, swirling mass, consuming all that nothing in a steady, constant spin, right there in her back garden, swallowing the view and potentially - eventually - the world.

Two strangers become acquaintances, who spot quickly that they hear the song of the world the same. They become friends, but only briefly, finding it much more to their liking to become lovers, and that first afternoon tea in the jovial quarter becomes a long story of dates and delight and setting their storms aright as they look out into the valley beyond the city. This date, like all the others, is set against a dust-cloud backdrop - but they do not notice today that the dust-cloud seems to contain the stars.

The creature has awoken on its branch, revealing to any who should be looking that it was a cat all along. It wonders if the moon has retreated over the horizon already in this vivid morning, or if it is still stealing away with its lover somewhere in the nexus rooms of the courtyard below. Then the cat stares into the dust-cloud that sits in the valley between here the Otherlande - and the stars stare back.

The porter sits at castle gate, patiently, trying to mind too many bags at once. The craft master who had delivered the repaired glickerlocks had looked exceptionally relieved and even more exhausted than everyone else at the castle, and perhaps it was the intensity of his exhortation to guard them with his life that now has the porter clutching them to himself, positioned around his body, as secure as he could make them about his person. One of them, as the craft master had warned, had been too buoyant with spinning light to keep tied down, so he has settled for the compromise of letting it sit atop his hat, where hopefully it will survive the remaining four hours until the council is out.

The Queen waits until the last of the star-watch are out before turning to her Knights. Most of them need little instruction, but she catches the eye of the woman at the end in her casual cashmere clothes and the customary bare feet of a true sky-rider. The Knight makes busy saddling her gryphon until the others are gone, then turns to receive a grateful hug from the Queen, nodding, unsurprised, when her old friend asks her to deliver a private and urgent message to the Emperor of Clandestire, far across the valley.

Over the impossible border, from the end of the world and into the final, fast threshold of this one, steps a little girl. She is dressed like a dancer, for, it must be supposed, she is one, after all. From her back swirls the writhing, reaching mass of the deep dancers, linking her even now to the unknowable ocean beyond time - and in her hands, ready, lifted, treacherous, there is given now a sword.

“I told you not to go that way,” says the cat to no avail, as the fool runs where she cannot come back from, in pursuit of something stupid, but maybe something good. Only the trees hear the cat, for the fool is gone already, and were it not for coldest winter it would be more obvious that the trees wept with bitter grief, letting tears run down to the empty forest floor. As it is, the tears just look like snow, dancing free as the trees shake their heads in woe.

Upon the walls of Clandestire palace, one of the runner boys pauses at the ninth stack. It has been long enough since there was something to report from this border that it takes him a minute to find the words, but when he does, he sprints in his woven uniform vest, bare feet and linen pants making him seem like a whirl as he cries along the perimeter: “The watcher has left her room - the watcher comes - the watcher comes - the end is no more!”

The fifth regiment are training by the Clandestire sea in a fairly routine manner when the gryphon and his rider drop out of the sky in a not at all routine manner. The lackey is so startled that he drops all of the swords he is supposed to be minding. He is flustered enough that he doesn’t even think to object when the woman, barefoot and smiling confidently, takes his palace key from around his neck, and only finds out too late once she has flown off again that she has - for now - taken his voice with it.

Just beyond the city keep, one of the best wine houses in all Otherlande is entertaining prestigious company, though the winemaster would never tell. He is very proud of the fact that the Queen frequents his house, and it does not matter to him that nobody else will ever know. He glances up through the window as he pours the wines himself, but the council flag is gone - so who, he wonders, though he will not ask, are the nine other glasses for?

The people of the sixth covered village beyond the city worry little about the dust-storm. They are well-equipped with their hatches and holds and bars and shutters, not to mention their deep cellars and sensible stockpiles of salted meats and pickled vegetables, to weather such things. Until the dust-cloud starts to encroach their limits, and brings with it a shower of bones - and even the dogs won’t touch them.

The two lovers get married up on the hill, just outside the city. It is a happy affair, though very private - only the couple, an officiary, and a witness. So there are very few to notice when they do not come back, and it will be years before the dust-cloud spits back out what is left of lover’s hill, and even longer - too long to indentify them or even remember - before the bones are uncovered.

The Queen sits alone in the upper room of the wine house, drinking the blood of a harvest reaped decades before her own rule began. The other nine glasses sit atop the glickerlocks, singing gently - until the singing becomes a howling gale. And then she is there, perched in the window, the golden parrot of her voice lifted in her hands. “You are wise to call me, darling one,” sings the bird, “the watcher has left her room - and, what’s more, it seems she’s been given a sword.”

The craft master will be found dead in a few days, hanging upside down from his ankles in the deepest dungeon of his workshop. Some say the work got too much for him - driven mad by his craft - broken by the constant breaking of that which he has given all his life to fix. It is the Queen who finds him, ordering that his premises be searched, not sharing that it was the wisdom of another woman which advised her to do so, speaking to her with the glowing song of a golden bird, meeting with her from the woods beyond the edge of the world.

The moon, in the arms of the Emperor, does not pull away as it usually does as the night tugs to recede from this private bower. “Let me stay,” the moon whispers, “this time, let me stay with you, lover, my kindness, my one.” “Perfect light, you know how I beg you to stay, but I must ask, when each night we have spent together has been swept away by the dawn, why is this different? Why do you stay?” “Because this time you will need me,” says the gentle moon. He does not voice the fear this puts in him, but he does not need to, the moon is closely held enough to feel the tremor. “But who will play your light? Even the night needs clarity,” whispers the Emperor, pressing the moon closer to his heart. “My brother the sun,” replies the moon. “He has promised me, and what’s more, he agrees: you cannot afford for night, now. There is too much at cost. All must be seen, and all your people must run in the unending day that will reign while I am with you.” The Emperor touches his lips to the moon, and murmurs, “then stay. And I will rule the better with you, lover, by my side.”

In the coming days, in the bewilderment of a blistering day which does not seem to end, the people of Clandestire will not think to question the figure who sits in the palace, a serene look and a deep, bewitching darkness to their dress. There is too much terror, too much to do in the face of the storm, to do more than bow when the Emperor makes the introduction to the High Celestior. One or two - perhaps those who have loved deeply themselves, glancing up at the night sky that now evades their land - recognise in that face the perfect light of the moon.

The Queen sits in the garden of the castle, the head of her cheetah upon her knee. The sun that no longer sets beats down across the garden, but she keeps its infinity well. She prays to the mothers of her lineage for strength. It is not long now til her knight will return with word from her friend across the valley. Perhaps he too has word from the heavens. Perhaps together, there will be hope. Cheetah lifts a paw to her thigh and purrs.

By Boogleboot

-- Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here

-- Master-post of chapters here

-- Link to a post about the chapter one spread here

[phantomwisestory]

"I shuffle them compulsively more than I read them," she says. "I'm surprised there aren't more down here, they're basically stories in pieces that can be rearranged."

-- Mirabel on tarot cards, from The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgnestern