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.
-- Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here
-- Master-post of chapters here
-- Link to a post about the chapter one spread here
