What scary firelight stories do the fae tell themselves about other creatures?
When I was smallerthan I am and lived in Faerieland, this is one of the stories they would tellthe little ones, the ones they hadn’t been able to trade away or deftly replace.
In the Other-world, some ancientfolk would murmur, in the land under the sun, in the land of time and allthings that grow and change and are and are and are, there are monsterswho drew iron about themselves just as we draw glamour. They wear it like an exo-skeleton and forgefrom it blades to murder and undo the selves of us. (Iron is organized, it pulls, it tugs,it snags on the fragile signals that constitute our forms and unravels us likea knit sweater.)
One of these iron-folk was calledSir Holth, and he was rumored to be a great and cruel warrior. Sir Holth was known among the sunless folk asthe fae-slayer, Sir Faerie-Bane. For nigh40 years he stalked the forests and the faerie-meadows, the points at which thesunless world touched his. He guardedthese gates and took every faerie life that crossed with his iron blade.
At that point, one of thewithered crones in the corner would pipe up and say some close friend oranother had been killed by this Sir Holth, or Renfidge, or whichever name theteller bestowed for the evening.
Sir Holth (or Renfidge, orwhomever) ultimately died at the gate, his death foretold by a banshee, whom herather rudely murdered shortly before. But as he had died so near a faerie gate, and as his soul was full of bloodyiron and leaden hate, his spirit lingered. They say, and the teller would pause, looking around at the young folkin their audience, taking in, while they still had the room’s attention, thewide-eyes and the knowing, narrowing ones, they say that Sir Holth’s spiritslipped in through the faerie gate, still full of iron and hate. They say his spirit has a bloody blade, thatthe phantom iron of it is still enough to kill a faerie if he gets enoughstrikes in.
Sir Holth haunts the woods, (orthe beaches, or the meadows) the teller says, so beware! Keep bloodstone on yourperson, my good neighbors, for you never know when the fae-slayer might sneakup on you!
