My piece for the @artists-guild-of-exandria project redoing old Critical Role Fan Art to see how far we’ve come as artists 💪
I really wanted to redraw this Mighty Nein in Eiselcross because it’s my favourite arc, and I’m super proud of much I’ve improved in digital media. Also I wanted an excuse to draw a cool wallpaper lol
The top from 2024/5, bottom from beginning of 2022 💜
Here is another one that requires some careful build up beforehand. It has been on my mind for a while and I think it has finally percolated enough to release into the wild to find its forever home.
As always, ignore any part of canon that contradicts this, for I certainly am.
So this one is going to take some necessary world building facts, then some world building cultural implications, and finally some actual build up to get to the scenes in my head. Buckle in folks, the ride is about to begin.
World building Facts
Soulmates: Soulmates exist, with all the regular mythology and usage as in our world (the universe is saying that we should be together). However the reality is much different. Soulmates are two or more people who make a vow during a highly specific ritual that carries over through every lifetime after (This relationship can be platonic, familial, romantic, even adversarial). This ritual has been lost since before any writing was invented, no one can even be sure that this ritual originated on earth. Part of the reason for that is as part of the ritual itself, the participants sacrifice their knowledge of how to do the ritual.
Getting down to the specifics, in the initial ritual all the participants (2 or more people) make a vow of some kind. This vow is unique to the pair or group, and in making this vow there is a mystical bond created between the participants, making them soulmates in that life and every life after. In every life after the soulmates will find each other, and know each other (though specific memories of those previous lives will be of the feelings rather than the events), and they have a choice. They may make the vow, unchanged since it was first made, again reaffirming the bond for that lifetime. They may choose to stay connected but not reaffirm the vow for that lifetime (for instance if they met each other late in that life and one or all the partners have other commitments for the lifetime that mean they cannot keep the vow). They may also choose to dissolve the bonding entirely, painlessly.
Should the soulmates reaffirm the vow, and one of the soulmates breaks that vow in that lifetime, a phenomenon called bondrot occurs. Bondrot is excruciating pain for the soulmates that did not break their vow, the magic of the ritual trying to encourage the complete shattering of the bond. Should all soulmates in a bond break the vow, not only is the bond forever broken but the former soulmates will live with an unspecified pain of something missing, in every life thereafter.
Magic: A quick note about magic in this universe. Magic functions a bit like chemistry or medication, in that different magic can mix and have strange reactions to each other. Any magic user above rank amateur (like any doctor worth their license) will not cast magic on a person where they do not know all the magic affecting them.
For the purposes of this, the Lazarus Pit counts as magic. So does the Soulmate Ritual, no matter how many lifetimes ago the ritual was cast.
World Building Cultural implications
Now this next bit are not actual facts. However there is a culture that has grown up around these reincarnated soulmates. Even though most do not actually have solid memories of their past lives, they do start to recognize each other through the centuries. Enough that in the past 200 years or so, there has been a small town of soulmates that has sprung up with enough magic that it is not tied to any one place but is accessible from all over the world. One pair of soulmates in this town have figured out how to bring forward more of the knowledge they have gained about Soulmates over their many lifetimes, and are the foremost experts in Soul based magic.
Not every soulmate grouping lives in this town, but most come in contact with it in their lifetimes and certain cultural norms have developed.
The Vow: Every group of soulmates guard their vow and it’s wording with everything they are. The only people who know the wording of the Vow are the people that swear it. Though no one actually knows, most soulmate groups believe that the initial ritual was created by some form of slaves, fearing that they would be separated from their loved ones. Thus they keep the working a secret so that no one will be able to induce Bondrot or force the bonds to break.
Current Lives: There is a tendency throughout all the soulmates to be somewhat disconnected from the people in their current lives. No one can really tell if the disconnect comes from the soulmates (not forming connections in the current life because they have connections already) or the non soulmate (that they can sense something strange so never form that connection) or some combination of both. Because of this disconnect soulmates tend not to talk about being soulmates with anyone in their current lives.
Death: Soulmates do not see death as an ending, and in some cases is the answer to a problem (particularly if that problem is related to Bondrot). Most of the time, once one member of a soulmate group dies, the others die within about 6 months. Generally enough time to put their affairs in order.
Now, almost three pages in, it is time to build the specifics.
One, Jason and Tim are soulmates. It is and was a romantic relationship. They reaffirmed their vow (The vow they made was swearing to never willinging kiss another-further reinforcing the idea that the initial ritual was designed by slaves) two months before Jason died in Ethiopia, but had not told anyone in the batfam that they knew each other.
Tim started to get his affairs in order, but realized that Bruce was losing his shit over Jason’s death. Thus decides that, before he can join Jason he needs to get Bruce back into better mental ground, still never letting on who Jason was to him. By the time Bruce is stable, Red Hood has been revealed as Jason. But here’s the twist.
Jason comes back, digs himself out of his grave, and is thrown in the Lazarus Pit by Talia. Talia wants him to forge him into a weapon against Bruce, to an extent. She wants to break down Bruce’s psyche so that she and Ra’s can mold Bruce into the heir to the Demon’s head. If her plan had gone as it was supposed to, Jason would have been wielded to kill Tim and Dick then killed by Bruce (in the midst of a grief fueled psychotic break) only to be revealed as Jason Todd as he died. Talia would then swoop in to the Broken Bruce with the lure of a remaining son (Damian). Bruce would follow after her for the sake of the only child he had left and she would mold him into the person she wanted him to be.
This is not what happened. And where Magic enters.
In the first place, there is no way that Jason does not recognize Tim, Robin costume or not. And Jason has no problem with his soulmate being Robin. Second, death does not mean the same thing to Jason as it would to most, and he’s aware of that. He’s a little irritated at the Joker for murdering him, but despite the fact that he has no clear memories of his past life he is pretty sure that the Joker is not the only person to murder him (also to a certain extent does not feel traumatized/surprised that the Joker- an unrepentant murderer- murdered him). He is more betrayed and pissed at Sheila but she ends up dead. Jason is also very aware that Bruce has tons of trauma regarding death, so does not come out of the Pit thinking that Bruce should have killed (thus triggering the destruction of the core of Bruce’s being) the Joker. He also outright, and vocally, disbelieves Talia when she tries to say that Dick deliberately missed his funeral..
In short Talia is not able to weaponize Jason after the Lazarus pit. So she finds a magic user. Later opinions will say she found an idiot of an amateur magic user, who she has cast a memory spell on Jason. It is a spell to suppress his happy memories from before his death, and to increase his anger toward Bruce, Tim, and Dick to a very specific level (so he does not go kill Bruce outright).
The Soulmate ritual is soul magic. It is ancient and, save for Bondrot and the bond breaking, is unbreakable. However it does not need to be broken to be affected. If a person’s memory of making The Vow, and the memories of the person they made the vow to is suppressed, then how will Jason even know there is something to break or that he has.
The Lazarus pit is magic of the body and mind. It heals and hurts and causes madness that is supposed to fade after a time. It saturates and causes instability, but is supposed to drain from the flesh.
The final spell cast is one of the mind and the emotions. It is cast to be permanent, but not in the same way that Soul magic is permanent (it lasts unto death or being broken not it lasts unto eternity). It is meant to exist on the surface and shape a person, but not meant to penetrate deeper.
As far as Talia is concerned, the memory spell worked as intended, Jason no longer remembered most of his good memories from before his death and wanted to kill ‘The Replacement’. She noted that Jason’s pit madness did not seem to be fading like it should be, but cared very little about it. After all, it would not hurt her plans.
She released him on Gotham to become The Red Hood.
When Jason attacked Tim at Titan’s Tower, Tim realized quickly that something was wrong. He managed to knock Jason out and call ‘Doc’, a member of the soulmate group that was the foremost authority in soulmates and soul magic. Doc was able to examine Jason, read the magic laid on him and their interactions. The magic had combined into a horrific Gordian knot, making it impossible to undo any of the magic without breaking any of the rest (and with that shattering both Jason and Tims souls and sending them into an eternity of agony). They also could not tell Jason what was going on, for fear that the knowledge would put pressure on the memory spell (which was poorly applied besides), thus back to shattering it and their souls. Though Tim and Doc discuss death as a reset, they cannot be sure that the magic will not follow them into the next life and make things worse.
Tim makes the decision to not tell the rest of the Batfam either, correctly deducing that they would never be able to leave it alone. He maintains the status quo, never letting on the pain he was feeling as Jason, not remembering their vow, breaks it often. He tell no one about his deeper relationship to Jason.
Now we have built enough to arrive at the scenes in my head, set a few years after Bruce returns from the Timestream. The Bats (Batman, Red Hood, Nightwing, Red Robin, Black Bat, Batgirl, Robin), two lanterns, along with Zatanna and Constantine are captured by some weird new villain who has a device, decidedly running on science and not magic, that is supposed to transform suffering/ bad memories into power for the villian. The villain had already drained one of the Lanterns, who was from off world, into a near catatonic state.
The villain, who doesn’t get a name, they are not important enough, takes Jason to put in the machine, also plugs himself in and turns it on…
Only to begin to scream, which is not what happened the first time. The magic acting on Jason reacted badly to the villains machine. For the villain.
The distraction is enough for the group of heroes to break out and capture the villain. Tim goes right to unstrap Jason.
Jason wakes up and calls Tim by a name the Bats had never heard (a nickname that had stuck around through each lifetime) and as Tim goes still, Jason apologizes over and over for what he was doing, saying that he can feel himself being dragged under again. After a small amount of time Jason goes silent and when he speaks again it is clear he does not remember anything after being strapped into the machine.
Later, during the debriefing in the Cave with the Bats and the two magic users (the lanterns had left to get the injured lantern medical care), Damian brings up Jasons strange words after the machine was turned off. Damian goes to say what Jason had called Tim, but Tim interrupts, saying that if Damian attempts to speak that term, Tim would rip his tongue out and feed it to him. Completely serious and threatening in a way that is unusual.
There is a bit of back and forth while Tim tries to not have to answer any questions, Jason is very confused and irritated, and the rest of the table is only mildly less confused. Finally Tim does convince them that saying the wrong thing would have disastrous consequences (Dick: What’s the worst that could happen? Tim: You shatter the minds and souls of multiple people and send them into eternal agony), but they convince him that it is better to give them, including Jason, as much information as possible. Tim insists on calling Doc to explain things. He also turns to Bruce and goes “Doc knows me as a civilian, we can either invite him to the Cave, and disclose our identities to him, or we can invite him to the Manor and Constantine and Zatanna can stop pretending they don’t know who we are.”
Batman decides to receive this Doc in one of the manor’s sitting rooms.
Doc arrives, Tim gives him a brief overview of what went on. Doc then surprises everyone by asking Tim if he had any additional pain (since Tim is bearing all of the pain from their Bondrot, he would know better if the machine had done anything to make the bond unstable). When Tim says no, Doc nods to himself and murmurs that they then have time to do things right. He looks at Jason and asks if he was ok with the rest, barring Tim, knowing what was going on. Dick tries to interject but Doc says that without Jason and Tim’s ok, none of them were learning squat.
Jason does decide that he is okay with the bats and the magic users knowing whatever was going on. Doc nods and goes “Alright, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to do a quick spell to give an overview of what is going on. Mostly to establish my bonafides with the magic users, so that when I explain the sheer fuckery going on we don’t waste time with what I should or should not know. Then I will tell you what the parts that I safely can.” Jason starts to look even more irate “What I do or do not tell you has nothing to do with your abilities. But I will not risk a 80% of unending agony for your ego. After I explain I will do a slightly deeper check, then you will choose someone, not Tim, to make decisions on your behalf, I cast a spell to ensure that they will make choices with your long term interest at heart, then you and Tim will go somewhere out of earshot so that I can give a more complete explanation.Then see if we can plan on where to go from here.”
Jason let Doc do the overview spell (specifically created to not interfere with other magic), the results of which appear in triplicate on letter sized paper on a nearby table. The Doc goes “The long and short of it is, at some point after your cam out f the Lazarus Pits some moron of an amateur magic user cast a spell on you which interacted weirdly with both the Pit and another piece of beneficial magic that, if broken, is going to result in that eternal agony. Because of the interaction between the magic we can’t remove one without breaking the others. Too much information about the spell effects will cause your mind to break the spell and lead to the aforementioned eternal agony.”
With that Doc moved on to a verbal check with Tim. Things like likelihood of nightmares for Tim tonight (Tim: 100% Jay saw me completely for 1 minute 19 seconds before fading); Tim’s current pain level (Tim: 9.3 out of 10; Doc: That’s lower than I thought. Tim: 1 minute 19 second) and other questions that no one had the context for but the answers were still concerning.
After that Jason picks Alfred to speak on his behalf, Doc behinds Alfred to make decisions for Jason’s long term welfare no matter Alfred’s feelings on the matter (on the off chance that Death is brought up as an option again). After Jason and Tim are out of earshot, Doc hands Constantine and Zatanna the most recent result of the spell, also summoning the previous results as well to give a more complete picture.
The first thing Constantine said was agreeing that the memory spell was cast by a moron. Then he gets a little pale when he sees the Soulmate magic that is affecting Jason.
Doc explains Soulmates, that Jason and Tim are Soulmates in this sense, and what exactly the combination of magic on Jason is doing. He also mentions in this explanation that killing Tim and Jason had been discussed but put aside and that Jason had broken their vow (one of the contextless questions asked) three times in the last week.
All of the bats, including Damian, are a little distressed to realize that the only reason that Death was not still be considered as an answer was that they did not know if the convoluted magic would follow Jason into the next life. Also Bruce and Dick were having a bit of a crisis in the realization that Bruce’s breakdown had prevented Tim’s death before they ever met him.
Though Black Bat is not particularly well versed in magic, she is the one (while peering curiously over Zatanna’s shoulder) that points out there is a difference between the most recent results and the ones from previous overview spells cast. Doc looks and realizes that the machine had shifted something in the spell, in that telling Jason the vow he made would no longer shatter the spells. From the readings it was clear if Jason and Tim made their vow again, it would reestablish their bond, free of the other magic.
There is still a risk. There was about a 20% chance it would not work and the act of Tim (because Tim is the only person who remembers the Vow) telling the vow to Jason would shatter them both.
Doc (who had previously, extensively, discussed Tim’s wishes on the subject with him)and Alfred (bound by magic as well) decide that 20% is worth the risk, to Batman’s vocal displeasure. The call JAson and Tim back in. Because of the way that the machine shifted the magic, they cannot tell Jason what he is vowing or why. All they can say is that Tim is going to tell you a vow that you will have to make, and that should fix things.
Tim gets no explanation either, but goes along with it. He does insist that they find a room big enough that they can be in sight, but far enough away that no one can overhear their vow.
They say their vows again (‘I swear not to willingly kiss anyone but you’) and it works, reestablishing their bond. It does not fully break the other spells, though that will come naturally with time. But the bond being reestablished is enough for Jason to gain some of the knowledge he has again about soulmates and realize exactly how much pain he has been causing Tim.
Jason and tim, now holding hands, say goodbye to Doc (after another brief check to make sure things are as astable as can be) and go to leave to head to Tim’s Nest. The batfam expresses vocal displeasure with that. Jason goes ‘both of us are due about three panic attacks…each. We need to feel completely safe to do that, and the manor has not been safe for us for a long time’.
I have no idea where it goes from there, but anyone who wants to pick it up and run with it is welcome.
it’s rare that I take pictures of it, but I thought I’d share the ghosting effect
the first picture is pretty faint but the second one’s more obvious, you can see something almost like a stain. it won’t come off, in my experience
these pieces sat on something with underglaze during the bisque fire. while they cooked, the underglaze from whatever they were touching imprinted onto the bare pottery, leaving a ghost.
it can make loading a kiln challenging if I’m sharing it with others or if I need some white clay to stay white. using cookies can help for stacking
This is probably one of the most insane and out there practices I have done and gotten results from. Within the Secrets of Solomon By Joseph H Peterson are many different works based around the Verum demons. The "Secrets" are all very unique ways of contacting and working the magic of these demons. However, I felt that this particular secret was going to be my first attempt at contact with one of these spirits.
I was genuinely unsure how this would manifest, and was excited to find out!
I went out to the woods near my parent's house. I brought a bag of flour, the book, and 6 white tea light candles. I made it to the spot, and set down my bag. I drew up the circle in flour, and made the sigil within. I placed a candle at different points around the circle, and then lit each of them. I then took out the book and sat next to the circle. I began to sing the invocation, for 12 rounds. Over time, I grew familiarity with the words, and they seemed to come to life. Well, after 12 rounds of singing, nothing happened. I waited and waited, still nothing. I figured that it was something of the past, and not really worthwhile. I thank Klepoth for her time, and dismissed her. I snuffed the candles, and removed the circle.
The rest of my night was pretty normal. I talked with my friends on Discord, refused to sleep until 3AM, the usual. But, as my candles dimmed and snuffed out, and I prepared for bed, I finally got the results I wanted. I laid my head down to go to sleep at long last, and that's when I heard it.
A strange voice came from nowhere saying "Did you really think I'd forget about you?" or something to that effect. Her voice was very inhuman, but it was eerily similar to Kyubey from Madoka Magica. But very distorted, pitch shifted, and non human. After she spoke, music came, again from no discernible source. The thing that shocked me is that it had actual musical theory applied to it. It made sense. It was real music, though I had never heard this piece in my life. It had many instruments, starting more orchestral then branching off, gaining new genres and styles. It grew and grew. becoming greater and greater. Finally, it came to an end, and left just as it went.
I fell asleep afterwards, and have been thinking about this experience since. The Verum spirits are truly unique, and in all honestly Klepoth didn't seem to act like any of the demons I've previously encountered. She even seemed more fae-like than demon-like. There's a lot to ponder with this and other experiences I will discuss soon. But for now, I'll let you all ponder on this one.
There is an aspect to Dungeons and Dragons that I feel is grossly overlooked by the community, and that’s Weird Magic. This concept is closely tied to hags, stemming from their ancient knowledge forgotten by everyone else, but there’s no reason that Asmodeus or Demogorgon couldn’t also be familiar with certain practices. It mimics some other types of magic, like being able to create beacons of light, create and destroy diseases, or create a wall of blades in front of the caster.
I hope you can see where I’m going with this. Ancient magic known only by incredibly old patrons that offer power a person could only dream of sounds like the sort of thing a disgraced scholar or lost wizard might sell their services for. I know I certainly would in that sort of scenario.
Now, Dungeon Masters, this is a wonderful opportunity for you to be creative! Try to expand on the idea and give it some flavor. Hags use Weird Magic to turn a human child into a changeling, or to strip a lycanthrope of their free will to create an invincible thrall. Let your players, namely your warlocks, have some wiggle room in your world because for the duration of your game, they live in it too. Especially at higher levels. While the wizard is fighting gods and the druid is becoming immortal, let your party’s fiendlock have their own unique niche, something no other class can achieve. It is also a solid plot hook: what do they have to do to earn this knowledge? Do they have to serve a Night Hag for a year and a day? Do they have to officially join the legions of the Nine Hells after death? Do they have to eat seven souls to please Orcus?
If I can offer some examples: let a necromancer experiment with permanent undead or diseases, give a devout warlock the soul bag of a Night Hag, and let a healer learn old ways of tending to loved ones that possibly leads to more issues if done improperly.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: 盗墓笔记 - 南派三叔 | The Grave Robbers' Chronicles - Xu Lei, 沙海 | Tomb of the Sea (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Wang Can & Wang Pangzi, Wang Can/Wang Pangzi
Characters: Wāng Càn, Wang Pangzi
Additional Tags: Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergent AU, Wang Pangzi wants to beat someone up, Wang Can just wants food, And to keep his fingers, written for PangChang Week 2022, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, timeline squeezed down to keep characters closer in age, cultivation magic is real, absolutely no human-faced owls were hurt in this production
Summary:
When Wang Pangzi captures the Wang spy Wang Can, things take a left turn at Shanghai and across the Yellow Sea.
(NOTE: Apparently AO3′s draft system doesn’t work the way I hoped it would. Reposting because I messed up when trying to fix the problem.)
For the square "Weird magic" from my @stephenstrangebingo card
Also the next part of my the-dog-from-the-deleted-scene-follows-Stephen!AU. Bats talks in the comics for some weird reason and I just decided that that reason was weird magic :)
There is a place in the west, near the gravelly spit of Portland and the crumbling cliffs filled with dinosaur bones, where Somerset and Dorset do not meet. There is a sign on the road whichever way one travels, that warns you are leaving the shire, and its twin, welcoming you to the next, does not appear for nearly a mile.
This is an unusual distance. The Shires of England have been expanding for centuries, their edges creeping ever closing, squeezing the old country into the narrowest gaps. Between Essex and Kent only the Thames now stands, sweeping across the clay and silt to bury itself in the Channel salt. Strange things lurk along the riverbed, driven down into the water by the trades of London, plotting their endless revenge. But here, in the west, the villagers have a little of the old blood about them still. The borders have not moved for centuries. The villagers forbid it, whatever their landlords say on the matter. Let the justices order the enclosures; the hedges and banks remain.
And so a traveller, riding at night along the high road northwest from crumbling Dorchester, lost in dreams of Roman glory, shall come to a sign of brick and fine grey Portland stone.
It says "You are now leaving Dorset", and the wisest travellers whip their horses and do not look too closely at the view.
The land falls away, on either side of that road. It is no glittering bridge such as they have in the East, where the cities forget why the borders are guarded. It is only a natural ridge, where water and time have scoured away the chalk to either side. The valley to the south is wide and singular, almost a cliff, falling away to the wide wet vale. On the north, the land lies crumpled as old laundry, village and river hidden alike by the folds of the earth.
The wise traveller whips their horses, and does not look.
On a cool day in autumn, when the hawthorn trades its leaves for berries of bloodiest red, a traveller stands upon the ridge.
He was borne in no swift carriage, nor riding the swift horses of the post-inn. He had come on the mail coach, which had left him near half a mile from the border of Somerset, unwilling to risk a halt even close to the old country. From there he had walked, along the overgrown verges, with the grass soaking his trousers to the knee and his boots slipping every minute into the deep nettle-hidden ditch. He walked, as the rising sun lit the leaves to flaming gold, to where Somerset ends, and he walked on, past the sign, into the old country.
His name is Roland, and he stood upon the road, on the ridge, and gazed down into the wrinkled land to the north.
Another man might have been gathering his courage, but Roland was only waiting.
The sun creeps up the sky, the light spreading from golden bars to a pale white blanket over the wet grass. When it rises high enough to light the valley – when the shadows are banished from both those slopes of grass - Roland sighs, once, as a man who finds to his relief that the old key opens the guessed-at door.
He steps off the road and follows the line of the tiny stream, which oozes into life from the matted roots and dew-catching knots of the grass, without a spring to give it a name. The stream twists along the valley, too small and secret to account for the folding of the land. The valley cannot have been made by such a stream. But here it is all the same, running wet between the tussocks, where the traveller may plunge to the knee in water if she does not see the dark gleam of the ground, waiting to give way.
Roland is not such a traveller. He knows this stream of old. Has lain beside it, in the brief heat of summer, to find his back wet with hungry water when he rose. Has walked its bank in every season, drawn dead rabbits from the dark water and see the hawthorn blossom rot among the ripples. The ice that creeps over it in winter has been his companion, in years not yet forgotten by the stream.
He is not a traveller, this man come up from the shires and down from the road. He would laugh at you for saying so. He would laugh the silent, eye-crinkling laugh of the border folk, that sounds itself in eyebrows and the shift of the shoulders, that murmurs under silent breath. He was born here, along the reedless banks of the tiny stream, the stream that never cut the valley, the valley that twists away east where no traveller on the road can see down to it, and here is the house he was born in.
The house is badly in need of repair. The thatch is sagging, all but holed through by its own weight, moss creeping down from the eaves. The walls bulge like undercooked bread, flattened under their own weight. The windowsills have fallen away in chunks, crumbling yellow sandstone showing where the white paint has cracked apart. The wet grass has almost overcome the doors.
Roland does not go to the house. He does not knock at the dark oak door, between the nails and the half-supported lion's head knocker. He does not turn a key in the rusting lock, or push open the creaking door, or set an eye upon the residents where they crumble in the half-lit rooms.
He goes instead to the stream he has followed from its birth, followed from the edge of the road between the shires, and now at last he goes to the banks and he kneels down beside it on the overhanding grass and he lets the dew soak through the knees of his trousers and rest clammy and damp against his skin.
Roland leans forward, over the uncertain banks of the stream, and he digs.
He does not have a spade, a trowel, even a spoon. He digs with his hands, plunging them into the stream to brush at the clogged sand at the bottom. The stream carries away the silt in great clouds like smoke from damp firewood. Under his hands, shapes appear, and are blown away by the current that rises and twists along the riverbed until at last his numbing fingers scrape from the mud a single gleaming apple-seed.
He lifts it out, as reverently as if it were his firstborn, and draws from his pocket a single apple. It is perfect. Not shining red, like the waxed imports of the markets. This is an apple from an English orchard, half-forgotten by its owners, tended to by the peasantry because it is in their blood to tend to the orchards where they find them. It is pale yellowish green and mottled, the stem surrounded by tough brown skin, and clinging determinedly to the last wilting leaf.
He takes from his other pocket a knife, and carves his name into the soft yellow flesh.
Where the seed came out, the apple goes in, and no sooner are Roland’s steady fingers out of the water than the apple is gone, hidden under silt and sand in the bed of the stream, hidden under dark flowing water.
Roland stands, and brushes the wet knees of his trousers with cold wet hands. It does no good, but he tries it anyway. He brushes at his knees and he turns away from the cottage and he walks up the hill and he does not look back, back to the fresh-cut eaves of the thatch, the tidy lawn, the trim cottage that rests in the valley as neatly as on a postcard, shining with the morning sun and the health of a newly-paid rent.
He climbs the hill, along the twisting line of the stream, back towards, the road, but he does not follow it. He passes over the ridge instead, unmoved by the sweep of stone that calls the traveller back to safety, and goes down again, down into the broad southern valley of Enniskillen.
There is always some light in Enniskillen's valley. The sun is never quite hidden by the fogs. The moon shines brighter than in other places, the stars are more attentive on moonless nights. Roland has never questioned it. The valley to the south is lighter than his; he knew this as a child, he knows it now, as he knows which way the rivers run.
There is a stand of oak trees, turned golden and brown in the cooling winds, and he crosses through it. The trees bear tokens of favour from this gentle and that, here a scarlet ribbon, there a long-toothed badger skull. The favours do not rustle in the breeze. The acorns are plentiful this year, brown shells shining under fallen leaves. There are piles of those leaves, raked into heaps to sift the acorns out. The acorns of such oaks as these are not to be overlooked.
Under the leaves of the last oaks, the last oaks that stand bare of ribbons and skulls and drop their leaves onto the mossy grass, there is a labyrinth. It is cut into the turf and moulded into the ground, felt underfoot as easily as seen, except when the sun is low and the sky is clear and the banks of the labyrinth cast deep shadows across the path. Edge to edge, it might be thirty feet, or fifty; Roland has never crossed it edge to edge, never measured its boundaries. He passes between the last oaks as through a gateway, and sets his feet upon the winding, mossy path. You cannot go wrong, walking Enniskillen's labyrinth. There are no false turnings to lead you astray. There is only the straight plain route, twisting around itself, towards the wood and away and down the slope and up, until you approach the house from below and the grey slate roof hides the arching oaks.
The day is young, the chill mist of morning not yet burned away, and Enniskillen is baking bread.
Roland leans on the broad windowsill, pulling back the half-open shutters and leaning through. Enniskillen's hands never stop kneading, turn and press and turn and press, all the while they are talking.
"Rent's paid."
"I heard." She looks past him, over his shoulder. It is long years since he wondered what was standing behind him. "Did you speak to Sarah?"
"I didn't."
"You ought."
"She ought. Ought to be the firstborn, didn’t it? That's what's proper. Ten years she's held the deeds and seven she's forgot."
Turn, press, turn, press. Enniskillen's rhythm doesn't change, nor her expression change, nor her level gaze shift from over Roland's shoulder, but Roland blushes, and feels shame as hot as embers spreading from his belly. "Tell me, then," he mutters, and frowns at the turning dough.
"She forgets because she's had a second son, and the landlord's taken a shine to the boy. Can't see the roof leaking, any of them. Can't remember what week it is, nor why they ought to care. You ought to remember that well enough. No? You ought to remember all those years when the house was bright and clean and all the days were golden? Think that was true, do you still? Think she took the place on because she wanted it, her being so fond of rot and ruin? Think better before you complain on that next year."
She tosses the dough into the air, muttering words Roland cannot quite hear, but which he knows – from asking as an impertinent youth, who thought all the mysteries belonged to him – to be the first lines of an ancient lullaby.
"Who's your landlord, Enniskillen?"
He has asked before, of course, and of course, she does not answer this time either.
"Tell me a spell to bind a heart to the land," she says instead, and he sighs a little, and does as he is told.
This is a teaser chapter of Borderlands, one of the books I’ll be serialising this year exclusively for my patrons. If you’d like to read more about the Old Country, you can sign up at https://www.patreon.com/duckbunny for as little as one dollar a month.
