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emptymanuscriptAlright, my first post for Elfebruary. A bit longer than I intended it to be but so it goes. Bindlesticks has been living in my head a couple of years now, so there will probably be more of her.
Lights and Fires
The advantage and disadvantage of being a mutt was that all manner of magics that were only supposed to effect one specific kith or the other still thought that Bindlesticks counted. As she wandered through a valley between a world where nothing had ever lived at all and a world where the dominant form of life were spiders the size of oversized SUVs – neither of which particularly seemed promising to Bindlesticks – a billow of what looked liked fireflies washed down the valley side and over her. The tiny twinkling lights surrounded her in a halo and there they paused as much as tiny twinkling dancing lights ever do, the halo spinning around her like she was the galactic center of their thousand-thousand stars.
Bindlesticks reached out to feel the dancing swarm and they brushed like an electric buzz over her fingers and through the twining ochre-brown branches of her arm. She resisted the urge to shake free of them and the buzz settled into a tickle that drew out her slow laugh. She stretched out her other arm, letting them swirl around and through her. She decided she liked it. She could be the tree at the center of their universe feeling the tickle of them. So she wiggled her rooty toes into the earth, settling in to be the galactic core for a while.
But nearly all things were less patient than Bindlesticks. Especially small things. Except for tortoises. Sometimes tortoises would sit with her in the sun for hours and enjoy just eating the air. The swarm of lights were more like squirrels than tortoises, happy to scamper over her tree-like body but immune to the call of stillness. They zipped and zoomed and then they pulled, rushing in a single direction and then peeling away so she tickled to go in that direction, too. In the end they were like a twin whirl of carwash brushes urging her on.
Bindlesticks sighed and looked past them to the blue sky and the sun. If there was far to go, she wouldn’t make it. Her time was daylight and she rarely saw the stars. “Couldn’t you go back to being my stars for just today?”
In answer the tiny lights zipped and cavorted faster, buzzing urgently through her arms, pattering in an electric rain against her back.
Bindlesticks sighed again and lifted one thick leg from the dirt and then the other. One foot in front of the other. Which was the way of things she supposed. At least her way. She built speed, letting her long legs and unflagging stamina make up for not being as fast as the little things. Between them they set a pace that stretched them both and the valley disgorged them into a plain where the rain of the hills and the mountains had turned into rich high grass and shallow streams.
As the sun dipped toward sunset even the horizon turned verdant as the streams gathered enough to feed a forest. The trees, some nearly as giant as her mother had been, quickly towered above her, their crowns, darker than her own leafy hair, speckling the fading sunlight until Bindlesticks did have to worry about staying awake. “Where are we going?”
The swarm of lights, her own personal galaxy, shattered, each light zooming in a straight shot away to be lost in the forest, leaving her alone in the dim light.
“I hope that means here.” She crossed the twining branches of her arms and tapped her fingers on her skin like a hungry woodpecker. “This is why no one trust fae things, you know.” She looked around and without her guides she wasn’t entirely sure which way was out of the forest. “Nice. Lost again.”
But patience was her virtue. She waited, letting the sunlight and the natural world tell her east and west as the day faded. The breeze told her the way of the water. She revolved to face exactly back toward the valley she had come from, which would have to be the fastest way out.
New lights sprang up in the distance. Orangey-yellow and dancing brighter than the sunlight already. A bonfire. Well, she was here. And maybe this is why the lights had brought her here. Who knew how squirrel lights thought but it was as good a guess as any. And if it wasn’t, there was tomorrow. In the grand scheme of her journey one night wouldn’t be noticed.
Her grandfather’s voice cautioned her in her head that while one night wouldn’t be noticed, all the nights she had given and had yet to give would make quite a difference. But she was curious now. What had the lights wanted? Who had lit the bonfire? For all she knew it could be her grandfather roasting marshmallows as he had when she was a little girl. Which settled matters.
The matter was settled well enough by the time she came to the bonfire that she called, “Grandfather?” as she stepped into the clearing.
Tables, chairs, and floating candles circled the edge of the clearing, with the bonfire the flickering heart in its center. It was obviously going to be a party. At the moment the thin, tall, elves right in front of her with the pearl tablecloth stretched between them were clearly not the highest of the high born. A trio of more servants on the far side of the fire, were so shocked at her appearance that one of them dropped his side of the box of floating candles and they spilled up into the air floating away before the trio started leaping to grab them.
The elf nearest her, a fussy, squirrely faced man so pinched in his features that he looked like the air-pressure was about to crush him, demanded, “Who are you? What are you doing here? Entertainers are at fire three. Get out of here. We’re busy. No solicitations.”
“Hello,” Bindlesticks said to keep everything polite. “Is my grandfather here?”
“Your grandfather? What? No. This is Lady Malamab’s soiree and trees, dryads, ents, and whatever you are, are definitely not invited. And you’ve done quite enough damage so you should leave before I call security.”
“You have security at a soiree?” Bindlesticks asked.
“No,” the other elf holding the pearl tablecloth admitted. “But Spinythorn is big and scary so we just use her when we need to kick someone out.”
“Hey! Hey!” The over-pressured elf said. “What are you doing? You don’t tell her these things. She could be…” what she could be clearly stumped him.
“A terrorist?” Bindlesticks offered.
“Yes,” He agreed. “Just so. She could be a terrorist. You don’t know. Maybe she’s got a bomb hidden in her leaves. Or an IED she’s going to set up to blow Lady Malamab sky high. And then we wouldn’t get paid. We wouldn’t get paid, Gen. You want to be poor, Gen? Nobody gives hand-outs to elves, Gen. Starvation, Gen. We’re going to starve. We’re going to be wearing rags in a gutter and starve all because-“
The pleasanter one cut off his friend. “I’m Gen.”
Bindlesticks reached out her hand to shake. “I’m Bindlesticks Lostagain.” Her hand wrapped around his, eclipsing it, but it wasn’t so much bigger as to make the gentle shake impossible. “I’m lost.”
“Again, I take it,” Gen said, giving her a final squeeze before extracting his hand. “And you’re looking for your grandfather.”
“Yes. I was minding my own business and there were all these little lights and they brought me here.”
“Nonsense. She’s lying Gen.”
“That’s rude,” Bindlesticks said.
The over-pressured elf rolled on right over her objection. “The e-vites only go to Elves. Can only go to Elves. Not her. She’s a party crasher. Get Spinythorn.”
“Wait. Just cool it, Bor.” Gen looked Bindlesticks carefully up and down. “You’re right, she’s not a dryad or a tree or anything I recognize. Your grandfather, Ms. Lostagain, is he an elf?”
“No. But his father was. My great-grandfather was Erllkonikh. Maybe he’s one of the guests?”
Gen and Bor looked long and hard at one another over the pearl tablecloth which both had clutched tighter. Bor swallowed hard enough that Bindlesticks could see his throat bob and shook his vehemently at Gen.
Gen spoke carefully as if Bor might hit him at any second. “I don’t think there’s an Erlkönig coming but you know us elves, we like have more than one name. Lots of names. More names the better. Would your grandfather have told you another name for your great grandfather?”
“No. Just that he came from Knock Maa and he liked to drink in Finland.”
“She’s lying, Gen.”
“Finbar?” Gen asked, his voice cracking on the second syllable.
Bindlesticks nodded. “Yes, that’s where.”
Bor stared at Gen as if begging silently for him to not get them in trouble. The fates of Spinythorn and starvation making him seem even more squished with terror.
“He’s not coming to this one but if you’d like to stay, I’m sure Lady Malamab would love to have Erlkönig Finvarra’s great granddaughter as a guest.”
Bor shook his head madly.
Bindlesticks smiled brightly. “Oh. I’ve never been a soiree. And it’s just one night. I think that would be lovely.”
Gen ran off, leaving Bor clutching one end of the pearl tablecloth that now dragged on the ground.
“Would you like some help with that?” Bindlesticks asked.
“No. Better not.”
“Wut!?” Thundered through the trees.
Before Bindlesticks could decide if that meant trouble for her or not, a woman dressed in shadows, spun like draping silks, so every hurried step made her seem to flicker like the antithesis of the bonfire, came up with her arms wide and welcoming, even if her face was an unreadable mask of beauty. “Finvarrasdotter, I didn’t think you were coming.” The woman grabbed Bindlesticks, pulling her around into the woods, making her feel absolutely helpless and small in spite of the fact that she was edging toward three feet taller than the woman who quickly made plain that she was Lady Malamab. “Such an honor though. And to trust me with your dress. Such an honor.”
It didn’t occur to Bindlesticks that she should be shocked to still be awake until she was fitted in a ridiculous dress of illuisions that made her look like she was the forest come to life, feasting on starlight dipped dream-of-majesty-shrimp which no one cared that she didn’t need to eat, and dancing with the tallest nobleman at the party who was still a foot shorter than her. He was a young count of something or other that Bindlesticks could never quite make out as if he had enchanted the phrase so she couldn’t hear it. His face too was that terrible stillness of beauty that made Bindlesticks feel like she wasn’t actually looking at someone’s real face. Though he finally relaxed into just a mildly annoyed frown when their ages came up and he even smiled like she had given him a present when their final dance came to an end.
His whisper into the Lady’s ear as Bindlesticks tried the Trout Amaranthine got another roll of thunder: “Fourteen!?” But Bindlesticks didn’t feel the need to worry as smiles seemed to spread faster than happy news among all the guests.
Bindlesticks lost a clear perception of the party after that. She was given a delicious wine and everything fuzzed out into laughter and the whirl of the trees around her. For once she was the squirrel darting over the stillness of the earth while her dance partners complimented her for how tall and what a good dancer she was for her age. And there was one Lady who danced with her that Bindlesticks enjoyed very much because she lead well and made her feel whipped around and into the air in the way only her mother used to be able to do. The lady whispered thanks because Bindlesticks crashing the party was going to make the best safely embarrassing story against Lady Malamab in centuries and Bindlesticks shouldn’t worry about being murdered because the Lady… whose name and face Bindlesticks never could remember after that promised her safety in a return gift.
It was easy to tell it was late when Bindlesticks awoke the next day. She lounged, unrooted, against a tree in an empty clearing, the only sign of the prior night the faint smell of woodsmoke and an ache in her head and belly. She really should have been more insistent in telling them that she didn’t need to eat food. It had tasted good though. At least she thought she had had that thought.
She climbed unsteadily to her feet. She took a moment to wiggle her rooty toes in the earth to ground herself, pulling in the sweet clear air which fed her more surely than anything made of dreams. She stretched out her arms, cracking her back, expanding herself to her full height.
A sparrow darted down through the trees and rested a moment on her arm.
It had been delightful. Though now the issue of finding her way home was back again. She was lost, even knowing exactly where she was. A bright dapple of light caught her eye on her other arm and she brought it toward her face, careful not to disturb the sparrow before it was ready to go. Someone had stuffed a scrap of paper – no, an envelope – into one of the gaps in the twisted branches of her arm.
She waited for the sparrow to recuperate and fly off again before plucking the envelope out and turning it so she could clearly see the writing. In a blocky script that spoke of the writer not being used to wielding a pen it read, ‘Thank you for the kiss and the promotion. In return I cordially invite you to meet your nearest relative. – GENdelrass.’
“I kissed a boy? Eww.”
She opened the envelope and one mote of light danced out and over her fingers, buzz-tickling as it stroked over and around her before catapulting off her fingertip to the lead the way. Bindlesticks Lostagain heaved herself forward, chasing the light.
Lights and Fires
The advantage and disadvantage of being a mutt was that all manner of magics that were only supposed to effect one specific kith or the other still thought that Bindlesticks counted. As she wandered through a valley between a world where nothing had ever lived at all and a world where the dominant form of life were spiders the size of oversized SUVs – neither of which particularly seemed promising to Bindlesticks – a billow of what looked liked fireflies washed down the valley side and over her. The tiny twinkling lights surrounded her in a halo and there they paused as much as tiny twinkling dancing lights ever do, the halo spinning around her like she was the galactic center of their thousand-thousand stars.
Bindlesticks reached out to feel the dancing swarm and they brushed like an electric buzz over her fingers and through the twining ochre-brown branches of her arm. She resisted the urge to shake free of them and the buzz settled into a tickle that drew out her slow laugh. She stretched out her other arm, letting them swirl around and through her. She decided she liked it. She could be the tree at the center of their universe feeling the tickle of them. So she wiggled her rooty toes into the earth, settling in to be the galactic core for a while.
But nearly all things were less patient than Bindlesticks. Especially small things. Except for tortoises. Sometimes tortoises would sit with her in the sun for hours and enjoy just eating the air. The swarm of lights were more like squirrels than tortoises, happy to scamper over her tree-like body but immune to the call of stillness. They zipped and zoomed and then they pulled, rushing in a single direction and then peeling away so she tickled to go in that direction, too. In the end they were like a twin whirl of carwash brushes urging her on.
Bindlesticks sighed and looked past them to the blue sky and the sun. If there was far to go, she wouldn’t make it. Her time was daylight and she rarely saw the stars. “Couldn’t you go back to being my stars for just today?”
In answer the tiny lights zipped and cavorted faster, buzzing urgently through her arms, pattering in an electric rain against her back.
Bindlesticks sighed again and lifted one thick leg from the dirt and then the other. One foot in front of the other. Which was the way of things she supposed. At least her way. She built speed, letting her long legs and unflagging stamina make up for not being as fast as the little things. Between them they set a pace that stretched them both and the valley disgorged them into a plain where the rain of the hills and the mountains had turned into rich high grass and shallow streams.
As the sun dipped toward sunset even the horizon turned verdant as the streams gathered enough to feed a forest. The trees, some nearly as giant as her mother had been, quickly towered above her, their crowns, darker than her own leafy hair, speckling the fading sunlight until Bindlesticks did have to worry about staying awake. “Where are we going?”
The swarm of lights, her own personal galaxy, shattered, each light zooming in a straight shot away to be lost in the forest, leaving her alone in the dim light.
“I hope that means here.” She crossed the twining branches of her arms and tapped her fingers on her skin like a hungry woodpecker. “This is why no one trust fae things, you know.” She looked around and without her guides she wasn’t entirely sure which way was out of the forest. “Nice. Lost again.”
But patience was her virtue. She waited, letting the sunlight and the natural world tell her east and west as the day faded. The breeze told her the way of the water. She revolved to face exactly back toward the valley she had come from, which would have to be the fastest way out.
New lights sprang up in the distance. Orangey-yellow and dancing brighter than the sunlight already. A bonfire. Well, she was here. And maybe this is why the lights had brought her here. Who knew how squirrel lights thought but it was as good a guess as any. And if it wasn’t, there was tomorrow. In the grand scheme of her journey one night wouldn’t be noticed.
Her grandfather’s voice cautioned her in her head that while one night wouldn’t be noticed, all the nights she had given and had yet to give would make quite a difference. But she was curious now. What had the lights wanted? Who had lit the bonfire? For all she knew it could be her grandfather roasting marshmallows as he had when she was a little girl. Which settled matters.
The matter was settled well enough by the time she came to the bonfire that she called, “Grandfather?” as she stepped into the clearing.
Tables, chairs, and floating candles circled the edge of the clearing, with the bonfire the flickering heart in its center. It was obviously going to be a party. At the moment the thin, tall, elves right in front of her with the pearl tablecloth stretched between them were clearly not the highest of the high born. A trio of more servants on the far side of the fire, were so shocked at her appearance that one of them dropped his side of the box of floating candles and they spilled up into the air floating away before the trio started leaping to grab them.
The elf nearest her, a fussy, squirrely faced man so pinched in his features that he looked like the air-pressure was about to crush him, demanded, “Who are you? What are you doing here? Entertainers are at fire three. Get out of here. We’re busy. No solicitations.”
“Hello,” Bindlesticks said to keep everything polite. “Is my grandfather here?”
“Your grandfather? What? No. This is Lady Malamab’s soiree and trees, dryads, ents, and whatever you are, are definitely not invited. And you’ve done quite enough damage so you should leave before I call security.”
“You have security at a soiree?” Bindlesticks asked.
“No,” the other elf holding the pearl tablecloth admitted. “But Spinythorn is big and scary so we just use her when we need to kick someone out.”
“Hey! Hey!” The over-pressured elf said. “What are you doing? You don’t tell her these things. She could be…” what she could be clearly stumped him.
“A terrorist?” Bindlesticks offered.
“Yes,” He agreed. “Just so. She could be a terrorist. You don’t know. Maybe she’s got a bomb hidden in her leaves. Or an IED she’s going to set up to blow Lady Malamab sky high. And then we wouldn’t get paid. We wouldn’t get paid, Gen. You want to be poor, Gen? Nobody gives hand-outs to elves, Gen. Starvation, Gen. We’re going to starve. We’re going to be wearing rags in a gutter and starve all because-“
The pleasanter one cut off his friend. “I’m Gen.”
Bindlesticks reached out her hand to shake. “I’m Bindlesticks Lostagain.” Her hand wrapped around his, eclipsing it, but it wasn’t so much bigger as to make the gentle shake impossible. “I’m lost.”
“Again, I take it,” Gen said, giving her a final squeeze before extracting his hand. “And you’re looking for your grandfather.”
“Yes. I was minding my own business and there were all these little lights and they brought me here.”
“Nonsense. She’s lying Gen.”
“That’s rude,” Bindlesticks said.
The over-pressured elf rolled on right over her objection. “The e-vites only go to Elves. Can only go to Elves. Not her. She’s a party crasher. Get Spinythorn.”
“Wait. Just cool it, Bor.” Gen looked Bindlesticks carefully up and down. “You’re right, she’s not a dryad or a tree or anything I recognize. Your grandfather, Ms. Lostagain, is he an elf?”
“No. But his father was. My great-grandfather was Erllkonikh. Maybe he’s one of the guests?”
Gen and Bor looked long and hard at one another over the pearl tablecloth which both had clutched tighter. Bor swallowed hard enough that Bindlesticks could see his throat bob and shook his vehemently at Gen.
Gen spoke carefully as if Bor might hit him at any second. “I don’t think there’s an Erlkönig coming but you know us elves, we like have more than one name. Lots of names. More names the better. Would your grandfather have told you another name for your great grandfather?”
“No. Just that he came from Knock Maa and he liked to drink in Finland.”
“She’s lying, Gen.”
“Finbar?” Gen asked, his voice cracking on the second syllable.
Bindlesticks nodded. “Yes, that’s where.”
Bor stared at Gen as if begging silently for him to not get them in trouble. The fates of Spinythorn and starvation making him seem even more squished with terror.
“He’s not coming to this one but if you’d like to stay, I’m sure Lady Malamab would love to have Erlkönig Finvarra’s great granddaughter as a guest.”
Bor shook his head madly.
Bindlesticks smiled brightly. “Oh. I’ve never been a soiree. And it’s just one night. I think that would be lovely.”
Gen ran off, leaving Bor clutching one end of the pearl tablecloth that now dragged on the ground.
“Would you like some help with that?” Bindlesticks asked.
“No. Better not.”
“Wut!?” Thundered through the trees.
Before Bindlesticks could decide if that meant trouble for her or not, a woman dressed in shadows, spun like draping silks, so every hurried step made her seem to flicker like the antithesis of the bonfire, came up with her arms wide and welcoming, even if her face was an unreadable mask of beauty. “Finvarrasdotter, I didn’t think you were coming.” The woman grabbed Bindlesticks, pulling her around into the woods, making her feel absolutely helpless and small in spite of the fact that she was edging toward three feet taller than the woman who quickly made plain that she was Lady Malamab. “Such an honor though. And to trust me with your dress. Such an honor.”
It didn’t occur to Bindlesticks that she should be shocked to still be awake until she was fitted in a ridiculous dress of illuisions that made her look like she was the forest come to life, feasting on starlight dipped dream-of-majesty-shrimp which no one cared that she didn’t need to eat, and dancing with the tallest nobleman at the party who was still a foot shorter than her. He was a young count of something or other that Bindlesticks could never quite make out as if he had enchanted the phrase so she couldn’t hear it. His face too was that terrible stillness of beauty that made Bindlesticks feel like she wasn’t actually looking at someone’s real face. Though he finally relaxed into just a mildly annoyed frown when their ages came up and he even smiled like she had given him a present when their final dance came to an end.
His whisper into the Lady’s ear as Bindlesticks tried the Trout Amaranthine got another roll of thunder: “Fourteen!?” But Bindlesticks didn’t feel the need to worry as smiles seemed to spread faster than happy news among all the guests.
Bindlesticks lost a clear perception of the party after that. She was given a delicious wine and everything fuzzed out into laughter and the whirl of the trees around her. For once she was the squirrel darting over the stillness of the earth while her dance partners complimented her for how tall and what a good dancer she was for her age. And there was one Lady who danced with her that Bindlesticks enjoyed very much because she lead well and made her feel whipped around and into the air in the way only her mother used to be able to do. The lady whispered thanks because Bindlesticks crashing the party was going to make the best safely embarrassing story against Lady Malamab in centuries and Bindlesticks shouldn’t worry about being murdered because the Lady… whose name and face Bindlesticks never could remember after that promised her safety in a return gift.
It was easy to tell it was late when Bindlesticks awoke the next day. She lounged, unrooted, against a tree in an empty clearing, the only sign of the prior night the faint smell of woodsmoke and an ache in her head and belly. She really should have been more insistent in telling them that she didn’t need to eat food. It had tasted good though. At least she thought she had had that thought.
She climbed unsteadily to her feet. She took a moment to wiggle her rooty toes in the earth to ground herself, pulling in the sweet clear air which fed her more surely than anything made of dreams. She stretched out her arms, cracking her back, expanding herself to her full height.
A sparrow darted down through the trees and rested a moment on her arm.
It had been delightful. Though now the issue of finding her way home was back again. She was lost, even knowing exactly where she was. A bright dapple of light caught her eye on her other arm and she brought it toward her face, careful not to disturb the sparrow before it was ready to go. Someone had stuffed a scrap of paper – no, an envelope – into one of the gaps in the twisted branches of her arm.
She waited for the sparrow to recuperate and fly off again before plucking the envelope out and turning it so she could clearly see the writing. In a blocky script that spoke of the writer not being used to wielding a pen it read, ‘Thank you for the kiss and the promotion. In return I cordially invite you to meet your nearest relative. – GENdelrass.’
“I kissed a boy? Eww.”
She opened the envelope and one mote of light danced out and over her fingers, buzz-tickling as it stroked over and around her before catapulting off her fingertip to the lead the way. Bindlesticks Lostagain heaved herself forward, chasing the light.
