The First Chapter of an Untitled First Draft

Why not?

Last year was mostly a year of editing (with the release of Pallas in July and The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick coming out within the next few months) and since the start of Mechanical Pulp in April of 2023, a lot of my writing focus shifted to Things I Could Post. (My serial, Pull Me Under, was already “finished,” but each chapter was cleaned up a bit before posting.) So, around August/September I decided to slow down on fresh short stories etc (while still editing HKT) to again focus my brain-space on drafting the novel I had set aside earlier in the year. I can read multiple books at once, but prefer one writing project at a time.

This novel—which is currently untitled but will probably be named something to do with tapestries or weaving or hares, I don't know yet—is still in Very Rough Shape. But! As I was looking at it the other day I thought, why not share it? (Also, you’ll notice some similarities to my 2-part short story The Well and the Rowan Shield—I borrowed a bit (a lot) thinking I wasn’t ever going to finish the novel. I sure showed me!) The novel itself won’t be seeing the light of day for a very, very long time but what better way to update you all on my WIPs than to let you sample some? Besides:

This is my Substack and I’ll do what I want!

Speaking of doing whatever I want: the structure of this book/prose won’t be to everyone’s taste. I play around a bit.

Without further ado—here’s my current work-in-progress!

(Reading soundtrack recommendation: the album Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull.)

---

Untitled Fantasy Project - Chapter I

This was not the first odd occurrence since my arrival at Castle Laith. I listened to the knight’s story with inward concern and outward impartiality—a practised skill as a professional magician. The knight recited the rhyme, just as the lord’s son had, and it confirmed that it was not some feverish hallucination.

“It was a man, sir magician, but of ravens. A body, it seemed, made of feathers—or a cloak, perhaps, but it was dark.”

“A cloak of ravens is a whole lot different than a man of ravens,” I said.

“I wish I could say for sure, but in the dark—”

“What was your name again, Sir?”

“Brychan, my lord.”

“Save the ‘lord,’ I am not one.”

The knight shifted on his feet as I bent to return my attention to the man on the pallet. His eye was festering, and would need fast treatment, I knew just by smell alone. Unfortunately, being so far from my resources, I hoped whatever fight they won was worth the loss of an eye. “I suppose you’ll be going hunting?”

“As soon as Sir Rhys can ride, aye.”

“Good. When magic ravens speak to you, it’s wise to take heed. Wiser still if they were owls, but ravens know Death, and this gives them certain privileges.” He looked at me as though I had mocked him, and I assured him it was simply a regrettable attitude I’ve had since birth and not personal. “Nothing else odd on your travels?”

Brychan, now assured of my nature, gave a puzzled half-smile. I could see the light spirit in the young man—far from stupidity, his brightness instead showed a secret clarity through his mask of sun, especially considering the condition of his friend. “Nay, only that.”

I glanced at a nearby tapestry, and it interrupted my concern for the lord’s son laying on the pallet. The woman who wove it, as if she stood before me, painted my vision. Perhaps the rhyme…

“‘Hark ye, men!’ That’s the start? And you did not rise? ‘Swords aglow in summer fire, battle-sweat upon ye brow.’ So far?” Brychan confirmed with a nod. “‘Benighted of the maiden’s ire. Seek ye out—”

“‘The mountain hare—’”

“‘Held fast in a rowan bough, of ash-wood grey and lily fair.’”

“That’s right. And I asked it ‘What maiden? Which one cursed me now?’ I thought it funny in the moment, magician, but the ravens didn’t seem to share my humour. ‘If I catch this hare of yours, will I be cursed then, or remedied of it?’ There was no more to be said, not in riddles or otherwise, I suppose, so we thanked our wanderer for its rhyme and returned to eating pheasant…” Brychan shrugged. “Seeing Rhys like this now… I suppose I shouldn’t have been so blythe.”

“You were camped near a shee.”

“Aye, but ‘twas no fae.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Brychan’s brief glance to the same tapestry I had eyed was a sort of hesitation that told me enough, but I let him elaborate. “Sir Rhys would know, magician.” He paused, squirming again. “There was a hoarseness to the voice, magician, like a hundred mocking ravens, and yet it stood as a human would.”

“Were they standing on, or near, anything of note?”

“An oak grove, it stood upon nettles.”

I sucked my teeth—the little details!

Brychan laughed, then, taking me by surprise. “I asked Rhys, ‘What do you think it meant about the maiden’s ire?’ He said to me, ‘One of us has pissed off the wrong maiden’—that’s how he speaks, forgive me, a lord’s son and he speaks like a swineherd.” I did not for a minute believe Brychan was any better, but it wasn’t the time to interrupt. “‘Not intentionally,’ I said, ‘but do you think Elspeth would have put someone up to this?’ Of course not, he assures me.” There shone a sparkle in the knight’s eye, “‘Or have I wronged Muireall?’”

We both looked at the tapestry, then, as the joke left Brychan’s face. “‘My sister wouldn’t curse the devil—What have you done Muireall?’ He was so furious to see me laughing. ‘Rest assured,’ I said, ‘I’ve done absolutely nothing to your fair sister, not outside my dreams.’”

Sir Rhys and Brychan both, when they entered the hall, had blood down their fronts, it coated their maille like they were dug up and rusty. Before Rhys had fallen to fevered sleep he told of a fight, and in the quiet I thought a minute on the details—but there seemed no connection I could make to any of it. But the raven’s riddle, and the disappearance of Muireall, that might be something else.

Before I dismissed Brychan, he said to me, “They really did exaggerate the battle.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The raven-man. But I suppose that’ll change once word gets around. It’ll become the Battle of Greenegulch Hall or something like. And his father will surely burst his spleen when he sees his son looking half-dead as a sorry thing.”

It was my horse, but not my horse, Rhys had said before his sleep. The blow to his head surely jostled his brains, Brychan had said, but Rhys, as if without hearing, set him straight. As familiar as the sky, a natural constant, do you understand?

I do, Brychan had said. Rhys was not convinced.

Like part of my own legs, the horse—my bay horse. The movements beneath me, the longer I felt them the less I was sure. I thought maybe you stole him, you fool, and you would—in the dark.

Before tiring, he admitted to no one—as Brychan had gone and Rhys was unaware of my caring for him—that the horse seemed to trot on without guidance, the strange horse that was surely stolen, knew where to go even with his rider bent in the saddle.

“But how could your own horse be stolen?” I asked him later, for my own amusement, knowing he wasn’t in any state to respond. That’s just the way I think, at times. As I have earned few friends in my line of work, consulting myself if nothing else brings me a sort of comfort, as if the sound of my own voice eases my loneliness.

As a servant provided me some supplies, I looked again upon the tapestry nearest me—understand, it was one of many. The walls of Castle Laith were the most decorated I had ever seen, and the lord of the castle was proud of this fact. His daughter, you see, made each and every one.

As much as I have tried, in my brief stay at Castle Laith, to repress my affections I bear for Muireall—brief, again I remind myself, looking at the warp and weft above me, so brief an acquaintance—and as a magician vowed to stay out of the affairs of lords, kings, priests, and taxmen, the raven’s riddle weighed heavy on my heart, especially with her brother sweating pallid. I did some figuring in my head, and judged the infection too fast set, from the time of their flight from Greenegulch to their arrival at the keep. To a near-invisible serving girl I said, “I will treat Sir Rhys as best I can. Tell his lordship his son will live,” for he was due back by evening.

The eye would be lost—there was no other option, but I silently hoped the remaining eye would help us all find the missing Muireall. I wanted very much to promise Lord Wyot she would live, too.

The serving girl arrived with a jug of hot water (a specific copper jug embossed with runes cleverly disguised as dancing girls) and I was left again to do my physicking. All the while, treating fever and cleaning wounds, I wondered aloud to myself, “Benighted, benighted. Ignorant of facts, or cloaked in darkness, or perhaps knighted, both men have been knighted, but no oaths sworn to women for their distinction… Beknighted of a maiden, what maiden has the authority to make a knight? She wouldn’t if she were cross. But the ravens didn’t say exactly to whom her ire is directed—”

Rhys stirred then, swallowed hard. I held a skin of water to his lips, supporting him to sit.

“Do you remember me?” I asked him, once he could take the skin on his own.

“Nay, sir.”

“I’ll have time to speak of myself once you’re healed. Do you remember about your sister?”

Rhys shook his head and winced—with a gesture, I had to stop him from touching his eye. He reclined again on his pallet, and I explained what had happened. Muireall had gone to the standing stones to do her spinning, as she was wont to do, the place was a peaceful spot for her, and he gently nodded to confirm these facts—but this is where I omitted my infatuation with her. I had watched her spin in lieu of conversation, which was at her request, and it was a sweet summer day like any other. But she did not return by evening—this I did say to him, as it was relevant again—even her spindle and distaff were gone, and in the night her loom went missing.

“I could scent no magic,” I said, “so at your father’s insistence I’ve done some investigating. He claims she would never run away—”

“He’s right.”

“Aye, agreed upon by all the servants and visiting vassals that knew her. Her closest maidservant, pressed by your father and I, confessed there is no secret lover,” a fact I kept in my heart, “no reason at all to leave.”

Rhys looked enough like his sister, with his ale-brown hair, dimpled chin, and upturned nose, but it was clear Rhys took after their father more than Muireall did. “And I told the riddle?”

“Aye, Sir Rhys, and Sir Brychan did as well. He and I agree it might be worthwhile to go after this mountain hare, if the thing exists plainly—you understand my meaning.” Though I had made a statement, Rhys nodded. “Muireall has a special gift for weaving, are you aware of this?”

Rhys looked over my shoulder, to the tapestry that hung there, and I turned, too. It was half-hid by the curtain that surrounded the pallet, to keep Rhys from sight of the main hall. Every one of them were the finest I had ever seen on my travels, and that one behind the curtain was no different—the colours were brighter, the thread finer, the images were visceral, and each held a gleam where the light hit that seemed to breathe. “It’s obvious to any who have ever laid eyes on her work. In the entire world there’s nothing more important to her than her tapestries.”

I turned back to him, placed a hand on his forehead to gauge the heat, an excuse to lean in close to whisper. “More than that, Sir Rhys, and I hope you tell me the truth of it when your health returns.”

There was acerbity in his good eye as he narrowed it at me, and I took it as my cue to leave him be. I pushed aside the curtain and exited the hall, venturing out to the standing stones in the sheep field north of the castle grounds where Muireall was last seen, by myself or anyone.

Castle Laith was built amongst the ruins of many others, the history seeped from the soil and left a film on my skin. Beyond the motte I could see an ancient henge, a field dotted with barrows, farmers and shepherds knew of countless other features hidden from sight. This was what led me here, to study what I could, and those farmers and shepherds and common folk, who’s families had stepped amongst the stones for generations, hundreds or more—their lords might change but they all stay. There was a certain knowledge they breathed and ate and drank and slept that could not be written down and could not be spoken, but they knew it, and I sought it.

Long strides through the bailey carried me beyond the walls, curving my path to the north. Past a small copse of trees and a sleeping shepherd I found the stones. Three, though one had fallen, making for Muireall a seat.

“You do not find it boring, sir magician?” she had asked me, a brief smile. She had dressed in lustrous linen, madder red, her hair covered only gave glimpses of her plaits. A snap of fingers would rid her of any trace of flax, but I was not so rude as to act on the impulse. She might not have known the precise thought in my head, but she knew.

I reclined against the nearest stone, just as I had in her company, my feet crossed at the ankles, my fingers twiddling a blade of grass. “Never.”

“Then you shall watch me in silence.”

So I did. She rarely broke gaze with me, those peridot eyes, and hidden behind the sureness of her stare there were secrets. Her motions were fluid, pulling the wool from the distaff as the spindle flew, the carved whorl catching the light as she drew out the wool in fine threads, pausing only to flick the spindle faster. It started as a trickle down my neck, a pull from my breastbone took my breath, a caress by nothing with the tenderness of fingers—hers, I imagined—over my stomach that trailed to my loins as she drew more wool and more wool and it became a task all its own to keep silent the longer she spun.

“You keep your word,” she had said. I continued to stay my tongue, wary of any tricks to break the magic she had cast on me. She stood from the rock. “I shall dye it gold to match the specks in your eyes. Good day, sir magician.” She curtsied a small bob—a high praise, I thought—and she was away, leaving a gap in my heart where the magic had been.

Once she was out of sight, through the copse of trees, I groaned into the crook of my arm to muffle myself and laid in the grass a while, before having a bath in the river.

But she was not there now, nor any magic but from the earth itself. So I dropped my bit of grass and stood, circled slowly the fallen stone, thinking there might be something I had missed before—I had already investigated the spot after she was first discovered missing. I sat how she had sat, looked where she had looked. I examined the grass, again, but this time spied a small tuft of wool, pressed flat as if stepped on. I picked it up and smelled it, but I could only smell sheep. As I held it I noticed a single strand of hair, the correct colour, and with this I returned to the keep to join Rhys at his bedside.

Brychan greeted me as I parted the curtain. “Have you news? His father will return by evening—”

“Aye. Ah, a moment.” I stepped past the knight and held the hair against Rhys’ grave-pale head to confirm the match. Rhys’ hair was too darkened by sweat. The fever had returned with anger I knew it was time to act, wrapping the hair around the bit of wool for later. “Fetch me young leaves of henbane, I spied some growing at the foot of the motte by the northern road, and a switch of rowan, and I’ll begin.”

Sometimes it annoyed me, but sometimes I used it to my advantage. I had no real authority over the gentry, but the smart ones like Brychan obeyed the commands of a magician with haste. Think of me however you please, but believe me when I say I only ever played with their superstitions when necessary—at that moment, it was. I commanded the water in the jug to boil, and summoned a glass bowl within my palm. As Brychan returned with the herb I tossed the choicest leaves into the jug and held my fingers to Rhys’ neck, to keep measure of his heartbeat until the brew was ready. “Wake up, Sir Rhys of Laith, I have a message for you. You’ll find it at the bottom of this bowl in my hand.” I filled the glass with the brew and puffed a magic breath to make it tepid, and helped Rhys to drink. When the bowl was empty, I smashed it at my feet, with no glass to sweep. “Place the switch on his chest.”

Brychan did so. There were extra footsteps in the hall, poorly hushed whispers. Everyone and their dog wanted to watch a magician at work. Brychan heard it, too, and made sure the velvet was pulled fully closed. It was dark in our little space but for an oil lamp beside the pallet, but it was enough for me. I whispered to Brychan, “Will it trouble you to watch?”

“He would be at my bedside, and I’ve seen worse in battle.”

I nodded, patting him on the shoulder. “He is fitful now, when he is fully succumbed to sleep I will remove the eye, and we will know. I would like to use your knife for the procedure.”

Brychan frowned, but pulled the knife from his belt and handed it to me, handle-first. Smooth antler, well cared for, and I turned it over in my hands while Brychan relaxed his face. “Why my knife?”

“Because you’ve used it in defense of poor Rhys, have you not?”

“Aye.”

I held up the blade, glinting orange in the lamplight. “Then it shall be doubly eager to help him now. Objects develop habits, just like you or I.”

There was that puzzled smile again. Perhaps he thought me a madman.

***

Lord Wyot of Laith returned in time to catch Brychan burning the eye, pierced by the rowan switch like some imp’s meal over the central hearth. The black worms wriggled through the embers and shrieked their last as the stinking fluid popped and sizzled. I watched through the gap in the curtain as Wyot stormed through the hall, no greeting at all to poor Brychan. Rhys’ howling had calmed before the arrival of his father, which was a relief to me. I was cleaning the knife before laying it aside and, perhaps rudely, I spoke before Wyot could demand the status of his son’s health.

“A small bit of fae mischief, my lord, easily remedied.”

Wyot had the broad-shouldered stance of an old warrior and the grey face of a millstone, but at my words I caught the softening of his stature. “First my daughter goes missing and then my son loses an eye. If you know anything of curses it would please me to uncover whatever curse must be plaguing me.”

I could only shrug as I wiped my hands on a bit of rag. “I don’t believe any curse brings your family low, Lord Wyot, since by Sir Brychan’s account your son knew they were travelling too close to a shee. Your daughter, on the other hand, I am working to uncover. Uncover her disappearance, the circumstances thereof.” I cleared my throat and hoped Lord Wyot failed to notice the slip of words. I laughed about it later.

He leaned past me to frown at the sight of his son. “Do magicians expect pay when they break their vows of neutrality?”

“Priests break more vows than I could ever make and they take their tithes by force. But, my lord, you have been generous in your hospitality, and that is enough for me.”

“I don’t trust any man who claims to do things out of the goodness of his heart.”

“I never claimed that, either. What is the purpose of my education if I do not use it?”

Wyot agreed with a grunt. “Have you eaten?”

We supped on venison stewed in wine and juniper, braised cabbage and parsnip, and platters of a half-dozen varieties of cheese—one of which Lord Wyot, weakly attempting joviality, boasted was made in the castle and complimented by the king himself at a visit years ago. His words were empty, and he gave up after the polite small talk ran its course, which was fine for me—I was getting eager for night, so I might investigate Muireall’s bower for any other clues. No one at any table in the hall brought up her disappearance.