“I want a faerie story!”
"... There and back again! ..."
"The one with the turtle, horse and princess with no name!"
"The nine fingered man!!"
"The man who killed with arrows made from his own heart!"
"I wanna hear about the stormwall. Odiums last dessert, and the gods who lied...."
This post is a continuation of Shadows on the Wal. This story is intended to be read from the start, which is Warrens. As such, we will quickly continue on. Similar to before will cover Auri's journey as she sees it. Then will walk it back and I'll show you what I see. This is broken into several parts. I feel broken into pieces, too; I hear a sharp ringing and try to pull myself together. The world seems to swirl around and finally slows and coalesces into something reasonable. Blue, bottles. A low wooden table.and I catch my breath. We are back in Auri's sitting room. Something real, something we can touch. I put my hand upon the tall velvet chair. It feels normal, like sunlight and rugged, honest wood beneath. Auri insists something is still wrong with the place. On top of that, she can't find a proper place for Fulcrum. Which is sad, all things deserve their place. Oh, I'm sorry I haven't introduced you to fulcrum. I'm terrible sorry, how very rude of me.
Will need to focus our Alar and follow several paths at once. It seems unfair, us recently all put back together, but time is against us, he is coming...
Fulcrum didn't always go by that name. Auri gave it when... wait. What I doing? A proper story starts at the beginning. So let's have a proper telling. On the first day, Auri found it in the deep dark below of the Twelve. It would also be fair to the Underthing as a whole if we explored it a bit more as well, it's slow going, but worth doing.
Down to the dark. The stone. The timber. Then nothing but dim Foxen’s light, coloring her outstretched hand a pale blue-green. It looked the way a water nixie’s must. Her knuckles brushed the bottom and she spun a bit to orient herself. She kicked and swept her hand about, skimming smoothly out along the black stone bottom of the pool. Then she saw a glint of light and her fingers bumped something solid and cold, all hard lines and smooth. It was full of love and answers, so full she felt them spilling out at just her briefest touch. For the space of ten hard heartbeats Auri thought it must be fastened to the stone. Then it slid and she realized the truth. It was a weighty thing. After a long, slippery moment her tiny fingers found a way to pry it up. It was solid metal, thick as a book. It was oddly shaped and heavy as a bar of raw iridium. Auri brought it to her chest and felt its edges dig into her skin. --15G
A heavy burden indeed, enough to jostle her about and let foxen slip...
Auri snatched with her free hand, but her knuckles only batted Foxen farther off away. And for a moment, Auri froze. To let the metal drop would be unthinkable. But Foxen. He had been with her forever.... --17
But duty is formost in Auri's heart, and to lose the gear is unimaginable.
Losing Foxen was bad. It would leave her blind and lonely in the dark. Being trapped beneath the pipes and choking out her life was awful too. But neither of those things were wrong. Letting the metal slide into the dark simply could not be done. It was unthinkable. --18
and so she does it! Nearly drowned, but full of joy:
Auri heaved the thing out of the water, and it struck the stone floor with the sound of a bell. It was a bright brass gear, big as a platter. Thicker than her thumb with some to spare. It had a hole in the middle, nine teeth, and a jagged gap where a tenth had long ago been torn away. It was full of true answers and love and hearthlight. It was beautiful. Auri smiled and heaved up half a stomachful of water on the stones. Then heaved again, turning her head so that it didn’t splash against the bright brass gear. She coughed then, took a mouthful of water, and spat it back into the pool. The brass gear lay heavy as a heart on the cold stones of The Yellow Twelve. The light from up above made the surface of it shimmerant and gold. It looked like a piece of sun she’d brought up from the deep. Auri coughed again and shivered. Then she reached out and touched it with one finger. She smiled to look at it. Her lips were blue. She trembled. Her heart was full of joy. --19
Auri is kind and the world is kind in turn, and so foxen from it's depths is returned:
But the thought of leaving Foxen in the dark was enough to put a fine, thin crack straight through her heart. To lose him after all this time.... Then Auri caught a glimpse of something deep below the surface. A glint. A glow. She grinned. Foxen looked for all the world like a great bumbrous firefly as he bobbled and bumped his slow way slowly up through all the tangled pipes. She waited five long minutes, watching Foxen’s bottle bob and drift until it finally popped up to the surface like a duck. Then she caught it up and kissed it. She held it to her chest. Oh yes. It was well worth it, doing things the proper way. --20
She carries the gear, along with her other gifts back to port:
The great brass gear was bright straight through. The key was black as black. --23
The gear would almost make a gift for him.
The gear would need consideration. It almost felt like it could be for him—but that could wait. --23
But, it wasn't right yet and whats worse she can't seem to find the right place for it!
The gear was troublesome in this regard. She set it on the bookshelf, then moved it to the table in the corner. It leaned against the wall, the gap from its lost tooth pointing up into the air. Auri frowned. It wasn’t quite the proper place. Auri brought out the key and held it in front of the gear. Black and brass. Both for turning. They had twelve teeth between them.... She shook her head and sighed. She put the key back into her pocket and left the great brass gear on the bookshelf. It wasn’t the proper place for it, but it was the best that she could do for now. -- 24
She sees if the crystal will put it to rights, she even tries resting it in Mantle, but it seems most content vexing her. She leaves it there to sulk. Then resorts to flattery by placing it atop the mantelpiece beside her box of stone. What could possibly resist.... but no, not a peep from it. Auri is nearly angry with everything, but no, she knows it's her fault for not knowing its proper place. Maybe it doesn't want to be with her at all? A sad thought, but it may be the way of things, and that's the way things have to go. So she takes it back to the Twelve. She places it by the edge of the pool and gives it a moment to consider. To her delight, it doesn't want to go. She weighs some other locations, but nothing feels right. She rushes to see what's wrong with Tenance and sees to fixing a leaky pipe, the whole business is quite distressing, and she heads back to Mantle to calm down. After setting yourself to rights, she gathers up the brazen gear. She carries it on to Wains, maybe it belonged there, or perhaps it could help her find out what was wrong with the place. So she took it to her new sitting room and placed it upon the couch:
Then into her new sitting room. She sat the brazen gear upon the couch and curled up close beside it, tucking her feet underneath herself. It wasn’t any more content. Auri sighed and cocked her head at it. Poor thing. To be so lovely and so lost. To be all answerful with all that knowing trapped inside. To be beautiful and broken. -- 59
Though she can't see to help the Fulcrum, it finds the strength to help her. As she runs her hands along its broken tooth it shows her what's amiss in the room. The bone button needs companionship.
Auri set the tarnished buckle down beside the button. She nudged it closer. Turned it. There. She trembled slightly as she put the carpet back in place. She smoothed it flat with both her hands. She came to her feet and there was a click inside her like a key inside a lock. The room was perfect as a circle now. Like a bell. Like the moon when it was perfect full. Auri laughed in delight, and every piece of the laughing was a tiny bird come tumbling out to fly around the room. She stood in the center of the room and spun in a circle to see it all. -- 60
Things more set to right, she gathers the gear and heads back to mantle where set puts it above the fireplace, where it seems sullen again. Maybe the sitting room was better? Auri has other things to be about. But she finds herself all turned untrue inside when she finds her blanket twisted in the corner. She tries to see if the gear will help, the horrid galling stubborn thing, might it lend a hand? But no, of course not. She would like to blame things on the brazen turner, but she knows it's not true. She wishes the world would run like a well-oiled gear, but the oil seems to always run out. She is so chafed and chaffed inside, rubbed raw and empty. She needs to sets herself to rights, but even she can't get clean, because something has taken her perfect soap!
All flickerling and sticky with web, Auri made her way to Bakery. It wasn’t oveny today. It was hunkered down and sullen, like a forgotten kiln. She passed the mellow pipes and turned and turned again before she made her way to the little bricky niche so perfect for her hoard of soap to season in. Not hot, but dry. And— There was no soap. Her soap was gone. But no. It was the shifting light from the spirit lamp, tricking her. All odd and yellow. It threw shadows everywhere. It changed the Underthing. It couldn’t be trusted. This was obviously a different little bricky niche, empty as anything. She turned around and followed her own footsteps back to Emberling. Then she went back, counting turns. Left and right. Left then left then right. No.
This was Bakery. This was her niche. But there was nothing here. No burlap sack. No careful cakes of perfect summer soap. Even in the low red radiant of that place Auri felt ice in her belly. Was someone in her Underthing? Was someone moving things about?
Rucking up the smoothness of all her long, hard years of work? All watery and loose inside she searched about, peering around corners and shining her lamp into shadows. Barely ten feet away, she found her burlap sack torn to tatters. Underneath the scent of her sweet cinnas soap was the smell of musk and piss. There was a tuft of fur where some small climbing beast had rubbed itself against a jutting brick. Auri stood. All tangle-haired and sticky. Her tiny face was stunned at first, numb in the flickerling yellow. Then her mouth grew furious. Her eyes went hard. Some thing had eaten all her perfect soap. Reaching out, she took the tuft of fur between her fingers. The gesture was so tight with rage she feared she’d snap and crack the world in two. Eight cakes. An entire winter’s worth of soap. Some thing had eaten all the perfect soap she’d made. It dared come here, into the proper place for soap, and eat it all. She stamped her foot. She hoped the greedy thing shit for a week. She hoped it s hit its awful self inside-out and backward, then fell into a crack and lost its name and died alone and hollowempty in the angry dark. She threw the tuft of fur down on the floor. She tried to run her fingers through her hair, but they snagged up in her tangleness. For a second her hard eyes went all brimful, but she blinked them back. Hot from Bakery, and all asweat with rage and the unrightness of it all, Auri turned and stormed away, her bare feet slapping angrily against the stone. --83
Auri settles for a less satisfying bath in Mantle. But her rest is short, as she hears a cry for help.
And echoes came from everywhere, scattered by the pipes and water in The Silver Twelve, so ears were hardly any help at all. Finally she found it. A tiny thing, mewling and paddling weakly. It was the next thing to a baby, barely old enough to be out on its own. Auri took hold of a hanging brace and leaned out long across the water, one leg lifting up for balance while her other arm went out above her head. She stretched like a dancer. Her hand described a gentle arc and dipped into the pool, gently scooping the tiny draggled thing up.... And it bit her. It sunk its teeth into the meaty bit between her finger and her thumb. Auri blinked and pulled herself back to the edge, cupping the small skunk gently in her hand. It struggled, and she was forced to grip it tighter than she liked. If it fell into the pool again, it might gasp and drown before she found and fetched it out. Once both her feet were back upon the stone, Auri made a cage for the tiny skunk with both her hands against her chest. With no hands left to hold her lamp, Auri trusted to the moonlight as she scurried up Old Ironways. It squirmed
and scratched at her chest, fighting to be free, biting her a second time on the tippad of her smallest finger. But by then she’d reached the nearest grate. She lifted up her hand and nudged the poor lost thing outside. Out of the Underthing and back toward its proper nighttime place of mothers, bins, and cobblestones. --85
As so often is the case her, her kindness goes unrewarded. What's more something has also put her perfect place into disarray. Her blanket all twisted and turned, it's enough to make her nearly cry.
she might cry, but when she felt around inside herself she found she had no crying left. She was full of broken glass and burrs. She was weary and disappointed with all of everything. --89
She tried everything to set it to rights, even seeing if her new living room might have the answers...
Auri carried the blanket all the way down to Wains and into her new perfect sitting room. She draped it over the back of the couch. She folded it and set it in the chair. Finally, in true desperation, Auri set her jaw and spread her blanket flat across the lush red rug in the center of the room. She smoothed it with both hands, careful not to let it touch the stone of the floor. It overlapped the rug almost perfectly. And for a second she felt hope rise in her chest that— But no. It didn’t fix things at all. She knew it then. She’d known all along, really. Nothing was going to make the blanket right again. Scowling, Auri snatched the blanket up, wadded the ungrateful thing into a ball, and headed up the unnamed stair. --90
Later she tries to set herself to rights by making more of her perfect soap. You can't clean the world if you're a mess, after all. All seems right as honey until she sees the pomace is full of red screaming.
It was full of screaming. Days of endless dark red screaming. It had been hidden by the mysteries before, but now the selas-sweet had stolen those away, and Auri saw the screaming clear as day. --113
She knew enough of red and screaming. It wouldn't do. She takes it to Boundry. Which isn't her place any longer. The experience leaves her ragged. She can't seem to fix anything, she wants some honey, but she knows she mustn't.... She feels the panic start to rise.
She felt the panic rising in her then. She knew. She knew how quickly things could break. You did the things you could. You tended to the world for the world’s sake. You hoped you would be safe. But still she knew. It could come crashing down and there was nothing you could do. And yes. She knew she wasn’t right. She knew her everything was canted wrong. She knew her head was all unkilter. She knew she wasn’t true inside. She knew. Her breath was coming harder now. Her heart a hammer in her chest. The light was brighter and she heard the sound of things that normally she couldn’t hear. A keening of the world all out of place. A howl of everything all turned from true.... Auri looked around the room, all startle sweat and fear. She was tangle and cut-string. Even here. She could see traces. Mantle was all eggshell. Even her most perfect place. Her bed was almost not her bed. Her perfect leaf so frail. Her box of stone so far away. Her lavender no help at all and growing pale.... She looked down at her shaking hands. Was she all full of screaming now? Again? No. No no. It wasn’t her. Not just. It was all everything. All everything unravelding and thin and tatter. She could not even stand. The light was jagged, scraping like a knife against her teeth. And underneath it was the hollow dark. The nameless empty everything was clawing at the fraying edges of the walls. Even Foxen wasn’t even nearly. The stones were strange. The air. She went looking for her name and couldn’t even find it flickering. She was just hollow in. Everything was. Everything was everything. Everything was everything else. Even here in her most perfect place. She needed. Please she needed please.... But there. Against the wall she saw the brazen gear was all unchanged. It was too full of love. Nothing could shift it. Nothing could turn it from itself. When all the world was palimpsest, it was a perfect palindrome. Inviolate. It was all the way across the room. So far she feared she could not reach it. Not with the stones below her gone so rough. Not hollow as she was. But when she moved a bit she saw it was not hard at all. It was downhill. The proud, bright brazen gear was true enough, it pressed down hard against the thin frayed tatter world and made a dent. Then she was touching it. It was so smooth and warm along its face. And all a sweat breathless desperate Auri pressed her forehead up against its cool. She took hold of it with both her hands. The sharpness of its edges on her palms was like a calming knife. She clung to it at first, like someone in a shipwreck grips the stone of shore. But all the world around her was still storm. All tumbledown. All crumble pale and ache. And so, with shaking arms she strained against it. She pulled to turn the gear upon its narrow ledge of rock. She spun it widdershins. The breaking way. It tipped from tooth to tooth. She spun the brazen gear and only then did Auri understand the fearsome weight of it. It was a fulcrum thing. It was a pin. A pivot. It shifted, tilted, but truthfully it only seemed to turn. In truth, it stayed. It staid. In truth the whole world spun. One final weighty tip and now the space left by the missing tooth was turned straight down. And as the edges of the gear grit hard into the stone Auri felt the whole world jar around her. It ticked. Clicked. Fit. Fixed. Trembling, she looked around and saw that everything was fine. Her bed was just her bed. All of everything in Mantle: fine. Nothing was nothing else. Nothing was anything it shouldn’t be.
Auri sat down hard upon the floor. So sudden-full of sweet relief she gasped. She laughed and gathered up the gear and held it to her chest. She kissed it. She closed her eyes and wept. --115
So Fulcrum is her rock on a stormy night. It's pride a pedestal; it's shimmerant a guiding light. As a reward, she takes Fulcrum to see Tree. It's the least she could do for its help. She makes some pea soup. She is nearly out of food... but she puts that out of her mind. After her soup, on the way back to Mantle, they encounter some scattered leaves, a bit of a mystery, really. She discovers where they came from and leaves her silver etched plate there. She checks on the vanity in Tumbrel again and then finally takes a well-deserved rest in Annulet.
She paused to rest in Annulet, her new and perfect circle of a sitting room. Fulcrum settled like a king upon the velvet chair while Auri lounged upon the fainting couch and let her arms recover from the oh sweet ache of holding him. But she was too busy for long lounging. --130
There isn't much left to Fulcrums journey, but we can save the last bit for later. Let's travel through the second door Auri finds in Annulet. She finds some worrisome stairs, but nothing she can't navigate.
A second door sat on the other side of the room, eager to be opened. She worked the latch, walked through a hallway, only to come to the foot of a set of stairs. There she looked around with some surprise. She’d thought that she was still in Wains. But clearly not. This was a different place entirely. Auri’s heart beat faster then. It had been ages since she’d come on somewhere wholly new. A place that dared to be entirely itself. Still, carefully. In Foxen’s steady light Auri looked closely at the walls and ceiling. --29
The ceiling above had collapsed.
At the top of the stairs the ceiling had collapsed, but there was a gap made by a broken wall. Auri stepped through and found herself grinning with the thrill of it. Another new place. --30
Half the ceiling had fallen in and everything was covered in dust. --31
In the room she finds a vanity mirror, a proud place indeed.
In the unfallen portion of the room, there was a triune mirror vanity and a dark wooden wardrobe taller than a tall woman standing on her toes. --31
It's a bit of a mess, but Auri is use to places being untidy.
It was half-buried by a broken beam and blocks of shattered stone. --31
She finds a white tatted lace that goes nicely with her crystal and her ciridae.
She found the wreckage of a small table underneath the stones, and amid the splintered wood she found a length of fine white tatted lace. She folded this up carefully and put it in her pocket with the crystal and the small stone soldier. --32
There is much more to Tumbrel, you doubtless recall this is where Auri found her going out dress and face. No doubt a clever reader will be able to find much more, especially once they learn the proper way of looking. But for now, lets move on...
We need to leave Auri and her fulcrum behind, will see them later where all roads meet. We need to pick up another thread and that means a double binding.
We catch up with Kvothe and Felurian after their terrifying experience in the Fae. Kvothe wisely asks no questions and together then continue their journey. The travel nightward, in search of darkness and a shaed.
So we continued in darkness. Eventually my eyes adjusted, and through the branches above I could see the stars, differently patterned and brighter than those in the mortal sky. Their light was barely enough to give an impression of the ground and surrounding trees. Felurian’s slender form was a silver shadow in the darkness. We kept walking, and the trees grew taller and thicker, blocking out the pale starlight bit by bit. Then it became truly dark. Felurian was little more than a piece of pale darkness ahead of me. --TMMF this and below Chapter 100 shaed
As they start to lose the light Felurian calls out more gently then a cat and is answered by hundreds of small flickering moth lights.
She stopped walking before I lost sight of her entirely and cupped her hands around her mouth as if she were about to shout. I cringed at the thought of a loud noise invading the warm quiet of this place. But instead of a shout there was nothing. No. Not nothing. It was like a low, slow purr. Not anything so loud and rough as a cat’s purr. It was closer to the sound a heavy snowfall makes, a muffled hush that almost makes less noise than no noise at all.
I could no longer see even the faintest shape of her. After the final pause, Felurian stepped close to me in the dark, pressing her body to mine. She gave me a long and thorough kiss that I expected to become something more involved when she pulled away and spoke softly into my ear. “quietly,” she breathed. “they come.” For several minutes I strained my eyes and ears to no avail. Then I saw something luminous in the distance. It disappeared quickly, and I thought my light-starved eyes were playing tricks on me. Then I saw another flicker. Two more. Ten. A hundred pale lights danced toward us through the trees, faint as foxfire. I’d heard of fool’s fire before, but never seen it. And given that we were in the Fae, I doubted this was anything so mundane. I thought of a hundred faerie stories and wondered which of those creatures could be responsible for these dim, madly dancing lights. Tom-Sparks? Will o’ wisps? Dennerlings with lanterns full of corpselight? Then they were all around us, startling me. The lights were smaller than I’d thought, and closer. I heard the hushed snowfall sound again, this time from all around me. I still couldn’t guess what they might be until one of them brushed my arm as lightly as a feather. They were moths of some sort. Moths with luminescent patches on their wings.
They pass over soft soil, a farmers field, twisting stone path and then a high bridge.
They shone with a pale, silvery light too weak to illuminate anything around them. But hundreds of them, dancing between the boles of trees, showed the silhouette of our surroundings. Some of them lit on trees or the ground. A few landed on Felurian, and though I still could not see more than a few inches of her pale skin, I could use the moving light of them to follow her. We walked a long while after that, Felurian leading between the trunks of ancient trees. Once I felt grass soft beneath my bare feet instead of moss, then there was soft soil, as if we were crossing a farmer ’s fresh-tilled field. For a time we followed a twisting path of smooth paved stone that led us over the arch of a high bridge. All the while the moths followed us, giving me only the dimmest impression of our surroundings.
They find themselves in an open space, with vast darkness overhead. Kovthe feels the presence of something great sleeping there.
we were standing in an open space. There were no stars above us. If we were in a clearing, the trees must be vast for their branches to meet overhead. But for all I knew we could just as easily be deep underground. Or perhaps the sky was black and empty in this portion of the Fae. It was a strangely unsettling thought. The subtle feeling of sleeping alertness was stronger here. If the rest of the Fae felt like it was sleeping, this place felt like it had stirred half a moment ago and hovered on the verge of waking. It was disconcerting.
Felurian finds what she needs at the center of the fae. Kvoth watches like a new born lamb as she picks things from all around.
Felurian gently pressed the flat of her hand against my chest, then a finger against my lips. I watched as she moved away from me, softly humming a little snatch of the song I had made for her. But even this piece of flattery couldn’t distract me from the fact that I was in the center of the Fae realm, blind, stark naked, and without the slightest idea of what was going on. A handful of moths had landed on Felurian, resting on her wrist, hip, shoulder and thigh. Watching them gave me a vague impression of her movements. If I had to guess, I would have said she was picking things out of the trees, from behind or beneath bushes or stones. A warm breeze sighed through the clearing, and I felt strangely comforted as it brushed my bare skin. After about ten minutes, Felurian came back and kissed me. She held something soft and warm in her arms.
They head back until they reach a cleaning. Felurian stops kvothe from looking past the curtain and then he watches patiently as she weaves starlight into his newborn shaed.
We walked back the way we had come. The moths gradually lost interest in us, leaving us with less and less of an impression of our surroundings. After what seemed an interminable amount of time I saw light filtering through a break in the trees ahead. It was only faint starlight, but at that moment it seemed bright as a curtain of burning diamonds.
I started to walk through it, but Felurian took hold of my arm to stop me. Without a word she sat me down where the first faint beams of starlight lanced through the trees to touch the ground. Carefully she stepped between the rays of starlight, avoiding them as if they might burn her. When she stood in the center of them, she lowered herself to the ground and sat cross-legged, facing me. She held whatever she had collected in her lap, but other than the fact that it was shapeless and dark I could tell nothing about it. Then Felurian reached out a hand, took hold of one of the thin beams of starlight, and pulled it toward the dark shape in her lap. I might have been more surprised if Felurian’s manner hadn’t been so casual. In the dim light, I saw her hands make a familiar motion. A second later she reached out again, almost absentmindedly, and grasped another narrow strand of starlight between her thumb and forefinger. She drew it in as easily as the first and manipulated it in the same way. Again the motion struck me as familiar, but it was nothing I could press my finger to. Felurian started to hum quietly to herself as she gathered in the next beam of starlight, brightening things an imperceptible amount. The shape in her lap looked like thick, dark cloth. Seeing this I realized what she reminded me of: my father sewing. Was she sewing by starlight?
Sewing with starlight. Realization came to me in a flood. Shaed meant shadow. She had somehow brought back an armful of shadow and was sewing it with starlight. Sewing me a cloak of shadow. Sound absurd? It did to me. But regardless of my ignorant opinion, Felurian took hold of another strand of starlight and brought it to her lap. I brushed any doubt aside. Only a fool disbelieves what he sees with his own eyes. Besides, the stars above me were bright and strange. I was sitting next to a creature out of a storybook. She had been young and beautiful for a thousand years. She could stop my heart with a kiss and talk to butterflies. Was I going to start quibbling now? After a while I moved closer so I could watch more carefully. She smiled as I sat next to her, favoring me with a hasty kiss.
I asked a couple questions, but her answers either made no sense or were hopelessly nonchalant. She didn’t know the first thing about the laws of sympathy, or sygaldry, or the Alar. She simply didn’t think there was anything odd about sitting in the forest holding a handful of shadow. First I was offended, then I was terribly jealous.
I remembered when I’d found the name of the wind in her pavilion. It had felt as if I were truly awake for the first time, true knowledge running like ice in my blood.
As we fear the coming night, so might the dark feel the same...
The memory exhilarated me for a moment, then left me with a broken chord of loss. My sleeping mind was slumbering again. I turned my attention back to Felurian and tried to understand. Before too long, Felurian stood in a fluid motion and helped me to my feet. She hummed happily and took my arm as we strolled back the way we had come, chatting of little things. She held the dark shape of the shaed draped easily over her arm. Then, just as the first faint hint of twilight began to touch the sky, she hung it invisibly in the dark branches of a nearby tree. “sometimes slow seduction is the only way,” she said. “the gentle shadow fears the candleflame. how could your fledgling shaed not feel the same?”
Later kvothe tries to learn about fae magic but his efforts are fruitless.
After our shadow-gathering expedition, I asked more pointed questions about Felurian’s magic. Most of her answers continued to be hopelessly matter-of-fact. How do you take hold of a shadow? She motioned with one hand, as if reaching for a piece of fruit. That was how, apparently.
The pass the time pleasantly until Felurian sense the shaed is ready. Knowing kvothe will be nothing but a nuisance she sends him away:
Felurian said nothing. She held it tightly between her thumb and two forefingers, as if it were a snake struggling to twist around and bite her. Her mouth made a thin line, and her eyes began to brighten from their customary twilight purple to a deep-water blue. “Can I help?” I asked. She laughed. Not the light, chiming laugh I had heard so often, but a wild, fierce laugh. “do you want to help truly?” she asked. The hand holding the shard of iron trembled slightly. I nodded, a little frightened. “then go.” Her eyes were still changing, brightening to a bluish-white.
The Shaed is no simple magic, much of the world will revolve around the events of its creation. But we can only focus on a few parts at a time, and so, like Kvothe we must go looking else where for a bit...
To quickly reccap, Felurian leads Kvothe from twilight into night and back. Along the way back they stop a curtain and she pulls light to weave into the his new shaed. Later we get a sense of how time and space works in the fae. Which is to say, nothing like they do in the mortal realm.
I also learned that there aren’t directions of the usual sort in the Fae. Your trifoil compass is useless as a tin codpiece there. North does not exist. And when the sky is endless twilight, you cannot watch the sun rise in the east.
But if you look closely at the sky, one piece of the horizon will be a shade brighter, in the opposite direction a shade darker. If you walk toward the brighter horizon, eventually it will become daytime. The other way leads to darker night. If you keep walking in one direction long enough, you will eventually see a whole “day” pass and end up in the same place you began. That’s the theory, at any rate.
Felurian described those two points of the Fae compass as Day and Night. The other two points she referred to at different times as Dark and Light, Summer and Winter, or Forward and Backward. Once she even referred to them as Grimward and Grinning, but something about the way she said it made me suspect it was a joke.
So you move towards time. E.g you can walk towards dayward, as we see Kvothe do. Does that mean the less you move the less time passes? Trees must be very old indeed then. If I had to summarize, I would say that in the real world time and space are linked and expanding. In the Fae you can walk a whole day and return back to where you started. The natural right shape might be one perfect circle. But things dont feel right to me, they feel twisted against themselves.
Sim told us that we know nothing about Alchemy and Kote reminded us Fae are as different from us as oil is to water. I'm reminded of Auri, who is both, and how little we understand the shifting lights of the depths below, like twilight playing off a gem
we see the flicking lights and think our musing a fancy. We see the shadows they cast and think our thoughts a trickster. For in their edges we cannot breath, we feel the darkness horrible need. Fear kills the mind, and we must face the shadows. And so first high above we must go. And that means another binding. We can hardly hold the shape of ourselves together, we hear our own voice through walls of stone arguing, shouting to be let out, planning against us. But the plan, the vision, the road we must hold the course...
We see our past, our friends, the velvet sky all terrifying and beautiful above.
The night is like warm velvet around them. The stars, burning diamonds in the cloudless sky, turn the road beneath their feet a silver grey. The University and Imre are the hearts of understanding and art, the strongest of the four corners of civilization. Here on the road between the two there is nothing but old trees and long grass bending to the wind. The night is perfect in a wild way, almost terrifyingly beautiful. --NOTW:374
We walk road that divides. Music and faeries on one side and sympathy and mastery on the other.
The Eolian lay at the heart of Imre, its front doors facing out onto the city’s central cobblestone courtyard. There were benches, a few flowering trees, and a marble fountain misting water over a statue of a satyr chasing a group of half-clothed nymphs whose attempt at flight seemed token at best. Well-dressed people milled around, nearly a third carrying some sort of musical instrument or another. I counted at least seven lutes. --NOTW:374
We follow the road over the a high bridge and to an immense greystone and enter. We taste lemons and though true, they are sour.
My mouth tasted strangely of lemons. --NOTW:302
Past the smell of leather and forgotten secrets.
The air was cool and dry. It smelled of old leather, parchment, and forgotten secrets. --NOWT:303
riding the rivers current downward.
as he turned to descend a long flight of stone steps. Centuries of use had worn down the stone, making the stairs look as bowed as heavy-laden shelves. As we started down, the shadows made the steps look smooth and dark and edgeless, like an abandoned riverbed worn from the rock. --TWMF:295
Towards the center, seeing, dark cloth and flicking candlelight behind it.
Once, twice, then the door swung open and we were confronted with a looming figure in a dark robe. His cowled hood shadowed his face, and the long sleeves of his robe stirred in the wind. --TWMF:296
We have traveled around a bit with Fulcrum. He has been brazen, proud, sullen, vexing, stubborn, and answerful. He came from below, and he helped Auri in a tight spot. He is a symbol of motion, movement, and turnings. But he is also beautiful and broken. We have walked with Kvothe and felurian and she has woven him a shaed. We have hovered above our friends and dived deep below the Archives for secrets. To what end? What does it have to do with the price of butter?
Three bindings we have made, and three times now, we have reached a turning point. Three times is the proper way, what the world will bear. All the stories agree on this: three gifts, three calls, three parts of silence. But we, like Auri, are not always proper. And so a final turn, hidden from the slight of men. A desperate gentle thing, just breath to set it into motion. So soft and pure creation itself bends, and bends and bends ... bends... and breaks. There is no thunderclap, no distant drums. The stars hang silently in the sky—only a slight change in the wind, a hesitation, then slight pull upward. As if the world hung by a string, now cut, and is falling.
We split again and our mind starts to reel, we see only flashes. We can't control them, they press in from all sides. We are a leaf in the wind... but this is a storm, and we are wet and battered against the branches of a tall dark tree.
Were filled with the smell of felurian, we her gentle purr and she is all spice, musk..
Her breath in my mouth, filling my head. The hot tips of her breasts brush my chest. The smell of her like clover, like musk, like ripe apples fallen to the ground ... --TWMF:633
She the perfect sculpture of beauty...
Felurian lay, her naked body loosely splayed in sleep. She looked smooth and perfect as a sculpture. --TWMF:634
Her claws tear at dark velvet...
She smiled like a knife in velvet and stretched like a cat in the sun --TWMF:636
Were pushed forward in time, to a quiet inn and the harmless chatter of farmers...
The smith’s prentice set his glass down only to have it tip onto its side and roll across the bar. He snatched it up before it skittered over the edge and turned it over, eyeing its rounded bottom suspiciously. Jake laughed a loud farmer ’s laugh at his bewilderment while Carter made a point of setting his glass on the bar topside-down. “I don’t know how they do it in Rannish,” Carter said to the boy. “But round here there’s a reason we call it a tumble.” --TMWF:140
and the carefully chosen words of master namers...
“Your cloak, boy. Your turning cape. How in God’s sweet grace did you tumble onto a shaed?” --TMWF:947
We are stretched too thin, and breaking. Skarpi's words start to give us wings we need to fly. He speaks of the a lost place from long ago.
Once, years and miles away, there was Myr Tariniel. The shining city. It sat among the tall mountains of the world like a gem on the crown of a king. Imagine a city as large as Tarbean, but on every corner of every street there was a bright fountain, or a green tree growing, or a statue so beautiful it would make a proud man cry to look at it. The buildings were tall and graceful, carved from the **mountain ** itself, carved of a bright white stone that held the sun’s light long after evening fell. --NOTW:183
and of it's ruler of the seeing eye
Selitos was well loved by the people he protected. His judgments were strict and fair, and none could sway him through falsehood or dissembling. Such was the power of his sight that he could read the hearts of men like heavy-lettered books. --NOWT:695
and a tale of it's fall
Together they walked the mountain paths. Lanre leading the way, they came to a high place in the mountains where they could look out over the land. The proud towers of Myr Tariniel shone brightly in the last light of the setting sun. --NOTW:186
Which lead to the blackening of the sky and of a face.
Selitos spoke the long name that lay in Lanre’s heart, and at the sound of it the sun grew dark and wind tore stones from the mountainside.
Then Selitos spoke, “This is my doom upon you. May your face be always held in shadow, black as the toppled towers of my beloved Myr Tariniel. “This is my doom upon you. Your own name will be turned against you, that you shall have no peace. “This is my doom upon you and all who follow you. May it last until the world ends and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky” Selitos watched as a darkness gathered about Lanre. Soon nothing could be seen of his handsome features, only a vague impression of nose and mouth and eyes. All the rest was shadow, black and seamless. Then Selitos stood and said, “You have beaten me once through guile, but never again. Now I see truer than before and my power is upon me. I cannot kill you, but I can send you from this place. Begone! The sight of you is all the fouler, knowing that you once were fair.” But even as he spoke them, the words were bitter in his mouth. Lanre, his face in shadow darker than a starless night, was blown away like smoke upon the wind. Then Selitos bowed his head and wept hot tears of blood upon the earth. --NOTW:190
The past pours into us like a torrent. We are drowning in it. We are full to bursting with all this knowing. We are a white river in full fury and we must focus if we hope to live. No, we are kneeling hopeless by the rivers edge. In our hands sharp glass pressed to skin. Another binding? But were already too cold. Our vision is glossy as lights shift back and forth in the dark. We see woman wearing blue silk on the far bank. Her face turned away from us. Her too pale body seems ridge and still, with only her purple grey wrist given motion by the stream...
from something we pull the omethi
and find nearly a song
we push moteth from something
and find that we can sing once more
We are filled with light. It bursts from our mouth our eyes. Our hand held the flame, but the ☒ forgets, once a fire is started, the wind decides which way it goes... ↯
And so we shine like a light in the dark, we are near a greystone once more. Willem and Simmon aren't there to entertain, to show the way or lend sympathy. We must walk this road alone, following not their footfalls, but the delicate trace of felurian from the moss of the fae, through the greystone, then a soft soil, upon a farmer ’s fresh-tilled field and following a twisting path of smooth paved stone that leads over the high arch of Stonebridge that leads to something something el...
To follow this path we must leave walls and rules behind. We must be able to hold onto the belief that a thing is more the story and less the conceptions we have of it. We have broken our minds, and hold each tale in a room. Now we must tip our minds in to spinning leaf, and walk through the walls...
Now we travel to deep dark below. Quickly as sun is faded, see the flickering light from far away amusing. Before us fair felurian, full chest rising. Her soft footfalls Imre's cobblestone finding. The arch of her step no cold statue, her beauty fast brings pride weeping. Her too clever cat eyes seeing, the shadows heart is gone seeking. So to shaeding her flame, her road leads under us under things, to bakery, where warm breeze incubates. A niche, a nest, where hatchling dreams of flight await. See her plucking summer and winter out of time, stealing the fruit from the fluter. Her gentle musk, a tuft of hair, the only traces of the feline looter. But to take alone, is little avail, so they must seek the diamond burning veil. It's a mystery, why they call it the fishery, something we must leave for another day. For now it's enough to say, its from lamp light she weaves:
I worry their smoke the wings upon which this tragedy rides. Or could the light be past lemon, leather and descending river stone, behind the puppet strings, a curtain unto candlelight? Last, I dare suggest, it might simply come warm velvet night. The stars, burning diamonds in a cloudless sky. Though that would imply, all the world caught within it's eye.
Lets leave that door closed for now and our join our Lady of the quiet. Her blue-white eyes joined to darker self. See how she grips on burning iron with thumb and forefinger, and feels the bite of tiny teeth. But our young hero is not there to see, how a shaed truley came to be.
For he was sent away...
Recall Auri's "Sitting Room" is part of the Fea. It has two pieces of furniture you can sit on: a couch and a velvet chair. It Auri's hand that reached under the couch to find the light. That implies some separation between things under the couch and things near the velvet chair.
It means a border, moving from darkness to the lights of the chandelier above. We are brave, young, and far from home and hearth. Our eyes, like our red haired heroes, used to twilight's haze, adjust to daylight...
Still, I knew I wouldn’t be welcome back in the clearing for some time. So I pointed my face Dayward and set off to explore. I can’t say why I wandered so far afield that day. Felurian had warned me to stay close, and I knew it to be good advice. Any of a hundred stories from my childhood told me the danger of wandering in the Fae. Even discounting them, the stories Felurian herself had told should have been enough to keep me close to the safety of her twilight grove.
All the parts of the Fae Felurian had shown me had been forested. So this seemed a clear sign I was well outside the bounds of where I ought to be. Still I continued, enjoying the feel of sunlight on my skin after so long in the dim twilight of Felurian’s glade.
The trail I followed seemed to be leading to a lone tree standing in the grassy field. I decided I would go as far as that tree, then head back. -- TWMF:104:680
A tree, with power-blue blossoms.
It was no type of tree I had ever seen before, and I approached it slowly. It resembled a vast spreading willow, with broader leaves of a darker green. The tree had deep, hanging foliage scattered with pale, powder-blue blossoms.
At its feet a glittering gemstone graveyard:
littered the grass beneath the tree’s canopy, like a blanket of gemstones.
Kvothe sees a blue topped tree, Auri see's a blue chair, but the voice from the crown tells us it is neither:
I am no tree. No more than is a man a chair.
Not a chair, but a thrown.
Fulcrum settled like a king upon the velvet chair
See a tree tall as mountain grown, its trunk sunlit warmth known
climb it naked and alone
seek us now the lord of stone
the stories not legends but prophecy
here thrice and attend to me
not a tree, but a great king
the joy his tales bring a delight for simple townsfolk
see his cloak of no particular color...
see now a grim graveyard gem,
let your eyes linger, a ring on upon each finger.
except that which was cut away
upon his head a crown
from there did the silent lady weave her shaed
and beyond diamond curtains veil, the price was paid
What? A great question. I know so many whats... What's the reason she calls it Tumbrel? What is Kilvin really fishing for? What do you call an upside broken mirror?
an awry Faeriniel
Gods twisted hooter, What ever else you might forget, remember that. I promise, you will laugh when the time comes. I guarantee it.
You don't believe? Pity, but I guess that's what happens when we think were on top of everything, in control. Flying high without a care in the sky. The air is clean and the sky is blue. How exhilarating! How romantic... But the dross, the rot, it's building... oh yes, I taste it. The pipes are close to breaking, and she is so tired and broken. and you know what she thinks before she hurts herself? You. She thinks about you.
I bet you thought of her too, between the galloping about and riding the wind. I understand. You will come back to down to earth eventually. I suppose that's the price you pay for wings, eventually, you fall.
Let's change pace a bit and try climbing a different tree. Etymologies tend to mirror history and so we can learn much simply be seeing how things evolved over time. With that in mind, will attempt to avoid disaster and fit a Kote.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" (when she thought it over afterwards it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but, when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well.
Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.
First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything: then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down ajar from one of the shelves as she passed: it was labeled "ORANGE MARMALADE" but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar, for fear of killing somebody underneath, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.
"Well!" thought Alice to herself "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (which was very likely true.)
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?
To my friends u/RhintaMorie and u/Playtheboard, for listening to my madness.
