13.5 Ghost Stories
General Summary
Day 154
We set off towards Ghost Hollow Hill in the morning. It’s a beautiful day, but the chill and fog grow as we approach the hill - not as chilly as around the winter fae, but certainly more than is normal.
The magic in the air feels adjacent to Mistress’ magic and the Land of the Dead. This alone gives me pause as I recall everything she told me about getting lost when calling on ancestors. Still, we approach, with Alder scouting ahead in the False Dawn.
When he returns, it’s to tell us that the place feels like a burial ground. At the top of the hill are stone ruins surrounding a staircase that descends into darkness into which he cannot see. All the ruins and statuary around us as we climb are old enough to be indistinct - long before Four Boots or anything Kadia can remember.
At the top, a circular arrangement of columns overlaid with wrought iron and vines stands surrounding a pit. The fog emanates not from the pit, but from the columns.
Even the pearl tells me nothing - this place has always been like this, and the pearl cannot see back far enough to tell me otherwise. Bran’s magic tells him that this place has no future either, and when he divines this he stumbles and falls towards the pit. I catch him, barely, and step towards it by myself. The darkness doesn’t recede, nor do my eyes penetrate it. I do, however, hear a faint whispered conversation beneath me.
Everything I know about this place is foreboding. The past, the future, the darkness that doesn’t feel comforting and the conversation I can’t hear. The magic that I know is threatening and deep. It’s a mystery, and not one upon which my entire world hinges. It’s intoxicating - a book I’ve barely opened, a question I’ve barely asked.
But I listen to reason, and we retreat to an adjacent hill before Bran and I step into the Dreaming to investigate. The hillside is identical in the Dreaming. I take Bran’s hand and take a few steps deeper before falling into the darkness itself. I still feel the stairs beneath me, and I can see them descending now that my head is below the surface, I can hear the voices more distinctly (2 men and 2 women). Still, I tear myself away and surface to find Bran shaken and waiting for me.
He listens anxiously as I ramble - I could just lean down and slip an ear beneath the surface. Maybe then I could hear the voices better without wading too deep? Or maybe, Bran suggests, we tie a rope around me and let me walk in alone? My mind is ablaze with questions about whatever lies at the bottom of this pit and he looks at me like I’m horribly, horribly sane.
“You know this place is dangerous. You said it’s the sort of place that calls out to people like you and might even threaten you. Why do you want to go deeper?”
He has such sympathy when I wail that it’s one mystery that I can afford to be academic and curious about. It’s not the Barrier, it’s not a forest on fire that I need to douse, and it’s not the roots of my race. It’s just a pit in the ground with some voices. I feel like I can afford this curiosity, when I can’t afford any others.
But still, he’s right. We turn back, and I promise I’ll come back when everything else is done. I’ll bring Mistress and she and I will plunge into the darkness together.
It takes us the rest of the day to travel towards the Vanishing Marshes. Around our campfire, I tell stories about elvish ghosts - people who’ve sworn oaths and bound themselves to service unending. Bran tells us of humans who have been cursed and become ‘lost’ in death, dying before the Fisherman was ready to reel them in and forever searching to steal a few more years from someone else. Camellia tells us not of Lost fae (because that is something they do not make light of) but of dark songs that one hears and succumbs to in sleep, turning you into something horrible. And Kadia, Kadia tells us stories of things lurking in deep water, huge and mysterious.
In the darkness of the night, we all sleep closer than usual, with Bran’s arm around me and Hella tucked up beside me.
Day 155
Camellia is awake when I rise, seemingly not having slept. I slip out of Bran’s arms and join her at the fire. She’s reminiscing about how reckless she was when she was younger (less than ten years, she tells me with a chuckle). Maybe next time she’ll be a scoundrel, she thinks.
And over tea, she tells me of her family. For once, I feel like another culture’s family structure is more complex than I can understand!
She tells me of her (first?) partner, Jederich. He was a few years older than she - a warrior and poet. He was Spring and she was Summer, and together they had Neela-Noren. She speaks happily of this child, who she describes as a dreamer. Then there’s Iish, who has been a wizard and a mystic alternately for all six of their years. She says they’re trapped in a cycle of how and why, and that they’re so curious about the world. Right now they’re with a group of human adventurers, she thinks.
And then Gal-Jalia. She tells me it’s her first time being a father, and that is new and hard for her. Mothers stay in sync with their children for 4-5 years, but fathers don’t. She thinks that Gal is listening to songs that make him brave but not fearless. She sounds so proud.
She asks if I have children and I laugh. At times it feels like all elves are my children, with the things I have to do. And I have my apprentices and my family. I think I do quite enough mothering already. Perhaps I’m more of a nanny for the elvish people; I think the Empress would be our mother. She just hands off tasks to me sometimes.
