Bëor and the Faërie King by Aerlinn

Chapter 1

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“In the Old Days no one now remembers, in a land that now lies deep below the Sea, there once was a Man who loved the Stars. Why the Man loved these far lights more than the near he could not say; it was simply who he was, and his name was Balan.

Now Balan was known for more than his love of the far fires of the Heavens, though his ability to read direction from them helped lead our forefathers’ forefathers over the Mountains-That-Were, seeking the Gods that are. Because of Balan we were never truly lost, though we came through the cold waste to lands we had never seen with only the Sun to follow. Nor did we lose children to the steep, perilous mountain paths, for the spirits of the wild mountain-bears were ever well-inclined to us for all his days. His star-sharpened eyes and long practice made him matchless in his skill with the bow, bringing warm hare-pelts; and his sister remembered his mother’s herb-lore, and the old way of charming bees out of honey. And all were glad to hear him speak in the fire-circle, for many a decision were more sensible for his words.

It was a cloudy night in the springtime of a cold year, when the King of Faërie came among us. None heard him come; though many after said they had spotted something like glimpses of gold among the leaves and something like gentle laughter when we were speaking of the Gods, soft like the sound of leaves in the wind that evening. The King said, after, that he had not come to us until midnight. And many a Man loves to say he saw things coming he surely must only have come to see long after. Still, it may be some of the trees gossiped of his arrival, for the woods were gnarled and wakeful in the Old Days. But some say that precisely because the Faërie King cannot lie, he has spent many centuries learning how to have no need of it without revealing the truth. What they say of his laughter I will not repeat."

"Who is to say who first awoke from dream to find it was not one; but it is certain who was the first to show it. Balan, his heart full of starlight and unfamiliar with fear opened his eyes to the strange music, and was lost to it. Some say he was lost even before he opened his eyes, his dreams already dyed in stranger colours by the music that twined into them.

For none of us were unaffected by what we saw; hills brighter than emerald, buildings in shapes and sizes we had no names for yet, of eerie glowing white. The Sea, which we had never seen, but which we now understood even so, understood it exactly as he did, without ever having encountered it. Delicate nocturnal flowers blooming beneath the stars, and the slow life of long centuries. Beauty so full in measure that it threatened to overshadow every sight we had ever seen, the rest of our lives lived under the shadow of a stranger’s dream, and dying for it.

And Balan, too, had become a stranger to us, that very night. Though he was still with us then, neither Baran nor Belen could draw him away when the Faërie King spoke, that voice of molten gold pouring into him like an empty mould. For the King delighted in speaking with him, and teaching him words in his song-like tongue. And it seemed that, though he would hear all our fire-tales, there was often something he found better changed than kept; sometimes he changed only a rhyme scheme, at others the names of a God. Nothing his smile touched remained unchanged, and in those days we were tired of the dark and glad for his light. He was like a God unto us; and though he would deny it, none could deny he was the closest thing to one we could actually touch, and allowed it gladly. And so we gazed at the King with love, and were led by him, though we had never known leaders.

And our children sat at his feet, and gazed into his strange eyes that gleamed in the dark like the stars Balan knew so well how to follow. And none that were born after that day were ever free of the spell of his folk, or their sorrows, or the memory of a higher Beauty we could not have seen with our own eyes and lived. For we knew then that the Gods that had called us West would never greet us, and that perhaps even seeing their reflection in the Faërie King was not something we could face and survive remaining who we were.”

The old woman stood up to poke the fire back into life again. Her voice was like winter, and the cabin full of smoke. But when she spoke, I listened. After a long pause she continued;

“You shouldn’t let elves steal your name from you, and fill your head with visions of things you will never be allowed to see the way you would have seen them.”

Although the tale was of days long ago and her eyes clouded with age, she seemed to be looking straight at me. Was it that obvious? Her gaze was like a living thing, and I thought of braving the snowstorm to escape its clutches. But before I could so much as utter a single word, she handed me a soft honeycake and sat down again before me. And her voice pinned me to my bench as surely as King Finrod’s song had stayed the Men around their campfire, though fear ran through them like a living current when they woke and found a shining one before them, and their heads too full of visions they could not understand.

“Now, it had been one turn of the Sun since the King of Faërie had come among us, and when spring came again he was called back to his realm, and he took a tithe…”