A Fae Fable
Composed and compiled by Myeira Aslanti
The "Fae Fables" are human renditions of oral stories in the Fae communities. They often tell the stories of engagement with humans, dangers of breaking elder rules, and how the Fae manage to outsmart their situations without having to resort to violence like humans do. While many of these were codified by the human scholar Myeria Aslanti during and after her time living with various Fae communities, there are many more that are lost to time and the atrocious treatment of Fae at human hands. "The Wily Gnome" is a favorite in the human healer circles, for it seems to offer a recipe for a sleeping potion and a poison, though the latter has only been experimented with as blood majik requires a power far beyond even most witches. Rarely are humans ever able to effectively recreate any assumed potions, draughts, or charms from these Fables, but that has not stopped many from trying over the ages.
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There once was a gnome in the shadows of the mountains; his only brother called him Nonagesit.
He lived inside the toadstool ring, where seven short muralis mushrooms grew around his tree.
Nonagesit didn’t tend them, because they grew in the shade, but he asked them their names each evening the moon was full. This was because, when the moon was full, he could tell their spots had changed. And when the spots grew greater than four on each head, Nonagesit knew they were ready to die.
Death is one of two ways of being, and Nonagesit knew that the muralis did not mind dying, for they offered him life. He was careful never to cut more than three of the heads at a time; the muralis were connected. To cut all seven was to spell doom.
One day, when Nonagesit was quite old, though he still bore no beard, Nonagesit and his brother were walking along the bottom of a terrace in the mountains. The humans had sliced flatness into the sides of the hills, the better to grow their non-mushroom crops.
Nonagesit had heard the mountains cry out, not once, but six times when his neighbors arrived, and he’d taken some dirt into his hands, rolled it into a ball, and placed lavender inside to help the land be calm. He had hoped it had worked. The land had quieted.
That day, Nonagesit and his brother walked slowly, arm in arm, at the bottom of the terrace, when a voice called out, “Ho there!”
A human approached, nearly four times taller than Nonagesit and his brother, and nearly four times as wide.
“My brother is having fits.” The man said through tears. “Would you help?”
The gnomes were not perturbed; it was common enough for the humans to ask for remedies. They enjoyed a quiet peace in the mountains; the humans offered their neighbors pies and seeds and bounties of vegetables when they could. The gnomes, for their part, gave the humans a healthy space unless called.
The large man led the gnomes to a darkened house, built of three dead trees, with a soft bark roof. It smelled of death.
Nonagesit cast his mind forward, calling softly to the brother. He was no longer alive. Nonagesit turned to his own brother to see if he too had drawn this conclusion. By his grim expression, Nonagesit could tell that he had.
“I’m sorry, sir.” Nonagesit said softly to the man in tears. “I don’t know if we can help your brother.”
“Please.” The man begged. “You must try.”
Nonagesit and his brother entered the home, which smelled of dark peppermint, mintweed, and the stench of a man whose last life breath had left.
“Sir, your brother is no longer breathing.” Nonagesit explained as they neared the body. The corpse, at least, looked peaceful.
Nonagesit had seen no fewer than one thousand six hundred and eighty two dead human bodies. Many did not die this way.
“You can bring him back.” The man closed the door behind the gnomes. His face had transformed; suddenly he was deranged, his eyes grew wide with desperation, his face drawn back in a grimace. His gaze bore down upon Nonagesit, and though the gnome had fought humans before, his brother too, was no longer able to move and fight as he once was.
They were trapped.
“We cannot bring the dead back.” Nonagesit said calmly. He cast his mind out once more to ask the house if it would fall. The dead trees answered softly, saying they would cave if needed. Nonagesit did not wish to ruin this man’s home, for his actions were human, full of sorrow and driven by an absence of understanding of the two ways of being: alive or dead.
“I have seen it.” The man shouted. His hands were as large as Nonagesit’s skull. “I have seen the dead walk when the Fae will.”
Nonagesit highly doubted this, but he turned to his brother, whose face remained impassive. “What do you think, brother?”
Nonagesit’s brother waited for a moment, letting the silence stretch uncomfortably for the big man. “I think we will need some supplies.”
Nonagesit nodded. “Bring me the following big man—”
“No.” The man shook his head, looking ever so much like the dogs the humans used to guard their flattened mountains. “One of you can go. I will keep the other so that you do not escape.”
Nonagesit sighed. “You stay.” He left the hut with as much dignity as he could muster, wondering all the while how humans could miss the simple ways of the world. Even if the brother had been alive, threatening the gnomes to fix him would not produce the end results he wished. Toxic wishes do not invite a healthy outcome.
One cannot fix madness without two helpings of compassion and three of gratitude.
Nonagesit wandered around the terrace, pulling herbs. He selected a sprig of lavender, a pluck of peppermint, four petals of a black rose (odd to be growing there), several roots of midgespice, the left behind skin of a long-gone snake, and the donated wing-powder of a curious butterfly.
Returning to the hut, Nonagesit found his brother waiting patiently in a corner, staring at the ceiling. His beard was long and dark as night; Nonagesit’s hair was white as the first ray of sun over the eastern sea. Their eyes shared a dark orange hue, but Nonagesit was the younger of the two, and thus responsible for returning his aging brother home. He really did feel sorry for the big man, who slumped in the middle of the floor, his bloodshot eyes fixed on his own dead brother. They shared the same color hair, light brown, and the same eyes, dark blue. One face relaxed in peace, the other crumpled in fear.
Nonagesit asked the man to put a fire on and fill a pot with water. He did so before stepping back. “What will you do now?” The man asked.
Nonagesit rummaged in his pouch for the herbs he had selected. One by one, he placed them in to the water in reverse order to that which he had taken them from the earth. The smell began to lighten the room.
“You will need blood.” The man said softly. “You need blood from the living and blood from the dead and blood from an elf. But I suppose you’ll do.”
Nonagesit had stilled. This man had an idea of one of the elder rules, rules that were not supposed to be crossed. Fae did not share these with anyone, so how could he have seen this ritual?
“How do you know that?” Nonagesit’s brother asked sharply.
“My brother told me.” The man said. “He’s trained in the ways of majik.”
Nonagesit turned with a snear to the bed. The dead man was a witch. That still did not explain how he had stumbled upon such an ancient unbendable rule.
“Go on.” The man took out a knife and slashed his arm open over the water. Bright red drops flicked into the boil, turning it a ghastly scarlet. “I’ll take it from him.”
The man took the pot off the fire and walked to his brother, reaching for his outstretched arm. Having no moving blood in his veins, his heart being stopped, the man pressed dark blue blood from his brother’s veins. Heavily, four small splashes indicated he’d gotten enough.
The man then turned to the gnomes.
“You’re missing a step.” Nonagesit said calmly. “This must simmer. And before we can add our blood, you must take a sip, and give from another arm.”
The man frowned. “My brother did not say that.”
“Your brother is not Fae.” Nonagesit explained conversationally.
“Will this work?”
“Did it work the last time?” Nonagesit held his breath. He knew in his heart of hearts there was no way to bring back the dead, but there were ways to bring back approximations. They were dangerous creatures, inversions of life, perversions of the power of the First Language.
“No.” The man harrumphed.
Nonagesit relaxed. “Precisely. So let me do the spelling.”
The man opened his mouth, as if he wished to respond, then closed it. He nodded.
Nonagesit waited a few more moments, stiring the draught counter clockwise. Then, quickly, he pulled out the spoon and held it up to the man’s lips. He took it willingly, though he scrunched his nose at the taste.
Serves you right. Nonagesit thought fiercely. Placing the spoon back in the draught, he stirred a few more times, this time clockwise. As he did so, he called upon the plants within the man, the small pieces of the once-living things he had taken with intention. He asked them to work together to bring the big man to quiet, to sleep.
With a crash, the large man fell over, snoring.
“Blood majik is not a thing with which to be trifled.” Nonagesit’s brother said in the First Language. Both brothers felt more comfortable in their own tongue.
“No.” Nonagesit now faced a choice. “Do you suppose he has seen too much?”
“Yes.” Nonagesit’s brother replied without hesitation. “But we cannot violate another elder rule simply to leave him alive.”
No. Nonagesit sighed. We cannot.
Nonagesit took the draught from the fire, he could feel the potential power in its belly, and shuddered. “Take this out and bury it.” He instructed his brother. “I will clean up here.”
Nonagesit sighed once more as his brother trotted out the door, the pot, nearly the size of his torso, clutched primly in one hand. Humans will never understand, Nonagesit thought sadly. It is in the way things are done too, not simply the outcome desired.
Carefully, he pulled the covers up over the brother’s dead body. Though he was a witch, dignity mattered. He stretched the sleeping man out near the brother’s bed, as if they had fallen asleep next to one another.
Then, as Nonagesit strode to the entrance, he asked the fire its name. He politely called to it, asked it to be gentle, and not to be too greedy. There was a beautiful garden after all, no need to take anything else from one state of being to the other.
The fire was happy to oblige. Nonagesit found his brother asking the oddly placed black rose to grow over the fresh earth that had just moved, very willingly, to cover the almost-dark majik.
“Let’s go home.” Nonagesit slung his arm through his brother’s and pulled out two heads of muralis, one for each. Together, they munched on the last harvest until the next full moon.
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