RAVEL. Chapter 4. NEPENTHE

“When it rains, it pours,” quoth everyone in Trianvil.

By the way, by the moment, rising slowly, wuthering clouds were covering the sun. And the day was too warm for snow.

“It’s raining – it’s pouring,” an old porter repeated the old saying.

That man peeked at the Gi, twigged Gi’s nature, and turned toward the Sweet street leading to the Palace of Lords through all grand markets.

The porter and Gi were hiding under the salient eaves of the Grand Jester’s High House. And that undercarnice place was ample enough for both persons. However, Gi didn’t want to stand together with a stranger.

So, Gi continued his path, dashing from wall to wall, treading the vestige of the yester snow. Gi was afraid of rains even though the rain hadn’t begun. Anyway, this fear was not reasonless. In a nutshell, Ravel’s flutters always came with rain. As if there was a holey roof above, every pouring brought illusions, strange dreams, luck of misfortune. Unseen twines of the Ravel were everywhere.  

And so, by the moment, the dark canopy was finished. Water of winter’s sky was unleashed.

Fortunately, Gi had finished his way. He liked to be swift.

By the bye, Gi was known to be an “altaborn”, a questionable foundling resembling leisure altas. And they were either forsaken as a pitiful brat, or gifted to Trianvilians as a secret rite. Howbeit, most of altaborns could be mistaken for human’s folks. And so was Gi, being as tall as any human. But lad’s face was strange and somewhat unhuman in the eyes of beholder. Hence, many people in Trianvil saw his nature from the first sight.

“What are you? Are you welcome?” wearing arterial red clothes, inn’s doorkeeper looked very bright.

Innkeep known as “Red Inside” was carved from the flesh of a tall giant statue of a stocky bearded man, bald and sad, sitting with the crossed legs between which a portal was holed. That naked figure had been chiseled fifteen centuries ago to be a palace of the past. Then, too many pages of fate were turned.

“I seek orders,” the altaborn answered after a long pause.

“Are you waited here? Be welcome… if you know a name…” the sturdy doorman was an impassable wall for unwanted visitors.

The only good thing was that the doorkeeper did not understand Gi’s outhuman nature.

“Bread Unred,” quoth the altaborn.

The doorkeeper answered with a welcoming gesture.  

Then, Gi stepped inside to enter entrails of the baldheaded inn. 

And everything was red for truth. Russet walls of the carved rock were mantled by heavy scarlet curtains, while elegant marron tables were surrounded by crimson sofas. Thereto, porters, wearing bloody red clothes, had blushy somber faces.

So, finding Unred was an easy order for Gi’s eyes, because Bread’s clothes were too indigo to suit this place.

“I greet you, sir,” Gi murmured and nodded.

“Good hours!” Bread’s way to greet showed Lilewlen nature.     

Unred was a child of Lilewal, belonging to the Pantsless, a tier of people revered for their bravery, trickery and devious deeds of forebears. Meanwhile, Pantsless were not knightly by blood nor by their nature. So, living without pants was a mark of a tier as well as it was a chance to tether so desperate people every winter.

By the way, that rule was nothing outside Lilewal, but the Pantsless always tried to keep the old custom wherever they lived. And the pants were not the only missing item of their garments.    

Also, Pantsless people had the privilege of having their own Pantsless king. Thereto, Unred was an emissary of that fancy throne.

“Why so silent?” asking, Bread nibbled a piece of cheese, delicate, pale pink.

Feasting, Unred was sitting beside a dozen women and men, Pantsless and pantsful, Trianvilians and Lilewalians, Beerlanders and foreigners. 

“I was told to find you…” Gi shook head to get the greasy dark hair out of his face.

“You have found… And so?”

“I can work for you,” altaborn tried to be bold.

“Our guts aren’t a workshop.”

“I am a mercenary,” quoth the altaborn.  

“We have heard about you…” these words were said by the light-haired wench with naked winterly red legs. 

“Methought, I…” Gi was trying to say, but his speech was parried by Bread.

“We have heard about the deranged one walking here and there, wanting to be a mercenary,” Unred uttered and gestured.

Gi’s figure had been mantled by the spacy coat, that is why it was not obvious if he was armed or not. Nevertheless, Bread’s people were too eager to stay aside.

The swoop.

They pushed him down.

Hereupon, the fallen altaborn dropped the dark figurine, an embodied horse. The hefty thing was blunt enough to be a weapon. So, Bread’s people kicked it way.     

“Son of a wretch! You are weaponless bastard! You lie!” Unred’s utterance showed his ire.  

Bread was nearing to the trampled Gi.  

“I know! I feel, you are unreal!” quoth Unred. 

“You err…” Gi said, looking at Unred’s pantsless lower half, pale, with reddish blurs.

“Perhaps, he is a brat of Ravel…” the lass whose pantsless legs were also upkissed by winter returned with a round bulb and uncapped it. “Drink nepenthe!”

A hale Bread’s butcher unclenched Gi’s mouth.

Hereafter, a luminous trickle poured.  

“What if you are a guest from someone’s nightdreams? Drink nepenthe!” Bread had turned very serious.    

An eerie moment came along with last nasty dribbles of a Ravel’s rain.

MAXIM VAZANOV, 2024 

RAVEL. Chapter 3. WHY DiD I LOSE MY WiSH?

Twitchy nights.

Agog.

Twisted lacunas of thoughts.

And sadness begotten by passion’s waves.

Many morrows were shed.  

Li could only nap. Abed, lass was dreaming for the shortest day of the year. The day of Gramps. The day of burning wishes.

It was nearing, day by day.

Gramps came once every twelve years.   

Every lone hamlet, every lost townlet, every old farm, were waiting for his visits.

Very few people had seen Gramps and even fewer met him face-to-face. However, old Gramps was the one to embody an everyone’s wish, the burning wish.

Rumelia, the land of mellow rum, lived under the Gramp’s coat, warm and sheer.

Many kindreds were piling wishes together within own kin for dozens of years to feast All-Wishes-Day.

By the bye, Li’s ma had come from the land without a custom like this. So, Venerva carriaged her wish to be done one day. Thereto, Flance kept his burning wish too.

Alas, previous Gramps’ Day had been happened when Greenkind’s kids were too little to understand the grandeur of the moment.

Henceforth, Greenkinds nurtured all their gladness inside own deep oceans of consciousness.

Years passed.

By that time, the cherishing moment was nearby.

So, Li couldn’t sleep.

Lying in the bedchamber, calm and moonlit by all moons, Livinia was contemplating, looking at herself mirrored by the surface of the thoroughly polished oaken closet. Her beautiful thin lips and aquiline nose were chiseled so lightsome as if she was a daughter of air.

Yet she wasn’t.

Li was a daughter of Venerva and Flance Greenkind.

And she could not withstand the cold.

The heavy slow wave of bleak blow encroached on her bedchamber on the third floor. Thence, Li was to snuggle deeper inside the chaos of coverlets and rugs. But Livinia followed an own gust and escaped from the warmth of coverings.

Old boots and flimsy flaxen tunic were weak against all cold. So, she coated herself in the blanket.

Then she touched rough stones of chimney. And, indeed, it was tepid.  

Livinia knew the hearth in the hall was waiting for her canny hands.

Anyway, the girl hurried, opened the door and gingerly stepped down the stairs. 

The wooden hull was wincing by weaves of remains of inner warmth entwined with winter’s bleakness. Li felt its tension, flinch, inmost budging and jittery pulse.

Greenkind’s house was to be alive. So, it could withstand any sinister unhuman thing, as Flance once said.

“Li! Li! Come here!” it was ma’s whisper.

Livinia hastened.  

“Stoke the fire, please… Ma…” the girl strode through the darkness to the hall. 

Her mother was stirring embers, sitting at the hearth. Meantime, other nestlings were still hiding in their chambers.  

Li came here along with the first gleams of the dawn.

“Morrowing… And snowing…” Venerva uttered.

“Luntis and Ounce…” Li frowned. “Why do they hide behind the doors? Every night… For many nights…”

“They don’t.”

“Ma-a-a… I feel them when they are nearby.”  

“Thou is anxious. Some things are tenacious.”

“What do thou mean?”

“I have to say. But I beseech thou, please, Li, don’t follow the path of thoughts like these,” Ma added. “Li, thou brought here a story of ghost. And all grim stories beget bad things.”

“Yet our house is alive.”

“No... Its hull is well… But his… her… her inner timber bones were broken by the storm… she died with woe, as if she was an old house… two years ago… Don’t thou remember?”

“Yes, but I… Aye-e… I don’t know what is wrong with me,” Li was tense as a bowstring. “Gramps’ Day…”   

“Three weeks… Thou can’t wait for a few weeks… But why?” ma giggled kindly.

“I am so wistful…” quoth the daughter.

“Li worries about me and thee, and fa’s, and Lu’s wishes,” Ma laughed loudly. “But why?”

Li turned back and saw her drowsy sister. Thereto, she heard tapping trickling from the Luntis’ room. In a nutshell, Greenkind’s nestlings were wakening to meet a new morning.  

“Yes, I worry about all our wishes and my own,” Li spoke with passion.

“Thy own? What is thou talking about? We will devote all juiciest chunks of our wishes to thee,” Venerva Greenkind smiled kindly.

Li’s mother looked so bonny and young, blooming, as if she was Li’s twin.   

“I will do the same for you,” Livinia said, embracing her sister and ma.   

“Thou would… I know…” ma agreed.

“I will,” Li’s utterance was plucky.

“But how?” Venerva goggled and said. “Thou must remember”.

“What to remember?”

“Thou lost thy wish,” ma’s answer was terse.

Venerva touched Li’s face.

By the moment, girls and their mother bathed in the tide of the winter’s sun.  

“Thou was four years old... A little doe… It was a Gramps’ Day… We were sitting in thy room. We were praying to Gramps… And he was budging, stepping here, heavily breathing… here… in the main hall. He was assessing our life… And we were waiting… Don’t thou remember?”

“I have never kept…” Livinia would have been happy to recall to her mind.      

“Thou said thou wish to fly… thy heartfelt thing… And so, the window was opened as if it was sightless hand… or hands… Gramp’s will… These Ankharian panes looked so flimsy in hands of His… And so…  Li, thou was taken by the air… And we were agape… Then you overstepped the windowsill… Thou was soaring above, at the house… Thou was so joyful… Thou was laughing… Our blissfulness… And… Then… Thou fled away… within twilight… Since…  Li… Thou wanted… Thou wished for that… Yes… ” Venerva hauled it word by word.

“In a word, I was blessed,” quoth the daughter. “Yet I don’t have such memories.”

“Thou returned by the dip of night. Perhaps, in a word, thy mind hadn’t written that as if it was a nightdream. After all, we are humans. And humans sometimes forget own dreams.”

“Thank thou for the truth,” with these words, Li kissed her mother.

By the moment, Livinia lived in felicity. She felt.

Meantime, it was so much unfair to lose an own wish.

MAXIM VAZANOV, 2024