Monthly Archives: April 2012

Grace and Fae boy Ea were by dint of youth the first to reach the body, and they dodged around Marlowe’s attempts to grab them. “Please let me help you!” Ea said, keeping out of reach of Grace’s vaguely sword-like stick. “Your father may yet be saved ~ if my people help.”

“My name is Graceful Saxifrage. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” She took what should have been a wild swing at him and was astonished when it connected with his head, hard enough to make a loud “THUNK” and causing him to shout, “Be careful with that!” to which she replied, “This is simpler than it looks!” and he ducked under her next swing saying, “You have a talent!”

They fenced for a few moments more, sword against stick. Her every motion was swift and, Marlowe had to admit as he tried to intervene, graceful. Somehow she had grown out of her awkward spurt and found the truth of her name, though he didn’t know why she had called herself “Saxifrage”.

Before he could separate them the villagers and Fae converged and he found himself in the midst of a melee, standing over their leader’s body, trying to make peace with the point of his sword. Without hurting anyone.

The battle was in earnest now and rapidly spiraling out of control, as battles are wont to do. Marlowe shouted and declaimed and at one point found himself throwing an errant but imperturbable goose at Bil, but the struggle had taken on a life of its own as each side reacted to the other’s actions with redoubled efforts. If not for the superb swordsmanship of the Fae blood would have been spilled already, and Marlowe knew that soon enough it would happen. And blood once spilled, in his experience, could never be put back, though he’d once known a surgeon who claimed to have tried.

He caught a glimpse of Grace and Ea, far off to the side of the field now. The Fae boy was holding his sometime opponent, who was crying and staring toward where she thought her father’s body was. Her sister, Lady Belinda, was being helped to her feet after her faint by the Spaniard Don Diego.

He flinched as a sword swung past his face and shouted again for peace but none would listen. Sir Hyphen-Dash’s body was cooling between his feet. He didn’t know what to do next, and was thankfully saved the trouble by the sound of a “RAAWWER” from the direction of the bay.

A hush fell as Rothgar the sea-bear lumbered on to the battle-field, past Lady Belinda frozen into still-remonstrative silence beside Don Deigo, past Ea and Grace kneeling together, his arms around her as Rothgar shouldered her way through the still tableau of war to the centre of the melee. Marlowe again heard a crow caw in the silence, this time sounding circumspect and disappointed.

The sea-bear stood up on her hind legs and surveyed the field, sniffing the air while she did so. Fighters drew away from her in pairs, sticking close to their partner like interrupted dancers.

One of the juggling geese fluttered awkwardly down to land on Bil’s head, where it settled into sleep.

Marlowe glanced down at a motion near his feet, and saw Athis had reached Sir Hyphen-Dash’s body. The Fae’s hands made quick probes and touches, tapping above the heart and pressing his ear to the chest as if listening for an echo. He caught Marlowe’s eye and shook his head, regret full on his face.

Once she had everyone’s attention, Rothgar the sea-bear began to speak.

“September is the cruelest month, breeding
poppies out of the dead men, mixing
mud with rain where once a forest stood.”

The big sea-bear paused and looked around
at the forest encirling the village. Somewhere
far away the thunder spoke. Marlowe couldn’t
quite make out what it said.

“In this awful moment you must dare:
dare to surrender.” There was a momentary
stiffening of the English ranks. The
Fae looked on curiously, wondering what
“surrender” meant. “It is by this alone
you will exist,” Rothgar continued. She
turned and spoke directly to Marlowe:

“You will not cease from exploration
and the end of all your exploring
shall be to arrive where you started
and know the place for the first time.”

Marlowe nodded. He understood.

“What about us?” Athis asked.

“You shall beat your swords into plowshares
and your spears into pruning hooks:
Fae shall not lift up sword against human,
neither shall you learn war anymore”

“But it was just getting fun!” muttered Bil as
Rothgar disappeared back toward the open sea.

The silence left in the sea-bear’s wake lay like a heavy cloak of snow over the battlefield. Fae and humans looked at their weapons as if wondering quite what they were for.

Grace left Ea and Belinda left Don Diego to approach their father’s body. Marlowe stood back, but before the inevitable weeping could begin he said, “He died well, in the manner that he lived. I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me. But I respected his integrity. He was no hypocrite: friend or foe you knew where you stood with him, and that’s a virtue far too rare.”

Grace looked up at him, incipient tears in her eyes. “What do we do now?”

Marlowe looked around and saw everyone looking back at him. Even Captain Stone. Apparently he was the leader now. It was a pretty toy to be a poet, he thought. He realized his face was wet. He looked up and saw the sky was clearing.

“For I have seen blue skies… through the tears… in my eyes, and I realize… we’re going home,” he said, for no reason he could properly account for.

“We’re going home,” Marlowe said again, and Grace gave him an uncomprehending look.

“The ship…” was all she could say.

“The ship?” Marlowe replied, reality interrupting his imagined voyage back across the sea. “Oh shi…”

“The ship!” came a cry from the path that led to Abundance Beach.

All heads turned to see Hope, disheveled and dirty and with leaves tangled in her hair.

“The White Hart!” she said, breathing hard. “On the white sand!”

She pointed toward the distant beach, and Marlowe lifted up his eyes to where the path falls and where the path rises, and knew Rothgar’s words were all true.

Return To The Place of Your Beginnings


The White Hart lay on the white sand, draped in the detritus of the sea, which in this case meant Marie the Mermaid, Drunais of the Fae and Tuc the Seal King, his seaweed crown drooping in the autumn air.

Christopher Marlowe looked at the ship and the ship, in the form of Marie, looked back. He tried to keep his eyes on her… eyes, he reminded himself. I’m trying to keep my mind on her brea… eyes.

After Rothgar’s intervention had put an end to their abortive war he’d left Captain Stone to take charge of the funeral pyre for Sir Hypen-Dash and hurried to see the ship, their only tie to home. Grace had followed with him, her face now stoic. Hope walked beside her. Felicity had stayed to boss the village women around under Captain Stone’s nominal authority.

The ship stood upright by dint of her keel being wedged tightly into a gap of rock that thrust inconveniently out of the sand like a toothsome mouth of the Earth gnawing on the wood. “We are going to have to break that stone to set her free,” he said, and wondered why Grace started at his side.

Drunais scrambled down the side of the ship and ran gracefully in Marlowe’s direction, clothed only in a scrap of sail-cloth. He found his eyes darting helplessly of their own volition between her and Marie the Mermaid, who lay on the rocks, her tailed curled beneath her.

“I was not thinking! ~ Your people’s ways enclouded ~ my sensible mind!”

He smiled. “You may be Fae to your lovely toes, but still a woman for all that, to blame her man for every misstep and error.”

Her eyes fell. “I am to blame, me. ~ I cannot be with you, love, ~ my wanton poet.”

He nodded. “I know. My people… we are going home.”

“But your ship lies fast ~ where Marie pushed her to shore ~ to save her for you.”

“I can set the ship free,” came a voice from behind him.

“Dinnae be ridiculous,” said another voice, and Marlowe turned to see Captain Stone and the ship’s carpenter approaching Grace, who was bending down to look long under the stranded ship’s hull. There was a narrow passage beneath the keel, which was clearly trapped fast between the rocks. It must have already rested there for a full cycle of the tide. Marie the Mermaid flapped her tail listlessly. “I have rescued me too well.”

“I thought you were staying in the village,” Marlowe said to the new arrivals.

“Only to get things organized, which I did. But this is my ship,” Captain Stone told him.

“I can free her,” Grace said again, while Mr Scott the carpenter walked around the hull and frowned and muttered, “The keelson canna take it, Captain.”

“I think we can deal with this,” the captain told her, taking off his hat. “Clearly prayer is called for, and God will send a higher tide to lift her free. With a name like yours I’d expect you know nothing is accomplished without Grace.”

Grace watched the captain kneeling on the sand, his head bowed in prayer. Her religious education had been rudimentary at best, following the simple dictate of her father’s…

Her father.

She wasn’t quite numb enough not to realize how numb she felt. After that first awful endless silent moment when her whole body seemed melted by her tears she had felt the tenuous fabric that passed for reality in these lands recede from her. Nothing was real. Nothing could touch her.

A wet whiskery nose bumped her knee and she screamed and jumped. Tuc the Seal King sat back on his flippers and looked quizzically up at her.

“You have a job to do, Saxifrage,” he said.

“I… I don’t know what to do?” she replied. It was the strangest feeling. She knew she could do it. She knew she would do it. But she had no idea how.

Captain Stone stood up and brushed sand off his knees. “The Lord will provide,” he told Marlowe, who returned a skeptical look. He watched the water, which did not move. A gull swooped low.

“Tide and time have never answered my prayers,” he said.

“Perhaps you should try praying to God instead.”

The poet simply shook his head, his attention drawn up the beach where the Fae Five were approaching, lead by Athis.

Drunais’ face went pale and her eyes went wide when she saw her father. “Christopher! He will be so angry with me!”

“What’s the worst he can do?” Marlowe replied. “Beat you?”

“Much worse! He could send me off to my mother!”

“You sent for me, yes?” Athis asked as the Fae approached.

Marlowe shook his head. “No, you are not needed here.”

Athis looked at the beached ship, then at Grace, then back to Marlowe. “I can see that now.”

Then he turned his attention to his daughter, who hid discreetly behind the poet.

“Come with me daughter ~ you are in need of resting ~ after adventures.” He held out his hand to her, his face firm but not unsympathetic.

“You are not angry?”

“Frustrated, yes. Angry, no. ~ Now please come with me.”

Drunais stepped forward and kissed Marlowe quickly on the cheek before following the Fae, who turned as one and headed back down the beach without a word or a backward look.