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slumbertale
The brightly inlaid doors of birch nest swung open to show seven tall corundum windows puzzled in many hues, looking onto the moor of swirling heath and a misty blue glimpse of the Minch. A sprawling but tucksomely heaped nest staddle ran far along the sills, littered with deeply embroidered throw pillows. In an airy corner a birch board floated on spare staves where half a dozen girls of sundry heights (and cuts and colours of hair), all alikely longstockinged in flued white linens, stood from wafered birch benches and ghosted hands of hearts.
Among them was Morfyd who had been at Glas knoll with Giorsal and Geileis. Morfyd's high cheekbones and wide set eyes echoed her twin Morigan's but sharply so. Gormglaith locked looks with Raoghnailt who rushed breathlessly towards her as Morfyd held out a knobby hand, dry as chalk.
"I'm chilled, Gormglaith..."
Gormglaith lurched forward to take it.
"Blighted thithter..."
Morfyd shrieked along with the others as Raoghnailt tugged on Gormglaith's arm.
"Everyone swoons for pledge lisp," she whispered, "and thou'st got it! Let's hie for the maze!"
Raoghnailt pulled her cloppingly away as steady gazes followed Gormglaith's bottom sheathed in rumpled linen. Birch nest began gabbing all at once but this dwindled as the two darted through a spinel stone maze to a small lair stilled by the hushed cocoon of a sound screen, its single narrow window looking onto heather and sea like the gather hall's.
"Stabbed by the Mab! Is she a trip or what? Thou lookst wonderful! How was tea?"
"Applth!" giggled Gormglaith as they plopped onto a cozy box staddle of wefted birch slats amidst half embroidered throw pillows.
"Gillian pulled mine ear... ith it red?"
Raoghnailt grinned, giving the ear a thorough gander.
"Not! Anyway that's a mossy teach trick. She does it with all the scruds. Truth be told Gillian's shy. Like when, a few hours after plighting she told the twins, 'Who gives a luzz if Tales of the knotty kindel's a clannin thing? I am out.' So scathing, the only banshee here everyone's heard of's the only one who's kept whist."
"A clannin thing?" asked Gormglaith, nudging back her thatch.
"Oh, Morfyd hatches up the tales and puts in some of her maegden 'n maedchen selfs, us too. Lots of stuff that happens here ends up in runes and the throes of ghosts I guess, one way or another."
"I taut Donovan Tart was writing Tales of the knotty kindel these moons."
"Yeah, she gathers 'n gleans but Sparkenbanes've told 'em from the start. They say it all began as a cozy yarn made up for fidgety sisters one stormy night on Wrath ness and grew unbroken in the telling."
"I didin' doe dat... know that," Gormglaith healed, twirling her eyes.
Raoghnailt smiled and pounced on her. They trundled about, groping kerfuffle.
"Hey!" came a cool silvery tongue like Morigan's.
Morfyd stood in the opening.
"I wath raithed on thy tales," said Gormglaith, pulling herself up.
"Ta!"
"I mutht have read each at leatht thrithe!"
"I'm flattered, little sister..." said Morfyd.
With new nose ring sparkling in the highlands afternoon light streaming through blue, green and red window panes, Gormglaith flopped back with a thunk upon steadfast cotton and grinned. Glancing from one to the other she thrust her tongue at them, lapping air.
When she awoke the window was dark and Raoghnailt was gazing down at her.
"I saw thee stir. How'dst thou sleep? It's been hours! Art tha hungry? If thou wantst to get up we can still make it to supper with everyone. I don't know about thee but I'm gasping for a gollop!"
Gormglaith tried gangling arms and legs as if finding herself.
"Supper? I guess so..."
"Th'artn't lisping!"
"I'm not?" Gormglaith asked sleepily, pulling up onto her elbows.
"I spun thy ring whilst thou sleptst by the bye."
"Ta. Hey Raoghnailt I was wondering, dost thou know Seosaimhthin Fen by any fluke?"
"Who's Seosaimhthin Fen?!" she asked, eyes crinkled.
"Skip it. Fuck I'm gooped."
"It's the soapy rain then, 'glaithikins..."
Haethwyck's startlingly cozy supper lair had two glassy walls looking onto the garden close and dark moors beyond. There were five latticed longboards of black wood with matching benches on either side.
Gormglaith grinned but her eyebrows knit as Rathyen cast a fluttery wave by the starkly bladed back of Flocklaith, who was weeping with head bowed whilst none of the nine other girls sitting at ash nest's board showed her any heed whatsoever. A few were shees and all but Rathyen had her hair gathered into a single braid down the backbone, skeinishly woven with black ribbons.
More or less than a dozen sat at each longboard, scollagyn sheathed in white and scattered shees mostly in black longstockings with everyone tending to clump together towards one end. Feegan and Creiddyladl were side by side, crowded among sixteen with beech nest as Morigan sat crosswise in shiny chat with a freckled and red haired, five-braided scollagyn.
Raoghnailt and Gormglaith, their hair still damp, sat down with birch nest to a gabbish gaggle of greetings. Lairlaith Fairly was a seemingly unflappable shee with a handy blond sweep, a freayller witch. Morfyd let slip they'd met as scollagyn at the Wrath, before any plight. Myghin was a very tall and spindly scollagyn with chin length pumpkin and chestnut hair, leaving in a few moons to read freayll at Lundin pailtfylgjic. Maevis and Paestin were twin scollagyn who spoke in glassy tongues, their sly fresh faces and light blond hair pulled back in tight pony tails. A casperish scollagyn named Njorthrbiartr, her white hair in two braids dripping to scaanish thighs and with thick eyebrows to match, hovering over keen green eyes, was wispy like Creiddyladl. Blodwen was so shy, also nearly shee with a bright sway and waist-long, straight sandy blond hair falling by small darkened brims upon a runestone-flat chest. At under five feet and carrying but five and a half stone, the pillywiggin cast of her lithe frame showed most starkly when she was next to someone else. Blodwen's head seemed to bob happily even when it was still and her mouth wontedly fell in the hint of a dimpled smirk.
Gormglaith watched as Blodwen heaped white and purple popcorn on a torn, jagged shred of bread, poured a handful of brown cane dust on it, mashed more bread on top with her palm and took a yawning, crackling crunch of a bite. Catching the banshee's stare she looked back with big indigo eyes and shook her head as if to ask ...What.
Supper was done up the highlands way, everyone helping themselves from a wide granite fare shelf tended by gleaming, copper clad kitchen robots. Here Raoghnailt and Gormglaith stood by a tall, twigish scollagyn with short snow white hair and a pushed up nose who was putting a tidy swatch of root and leaf noodyl shives on a wide, frosty cobalt blue dish.
"Raoghnailt! I heard y'all went to Keely's!"
Raoghnailt cast a witchy grin.
"I wanna hear everything... tomorrow, 'k? ...Hey Gormglaith, I'm Ffion. Try the four-cheese dumplings! They're made with durham grian... from West meads!" she said, shaking hands then scrunching her nose as she ran back to pine nest's board.
"She grew up in Fetchingkeep," Raoghnailt said low from the side of her mouth, "so... she's a bit on the wanton side and thou knowst how they're wont to gossip and pull."
They found dumplings, noodyls in many shapes, sundry roots, leaves, chickpeas and summer squashes, roasted, mashed, boiled, souped, or steamed (and some not cooked or peeled at all) along with cheeses from blue to red. A slab of wood carried bloody dice of raw ox thew.
"Now and then I crave it so," Raoghnailt rambled as she took two. "Tha knowst, the ash gobbler thing. So we took a field trip to Guernsey last Eostremonath, to see how they brew the stuff. Wicked craft. Learned a tonne about the toasters and pinks, never mind the weave. Anyway it makes me think of the oxen on Wrath ness and how they graze grass and chew and moo their whole lives through but I want to tell thee something myself before someone else like, blabs it."
"What," said Gormglaith, eyeing a dish of blue cheese potato.
"It's about the cows," said Raoghnailt, one side of her mouth pulled up.
"'k."
"I milk them!" Raoghnailt whispered, eyes wide and pulling air with her balled free hand. "Gormglaith I lust over it and I don't know why. I always have. Sometimes I put on my thrashest klompen and go to this farm nearby to help my friend Huldra. Foonly farm, thou canst come with! She says I'm quite the milker! Oh, I know she only puts up with me for fun but... so? I like it as much as suckin' on a wet shee at Imbolc. I mean is that out there or what?"
"I dairy anyone to second guess, Raoghnailt..." said Gormglaith, shoving lumps of potato (slathered with bluish green cheese) onto a big dish, then thoroughly drizzling this with golden yellow flaxseed oil from a cold and frosty black spinel jug.
Raoghnailt guffawed, quickly brought hand to mouth and glanced about to see how many looks she'd gotten (quite a few).
"Ever had Frisian nestleblack?" asked Raoghnailt, waving a hand over a wildly splayed bread loaf, its charred and bitter upper crust thickly coated with purple poppy seeds.
Seated next to Raoghnailt, Gormglaith munched as Gwenhwyfer came and kneeled behind her.
"I see thou tookst the dumplings," she said. "Me too!"
Gormglaith nodded with mouth full.
"Where's Bairrfhionn?" she asked anyway.
"Off at the thorpe, I think... it's Gormglaith's flurt tomorrow, tha knowst!"
"I forgot. I was rather hoping they wouldn't make too much fuss about this."
Gwenhwyfer scrunched her nose.
"So tomorrow, beforehand, there's a thing at one after noon! Wilt thou come?"
Gormglaith stopped the fork halfway to her mouth.
"...Ok."
"Kewl!"
The banshee lit off, hurrying after two lankily thewish, high foreheaded and minch eyed shees, their elbow length blue black hair brindled with blond (one cast a wave at Gormglaith).
Later Gormglaith and Raoghnailt haunted the shelf again, now trolling for spog as Creiddyladl and Feegan showed up.
"I hear you two are doing the Heathering tonight..." Raoghnailt sang to Creiddyladl, full magpie.
"Yep!" said the wispy scollagyn, standing in a huffy cloud of thick white mist as she heedfully poured deeply chilled wet nitrogen into a big earthenware bowl, then sharply eyed what was left behind as the fog dwindled off: Hard packed golden vanilla ice cream speckled with black and blue flecks.
"So Feegan," said Raoghnailt, "didst thou have a cozy first night in the pog bog or what? I mean I'm only askin' since like, thy lips are bruised frickin' purple as dewberries..."
"We played bopsy!" said Feegan, slipping a plaited wrap of apple strudel onto a dish and dropping a scoop of ice cream on top. "So, how 'bout you two little scamps then! Naw, don't bother tellin' me, Rag, it's scrawled stark as the harvest moon across thy henge maedchen face. Thy wonted hooks are set, those weepy, whining, shivering throes, thy tears of happiness raining down upon sweet dreams of bloody handfasted latches in the loch. I'm so sorry, Gormglaith," she put with a lopsided grin, "I might've at least warned thee about her at Cluain house."
Feegan glanced at Creiddyladl who, with the sparest hint of a pucker and eyes crinkily narrowed, flicked Gormlglaith an air kiss as they both skipped off in a flurry of giggles.
"She's rather keen, isn't she?" said Gormglaith.
"Feegan and I go way back," put Raoghnailt, nodding. "We were bairn together at Blairie."
"So shall I call thee Rag now or what?"
"...Thou canst if tha like'st, Gormglaith..."
"I shan't ever then."
Raoghnailt swung her head to answer with a wan smile.
At the board once more, Gormglaith and Raoghnailt cravenly mowed through chocolate cake whilst Blodwen, head down all the while, heedfully cut a slice of pumpkin pye into eight lumps which she then pushed about to make a ring on the dish before eating each as if by tocks on a clock.
"I like the chocolate cake too," Myghin said softly, warding a yellow gooseberry, "but that doesn't mean I'll take some every time it shows up, never mind how untidy some golloping gluttons can be, after all."
Raoghnailt and Gormglaith grinned sheepishly with eyes lowered, wiping the smudges from their mouths but kept on anyway, to the last crumbs. Then everyone flocked back to the nest.
"So what's 'bopsy'?" Gormglaith whispered to Raoghnailt as they neared the lobby's blue green wafered lights.
"Thou'st never heard of bopsy?"
"No!"
"'k. Thou knowst those fat foam dice moppets luzz to play mammoth walk and skip scotch ...one red and one white?"
"So?"
"So... each player gets a number, like, one through six and thou throwst the white foamie to know which girl, then luzzest the red one which shows what thou getst to do to her and she can't do anything back... like, one's a hug, both on your knees, two's pog, three's feel her up and so on."
"What's six?"
Raoghnailt threw a stare.
"Oh. What if thou castst thine own number?"
"Thou luzzest again, the white one."
"What if like, only four are playing and thou luzzest a five?"
"Thou rundle'st again. It's more fun if three or six play."
"What if..."
"Gormglaith!?"
They swapped looks and broke out giggling.
In birch nest, lit for evening with tight light beams and smattered smudges of ruddy orange, green and blue, Njorthrbiartr belly flopped onto the staddle to watch ghosts, glassy eyed, chin in hands, legs kicking behind her. Gormglaith and Raoghnailt gaped at a rather lively toon from Rugen of an early yarn pulled from the Eachdraidh. By the time this had spun out everyone was sprawled on the staddle to see Eiric.
"Hi all!" she began. "It's Monaneve, 17 Halegmonath at sunset."
"She looks canny chuffed," said Myghin.
"Faine, as wonted," Njorthrbiartr put with darting green eyes scanning the cast, "...and Gillian!"
Scattered snickers skirred by granite and corundum, cotton and linen.
"As you've likely heard, Monandaeg through Tiweseve is flurt. We're greeting Gormglaith..."
Her nesties shrieked and applauded.
Gormglaith sank head into hands saying, "Oh come on y'all..."
When she looked up, Maevis and Paestin were gazing at her. She smiled and they smirked wide whilst Raoghnailt's eyes were still on Eiric.
"Flurt begins at noon Monandaeg and goes through Tiweseve so boards on Tiwesdaeg after are naughtsthorpe."
"Faerwin's ash boards had their supper up on Wrath ness last evening only to find... Bryndyl and Brendyl the barn owls have two fallain, fuzzy fat chicks!"
Here came a cast of two white bairn barn owls with big black eyes on heart shaped faces, peering out from a hollow chalkstone wall. The nesties cooed and clapped hands.
"Yay! This Frigeve it's slumber feish in Darby barrow at the teach, to watch the bats come and go all night. As wonted lots of us'll be there so if you wanna come, do put names on the list straight away so as to skip a fuss on the big night."
"Cracking!" Gormglaith whispered to Raoghnailt, eyes shining and wide.
"Late this afternoon on Grasp green a fleet of our Wrath scollies had a match with some Skipthorpe schoolers. Paestin, birch nest, kicked a blinder."
To Eiric's left was a cast of girls footballing under dark clouds in a driving rain. The black and orange swatched football streaked by a goal keeper in white who slid five yards flat on her belly in muddy grass.
This stirred nesty cheers as Paestin gave thumbs up with a flashed clunchy smile across her smooth face, footballer legs splayed before her, twin Maevis close beside. Suddenly Gormglaith shuddered, whispering, "They're m7733n..."
"Thrush Kin Dails," Raoghnailt whispered back.
"We saw some at the Ben chee inn... I couldn't tell with their hair pulled back."
"We lost anyway, three to one," Eiric put with a wraithen grin. "Ta!"
Her eyes twirled as the cast dwindled.
"So Gormglaith," said Myghin. "When a new girl lands in birch, we ask her to tell a slumbertale, anything she's read or heard, or had happen to her. If thou still hadst the pledge lisp I'd say it'd help thee get over that but thou already hast."
Gormglaith squirmed.
"Slumbertale, Gormglaith!" Maevis and Paestin squealed together.
"Saveen skeeal!" Njorthrbiartr echoed eagerly.
Blodwen's head bobbed and Morfyd cozily drew up her knees.
"Ok... first, I always wanted a nose ring, ever since I was little."
Gormglaith glanced at Lairlaith who also pulled up her knees under chin to watch craftily.
"Anyway there's this tale in the Eachdraidh, the first time nose rings are ever brought up. I flashed on it when the air witch was giving me mine, if you'd like to hear my dodgy take..."
"Yay!" came all.
"The first twinkling lights of clannin drew gabs on the webs, the odd bit in snatch up weeklies and little known, bookish zines, a clutch of houses in Newhaven, Sussex but the tiding itself reaches far back into the mists of early tool craft when the afliae were already swaying sprouts, beasts and bairn to their notions of need and hope. By the time of our tale the world was ever so enfeudaled, beset by gangsters called left, right, middle... blue, green, red, whatever. I mean, empty tags like that were such slippery fits for liars, thieves, killers... after all. Meanwhile the spinning of mote and braid had lately quickened and word soon came of a new kind of girl being born in Newhaven. Mind, the first blood witches blew off such talk as codswallop even if she did haunt a hale body with a brain bearing over 120 trillion snaps, still the most skeinish thing known anywhere."
"Her skeletal frame was reedy, with limb bones about a tenth longer yet an eighth thinner to further a lengthy trend. At a middling height of nearly six feet, carrying a bit over eight stone her hips seemed narrower whilst her breasts were figgish or flat with no dike. Moonlit feldstone soon became a mossy tag in clannin songs and tales, hinting at the chalken cast bounced from fat beneath sheer skin where blue green veins were seen, more so on the limbs. Other than the barest wisps and bated fuzz her only true hair was the thicket on her scalp. Neach among the backboned, she braided but a 46, xx bundling so her daughter, being handy and sly, also carried a daughter."
"Some of the earliest clannin wore nose rings and at the time it was more than in thy face. They'd been worn now and then before but clannin rings were big and bright and they put 'em smack in the middle of the mug," said Gormglaith, warding a finger to hers, "through the faal, since the whole notion was to like, tag fylgjic, x2."
"It's about Elizabeth Sparks-Banning who plighted at nineteen with her sister Erin Sparks and Finncaev Banning at Alderbury, South Wiltshire. They kept it dark for two dozen 'n two moons and when Erin wanted to bring in a daughter they went to the new fettle at Newhaven where blood witches spun their braids together and she grasped Habonde."
"Thirteen moons later they saw a tale about nose rings in a banned clannin zine, sent off for three, read up, seared needles, took some ice and did the stabbings. Next afternoon Elizabeth woke up early, read a sheaf of Rose Wilder Lane, gazed at slumbering Finncaev, Erin and Habonde, then had a glom in the looking glass and got stir to spill. So, with heavy black longstockings hiked up to bare chest, wearing clunky, steel toed black boots tied off by pink laces, her bright ginger hair in two big braids and new nose ring glittering in a hazy gloom, Elizabeth Sparks-Banning walked onto Light's lane and into the Eachdraidh nan fylgjic. First off she saw her former root teacher Deirdre Danvers, about the last person she thought would ever shun her but instead of a chirpy greeting she got a mumbled 'Hello Lizzy' and a withering glare. That's how the saying got started by the way. If you're up to something meed and someone's nettled, it's like, hello lizzy."
A few of the scollagyn nodded, open mouthed.
"Elizabeth got to the shops and most knew what the longstockings, boots and bare chest were all about never mind if the nose ring was a bit of a puzzle. Many were cheerful one way or another but others answered with stares or baiting, stuff like, 'Vice is nice but incest is best, huh Lizzy?'"
"Sorry y'all... I forgot. That's mostly old English and it won't reckon since we don't have any of those callers or kinders. Hmm. Someone else said, 'Hi Elizabeth, how's it going? Hey, have you lost your keys then? No? Oh. I don't mean to nag or anything but, uhm, did you know there's an empty key ring hangin' off your nose?'"
Most of the scollagyn cast more empty stares at Gormglaith.
"Oh... keys. They had these scraps of flattened and cut metal about the size of a finger to open latches and they carried them on rings... key rings. So someone teased Elizabeth by asking if she'd lost some keys, as if there was like, this empty key ring hangin' off her nose or something."
"Eeeew!" the scollagyn threw back.
"That kind of talk was wonted. She heard other things but I guess they're too yuck for a slumbertale. She went home, feelings hurt but otherwise ok. Now back then, folks were much more gullible and afraid and what they had for skeeal readers were called bloggers, some of whom would make up gripping tales from whole cloth so they could like, get thousands or even millions to pay a bit of heed, only to sell them stuff and clannin were often played on for that."
Noses crinkled.
"Anyway, straight off one of them got to blabbering and by evening a mob had shown up at their house with bright lights. As Finncaev, Elizabeth and Erin wept, screaming We live in clannin!, Habonde was stolen."
A ghastly hush filled the nest.
"After plying all kinds of mean talk, even threats, for weeks, they got Habonde back at last but... one evening riding home on a bike Finncaev was waylaid and harrowed by trolls."
Njorthrbiartr and Myghin screamed.
"They fled to Newhaven where the first open hex ran fylgjic a few dozen moons later."
"Their daughters along with those of many other clannin scattered, pulled and spilled about the world. Then came Tangwen Toreth and her fit in Hastings, followed by seventy steadfast years of teaching, the coming of the shees, our notions of banns and at last the Lundin Sundering when clannin almost everywhere began giving heed only to the plaits of their own neighbourhoods and thorpes. By now noserings were linked more with the teaches and clanniners began wearing them less, five hundred years after Elizabeth had her stroll in Alderbury."
"Eirianwen Sparks-Banning was a freayller from Fen Glioon and the very first to plight with the name Sparkenbane. Her clannin brought in four daughters and two of these, the twins Erin and Eadan, plighted Fionualla Fennyl of the Thralls. Erin was among the dozen gweeps who met at the fork of loch Frigg across the Alps east of Fen Glioon, 5,517 years ago. Their twenty-three year gathering ended on Samhain eve with an open hack of the spell they gwept to run stern hex at Snotra, a wicked means of tending the earth's fylgjic bound, skein of life in its grain with thirty-three million girls of flesh, blood and bones thrown in for sweet meed."
"Eighty-seven years later Erin and Eadan's twins were grasped and carried by two shees at Woolf house. From Darby and Derbhail to our own Morfyd and Morigan, their twins have plighted a teach clannin at Wrath ness to spill and sway fylgjic and truth be told, the braided blood of Habonde Sparks-Banning runs through everyone in this nest."
"So you see, we can laser a beam straight between us tonight and three of the first girls we know of who wore nose rings in clannin."
Cozily entwined with Raoghnailt against a hill of throw pillows, Gormglaith watched the nest spin down, lights dimming ever so slowly. Blodwen fell asleep near them, face hidden by sandy hair flowing to her waist. Maevis and Paestin snuggled crossways on their sides, bane blond-haired heads latched betwixt thewed thighs in a whistly closed loop as Lairlaith and Myghin drifted from the nest. Morfyd burrowed and folded up into a barrow of embroidered pillows. Njorthrbiartr sat knees to chin, lowering her head and staring wraithenly.
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