Afternoon of a Ten-Minute Story
Oct. 28th, 2004 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radfrac_archive_fullJack met the fairy king out walking -- the king was walking. Jack was floating down the river clinging to a plank. A few moments before, the plank had been part of a bridge, with no thought whatever of striking out on its own as a boat or some kind of smallish barge. Jack and the plank were doing their best in a bad situation, but neither one was giving the other very much support.
The king and the sinking man exchanged pleasantries -- one ought always to be polite to a fairy, even in awkward circumstances -- and eventually the king grew tired of trotting alongside the plank and offered to rescue the man if he liked. Jack acknowledged that he wouldn't mind.
The fairy king took him home -- the king's home, not Jack's. He took him to a sumptuous chamber and gave him restorative wines. Jack slept on a bed of goosedown and silk, and woke much refreshed. In the morning, he purposed to leave.
"Oh, no, you can't stay only one night in Faerie." said the king. "It's against the rules." I don't know why he used the Latin spelling for the place and the English one for the people. He just did.
So Jack stayed for three days -- three days in fairy/Faerie time, which turned out to be exactly nine days in the mortal world. Everyone at home thought he'd drowned in the freak flood that washed out the bridge. They were very glad to see him, although they made a fair amount of fun of him as well, for getting carried off by such a small river, and for not even managing to get killed.
Not-killed Jack, as they came to call him, grew a little tired of this, and one day he thought he'd get himself into a tight spot and see if the fairy king would come and rescue him again.
His efforts weren't immediately successful. He was almost gored to death by a bull -- or anyway he was fairly sure that's what it was trying to do. He picked a bar fight and ended up with only minor injuries and a debt for the price of fifteen chairs and an heirloom soup tureen.
Finally, his habit of teetering over steep cliffs murmuring "Help" nearly did him in. While turning to leave in disappointment, he tripped on a stone and fell backwards into the canyon. His nemesis the river had been cutting it for centuries, and it was very deep, with some quite pointy bits at the bottom.
Jack howled all the way down, and at the bottom the fairy king caught him, not with a net of cobweb or a single thread of silk, but in his own -- surprisingly wiry -- arms.
"You have a talent for mischance." said the king. "I could find that useful." And they agreed that Jack would visit for another three days while the fairies tried to distill a liquor of ill-judgement and bad timing from his tears. Since he was happy to be there, they had primarily to work with tears of laughter at the antics of some of the smaller brownies and imps, and the results, although interesting, were unpredictable.
Jack was surprised to find on his return to the mortal world that he had been gone, not for nine days, but for eighty-one; that his funeral had been held, a marker for his absent remains raised, and his sweetheart become engaged to a blacksmith.
"Three months?" he said indignantly.
"Life goes on." she said. "You can't stop it. How long would have satisfied you?"
It was a fair question. After some reflection, he said, "Two years."
"Hmm." she said.
After that, they called him Keep-on-Living Jack, and viewed him with awe, although he did get some ribbing for losing his sweetheart to the blacksmith. (This was a perfectly pleasant man who never had an unkind word for anyone. Jack could not help liking him, which blunted his resentment -- a poignant frustration my readers may have experienced themselves.)
Two visits to Faerie leave no taste for mortal things, at least not if you haven't been enslaved for a hundred years under a hill or changed into a tortoise. In Faerie, Jack was a lucky mortal, whereas in the mortal world his mischances depressed him. Which was quite the wrong way to think about it, but people are like that.
He didn't like his chances over another cliff, so he decided to take a different sort of risk -- one for his soul. He walked out to a crossroads, where the gibbets hang and the suicides are buried, and he spat three times on the ground. Death appeared, looking surprised and not all that fierce. He'd been in the middle of losing an argument with his sister. He governed death, and she governed death-in-life, and they were forever fighting about semantics.
Gruffly, rather than fearsomely, Death asked Jack what he wanted.
"I want to go back to Faerie," said Jack, "And I seem to have to risk death to do it. Will you play a game with me for my immortal soul?"
"Yes, all right." said Death. He didn't feel like going back to the underworld and arguing about the sailors anymore.
Unfortunately, they didn't know the same games, or had contradictory rules for them, so they settled on hide-and-go-seek. Jack was crouched behind a gorse-bush, snickering, when the king of Faerie whisked him off to the Other Lands, "In the nick of time," as he insisted when Jack pointed out sulkily that he'd been winning.
"Nobody beats death." said the fairy. "He was toying with you."
This disagreement marred the first of the three days somewhat, but by the second, the wine and perfumes, songs and tales of Faerie had won him again, and it was with real sorrow that he cut short an impromptu lute lesson on the third day to be sent home -- or rather back to the crossroads, where Death had long ago given up trying to find him and taken the soul of a rabbit instead. It proved a general favorite among the dead, and became a special pet of his sister's.
Our hero noticed that in his absence (something like a year, he guessed) the crossroads had taken on quite another character. The roads were paved, for one thing, with even yellow stones and high curbs, and there was a new gibbet with a fresh coat of paint. These improvements struck him as he walked home; as indeed a wagon of strangely light design nearly did, jouncing past him while he lingered, lost in observation, in the middle of the road. The driver cursed him as someone-he-hadn't-heard-of's son, and sailed on.
He was more surprised to find when he got home that not a year, but about eighteen years, had passed. His parents were dead. His sweetheart had three sons almost grown, and charming worry lines about her eyes and smile lines about her mouth.
"You look just like a silly boy I once knew," she said when she saw him. He tried to smile.
Jack had aged only three days, of course, and those who believed he was himself called him Deathless Jack. Everyone was a little uncomfortable with him, whether they believed him a liar, a madman, a distant cousin, or a person of eccentric habits. They made nervous jokes about cheating Death and were relieved when he went away.
Life seemed dreary. His old friends, who three days ago he'd laughed and caroused with, thought only of family and farming. The people his own age, who had been two and three years old when he left, seemed strangely trivial to him, as if some part of him had lived out the missing years.
Finally, he met a woman who made things seem sensible again. She'd been an awkward thirteen-year-old when he left, one of those young people unnerving in their excess of energy. She was thirty-one now, and her nervousness had become a calm humour. She liked him, and she didn't seem to care very much about the eighteen missing years.
They married. Her presence was a bridge between him and his old friends; the two of them were just a younger couple among the others. He began to fit back into things.
Some years passed peacefully. They had a daughter, and then a son, and another daughter. His mind was taken up with family and farming, though he liked still to tell fairy tales when the mood was on him.
One day, Jack was crossing the new bridge over the chortling river. Looking down, he saw a fish dart through his reflection. Its scales shone like gold and silver. On a sudden impulse, he leaned after it, and managed to catch it by the tail. It was terribly cold, and did seem to be made of precious metal, with glittering rubies set in a band about its middle.
He was just thinking he would take it home to amaze his children when it leapt from his hands and struck him across the face with its tail. He fell back, startled, and tumbled into the current. The river wasn't deep enough at this time of year to carry him away; but in the fall his head knocked a stone, and his face slid under the water.
He swam up from unconsciousness with an aching head, straining at the darkness behind his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, it was just the same, only the fairy king was there.
"Saved you again there, I think." said the fairy king. "I shouldn't have -- three visits to Faerie is the most any mortal is allowed -- but I've always liked you, Jack."
"Are we in Faerie, then?" asked Jack. "It looks different." They stood on some hard surface, but it was indistiguishable from the murky void around them.
"Well, we're on the borderlands, since I couldn't bring you entirely inside the gates, but -- yes, more or less." The king scuffed the nothingness with his toe. "I've been meaning to do something with this bit of the realm." he explained. "But I haven't had time."
"Thank you for saving me," said Jack, "But I wasn't planning on a visit to Faerie today, and I've a lot of work to do. Can you send me back?"
"Oh, yes, of course." said the King. "Not for three days, of course."
"But the farm--" Jack stopped speaking abruptly. They stood in awkward silence for a long time. The fairy king cleared his throat.
Eventually Jack spoke again. "How much time will have passed when I go back?" he asked, with difficulty.
"A bit more than last time." said the fairy king.
"How many years? Fifty?" Jack swallowed. "One hundred?"
"Oh," said the king lightly, "Well, give or take a few years... something like one hundred and eighteen thousand years?"
"What?" said Jack.
He was looking at the king's clothes.
The king looked down at himself. He wore a gold and silver tunic with a belt of rubies. He cleared his throat again.
"If we hurry," he said, "We can be back to my palace in time for the feast."
"I thought a mortal could only enter Faerie three times." said Jack hoarsely.
"Well," said the king. "More or less."
The king and the sinking man exchanged pleasantries -- one ought always to be polite to a fairy, even in awkward circumstances -- and eventually the king grew tired of trotting alongside the plank and offered to rescue the man if he liked. Jack acknowledged that he wouldn't mind.
The fairy king took him home -- the king's home, not Jack's. He took him to a sumptuous chamber and gave him restorative wines. Jack slept on a bed of goosedown and silk, and woke much refreshed. In the morning, he purposed to leave.
"Oh, no, you can't stay only one night in Faerie." said the king. "It's against the rules." I don't know why he used the Latin spelling for the place and the English one for the people. He just did.
So Jack stayed for three days -- three days in fairy/Faerie time, which turned out to be exactly nine days in the mortal world. Everyone at home thought he'd drowned in the freak flood that washed out the bridge. They were very glad to see him, although they made a fair amount of fun of him as well, for getting carried off by such a small river, and for not even managing to get killed.
Not-killed Jack, as they came to call him, grew a little tired of this, and one day he thought he'd get himself into a tight spot and see if the fairy king would come and rescue him again.
His efforts weren't immediately successful. He was almost gored to death by a bull -- or anyway he was fairly sure that's what it was trying to do. He picked a bar fight and ended up with only minor injuries and a debt for the price of fifteen chairs and an heirloom soup tureen.
Finally, his habit of teetering over steep cliffs murmuring "Help" nearly did him in. While turning to leave in disappointment, he tripped on a stone and fell backwards into the canyon. His nemesis the river had been cutting it for centuries, and it was very deep, with some quite pointy bits at the bottom.
Jack howled all the way down, and at the bottom the fairy king caught him, not with a net of cobweb or a single thread of silk, but in his own -- surprisingly wiry -- arms.
"You have a talent for mischance." said the king. "I could find that useful." And they agreed that Jack would visit for another three days while the fairies tried to distill a liquor of ill-judgement and bad timing from his tears. Since he was happy to be there, they had primarily to work with tears of laughter at the antics of some of the smaller brownies and imps, and the results, although interesting, were unpredictable.
Jack was surprised to find on his return to the mortal world that he had been gone, not for nine days, but for eighty-one; that his funeral had been held, a marker for his absent remains raised, and his sweetheart become engaged to a blacksmith.
"Three months?" he said indignantly.
"Life goes on." she said. "You can't stop it. How long would have satisfied you?"
It was a fair question. After some reflection, he said, "Two years."
"Hmm." she said.
After that, they called him Keep-on-Living Jack, and viewed him with awe, although he did get some ribbing for losing his sweetheart to the blacksmith. (This was a perfectly pleasant man who never had an unkind word for anyone. Jack could not help liking him, which blunted his resentment -- a poignant frustration my readers may have experienced themselves.)
Two visits to Faerie leave no taste for mortal things, at least not if you haven't been enslaved for a hundred years under a hill or changed into a tortoise. In Faerie, Jack was a lucky mortal, whereas in the mortal world his mischances depressed him. Which was quite the wrong way to think about it, but people are like that.
He didn't like his chances over another cliff, so he decided to take a different sort of risk -- one for his soul. He walked out to a crossroads, where the gibbets hang and the suicides are buried, and he spat three times on the ground. Death appeared, looking surprised and not all that fierce. He'd been in the middle of losing an argument with his sister. He governed death, and she governed death-in-life, and they were forever fighting about semantics.
Gruffly, rather than fearsomely, Death asked Jack what he wanted.
"I want to go back to Faerie," said Jack, "And I seem to have to risk death to do it. Will you play a game with me for my immortal soul?"
"Yes, all right." said Death. He didn't feel like going back to the underworld and arguing about the sailors anymore.
Unfortunately, they didn't know the same games, or had contradictory rules for them, so they settled on hide-and-go-seek. Jack was crouched behind a gorse-bush, snickering, when the king of Faerie whisked him off to the Other Lands, "In the nick of time," as he insisted when Jack pointed out sulkily that he'd been winning.
"Nobody beats death." said the fairy. "He was toying with you."
This disagreement marred the first of the three days somewhat, but by the second, the wine and perfumes, songs and tales of Faerie had won him again, and it was with real sorrow that he cut short an impromptu lute lesson on the third day to be sent home -- or rather back to the crossroads, where Death had long ago given up trying to find him and taken the soul of a rabbit instead. It proved a general favorite among the dead, and became a special pet of his sister's.
Our hero noticed that in his absence (something like a year, he guessed) the crossroads had taken on quite another character. The roads were paved, for one thing, with even yellow stones and high curbs, and there was a new gibbet with a fresh coat of paint. These improvements struck him as he walked home; as indeed a wagon of strangely light design nearly did, jouncing past him while he lingered, lost in observation, in the middle of the road. The driver cursed him as someone-he-hadn't-heard-of's son, and sailed on.
He was more surprised to find when he got home that not a year, but about eighteen years, had passed. His parents were dead. His sweetheart had three sons almost grown, and charming worry lines about her eyes and smile lines about her mouth.
"You look just like a silly boy I once knew," she said when she saw him. He tried to smile.
Jack had aged only three days, of course, and those who believed he was himself called him Deathless Jack. Everyone was a little uncomfortable with him, whether they believed him a liar, a madman, a distant cousin, or a person of eccentric habits. They made nervous jokes about cheating Death and were relieved when he went away.
Life seemed dreary. His old friends, who three days ago he'd laughed and caroused with, thought only of family and farming. The people his own age, who had been two and three years old when he left, seemed strangely trivial to him, as if some part of him had lived out the missing years.
Finally, he met a woman who made things seem sensible again. She'd been an awkward thirteen-year-old when he left, one of those young people unnerving in their excess of energy. She was thirty-one now, and her nervousness had become a calm humour. She liked him, and she didn't seem to care very much about the eighteen missing years.
They married. Her presence was a bridge between him and his old friends; the two of them were just a younger couple among the others. He began to fit back into things.
Some years passed peacefully. They had a daughter, and then a son, and another daughter. His mind was taken up with family and farming, though he liked still to tell fairy tales when the mood was on him.
One day, Jack was crossing the new bridge over the chortling river. Looking down, he saw a fish dart through his reflection. Its scales shone like gold and silver. On a sudden impulse, he leaned after it, and managed to catch it by the tail. It was terribly cold, and did seem to be made of precious metal, with glittering rubies set in a band about its middle.
He was just thinking he would take it home to amaze his children when it leapt from his hands and struck him across the face with its tail. He fell back, startled, and tumbled into the current. The river wasn't deep enough at this time of year to carry him away; but in the fall his head knocked a stone, and his face slid under the water.
He swam up from unconsciousness with an aching head, straining at the darkness behind his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, it was just the same, only the fairy king was there.
"Saved you again there, I think." said the fairy king. "I shouldn't have -- three visits to Faerie is the most any mortal is allowed -- but I've always liked you, Jack."
"Are we in Faerie, then?" asked Jack. "It looks different." They stood on some hard surface, but it was indistiguishable from the murky void around them.
"Well, we're on the borderlands, since I couldn't bring you entirely inside the gates, but -- yes, more or less." The king scuffed the nothingness with his toe. "I've been meaning to do something with this bit of the realm." he explained. "But I haven't had time."
"Thank you for saving me," said Jack, "But I wasn't planning on a visit to Faerie today, and I've a lot of work to do. Can you send me back?"
"Oh, yes, of course." said the King. "Not for three days, of course."
"But the farm--" Jack stopped speaking abruptly. They stood in awkward silence for a long time. The fairy king cleared his throat.
Eventually Jack spoke again. "How much time will have passed when I go back?" he asked, with difficulty.
"A bit more than last time." said the fairy king.
"How many years? Fifty?" Jack swallowed. "One hundred?"
"Oh," said the king lightly, "Well, give or take a few years... something like one hundred and eighteen thousand years?"
"What?" said Jack.
He was looking at the king's clothes.
The king looked down at himself. He wore a gold and silver tunic with a belt of rubies. He cleared his throat again.
"If we hurry," he said, "We can be back to my palace in time for the feast."
"I thought a mortal could only enter Faerie three times." said Jack hoarsely.
"Well," said the king. "More or less."
another step to mid-list stardom
Date: 2004-11-02 07:09 am (UTC)\i/
Re: another step to mid-list stardom
Date: 2004-11-02 06:59 pm (UTC)I like your version of an Informal Meeting...
--rf
Re: another step to mid-list stardom
Date: 2004-11-03 06:32 am (UTC)Graham, if you can't find the cheese, I can always supply the cheesiness ;) (oh crap, I think rf has already made that joke on this blog. Curses, saran-wrapped again.
-the Adraitic. (nope, that just doesn't work. reminds me too much of one of The Doctor's companions, and he died crashing into a planet.)
-the Other C
Re: another step to mid-list stardom
Date: 2004-11-03 10:53 pm (UTC){rf}