Fiddleeebod

In Bekka of Thorns’ second chronicle, The Carven Flute, she writes about the immortal lavender witch, Babba Ja Harick, and how she traveled to Earth seeking her long lost sister. In The Well of Shells, the story of the sisters as witchlets is dictated by the blind Harpo to his new scribe, Lace. Lace can’t resist adding comments of her own to the tale. Bekka is well acquainted with this story, excerpted below.

“You what? You what what? AGAIN!?” snarled the slightly larger of the two figures standing knee-deep in snow and surrounded by the stillness of a ghostly forest buried under ghostly fog. The trees were ice clad. They diamond sparkled in the mist. Shimmer.

“I didn’t bean to,” said the smaller figure in a little voice.

“You didn’t BEAN to? Not BEAN to. MEAN to! Mean! Muh, muh, muh! I don’t know. I don’t know. You lose your specs every time I turn around and you can never find the right word. A rhyme does not count! No rhyming! Am I made out of specs? Do I look like a walking pile of specs to you? Yoss or no?” ranted the larger figure.

“No, you don’t cook like a tile of flecks,” muttered the littler one.

“Cook like a tile of flecks,” repeated the larger in disgust.

Who were the two? Fair and true, sisters. The slightly larger one was five bar years old by substantial count. The smaller had just turned three. They were migratory witchlets trekking through the fog. The older sister had pasty gray green skin. The younger one’s skin was lavender lilac, a pale purple. They both wore cloaks of the blackest purple. Battered and bent pointy black hats covered their scraggly deeply black hair. They had no way of knowing whether night was night or day was day. It bothered them not a nince. They wandered the fog. Searching. Searching for what? Truth to tell, for something unknown. They knew not what. Nevertheless, they searched. The witchlets had names. The older was Simmering Jam Hatrack. The younger was Babbling Jam Hatrack. Sim, as she was called by her little sister, set her spectacles more firmly on her long narrow nose.

“Hang on to the hem of my cloak, then, wretch,” said Sim, “and pick up your pack. You’ll do without specs for the time.”

Bab, as she was called by her sister when she wasn’t being called ‘wretch’ or ‘lackwit’, shed no tear, though her lower lip trembled. She plucked her pack from the snow and got a good grip on Sim’s cloak. Sim plowed off without another word, dragging Bab in her wake. They passed beneath the ice diamond sparkle of overhead branches. They passed by the glimmer glass trunks of slender trees. They passed over mounds of white. They passed through glades thick with fog. On and on. Endless sameness. Diamond sparkle ice on frozen trees. Smooth blankets of white snow. Walls of fog, standing still.

“Do you think we will get pear spoon?” asked Bab. Her legs were short. They were getting tired.

“Pear spoon? Hm, let me see. If I knew by chance what a pear spoon was, I might be able to tell you if we were going to get one soon,” mocked Sim, and she began to walk faster, striding out.

Bab, unable to keep up, stumbled and fell, losing her grip on Sim’s cloak. She rolled quietly down the snowy hill and came to rest, hugging her pack. Sim stamped angrily after her. She raised her foot to give Bab an encouraging kick, but stopped bang bo, her buckle shoed foot poised in shock. Why shock? Fair and true, Sim saw something. What did she see? She saw the fog burning away swiftly, fleeing in wisps. The snow melted and flowed to disappear under the greening grass. The trees crackled icy chimes and burst instantly into leaf. Birds sang, chirp and trill.

*******

I am Lace. I am Harpo’s apprentice, the scribe who guides the quill. Chapter One has ended. Harpo is out by the well resting. I can’t help it. I must tell you something about the names. Babbling Jam Hatrack and Simmering Jam Hatrack. Such are the names Harpo uses. The true names, lore given, are Babba Ja Harick and Semma Ja Harick. Harpo has a merry nature. I have said enough for now.

This excerpt is from one of Harpo’s earliest chronicles, Babbling Jam Hatrack. In it, we meet Prince Hal, later to be Harold the Tooth, King of Fiddleeebod. Now he is merely a Prince of Fiddleebod. Fiddleebod will have to wait until Prince becomes King to acquire its third ‘e’. Bek and Kar know this story well. That’s my sketch of Prince Hal below.

Prince Hal sat, legs dangling, on the edge of the castle’s drawbridge. “Orrff! Orff! Raaahh!” he said, and a gleaming gray wet whiskered head broke through the glassy surface of the murky moat. Velvet ripples in circles expanded. “Orff! Orff! Raaaah!” answered the moatseal. It was the moatseal. Prince Hal’s father, King Harold the Wunth, had brought it from the Wide Great Sea. In the Royal opinion of his father, Prince Hal talked to the moatseal a worrisome amount of time each day. This day proved no different. Prince Hal was there at the moat to tell the moatseal about the strange dream he’d had.

“Urrr! Urr! Urr! Orf! Urr! Urr!” explained Prince Hal.

“Urrf!” nodded the seal.

“Urr! Orf! Raah! Raaah! Ur! Ur! Urp!” continued Prince Hal.

This went on for too long and it won’t do you or me any good whatsoever to hear the entire conversation. I don’t speak moatseal well, and I feel pretty strongly you don’t either. So allow them to talk, and I’ll describe for you Prince Hal’s dream. How do I know what happened in Prince Hal’s dream? I am the storyteller, aren’t I? I have the quill. I dip it in purple ink.

Here is the dream. It starts with Prince Hal standing by a dangerous looking rushing river. He is combing his hair with celery – it’s his dream, not mine – and three bales of hay are criticizing him. Suddenly the river writhes menacingly and Hal throws himself to hide behind one of the bales. He hears a thunderous voice asking, “WHERE IS HE?!” The bale of hay lies to protect him, saying, “He isn’t behind me. Those aren’t his feet sticking out there.” The river isn’t a river. The river is a green-eyed dragon. “WILL YOU DARE TO STEAL FROM ME?” Hal is plucked up in the dragon’s taloned grasp. Hal is calm. Hal is sly. He is a Prince. “I don’t steal. I’m not a stealer. Dragons are the best,” says Hal. The dragon chuckles and Hal is sliding in snow. He takes his sled to the top of the hill and jumps to ride it down. His hands grip tightly. His teeth are clenched. Whoosh he speeds straight down the black ice. No way to stop. He is heading for the gaping mouth. In he goes. There are windows under the water and the smiling maidens are serving out slices of seedcake. Prince Hal has his elbows on the table. The rest of the citizens move slowly, heavily. The library is full of crying babies. Prince Hal opens his mouth to sing. He sings. The babies sing with him. One of them walks up to him and shakes his hand. “I am Lorelei Lo,” says the baby. Prince Hal picks her up and puts her on his donkey. He feels proud, happy, successful and noble. The donkey says, “There is nothing more for us. We might as well.” Prince Hal understands perfectly. He tilts his head in agreement and places himself between the jigsaw puzzle and the donkey. The oat fields are all around. It is windy. He doesn’t want the donkey to step on the puzzle and knock it all apart. The puzzle is missing one piece, where the witch’s face should be. The Prince wakes up. The dream is over.

What do you make of it? The moatseal was no great interpreter of dreams. He – the moatseal was a he – was no help at all. His “Urrff” and “Orrr” were nothing more than “Urrff” and “Orrr”. They satisfied Prince Hal, though. He made them mean whatever he wanted them to. What did he want them to mean? He wanted “Urrff” to mean “wow” and “Orrr” to mean “great dream”. When he’d had enough moatseal talk, Prince Hal scrambled to his feet and announced, “I am Edward of the Lance. Beware, doers of evil!” He trotted easily across the bridge and back behind the castle walls.

This excerpt is from another of Lace’s chronicles, The Creely Crown. It describes a scavenger hunt/race to find and claim the legendary Creely Crown. The competing contestants are the wild Triplet Princesses Three of Fiddleeebod. That’s Wun on the left below, Tuu in the middle, and Thrii on the right. Thrii dyed her hair startling violet some time after this admittedly extremely rough sketch was made.

It happened in a year when the shy month of Jell made one of its rare appearances. The turret towers of Fiddleeebod Castle were suitably decorated with hutched gold ribbons and toiled lines strung with wavery green satin pennants. Sixteen summers of abundant oats had passed since last the month of Jell had materialized to offer its ten short days of existence. Fair and true, for that reason and one other, the castle was a Clover hive of activity. What other reason? The eighth day of Jell marked the birthday of the Triplet Princesses Three of Fiddleeebod. A blur of preparation for the final day of celebrations was under way. Kitchen workers, from lowest sculger to highest crape, and cartjaggers, forgetenders, visiting fleckrunners, everybody all engaged in a frenzy of assigned and voluntary duties. Buzzes of excitement swirled around the castle. The seventh day of Jell was drawing to a close.

Late in the evening, the Princesses Wun, Tuu and Thrii gabbled madly, head to head to head, in their private domain high up in the no-one-allowed-but-Princesses tower. Sometimes they used their secret language. It had a lot of ‘r’s in it. Sometimes they didn’t. The usual chalky turquoise color of their faces was flushed chalkyless. The feathers of their powder blue wings fluttered with each excited wiggle and twist. They wore matching tally vests and blossom shirts with roamer doublestitched wing vents. Their stub pantaloons were tied below the knees with the finest lacestretch string. Save one useful exception, each Princess was a mirror image of her sister and her sister. What exception? Why useful? Each Princess had a different hair color, and thusly so was the only way they could be told apart. Princess Wun, the firstborn, had curly black hair streaked with green. Princess Tuu, born ten minutes after Wun, had curly green hair streaked with black. The natural curly black green hair of Princess Thrii hid under a dye rinse made from the seeds of palmpears. Her hair was startling violet. It matched her eyes, and of course, the eyes of her sisters. So there they were, late in the evening, gabbling head to head to head on Tuuey’s pillow mound bed.

“Rorrum ro rik!”

“I know!  I know!”

“And it am tomorrow!”

“EEEEEEEEEE!”

“EEEEEEEEEEE!”

“EEEEEEEEEEEE!”

“What am we getting?

Tuuey, did you dream?”

“No, I couldn’t, but

reb rarra ro.”

“No, it amn’t. I looked.”

The Princesses fell into a flailing tangle of kicks and pinches followed by tickling and head to head to head again.

“Rorr! Wait! I know

something.”

“No secrets. Rev rurri.”

“What am it ? Tell us rerr.”

“Follow me.”

Princess Wun broke away and launched herself through the window. She was followed closely by Tuu and Thrii. Over the walls and down into the nearest oat field glided the Triplet Princesses Three. Both moons were high slivers in the sky. Stars were brilliant glints.

“What are here?”

“Rek rimm rarr. Why did

you bring us here?”

“Am it a nince past midnight yet?

If it am, I are sixteen and you am

still fifteen.”

Tuu and Thrii jumped on Wun, and the Princesses rolled and kicked in a tangle until tickling brought them head to head to head.

“I say it are half an hour

past midnight. We am all

sixteen. Rurrr!”

“Yeah, we all am.”

“But I are still the oldest!”

“Oh, rakka! Why am we here?

What did you see?”

“Look over there.”

“Ro ribbik? Ray?”

“It are a vedling cart covered

over with oat blankets. Look,

where the wheel peeks through.”

The Princesses crept closer to the cart and stared at the wheel. It glittered. Its spokes were wrapped in rainbow sparkle tape.

“See? It am loaded with our

presents. We could open them

now. It am the eighth of Jell.”

“Ruh Rarr ren! I say

we wait.”

“Me too. Wait for the party.”

Wun lunged for the blankets covering the cart and was tackled by Tuu and Thrii. When the kicking and scratching and pinching turned to tickling, Wun gave in.

“All right, all right. But I get

first choice. I are the oldest.”

“I get the largest

bowl of ool!”

“I get the biggest piece

of gadapple pie!”

“We am sixteen!”

“EEEEEEEEE!”

“EEEEEEEEEEEE!”

“EEEEEEEEEEE!”

The Triplet Princesses Three silenced and rose in the air. They flew themselves to exhaustion and collapsed through the window of their tower. They stumbled to their pillow mounds and fell snoring.

Today’s excerpt is from O’Tan’s Gate, a story recorded by Lace, the second chronicler, after Harpo and long before Bekka. Below is my rough sketch of Lace.

Frad, a nester musician, is featured in today’s excerpt.

The entire story swirls around Dosh, a mysterious hutkeeper.

A ziler, when well played, strikes a tone mellow and smooth, bell clear. A warm tone filled the room, and somehow it did seem yellow. I looked at Frad and nodded yes. He took the tone and wove it with a careful ease up and down in clever comfort. A theme of restful calm he sculpted in the air. He allowed it to hang there and melt, drifting to fade. Silence. Sigh lence. I sighed. Frad lowered his ziler. Another sigh. Not from me this time. From the hutkeeper! She opened her eyes. Yellow they glistened bright. She moved her gaze from ceiling to me to Frad. Her smile remained unchanged.

“Where? … Who? … Imagine …,” she said.

Frad leaped forward and blurted out, “You are in the fattest tower of Blossom Castle in the Woods Beyond the Wood. We found you at the gate on the cobbled road. Your clothes were torn. Your wings. We fixed your antenna. It was broken, out of tune. Lace did, I mean. That’s Lace there. She’s from Clover. Yellow, right? You hutkeepers dress in yellow. Lace repaired your things. She’s a roamer marvel with needle and thread. No hutkeeper has ever visited us here before. You are the first. I, how rude, I forgot, am Frad, historian and nester musician, ziler player, to be more note accurate. What a thrilling overture you have presented. I am anxious to hear …”

I was in no hurry to interrupt Frad’s gasblather. I patiently waited until he was out of breath. It took a goodly long seam of time. Ziler players have most powerful lungs. But there came a time when he finally wound down. I raised my hand to keep him from starting up again.

“As you can guess, youngling hutkeeper,” I said, “Frad with his ice blue hair is pleased to see you awake and seemingly well. Let me say that I am Fuzzybug Lacejacket, and I was long ago a Clover roamer. How do you really feel? Do you hunger? Or thirst? What is your name, youngling?”

She blinked her yellow eyes and fixed me with a stare of muted madness.

“Dosh. I am Dosh. If you have Clover honey, I would taste a drop or two. Imagine my pleasure,” said the youngling hutkeeper softly.

“Well, Frad, do you have honey here?” I asked.

“We do, but not Clover. It’s Blossom. Should I get some? I’ll get some. Mark time. Rest. Don’t play on before I get back,” said Frad, and he bolted out the door.

“Dosh, you are a long way from Clover. You look as if you have had quite some sort of adventure. Have you?” I probed with a seeming offhand delicacy.

She dropped her head back and stared up at the chamber’s low beamed ceiling. She moved her limbs under the quilt, grew still and turned her face again to me.

“My stockings,” she said.

“Right here with the rest of your things,” I reassured her, lifting the pile of neatly folded garments and the braced gildy slippers for her to see. “The stockings I’ve rolled up in your shoes.”

Frad raced into the room, holding a little pot and spouting, “Did I miss? … Has anything? … Did you start? Here’s the honey.”

What shortly followed Frad’s arrival was the hutkeeper Dosh being polite, tasting the Blossom honey. Why polite? I tasted it, too. It was to Clover honey as a dying ember is to the sun. Frad contained himself while the honey was tasted, then dove directly at the question. What question?

“How did you get here?” he asked.

She blinked her eyes as if in thought, smiling all the while.

“Imagine my pleasure. I don’t think I know. It wasn’t a random rain riddle,” she said.

This is the young cartjagger, Avado. At the beginning of her ritual 10 Year Wander, she meets her grandmother, Old Orrum, for the first time.

Here is Old Orrum, the most highly skilled cartjagger in all of Honeygold, Clover Castle. The chronicler Lace wrote the scene of their meeting as a play.

THE SCENE IN THE WHEELROOM

(Old Orrum’s wheelroom is littered with wheels and wheel parts – spokes, rims, cotters, hubs. Her tools – cudgels, sizers, bevellers, sandpads, scrapes, awkers – are stored in neat rows on shelves next to the forge and bellows. An embered fire in the forge glows green. An overflowing bucket of bittem coal chunks and a half-filled watertub rest by a black anvil edged with gold blossom and bee scrollwork. The floor is yellow stone. An oaken table and two oaken stools stand in one corner of the room. The yellow walls are fire smudged. A yellow curtain hangs slap in the middle of the back wall hiding an opening which leads into the cartroom. The door opposite the yellow curtain opens. Old Orrum and Avado enter, hand in hand.)

OLD ORRUM: Step in, Avado. Here and here is where your mother heard the tales from my mother.

AVADO: (tossing her pack on the table) Oh, yes! The same! Mother said! Our wheelroom is just like … and your forge! Except for the yellow and the bees, of course.

OLD ORRUM: Of course. The cart I was telling you about is in the cartroom. Would you like to see it?

AVADO: Not yet. I want to look at the embers. Green bittem fires are so … (She crosses to the forge, puts out her hands to warm them)

OLD ORRUM: (nodding) Such is so. A picture. You stand so like your mother stood and stared as I worked and told the tales. So quiet she was. Such big eyes.

AVADO: She says you know more stories than anyone. More than even the oldest roamer.

OLD ORRUM: (smiling) It is said that is so.

AVADO: I know all the Great Green Va stories. I made mother tell them a hundred times and better. Not a nince of peace did I give her until I had them all.

OLD ORRUM: Ah.

AVADO: The Caravan of Stones! and the Dragon! and the Falls of Horn! and the Rain of Cakes! and … oh, sorry, they say I get too excited when I start up about the Great Green Va. Oh, Grandmother Orrum, I know what I’m going to do on my 10 Year Wander!

OLD ORRUM: (finger to lips) Sssshhh. Musn’t say. For you alone. Listen a pace to me. Sit yourself on one of those stools. (Avado sits) Good. Your days with me will be few, and then off you’ll go on your Wander. Let’s fill the few days properly. You can help me prepare the Prince’s vedling cart for the 1000 Celebration. (Avado nods yes eagerly) And more. You say that you have taken into your heart all of the Great Green Va stories. Well and good. So and sa, this I will say to you. (whispers) I have saved one special story all of my life to share alone with a granddaughter. Hello, granddaughter.

AVADO: (leaping from stool) What is it?! What?! What?!

OLD ORRUM: (raising both hands) Subside, youngling, subside. The time will be right on the night of Honeygold’s 1000th birthday. You will sit by the green glow embers of the bittem fire. I will tell the story. But as for now, the Prince needs his vedling cart. Pick up two bevellers, one for each of us, and follow me to the cartroom. The Prince himself will be here in the morning to judge my … our work. Let’s hop to it, shall we?

AVADO: (catching up a pair of bevellers, one in each hand) I’m awfully good at jagging. I’m skilled beyond age, pa says. They say the Prince is …

(Old Orrum slides the yellow curtain aside and the pair of cartjaggers, ancient and young, slip through the opening and disappear into the cartroom, Avado gabbling all the while.)

I have decided to start posting excerpts from the stories heard by Bek and Kar all of their lives in the bramble bower hedge. This first one is from ‘The Great Green Va’, a story of the Princess Ivah Skay and how she hated rules and loved green.

This is the Princess Ivah Skay

This is Fatch, the Fool

Fatch the Fool made his way down curving lanes between the crowded yellow brick mounds of Tredgemont Castle. No longer did he hop with jingle bell hat balanced on lifted left blue foot. No. No more could he be seen by the King. No. Therefore, such and so, no more need to act the fool. Glumly frowning he plodded, hat with jingles wadded in a clenched blue fist. When he passed the kitchen mound, a pair of sculgers stopped scrubbing chegroots to watch him go by.

“What ho, Pobble. The Fool is on a steam,” said one.

“Sent again to fetch the impus youngling is my guess. Sure as honeymead tickles my tongue. Lowers his mask, then, don’t it?” replied the other, apparently Pobble.

“What do you think? She’ll be green again?” asked the first, scratching his forehead with his brush.

“It wouldn’t knock me down if she was. She is a little impus, don’t you know. I like her. She’s got a sparkle,” said Pobble.

“HEY!!” came a shout from inside the kitchen mound. The sculgers bang bo quick shut up and madly scrubbed the roots.

Fatch, when he reached the bottom of the castle hill, paused to snort when he saw the Goblet of Comfort lying on the ground next to the Bubble Up Well. He narrowed his eyes, looked around, and gave the goblet a kick. Cloing. He walked up to it and kicked it again. Cloing. He picked it up and spat on it. He wiped it clean with his jingle bell hat. He cleared his throat, slapped a smile on his face and began dancing toward the gorsegully. He sang as he danced.

“Oh, Honeyness Princess Ivah Skay,

Will you not come out and play?

With a hi and a ho and a hey nonny no,

Oh, won’t you come out and play?”

The Princess stood up laughing. She was a sight. She was a stained green, green, green, head to gold slipper toe sight.

“I am prepared to be punished. Give me the Goblet,” she announced and commanded. “Let me be led to the Well.”

Fatch grinned a grin that strained every muscle in his face. He did a back flip and waddled like a flabber back to the Bubble Up Well. The youngling Princess followed with dignity and green. She filled the Goblet and waved for Fatch to ascend the castle hill. Fatch galloped and barked up the curving path and passed once more the kitchen mound. The sculgers still were hard at work scrubbing the chegbush roots. They paused when they saw the Princess.

“There, would you know it, as I said. Green as greeny green green,” said the one called Pobble.

“I was the one what said, weren’t I?” said the other, whose name I have not yet mentioned. Baffin. Baffin was the name.

“Whoever, whatever, wherever, what’s said is more than done. Stand straight, Baffin! Oh, thank you, Your Honeyness,” said Pobble, and both bowed.

Why did they bow? The Princess smiled and winked at them.

Up the curving path and into O’Rone’s Circle of Great Stones the frolicking Fool led the green grinning Princess. Fatch cavorted into place and bowed himself low to the ground. The King sighed when his stained green daughter handed him the Goblet of Comfort. The Queen beside him sighed. Eight Princely brothers sighed. In the shadow of the gray blue Bask Stone, King Vor sighed again. In rank and file, by law and lore, the yellow clad citizens waited. They did not sigh. However, they watched with eager eyes and great interest.

“Ivah, Ivah, Ivah,” sighed King Vor.

“Father, Father, Father,” grinned his youngling daughter.

“What am I to do?” King Vor asked the Bask Stone, shrugging.

“Punish me,” said Ivah Skay brightly. “Send me to my room to think. I almost, almost, almost, really, really, really, really close to almost didn’t go into the gorsegully this time. I came as close as this to filling the Goblet and chanting the proper chant. If you would punish me a little nince more in my room thinking, I am almost, almost, almost sure I could follow the rules. Really, really, really, really.”

“Well, then, well. If you really think you might think, then, I suppose, make it so,” said King Vor, nodding a Kingly command. He turned and dribbled water from the Goblet of Comfort onto the Bask Stone. As he poured, the citizens and Royalty together chanted, “Avoli, Taromi, Ren ren bar.” Why? It was the way. Ivah Skay did not chant. She skipped to her mound to think.

That is the island of Jom in the middle of Winedarque Lake near the green sands home of Dodden, a spindly cragger on the world of Boad. The story I am working on right now takes place there. Though Bekka does make a brief appearance, she is not the storyteller. A quest to fulfill a prophesied task using the Rainbow Eye of Sight on Jom is narrated by Dodden herself.

This is the formidable winged Princess of Cloud Castle City, Nimble Missst. Bekka, in her seventh chronicle, tells the story of how Nimble Missst became Quen (yes, Quen, not Queen) Nim.

Here is Motty, the hollowite, a winged six-legged creature with a tongue she can fling all the way across a reception hall. She serves as nursemaid to the Princess and has done so since the day Nimble Missst was born.

This is Delia Branch, a timid woodlock. Bekka’s fourth chronicle is entitled ‘The Woodlock’. In it, Bekka is sent back in time to clarify a confusion. Without the clarification, the daughter of Delia Branch, a most important Boadlian character, the star of a story well known to Bekka and Karro, would never be born.

Rindle Mer, daughter of Delia Branch

The very first character to appear in my head from the planet Boad was a timid troll named Gorge. He struck fear straight into the bone marrow of all creatures meeting him for the first time. That’s why he practiced his disarming smile. Well, you can tell it really didn’t help much, can’t you?