The Fiction Work of a Morning.

Between Phantastes by George MacDonald and a lot of listening to Andrew Peterson, it was certainly time to write something folksy and fairy-ish.

I enjoyed making up some words and being rather cryptic and jumpy in general. While I had fun with that, I think it still reads and has an antique flavor for all classic lovers.

…

The silence that stirred across the plans was loud, but not hardly as loud as the sound of the winds rushing through the grasses.

Faint notes of lute-strum drifted from an inn set deep in a deep wood. Murmurs of the song’s lyrics seeped beneath the thick wooden door.

His grizzled beard, long and thin was inhabited by a young smouse. His eyes were but an expanse as grand as the night sky, dark—sparkling with some hope, some memories, and fewer dreams. His head, engilded by a bark of the head, was perhaps not one to envy, for it contained almost nothing. But beneath the lute that lay against his breast, his heart rested in all fullness, with near the fullness of nature.

Working for him, there were ten strong and worn who stood at his bidding and plucked and held at the strings to the tyrant of a musical soul, who know neither the words of the songs nor was concerned with the sound of them, but simply followed his heart where it led.

His audience was of man and woman, and a few hobgoblins. The goblins had not been invited, nor had the fairies, but they, as they had almost always done, had evaded the detection of the humans and sat the beneath the glow of that tasteful light of lyric and lute.

The words of his song that so rooted in the hearts of his listeners ran like this.

Streams that melt into the mire,

And every creature by the fire,

Wanted and unwanted, I tell thee all,

Great is the heart that breaks the wall,

And that moves in harmony,

Listen in with solemn glee.

The hearts of the fields are won again,

The sun brings them a fire within,

Find the fire among the blaze,

Whilst the morning light is on the days

Fear not evil nor ire,

Among the bog and the mire,

For there dwells there a son of the mountain,

Partly rock, partly man, I fear you won’t get on without him,

The Oak, the Elm, and all their fellows,

Fear them and only trust the Willows.

…