Marvelous Tales #9 - The Bane of Abeyance

Sweet faery Babda appeared in a dust twinkle at her daughter's front door. Her tiny leather booticles, laced up with a sprig of thyme, wiped, wiped, wiped on the mat. But before she could knock, her monocled eye caught sight of a Bladdernut leaf fluttering to the ground. Babda snatched at the leaf mid-flight and placed it, with precise fingers, in her monogrammed clutch.

The wind noticed.

Facing Babda was a round, wooden door that swung on a curlicued hinge. One's will was imposed on this door by turning a tarnished copper knob that Babda now rubbed clean. She pocketed her dusting kerchief and mouthed aloud the postal sign below the porchlight:

“143 Brinsmaid Trail, Jabbot
Abeyance Fritt and Peter Praline, inhabitants.”

This obvious entrance betrayed their hidden home in a low mound of earth. A slight hill in a dell outside Aduaine. On top of the little moundhouse, a briar extended itself, flowered and thorned, and poking out in all directions (though leaning mostly to the southeast to feast on first sun). Fronds of ferns uncoiled carelessly. Strands of grass flopped flagrantly. A bit of a mess, really.

Clearing her throat, Babda beat the two names with her knuckles, and unfurled a three-quarter smile.

The door creaked back.

“Mother--” the greeting began, but the inhabitant was swished past by brisk boots.

“I always said, Abeyance, that when one of us became maritally disentangled, we should become devoted to each other.” Babda looked around the room for a surface, found one, and cleared it. “And now, I've grown...” Weary? Disillusioned? Words offered themselves up, but were ignored. “...divorced of your father.” She plopped down her grip, lowered her shoulders an inch, and held out her arms in defeat. Abey obeyed with a hug.

Babda had been served with a writ and physically removed from her husband's premises. So Abey had allowed her homeless mother to make a semi-permanent visit. And now, for five autumn days, her mum's aproned abdomen had floated through their cluttered little cottage without incident.

Peter Praline had always lived among crooked towers of dusty books, and these required even extra cleaning.

Babda roamed the rooms as if on wheels, using her squeaky shoulder contraption to siphon up dust that she noticed sifting down from the dirt ceiling. Sometimes she caught it before it reached the floor. The sucking sound of an Alchemic Ablutions Particule-Recombinerator was a complicated ha-runkle-futz, as it was not only sucking in dirt but chemically recombining it into dust-particules of purest gold. It was a fourth-order magicle her former husband had invented. He built the Recombinerator, but he had not named it. The naming had been handled by her.

When the sucking had finally stopped, Babda drew herself to the open window and watched the pollenating breezes gather. She knew many of them by name. One left a fig leaf on the windowsill, next to a potted bluebell. Babda held the leaf up to the light, then tucked it in one of her apron's multitudinal pockets. The wind grinned.

Above her head, the briar roots tendriled in and out of the ceiling. Peter had hung glass beads from some of these to bounce sunshine around the room. White octagons and parallelograms with rainbowed edges played on the old patches of plaster. The beams and flickers pleased Babda and she buffed a bead every hour or so with her wiping kerchief. Mr. Praline, as she had come to call him, appreciated all her buffing.

On the sixth day of her stay, Babda noticed Peter embarking, with his trusty dog, Peter, on a muddy trudge through the Jabbot Field's wheat grasses. So Babda put away her Recombinerator, removed her Wednesday apron, and opened Abey's bedroom door without knocking.

“Abeyance, my dear, I'm a tiny bit concerned. Actually, basically, curtly, didactically...” Babda continued to modify her concern alphabetically, unsure just how to phrase it. “I'm... worried maybe your son shouldn't move back home quite yet.”

Abeyance frowned. “Phenyl has a name, mother. And this is your grandson you're talking about.” Phenyl was staying with his father near the Stone Keep of the Mouth of Mealladh. The reason why wasn't discussed. “What do you mean my son shouldn't come home?”

“Abey, that boyling. He's so difficult. So rebellious.” Babda fluffed Abey's bed pillows and smoothed her quilt. “His father is better equipped to handle him right now.”

This was all true. Phenyl was 14 and foul. He argued. He refused. He smoked sage in secret. Phenyl was in that between stage of life where the boy of him still hated bathing, while the man of him now required it.

“Abeyance,” pleaded Babda, “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.” Abey's voice grew louder. “Phenyl's father is sending him home on the 10th. I've readied his room.” Phenyl's room was at the end of a dark hallway. It opened into a windowless den of blacklit toadstools and dragon books. Peter and Phenyl shared an interest in the Blue Dragons of Strathgryffe.

Babda kicked a stray leaf under the bed. “However, I would hate to see that boy come between you and Mr. Praline.” The wind snarled.

Abey scoffed, and then looked at her mother as if the first time. “That won't happen.”

“But I'm afraid it could, Abeyance. I'm afraid that if Phenyl comes home, Mr. Praline might leave you.”

Abey's mind went blank.

How dare she?

Her brain sputtered. She was suddenly a kid, losing at checkers. Her brain clunked back into the reality of her bedroom.

“What?”

Her mother was speaking for Peter now? Her mother barely knew Peter. She feigned trouble pronouncing his name. But now she was speaking for him?

This behavior was new. It was familiar, but new in its push. It pricked more suddenly.

When had Abey felt this before? Her father, more ogre than faery. Obstreperous. Turbulent. A gravel voice of his own, but had he maybe allowed this woman to speak for him?

Abey's fingers tightened around the doorknob. Maybe he had.

Surely he had.

Abeyance breathed out. She turned to the window and watched the gloaming seep in, negating the field with its shadow. Her small hands smoothed her skirt. Body waters pooled in her mouth and she excused herself. “Mother, I have some carrots to pull.”

~~~~~~~

Abey lay in the crook of a brooding tree for some time. The bark scratched at her skirt and dented her skin. Abey sniffed at its trunk. Then, a deep smelling. The wood of a Cobnut brooding tree gave off a rummy odor that faerys found contemplative. Abey's anger melted into an original sadness that pointed backwards, always pointed backwards. Abey hugged her knees and sighed.

She refused to look backwards.

Instead, she stared out over Jabbot's Field to the castle snugged down in the valley. Evening lights flickered in the first-floor kitchen. The castle cook was a bulbous woman named Nadurtha. She'd be boiling her bay stock by now, a frumply bubbling brew the faery could almost hear. Sometimes Abey would share her conundrums with the cook, who enjoyed untangling them over a bowl of caraway soup.

Maybe tomorrow.

A deliberate cloud began to form above the Cobnut tree. Slowly, it sprinkled itself in drip-drops on Abey's nose. She flung it an ireful glance.

Summoning the sea, this persistent cloud grew, raining out a rhythm on the leaves, on the leaves, on the leaves, on the leaves. “Clutch,” the raining whispered. “Clutch the leaves, clutch the leaves, clutch the leaves.” Abey dropped all her thoughts and listened. Feeling dared, she reached up to grab hold of a Cobnut leaf, but the limb pulled back, affronted. Why were brooding trees always so sensitive?

The wind hummed.

Eventually, she dragged herself back home. All was quiet. The living room glowed from the light of the bluebell lamp, in its clay pot on the windowsill. Next to the pot sat Babda's leather purse, its mouth, wide-open as a bass. Abey peeked inside and saw all the leaves that had been greedily stuffed there. It looked like mother was hoarding tea again.

“The leaves,” came the thought. “He might leave.”

Then another voice. “Mr. Praline might leave you.”

Abey laughed.

A simple spell? That's what this was? A well-orchestrated leaving?

She needed to find him.

Pupils big and black, she searched the unlit rooms for Peter. The commodery was empty. The bedroom, unentered. But she could hear something burning. The spit and death of an ember. In the kitchen, by the hearth, she found him reading, steeped as a poultice in tales of dragonly exploit on the hills of Cairn Gorm.

“My mother has predicted you'll leave me.” With arms folded, she waited for him to laugh.

Peter peered up and over his reading glasses. “Hm?”

“She told me, Peter, that if Phenyl came back home, you'd leave me.”

Peter failed to react.

“Can you even believe that?” Abeyance primed him, but Peter said nothing.

“I mean, what a meddlesome thing to say. What complete nose-butting! Who does she think she is, speaking for you?”

Peter folded his book closed. He was, at his best, a corner dweller. A pipe smoker who spoke sparingly. But on this particular occasion, he stood up and cleared his throat for battle. “Well,” he said, “she may have something there,” and he left the room before Abey could respond.

Outside her window, the wind laughed.

---

This story isn't finished.
It's merely Chapter 1 of of what will become
the faery portion of my larger novel, Gallowglass,
which also includes a long metered poem, Grendel's Aunt.
But the Marvelous Tales contest, put on by @playfulfoodie,
has given me a great motivation to delve into this segment of the novel,
and a wonderful leaf / wind device in which to couch Babda's spell.
Thank you @playfulfoodie!

I'd like to also thank my friends at the MSP Fiction Workshop
for all their red ink!
Specifically, @pegasusphysics, @jrhughes, and @bex-dk.

All images courtesy pixabay.com.