Economous Musgrove Chapter 3

Welcome to a new week, welcome to chapter 3 - the whole chapter for it is a touch shorter than its previous two siblings. 

I have made note for second draft (if this proceeds that far... ) to check for one dimensionality in Lord Fold, and for info dumping at the very start (to see if these crimes are actually so or just simply tricks of perception versus intent). That said, as you know from MBT, I have this tendency to write rather tightly from a character's point of view, we see the world much as they see it, we know what they know, we go where they go - seldom do I do third party, author omniscient cut-aways: not sure why that is - the "Sauron effect" maybe (= we never know what the antagonists are doing kind of thing...)?

Anyhoo, fascinated to know what you all make of this week's offering - keep the comments coming.

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 3

A Fear Faced

word ~ definition …………

The next morning – and two days after the first possibly threwdish encounter – Economous found himself once more at the gate of the weird park, peering uneasily into the shadows ahead, unsure to go ahead but loath to retreat and let another day pass pinched by indecision.

It was a strangely unsettled day, low heavy clouds an unbroken pale grey, blustering winds oddly warm and unable to decide whether they were easterly or northerly – blowing down from the vast threwdish grasslands that stood between the southern city-states and their Imperial capital.

For motivations Economous did not fully comprehend, it had seemed appropriate to him to come garbed as finely as his meagre resources allowed: his shirt, longshanks and trews new washed, his neckerchief freshly pressed and tied with a full and highly fashionable gather about his throat, his coat brushed thrice and picked clean of grime. Yet he was not about to stroll naïvely into this bosom of danger. In his hand he gripped his calibrator, grateful for the five years training he had had in bastinado arts, and at his hip swung salt-pouch holding several doses of bothersalts – tiny bags of smarting chemistry to hurl at any monstrous threat. Yet, with all this preparation, all his determination, he hesitated still upon the very brink of the Mouldwood. Some echo of an upstanding citizen within fretted that he really ought tell the rightful organs of civil wellbeing about his albeit brief and increasingly uncertain discovery.

How many folk had glimpsed this creature?

As threwdish as it might be, the Mouldwood must be visited by other souls – though Economous could recall seeing anyone else.

Economous let out a short bitter bark of a laugh.

What a hoot it would be! A city full of folk holding such a shocking secret and no one telling another it for fear.

If I do tell – came the immediate counter – what then if I am believed?

The Mouldwood would surely be burned, the scorch-dead land cleared and turned into a swarming suburb or a sweltering tanning district or some other teaming cradle of filth and enginry. He for one was not about to be the cause for such despoilment.

On either turn it was all conjecture; if he had not been able yet to bring himself to even tell his beautiful Asthetica of the monstrous encounter, there was little chance of his confessing it to some starchy city master.

Some subtle movement in the gloom focused his attention and he spied a lone rabbit emerge about two score and ten yards in among the exposed roots of an age-ed olive that reached up over the single path that led so perilously – so invitingly – into the city-bound wood. A rather large specimen brown of  body and black of face and a drooping left ear, the rabbit appeared to stare boldly at Economous, almost daring the would-be fabulist to shake of his reluctance and enter the darksome park once more. Teeth Grit, Economous took one step and crossed the threshold from drab city bustle into hushed threwdish mystery, the very decision giving him momentum that took him directly to the crooked olive and its beastial watcher. As he drew close the hefty rabbit turned but rather than bounding away as Economous fully expected, it loped nonchalantly ahead with what seemed very much an attitude of haughty assurance – if a mere animal could possess such manners. Halting upon the path a little further in, it sat now to smuggly observe what its everyman guest would chose next.

What else could Economous do but follow?

Ears a-thump with rushing humours, feeling like his five-year-old self returning at last into the forbidden, forbidding hearthwood, he played the game of come-get-me with this self-important buck-rabbit, letting himself be drawn deeper and deeper until all he was aware of was the rhythm this slow, steady chase. Of a sudden, the rabbit sprang away. In a twinkling his guide was gone, breaking the fascination sharply and leaving Economous alone in this dim park, blinking like a man just waking from a long night’s slumber. Peering confusedly about, the would-be fabulist found himself much farther than he had ever ventured into the Mouldwood before, standing in a shallow dell surrounded by low olives and not a glimpse of an exiting path to be seen. All was hushed in this wooded gloom, no ringing of clatter of carriages nor faint but unmistakable cries of moll potnies, pamphlet sellers, posy hawkers, and begging songbirds, just the whoosh and gust of the fractious wind in olive boughs. The sensation of being in some isolated setting far from walls or streets or the safety of crowding people was no longer a trick of imagination but an abrupt and very present certainty. It seemed to him that the very trees ringing him about and the ground beneath knewthat he was there, marked his presence and were not entirely pleased about it.

The threwd!

He had once thought the Mouldwood untamed, yet what he previously knew was its mere fringes; here he found himself in a veritable wildwood, the darkling trees encircled so tightly – so threateningly – the warm wind clattering and  rushing in the boughs above, an ominous racket under heavy grey sky. With each disoriented step the unwelcoming watchfulness thickened, until Economous was glancing repeatedly over either shoulder and starting in fright at every twitch of branch or shadow.

Jumping at shadows…

So this all had just been a trick of rabbits after all.

Seeking to clear his overwraught mind with a violent shake of his head, the would-be fabulist regreted his descision to return to this blighted wood at all.

Think, man, think!

Though the sun was hidden fully behind the day’s dull vaporous blanket, he had a notion of finding his way out by the guide of the compass moss spread up and down many trunks. Even an ill-attentive nilyard – metrician-prentice – such as he had once been remembered well enough that such growth was to be found only on the southern side of a tree. Yet, at first inspection, every trunk seemed completely arrayed – south, north, east and west – in shaggy grey or scaly yellow. Flinging his hands up in frustration, Economous turned completely about and in the very midst of this action caught a hint carried on the boisterous wind of what might have been …

Music?

Unsure, his head cocked against the blusters to hear better, stepping forward to follow this tenuous hint. The threwd almost throbbing at every hand, the hint resolved into a queer kind of strumming, plucking music, ringing out from the very midst of the trees.

Perhaps it is someone playing from their house on the farther side?

With every stride the sublime melody filled him, setting the fine sympathies of his creative acuity ringing, drawing him into its charm. Economous quickly found his soul thrumming in sympathy, a-tremble with an ache for a lost beauty he had never known existed. His extremities to tingling, he found himself weeping that such wondrous splendour was now no more, then felt a lift of hope as he found in the melody itself both an expression and a fulfilment of a great urgency to keep even some tiny fragment of that impossible primordial innocence alive.

Oh, such soaring marvels of ecstatic enchantment!

Was it happiness?

Was it sadness?

Was it a kind of pain?

More than anything, he wanted to be at the source of that music, to behold for himself the author of such inexplicable wonder.

Then, all too quickly, the ancient soul-invading melody ceased.

“NO!” Economous could not help but cry out his dismay.

Bereft, he stumbled on, desperate now to dwell once again and forever more in that sonorous place of memory and warmth and a clear soul. Sobbing, staggering headlong, he tripped upon some obscured obstacle and collasped hands and knees to damp cool weeds, his hat all that he carried flying from him in his fall. Jarred back to something like proper sense, Economous sat back on his haunches, shamefacedly wiping the tears from cheek and jowl. Reaching out to collect his accoutrements he began to make out a more general brightness to his right, through the dim twilight. Putting his tricorn back atop his head, he clambered to his feet and went immediately for this glowing clarity, dodging about haphazard trunks and stumbling on warrenholes or crooked roots unseen in the wild grasses.

The diffusion of light proved to be a glade, a stark cavity amongst the thickness of trees in which stood a circular house on a high foundation – an ancient ruined variety of the rounded bottomholms still built by the long-conquered Pilts out in sokelands of about Lo – its mouldering bricks fallen about its feet in weed-grown piles, its windows gaping cavities. The once high-pitched roof was collapsed and gone, its several crude chimnies half toppled and sprouting yellow soursobs and purple sweetjane from their crumbling mortar. Leaves rattling and hissing in the wind, an enormous elderly olive grew from the very midst of the ruin, its venerable beams spreading wide over the crooked rim and making a new roof to shelter it.

The watchfulness felt heaviest here, though perhaps a mite less unfriendly.

The building was so decayed that the nearest side of its great foundation had tumbled open to reveal the undercrofts within. Glory-vine was spread over the cavity, its leaves glaring crimson despite the lateness of the year and among the  bright unseasonal colour, Economous spied the buck-rabbit sitting easy as if it had been waiting there for him all along. It seemed to be regarding the would-be fabulist in reproach – if such an expression was possible in a dumb animal. Unfoundedly certain that this precocious creature would ken where the beautiful, all-conquering music had gone, Economous approached the fallen down house, that unmanning desire for the intoxicating melody rising all-too-quickly again in his bosom. Clambering to the gap he entered willingly into the the cellar gloom, the rabbit retreating before him, its coal-black eyes twinkling with a mischievous gleam from the shadows of the undercroft proper. His yearning for the return of primal melody compelling him on, he followed his fractious guide deeper, ducking his head beneath the low curve of a dark tunnel like passage that deposited him in an ill-lit cavity that must have been in the very midst of the roundhouse. Here was the basal trunk of the elderly olive tree, creaking and groaning in the wind, the wild rattling of its arid, gust-torn leaves echoing and re-echoing down into cavity until it was like a hissing clattering thunder.

Somewhere the dull distant ringing of a noonday bell came with the wind, tolling into Economous’ awareness, breaking the enthralment, leaving him bereft but sensible now to the threwd pressing in on him like an ache in his head. Something else was here with him, something much greater than any over-sized buck-rabbit, something sitting oh so very still between ancient roots in the shadowy bole of the olive.

“What is a womb-born doing so deep inside my borders?” a rasping deep voice spoke, coming as from all about Economous, its question like an inquiry made to the entire cosmos.

Though he had heard it but once before, the would-be fabulist knew this voice instantly: for it was surely the rabbit-and-cat creature!

By an instinct – unsteadily though it might have been – formed from four years of unceasing practice, Economous brandished his calibrator and shifted his feet reflexively to the first defensive stance.

The shade stirred. “You will not be needing sticks nor the fine tricks that go with their wielding, young everyman,” the sonorous voice crooned from one corner or another, from above and from below.

Transfixed between terror and the need to know, to properly and fully see, Economous watched eyes wide as the shade silently stood – or more truly, unfolded. Getting taller and taller still as it unbent, until it finally rose erect, towering over him on long slender shanks bent awkwardly like a rabbit’s, and ending in feet of downy rabbit’s paws. Great ears upon his head – rabbits ears, he realised, but surely two foot or more in length themselves – made it more enormous still. To Economous’ astonishment, it wore a frock-coat of rich glistening indigo – such an expanse of cloth that could have garbbed Economous three times over – embroidered on its cuffs and at its hems with curling frolicking rabbits in golden thread. He knew well enough that monsters sometimes stole and dressed in clothes, but to actually see something so alien and bestial dressed as fine as any aristocratic soul of the city was disturbing, incongruous and charming in one.

The blustering element chose its own moment to bring drama to the meeting, clouds splitting for a moment to let warm spring light upon the countenance of the monstrous thing. The face was more terrible and even more cat-like than first impressions told, the pale eyes narrowed and feline and fixing him with a sharp, shrewd gaze.

“Well-a-do, brave everyman,” it declare in that low rasping, “I am the Lapinduce, the Duke of Rabbits, true lord and master of this city.”

Economous Musgrove Chapter 2 Part 2

Hello hello, I hope you have all been well over the last week, and I hope you enjoy this next instalment.

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 2

A thing that ought not be

part 2

Asthetica’s arrival provoked her mother, Madamine Grouse, to emerge from the ground floor door of her private sanctums. Tall and still slender despite three children and being well on the reverse slope of her prime, she bustled out with a hiss and rush of many silken skirts like a sea-born gale to throw her arms about her daughter.

“Oh oh, my wenigblüte!” she cried, her accent thick with the Gottish roll despite many years away from her homeland far across the Pontus Canis to the south-east. “My little blossom! Home to me once more. How I dread that someday it will be a skopp-boy instead to tell me that you are ground to powder under the wheels of those awful flecheschatchel and be returned to me as nothing more zan a sack of powder.”

“Mama…” Asthetica glanced the merest long-suffering glance to Economous. “You know full well I do not work with the gastrine mills, mama,” she continued her role in the game. “The worst I might suffer is to be smothered under a great pile of paper.”

These two played much the same game every time he was there to witness he beloved’s workday homecoming.

“Oh, how can you say such horrors to your dearest old ma-ma!” Madamine Grouse demanded with a pitch close to a wail. “You know how I fret myself to frays over you with untermensch – monsters – loose on every turn and circuit…”

At this a tall man entered the vestibule and graced the entire scene with a broad, knowing smile but saving his longest most oily looks for Asthetica herself. Though only a few years ahead of Econmous in age, the fellow was entire vaults filled with coin ahead in quality of dress.

It was Monsiere the Lord Sprandis Fold, Reive of Lot-in-the-Hole.

So far below the man in station that a mere word from him could have them wisked off to the Duke’s Bench, Binbrindle and Economous immediately bowed – just as they ought – offering a duet of “M’lord” as they did.

The Reive scarcely apprehended them, releasing them from their obeisance with a flick of his velvet-gloved hand.

Glossy was the only word Economous could think to describe the man as he straightened: glossy brightblack slippers, glossy silken trews, glossy plum longshanks and matching frockcoat, glossy fullbottom wig of fashionable silver, and – worst of all – betwixt glossy locks and glossy white neckerchief, a glossy unblemished smile. What woman would not be swept up by such dazzling cockery?

A pearl would be shamed to stand in this man’s presence, Economous concluded sourly feeling very drab indeed. He could not even dismiss the fellow as a high-stepping fluff; for primped and fashionable as the Reive of Lot-in-the-Hole might have been, he had not strayed into the kinds of sartorial excesses – huge bows, enormous ruffled neckerchiefs, fur-lined everything – of a vain and ludicrous dandidawdler.

“The Lord Fold has so very kindly brought me home today, ma ma,” Asthetica declared with pointed attention to her mother, yet her cheeks flushed with such pretty pleasure at such a focus of male attention.

For the merest pulse of a humour Economous was certain he witnessed an  expression of utter horror twist the mother’s face as she comprehended just who it was that stood resplendent in her shabby vestibule. However grandiose her ambitions for her daughter, it had clearly never figured in her reckonings that Asthetica would bring her exulted prize home.

“A kindness indeed, my gracious Lord,” Madamine Grouse proclaimed with a shrill display of delight, curtseying low with a cracking of knee joints and back bone. “Such more zan any others can do for my wenigblüte, I am sure,” she added with the briefest, sidelong scowl at the two lowly gents left hapless on the stairs.

“T’was a trifling, good lady.” The Lord Fold took the lowly landlady by the hand becked a genteel bow as she were a duchess of state herself.

Eyelashes fluttering girlishly fast as any bee’s wings, Madamine Grouse palid face transmuted to a scarlet hue Economous had never thought possible in such a habitually sour mien. Fer several beats her mouth made breathless “oh’s” of delight, until she finally declared, “Such handsome treatment, sir! Such handsome treatment!” Released once more, the madamine took Asthetica by the hand and drew her daughter towards the door of their ground floor apartment. “If you please, my lord, allow me und my delight some moments to refreshourselves,” she said with a harsh and nervous laugh, bobbing and nodding obsequiously even as she retreated.

“Refit and refurbish, a-hey – as the vinegaroons on the docks would say,” Bidbrindle offered with a friendly chuckle.

Backing through her domestic portal, Madamine Grouse glared at him from the shrinking gap, her eyes communicating perfectly just how inappropriate such terms were to be applied to ladies, and in the presence of gentry too!

Awkward, throat-clearing, foot-shuffling minutes commenced  and ground on. Leaving the two lesser men unreleased, Lord Fold seemed quite content to stand in silence, leaning on his silver-topped baton and staring at a yellowing patch in the green paint above the Grouse’ family door. He paid no mind at all to the other two men, yet neither Economous nor clearly the violin-maker had felt themselves unable to go on with their own small, pointless lives.

With a stout ruttle, Bidbrindle bravely undertook his marvellous tale of the black-elder viol on the Reive who looked at the violin maker in a show listening but clearly barely comprehended him nor saw the need to.

At the place in Bidbrindle’s telling where the rosewood was being ordered from Turkmantine, the Reive suddenly spoke. “You there!” he demanded of the violin-maker, stopping the poor fellow dumb. “Go out to my fit and let my bridleman know I shall be some time yet.”

“How will I know which fit is your, m’lord?” poor Bidbrindle asked, even as he moved to comply.

To this Lord Fold arched a brow and gave an impatient nod. “It is immediately outside. I can assure you, you will tell it from all others…”

Whether by strength of wind or a trained and broken soul, Binbrindle becked and humbly obeyed, stepping outside.

As the heavy front swung open then shut again, Economous caught a glimpse of two heavy set fellows without, waiting on either side of the door : the Reive’s spurns – his personal guards – little doubt, glowering at all passers and patently ill-at-ease.

Abruptly the Reive fixed his attention on Economous. “I do believe I know you, man,” he declared bluntly.

“M – me, m’lord?” Economous blinked.

“Aye indeed, man,” Lord Fold returned. “I have been puzzling on it o’er and o’er these many minutes gone, ‘Where is it that I have beheld such a distinctively lank-locked and  underfed face before?’ I never forget a face, you see. Once seen, it is in,” he tapped his smooth brow with a velvet-gloved finger. “And now I have it!”

Lank-locked, Economous did not hide his frown. Underfed! “And where have you seen me, m’lord?” he asked if only to divert his offended sensibilities.

“At the great gala that strutting foreign duchess-heir held at the fore o’ month: you were a scribbler there scribbling all the illustrious faces. My how you must have been agog to be surrounded by such glories, such heights of society – it’s a wonder you could draw at all. Still, my wife was well pleased with your work.

Wife? Economous’ scandalised mind lurched. Had the man meant to tell this? He was clearly careless of his company, but surely the Reive was not thiscontemptuous?

Lord Fold went on without a pause, as if nothing so extraordinary had passed his indulged and pouting lips. “‘Tis pity that that appalling Branden Rose dame was your first employer, m’boy, else I might have had you along as a curiosity at my own upcoming Lestwich Tide. Were she still here I would absolutely have to have you, but she is – as the papers say – run off again on some outrageous errand, no doubt to marry some monster if the buzz about certain circles is to be believed… It is a wonder the Emperor did not demand an explaining when he was with us a fortnight ago. She, of course, was not in the city – but if I were he I would have summoned her right back from where’er she is supposed to have slunk off.”

In his growing dismay Economous barely remarked any of this.  Asthetica cannot surely know that he is wed already, can she? “You said have a wife, m’lord?” he said, daring to draw out the appalling revelation so carelessly disclosed.

Yet in the very moment of utterance he was saved  what would have most likely been a dangerously withering remark and the more dangerous ire of a well placed peer by the racket of the simultaneous return of Bidbrindle back from street and Madamine and Miss Grouse emerged again from their boudoir.

Dressed in fold upon fold of glistening cloth-of-silver draped over petticoats of blood red then pristine white, Asthetica stopped all noise dead with her expensive splendour.

Gazing at her with cool yet patent hunger, the Reive crooked his arm for Asthetica to lay her hand upon, which she now did with a mannered kind of grace. He then said something he obviously found funny for he laughed loud and look-at-me drawing a shrill bray of uncomprehending mirth from the two women as he swept his beautiful companion out and away.

Dumbstruck, Economous watched them leave, utterly flummoxed as to how it was he could save Asthetica from heartbreak and shame without shaming her or breaking her heart instead.

Stamping her foot to get attention, Madamine Grouse gave a scornful sniff.

The young man and the older look at her as one.

“I have reckoned ze new rent arrears to ze start of spring,” she said with sharp tones so very appropriate to such sharp practice. “You owe me ze difference!” she proclaimed sourly without looking either man in the eye and slammed the door.

Turning and climbing the stairs to his own apartment, Bidbrindle tipped a knowing nod to Economous, as if he and the young concometrist belonged together in the same hopeless chase. “Raised rents equals fine dresses, methinks,” he said with a smirk, and retired.

Clearly too age-ed and frowsty and full of dull stories, that Bidbrindle fathomed his own cause with Asthetica to be a thin ruse was admirable self-knowledge; that he thought Economous was his fellow member in such a forlorn school was a bitter brew. Feeling thwarted and furious with himself, Economous climbed the shuddering, groaning flights to his cramped garret and lay a-bed on his tandem chair among the frames and boards and the greasy smell of seed oil, the gusting turmoil without a perfect twin of that within.

Was he to let all of his life be stymied by fear?

Was everything he reached for to be somehow snatched away as impossible?

Yet as wind battered angrily against the narrow shutters, it seemed to him that facing the Mouldwood was a less frightening prospect than exposing the blackguard Fold and laying himself soul-bared to Asthetica.

 

I will act then, he determined and with that, fell asleep.

Economous Musgrove Chapter 2 Part 1

Well-a-day once more, yet more Economous. I have a whole chapter to deliver but split it in two to keep to the 1000-1500 word limit I set myself. This limit is entirely arbitrary so if you would like more words at once just say.

More importantly, thank you for your words, comments, encouragements - I have not been responding much in the comments but I am definitely reading each one gratefully.

I have been thinking about the apparent "slow" start, the "info dump" of it and in part think that yes it does perhaps need review; yet when I consider the classics I have enjoyed find that many of these can begin in such a fashion, that such a start is consistent with the form of style and cannot help but wonder if it were in an actual book format whether it would feel nearly quite so "info dumpy" as it does in this electronic format, where expectations are different...? Hmm.

Anyway, on with the show.

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 2

A thing that ought not be

part 1

word ~ definition …………

All night Economous lay upon his tandem-chair, wondering, steadily doubting that he had seen what he had seen, dreaming of rabbits leaping from bushes and alleys. In the morning he rose unwilling to return to the Moldwood, just as he had been unwilling to go back into the doubly-forbidden hearthwood of Lo when he was small. Yet as the day progressed, he could not shake his fascination nor quash the steadily increasing need to seek a repetition of the encounter and resolve what in his intellectuals – his thinking – he held as unlikely yet his wind – his soul – held as certain. By mid afternoon he found himself ambling upon the opposite walk of South Arm, past the shabby park’s east gate, glancing at the iron-bound entrance and the dark trees beyond repeatedly through the bustle of carriage and handcart. Up and back he went, almost toppling into several well dressed day-strolling folks many times in his inattention to his actual path.

For its part, the Moldwood was as quiet and inscrutable as ever.

Surely what he had witnessed yesterday was an imaginary figmurement?

The dark treetops swayed in the freshening breeze of the afternoon pipistrelle – so common in Spring – and seemed to beckon the would-be fabulist within.

Finally Economous dared to cross to the gate side of South Arm but as he approached the black-wrought portal he spied the same water-caddie of the day before standing beneath a red lamppost not two hundred yards further down past the gate, crying, “Goose a gulp!”

As if prompted by the regard upon him, the fellow turned and regarded Economous closely, an amused wisdom growing clear on the forward fellow’s mien.

With a small start and thinking himself observed in his absurdity, Economous refused to lets his cheeks redden but with a tug on his neckerchief and a touch to his hat, hurried past the gate, the park and the water-caddie and made for the long miles back to his garret.

As the sun hid himself behind the Branden Downs – the low hills northwest of the great city – in a blaze of storm-promising orange, Economous footsore and ill-humoured finally found home. Shaded Rafters was its unlikely name: a narrow four storied tenement nigh identical to all its long row of neighbours on this close lane in the down-at-heel suburb of Merry-the-boon – dank, ill-repaired and necessarily affordable.

Scarcely up the first flight of uneasy stairs when a bang and bustle of the front door opening in the vestibule where he had just been below gave Economous a happy jolt for anticipation of Asthetica’s return. Yet the arrival was too bustling and too loud to be her. Rather it was Mister Bidbrindle Gleens – violin maker, neighbour and one of Economous rivals for fair Asthetica’s regard – returning from his working shop in fine suburb of Risen Mole.

“Hullo hullo!” Mister Bidbrindle called with unusually elevated cheer the very instant he spied Economous peering at him from the landing atop the first flight. Though he must surely have reckoned that Economous was a competitor in wooing, the violin-maker always spoke with great civility to his younger opponent. Clearly itching with some great tale, Bidbrindle waved Economous to remain even as the would-be fabulist tried to turn and retreat at last to the bless-ed gloom of his garret.

With a silent sigh, Economous gave the older man respect and did as he was bidden.

“You would not credit what was granted to me to heal this week, sir,” Bidbrindle declared excitedly, perching himself between the second and forth step.

“I would if I could, sir,” Economous said, nodding a polite bow and – his tricorn off and wedged beneath his arm – touching his crown.

Needing scant encouragement, the violin-maker continued with but a breath. “I was strolling this very morn up Baker’s Lane to start my daily labours,” he said in the rehearsed manner of someone who has told certain information many times already that day, “when upon nearing my humble workshop I spied a pavillion and six – six horse, sir! – drawn up at the very door. The Signals know how often such fine fits come for that sleuthing fellow who occupies the entire top floor space above my own humble workshop. But today – today!– the fine carriage was for me, sir. Can you credit it!”

Economous shook his head dutifully.

“Out steps the personal servant of a body of the highestconsequence – a body who I am undertaken with the solemnest of promises to always hold secret – to summon me away. No sooner was I aboard than we are hurtling to a location I am equally sworn to never divulge, where amongst great opulence, this body of consequence shows to me a viol passed to him from some obscure relative, saying it was in sore need of repair and that I – I!– was the only artisan he would trust such delicate work to. Oh, how my eyes poked from their seat when I beheld the instrument…” He paused in the gravity of imminent revelation.

Economous blinked.

“It was a Cordialis,” Bidbrindle declared with delighted solemnity. “A Cordialis!” he repeated when his listener’s only replied was a blank mein. “It is old as a still tuneful viol can get, m’boy! It is so old and so precious its neck and tailpiece are fashioned of black elder.”

At this Economous was final moved to genuine excitement.

Held to possess wondrous properties and highly prized by carpenters and habilists alike, black elder was so rare as to be almost mythic. The  common soul on the street would scarce know what to make of the stuff – just some dark pretty wood – but to the connoisseur and the learned who had even an inkling of its manifold qualities it was highly prized as the rarest and the best of woods. Only the lumber of the even rarer almug-tree was held in greater esteem. Economous had seen some once – and only once in the hallowed vaults of Athingdon Athy where Master [……NAME……] had shown the anthenaeum’s single precious item – a small saltbox made from the stuff, a beautiful little item, Yet, what had most impressed him at the time was the rare wood’s spicy sweet perfume.

“Oh!” Mister Gleens went on in pompous satisfaction at this reaction in his listener, “if only I could show it to you, you would marvel, sir, marvel! But alas, its owner will never suffer to have such a precious heirloom leave the safety of their palatial halls. Well for me it is not this wood that needs mending – not that it should, black elder is always true – for there is nowhere I know to get more without recourse to deals with the black habilists and their dark partners. Be that as it is, what work does need to be done has had me sending to far away Turkmantine for the finest rosewood they po…”

The quiet thump of front door opening once more instantly captured Economous attention away and it was quickly transmuted to joy as he first heard the swish and soft step that were oh so sweetly familiar to him and then beheld the subject of his longing.

“Asthetica!” Mister Bidbindle proclaimed, springing with admirable alacrity in an older man from his step to the vestibule. “All the flowers of Arbustrum have flowered in one!

Before them was revealed a vision to render the desire for such paltry things as black elder or fine viols suddenly base and common.

Hair the raven-black of deepest coolest midnight, wide eyes grey like storm-tossed sky; face an ideal oval of pure marmoreal pallor; the rose-buds of her Hamlin-bow lips dented so perfectly in the middle and dimpled so prettily at the cheeks, often expressing gorgeous little “O’s” of wonder; lithe of limb and of form, her every action quiet and considered: thiswas Asthetica Grouse. Clad in a simple stomacher skirt of sombre grey to match her gleaming often solemn eyes, with a black bonnetbow holding back her equally raven tresses, Asthetica was dressed almost as drably as a servant, yet her radiance remained undiminished. For this epitome of beauty, this exemplar of femanine wonder, was also a member of those most modern of modern innovations: a dollymop – a girl-at-work – fetching and filing for an underclerk to a lesser secretary of a minor responsibility at Fribbles Determined Franchisements. What Fribbles Determined Franchisements actually did, Economous had never been able to fathom, but they certainly employed a great many young middling station women to help them do it. Flustered and dishevelled, to Economous she was a vision of Atopian Dido herself.

 “Good evening, Mister Gleens,” she said, bobbing ever so slightly as she spoke with a fine address that told of the expensive day-school education her mother and long dead father had striven to afford her. “Good evening, Mister Musgrove.” She smiled at him with that smile he liked to imagine he never saw her give to another.

“Miss Grouse,” Economous returned, bowing low in his turn and wishing he could just seize her up in his arms.

Economous Musgrove Chapter 1 Part 3

Well-a-day to you all and welcome to a new week and the proper beginning of my intent to regularly post the continuing tale of Economous Musgrove, illustrator, some-time concometrist and would-be fabulist, and  citizen of Brandenbrass. It must be said that I cannot promise that this will succeed as a story, but I am willing to try if your are willing to go with me come what may. 

Either way, let us get on with part 3 ...

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 1, part 3

Breathing deeply of the tepid leafy perfume of the wooded park, he heaved a long sigh seeking to expel his fretting with that great exhalation. Curling and uncurling his bare toes in the grasses kept cropped and neat by many rabbit mouths, he allowed himself to bask for a beat or two of his humours in the dapple of sunlight touching his face as the day orb reached the acme of its meridian. Ringed about by hawthorn, the bench that was his seat was far enough in that he could almost pretend the city and its press of cares was not there. He tilted his head slightly so that the pale leaves of a stand of plane trees screened the banal sight of a chimney and a ridgecap. For this moment he let himself believe that he was out in proper woods wide, unfettered by taming walls, free of woes and weights, living each day as though it was new and unspoiled. A kind of music that was not quite music started in his soul singing of a longing for a great before when all things were simpler and bright …

With a snort and a startled blink, Economous roused himself.

“Was I sleeping?” he wondered in a whisper.

Bringing his attention pointedly to the scrawl of rabbits bounding over the open page of his numrelogue, Economous became sharply aware that the threwd of the park had thickened, became more intent, more deliberate in its watchfulness. In all the months he had been coming here such a thing had never happened before. A chill shuddering down his backbone, Economous turned first to his right, peering futilely into the wooded gloom seeing nothing but leaves, branches, trunks growing haphazard as if a true wild wood, stretching back in to the deeps of the park behind him.

“You have a commendable discernment of subject, womb-born,” came a deep, oddly purring voice over his other shoulder.

Pivoting in a twinkling he found himself peering straight into one of the queerer sights he had ever beheld. Partly thrust from thick hawthorn growth was the face of a greatly oversized rabbit – well, more the combination of rabbit and something more feline, its great ears errect and swivelling as it looked on the would-be fabulist with what to all the Alle looked like mirth. Suddenly this creature bent close and breathed upon him. Instantly his senses were overwhelmed with the thick perfume of honeysuckle and the odour of new-turned earth that brought happy thoughts of the vegetable plot at Athingdon Athy.

With a jolt, Economous remembered that he ought to be afraid. Shouting in wordless fright, he seized his calibrator and his thricehigh and sprang away, hareing barefooted down the lawn and the scant path, heedless of thorns and prickles in the lawn, leaving all the rest of his belongings to that … that thing as he dashed from that haunted parkland. Through its gate and safe out on the South Arm – the street of cloes-built half houses and merchant vendors that ran along the Mouldwood’s eastern boudary – Economous halted. His days were tough enough; he would not be deprived of his shoes and trews, nor of his numrelogue, satchel or the well-proofed frockcoat that had already preserved him from a deadly blow dealt many years ago.

Squaring his thricehigh determinedly upon his crown, the would-be fabulist steeled his milt and raced back into the Mouldwood, back up the path of his hasty flight to the hawthorn bench. He slowed for fear of the rabbit-beast. The woodland park creaked and ticked. His humours thumped in his ears. All the rabbits were gone and the weak threwdishness he new as common to this land was restored. Somewhere deeper in the park a wagtail gave voice to a tetchy call. With a lunge, Economous snatched his abandoned belongings from the hazelwood bench and dashed back to the Moldwood gates as fast as limbs and load would let him. The moment he was clear of the tree and grass and gate and out again on the long house-crowded street he halted. Bent, hand on knee, wind heaving to and from his lungs in great gulps, he leant against a stone pillaster of the park’s wall and quite unaccountably began to laugh. The clatter of lentums, park drags and pavillions running past largely swallowed the scandalous noise, but a day-strolling panderer in the lead of three fine-dressed young children was forced to step about him as he was rocked in his peculiar glee.

“How unseemly, sir!” the panderer exclaiming, her cheeks puffing self-importantly. “Not in all my born; it is scarce midday and you are as soused as a hog’s face!”

This made Econmous laugh only the harder.

Unseemly!

If only she knew what he had just seen.

That was a monster I just found wasn’t it…? he wondered in astonishment his laughter subsiding as quickly as it had risen. Suely surely not…

He had seen a hand of nickers and bogles on the few monster hunts he had managed to join; terrifying things all teeth and claws and slavering malice Yet a monster right in the very heart of our ancient, impreganble city? This should be mpossible…

I ought tell someone of this!

The masters of the city would most certainly desire to know so terrible a revelation yet what would he say? To whom would he actually say it?

“Are ye a’right, mate?” asked a passing water caddie, permanently bent – as was a mark of his trade – under the small but substantial weight of a water puncheon.

“There’s a… there’s a…” the would-be fabulist tried between great gasps. “There’s a mon–”

Abruptly, with a swallow, Economous stopped.

Who would credit such an outrageous claim? The impossibility of a monster in the very middle of so great and safe a capital as Brandenbrass. He doubted even Asthetica would believe him… And now that he came to it he found that did not wantto speak to anyone of this after all. The rabbit-and-cat beast had neither slavered nor snarled, nor had it rent him limb from trunk as all monsters were supposed to do. The worst it had done was compliment his drawing and to blow on him – odd certainly, but not violent.

Suddenly, inwardly, Economous was five years old again, just returned terrified but elated from the hearthwood copse that had grown behind the row of high-houses on the edge of his home village of Lo far out west on the fringes of the parishlands of the Page. Such coppices are a dangerous necessity in any rural setting, providing firewood easy to hand but always a potential haunt for some wandering bogle or nicker. Sure enough, little Economous had been seeking delicious bird’s eggs out in the forbidden trees with three childhood chums when a nasty slavering nicker all spines and talons had reared out from some dense blackberry thicket, snatching the little Economous in its cruel grip and sending the other boys to wild hollering flight. Still able to conjure the whirling, thought-emptying panic that had gripped him, one notion had stood clear in his little mind: this was his end. Yet in a great and tumbling violence, little Economous found himself free. Kicking and flailing to his feet, all he glimpsed before flying into the trees and home was a brown-skinned horned and bearded creature grappling with his wicked abductor, pounding away at the slavering black nicker with terrible mighty blows. Home once more and barely believing what had happened he immediately confessed to his parents of his profound fortune.

“I was attacked by a bad monster but a good one saved me!” he had cried in child’s delight and wonder, thrilled by such an astounding discovery, his humours racing at so miraculous an escape.

Yet rather than the delight that such a revelation of such a wondrous rescue of their only son, his parents had scolded him bitterly for telling such a horrid falsehood.

“There is no such thing as a good monster!” his father had bellowed.

“Never ever speak of this to anyone!” his mother had hissed in wide-eyed worry.

Not one gleam of relief that their own son was safe, just this great dread of other people’s regard, of ill-rumour – all too ready,  and of the black consequence for being found a monster-loving sedorner.

In the days after he had appealed to the witness of his friends yet none of them ever said a word in support of the truth or even of a supposed comrade.

Something had shifted inside little Economous so long ago, and it had never righted itself since…

“Jumpin’ at shadows are we, mate?”

The water caddie’s garbled voice broke into the dark charm of memory.

Tricorn tipped back on his crown to scratch at his brow, the fellow was squinting at Economous closely.

Equanimity returning, it took a beat for Economous to understand what the fellow had said through shockingly broken and protuberant teeth. “Well,” Economous began. “I –”

“She’s a curious plot of glebeland, that’s a’certain,” the fellow pressed, nodding towards the park and shrugging his shoulders against the heavy leather strap of the puncheon where it had worn the cloth of his olive-drab frockcoat to a greasy gloss. “Not willin’ to let go her threwd for no labour. I have watched ye as I amble on me common rounds, go in day on and day off like no common folk do. I caution ye: loiter a’long in that yonder park and ye are might to reckon on sights of things not prop’ly there…”

Economous frowned. “Well…” He was too keen an observer, too used to rigourously discerning what it is his eyes beheld to be duped by so simple an effect as the swiming shadows of breeze tossed branches. Perplexed now, Economous straightend and drew in the city’s pungeant air. Somehow, the creature’s breath lingered yet in his nostrils, sweet and sour and loamy at once. No, he had seen what he had seen and there was no getting around it. “Jumping at shadows.” Economous muttered, more to himself than as an answer.

However this seemed enough for the smiling water-carrier and he immediately took hold of this small opportunity. “A goose for a gulp, m’lord,” he asked.

Economous paid two cobs – or four guise – and took four full swills from the communal pewter ladle that hung by a long leather cord from harness that held the puncheon high on the caddie’s hunched shoulders.

With a wink the caddie went on his way.

Returning trews and shoes and coat to their rightful stations on his frame, and taking his lank black hair up in a bow and setting his thricehigh firmly back upon his head, Economous transformed himself from an unshod, bare-headed, tree-embracing wilder to the civilised city-dwelling soul he usually played. Thus comported, he made his way south down South Arm and for home, perplexed by a muted yet definite glow of peculiar and unfounded … positivity – if that was a word – that had crept into his bosom.

Onwards we go with Economous then \o/

Thank you all for your continued thoughts and reactions. I wondered too about having a more conversational start, to reveal some things about EM through chatter at an alehouse with fellow spedigraphers and other arterly types. We shall see - info-dumping is a common first draft symptom, so perhaps - if this goes to a second working - such an issue will be resolved.

I am thinking to post 1000-1500 words every Monday (Oz Monday that is, so this may vary for other parts of the world, late Sunday in the US and its neighbours for example). How does that grab you?

Economous Musgrove Chapter 1 Part 2

Here we are with the next instalment of Economous Musgrove - a Half-Continent tale, that I hope to be releasing with regular frequency. What do folks think: twice weekly? Once? Thrice? 

Thank you everyone for your encouragements, I shall press on and let the cross-fertilisation go on.

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 1, part 2

His most recent employment at a grand gala held a month past by the Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes – in which he performed the required entertainment of spedographer – hasty portraitist – he thought he had gained a reference of the truest excellence. Yet it turned that even so exulted a recommendation as that of the Branden Rose – surely one of the great lights in Brandenbrass society – actually produced opposite outcome of spoiling the interest of patrons. 

“Oh, that’s not much chop,” potential customers would say with the same sour yet subtle sneer. “She takes on just about anyone these days…”

All Economous knew was that it had been a glorious night brimfull with swirling noble souls of the highest of high stations, each one costumed in glittering fancies of such gorgeous magnificence the would-be fabulist was certain the cost of just one could probably cover a year of his own expenses. It had been a bizarre, gleaming, all-to-brief moment to punctuate his ceaseless run of dogged days and every “customer” had declared themselves well pleased with his spedigraphs. Were it not for the first-rate sum the would-be fabulist was paid for his portraits of the gala guests – one month’s wage for a single night’s work – Economous would be pinched and starving and desperate indeed.

As it might be, geese aren’t fatted to be kept, he reminded himself with a second sigh.

Rumour – learnt only yesterday from a supercilious underwriting clerk at the Letter & Coursing House  – spoke of strange excentricities amoungst the Branden Rose’ staff and even some dark disconcerting hint of the crime of sedony, that is of kindness or an inclination of the same towards monsters. This was as grave as rumour could get, for in Brandenbrass – as in all decentsocieties – the monster was the supreme foe utterly bent on the ruination of the kingdom of everymen and deserving only of expulsion and destruction. To be found a sedorner – a monster-lover – was to be guilty of the worst stripe of betrayal known to all history and civilization, of which death – usually prelonged or painful – was the only just and fitting consequence. Economous had seen such poor souls exposed at the edge of Lo or on the road in to Brandenbrass languishing in gibbet-cages or strung spreadeagle upon tall Catharine wheels grown about with thorns to prevent their families from rescuing them.

No one would surely dare such a blatant and dangerous accusation with the great woman herself about, but the Branden Rose was no longer in the city and tongues were free to wag. And so her sanction proved Economous’ disadvantage, and he was back to much as he was when he first arrived in Brandenbrass two years ago.

With Lestwich – year’s end – nigh upon him, he was all too aware that even so handsome a figure as five sous would not last him longer than two or at best three months, certainly not now that his rent had been raised by the second time that year. He also knew that the steady income of steady – that is, dull and wearying – employment was not his lot. Yet without some proof of constancy and income how ever was he to impress upon Madamine Grouse, his landlady, that he was a good match for her beautiful daughter, Asthetica.

His soul soared upon misty mooning admiration for the raven-haired magnificence that was Asthetica Grouse with her flashing grey eyes, fine manners and then plummeted at the thought of her demoralizing string of suitors… The most recent and most daunting of all of these pretenders: Monsiere the Lord Sprandis Fold, Reive of Lot-in-the-Hole, man-about-town, weak of chin, so very fine of dress, heir to some fine mercantile concern and a peer of state. Though Economous could plainly see that none of her daughter’s beaus meant truly well for Asthetica – the Monsiere least of all – Madamine Grouse happily encouraged such acquaintence. For she bore high hopes that Asthetica’s fair face and fine figure would make her an eligible for a match to some gentleman of elevated station and deep purse. As properly book-learned and handy with a cudgel as he might have been, to Madamine Grouse Economous was a parish-born bumpkin, irredeemably obscure and “… poor as poorhouse rat!” as she so often reminded him.

What I need, Economous confirmed to himself with dark determination, is some great exploit to join that pays handsomely at the outset, or a wealthy patron to commision whole bodies of work like they do of the great master illuminators.

That very week Economous had gone to apply to join as an official recorder in the champaign being planned against the nickers occupying the fortress of Winstermill up north – a calamity presenting to him glittering opportuinty. Unlike – it seemed – many of his fellow citizens who had never known of the place until the report of its attack barely a month ago – Economous had some idea of the place. Serving as the main staging for a battalion of Imperial Lamplighters, it was a minor Imperial bastion much vaunted as being inpregnable, built upon old Burgundian foundations of Winstreslewe. Yet, clearly, Winstermill had been “pregged” after all, and worse still, by vicious monsters. Now its fall was all anyone ever sought to talk about: the great and dread threat of the north, the blighted nicker come to swallow the precincts of everymen at last! If so unbreechable a place had been breeched, how long could Brandenbrass several rings of lofty walls hold such a ravening at bay? The entire city was submerged under a pall of heavy and anxious watchfulness as if the entire world of monster-kind might at any moment surge upon Brandenbrass’ mighty walls and bring ruin to them too.

Much vexed by a recent Imperial Bull altering the naming of the last months of the year in honour of yet another Imperial Grandson, the sneering clerks at the grand knaving house were especially venemous as they refused him. “The Arch-duke and his supporters have imagineers enough for the purpose and are, I am sure, more concerned with fighting the monsters than scetchingthem!”

So, for Economous the Mouldwood had become the best of places to the escape the endless searching, the dour and frettful speculation, the demeaning clerical disdain, and forget, if but for a moment, the grim futility of his own life. 

An idea... (or: Economous Musgrove Chapter 1 Part 1)

I just had a crazy thought: I have an m/s that has not gone anywhere for a long while so perhaps I could share it with you all 500? 1000? words at a time. Perhaps feedback might get it moving? Perhaps it might be cool to let you all roam the Half-Continent again?

It will be un-edited, first-drafty (draughty - holes in it, get it?), and like un-spellchecked (not a real verb) but what do you think? Will the format of this blog make it too hard to read? 500 words? 1000 words? Any other problems? Benefits?

Here is a sample to get things rolling and see how it works... (about 1100 words, too much?)

Economous

musgrove

© D.M.Cornish

DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

1^st Draft, June 2011-August 2013

1 ~ In the Park

fabulist ~ an imagineer – a maker of images by stylus, paint, charcoal or any other medium – employed by monster-hunting teratologists to go with them upon their dangerous exploits, observe their daring and make drawings and etchings of the same to prove to safe-living city folk of their praise-worthy prowess. Being a fabulist means therefore sharing all the dangers and hardships of your patron teratologist, and with it some hope of a healthy share of the accompanying rewards. For the true imagineer, however, it is not the promise of wealth that is the greatest draw, but the challenge of placing yourself in the very midst of the danger to draw a duel between patron and monster, and capture the as truly as possible at the very height and thrill of the violence.

Economous Musgrove, illustrator, some-time concometrist and would-be fabulist, sat quietly on a simple bench a little way in from the east gate of the Moldwood Park in the grand and ancient city of Brandenbrass and drew. He was well aware of the cleveland’s solemn reputation as a queer and unpleasant place, preserved by some ancient bond and stubbornly threwdish, despite centuries of encirclement by one of the world’s great cities. Indeed, surrounded by buzzing bugs and drifting pollens, he could feel a subtle watchfulness that he now called normal, brooding from the dark spaces between the olives and sycamores and black turpentines shaggy with yellowing lichens. It did not seem so unpleasant a sensation to him as most other folk complained upon. In truth – though he dare not admit it to anyone not even Asthetica, his true love – Economous actually liked the feeling of threwd here, as slight as it may have been. He found it a small but important thrill, giving him a taste of life as perhaps it ought to be: deep, perhaps impenetrable and impossibly vital – the stark opposite of the frustrating inertia that seemed to drag at his own days.

Barefoot, Economous sat now – shoes under his proofed frockcoat on the bench beside him – drawing nooks and boles, birds and all manner of crawling things that came his way. Most of all though, he drew the myriad rabbits great and small that so famously and helpfully infested this city-bound woodland. Loping from shadow to shadow, ears switchin ceaselessly forward and back, they grew bolder the longer he sat there, venturing from folds of thick cabage weed to wriggle their stunt noses at him. Though never able to pay him for his trouble, these nervous restless creatures were far less self-conscious or suspicious or given to offence than the people of this fair city, and they made excellent subjects to draught.

In dull blue-grey weskit and cotton shirt sleave rolled to elbow in the late spring heat, Economous strove to get every rabbit he spied down in the very midst of motion with both the speed and accuracy required for  the drawing of teratologists and their deadly exploits. He could have sat on any street or lane in the city itself to observe these, for Brandenbrass was famously over-run with the creatures, even to the obvious and peculiar exlusion of the far more usual rat that gnawed away at other cities. But where they were furtive, twitchy and quick to flight in the common ways, in the cool calm of the Moldwood the city-living rabbits were – contrary to all cause – calm and almost tame.

Today, however, his usually quiet, long-eared companions seemed unusually restless, making themselves hard to draw as they scampered among the roots and leaves, bounding over each other, breaking out in energetic scuffles Economous had never previously witnessed. They were bolder too, some daring to graze and frolic right up by his seat, while out of the deeper shades of the park more rabbits emerged, playing all about him now in such numbers that set Economous to marvelling.

Perhaps their spring-time broods have come out to join them?

Yet he could not see any small-bodied, big-eyed, short-eared bunnies among the great variety of creatures gathered, nor even one slender leveret. They were all – as far as he could reckon it – full grown rabbits.

Economous paused for a moment, leaning back and rubbing his eyes against the strain of concentration to which they had been subject for the last two hours.

Though rigourously schooled as a concometrists at the athenaeum, he spent much of his apprenticeship drawing rather than measuring or reading or recording as he was supposed to do. And though he had at the end of his five years there been granted a numrelogue to record measurements and earned his calibrator – the thick yard long ruler that was both weapon and tool of a concometrist’s trade, much of what his exasperated masters had sought to squeeze into his intellectuals had simply gone in his ears and run out of his eyes. Little now seemed left behind of his learning but some vague reckoning of the tribes into which habilists divided all beasts, a modicum of Tutin – the language of scholarship and the Empire – and page upon page of unauthorised drawings. It had felt like a false start as he left the athy and made for the great and shining prospects of Brandenbrass and after missteps and blank leads, it still felt like it now.

For, no matter how he tried these two years gone since departing Athingdon Athenaeum, he had failed to gain any momentum as a full-fledge fabulist: drafting, etching and daubing his way from one client to the next upon the headway of an ever-increasing set of references of ever-increaing excellence. Though he had been considered many many times, he had only been on three true hunts. He had thrilled at the chase and stood astonished at the wonder and dread of the snarling cornered beasts they sought, capturing the wild things with far greater passion than he drew the exploits of his actual human patron. Unfortunately, upon the last hunt – now nigh on a year gone –in his eagerness to fully render the small, wizzened, almost pathetically child-like bogle they were chasing, he thoughtlessly got in the teratologist’s way thus allowing the little creature to win free and escape. Though they searched for a week it was never to be found again. Foiled, the hunt had returned to the city empty-handed where – deprived of his prize – the teratologist gave Economous so bad a report that it swiftly spread into an awkward reputation. This poor name went well ahead of the would-be fabulist, so bringing him to this present paucity of work. Still, Economous was not about to let himself be so simply prevented. Ever since his earliest years his way had not been as every other soul’s, and regardless of anyone else's interventions, he was not about to let one mistake ruin his own chosen course of life.