Economous Musgrove Chapter 4 Part 2

What is it to draw something that is not meant to exist?

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 4 PART 2

An Uncommon request

The sun achieved its apex and swung beyond unheeded by the would-be fabulist and his astounding unmoving model. Rabbits began to gather bout his feet and upon the rubble about him, all facing him as if engrossed by his process, but he scarce noticed them as he drew and drew and drew. It was movement in shadows of his vision’s corners that finally distracted him, perhaps more a shifting of threwd – if such a thing were possible – than of bodies finally arresting his attention. Looking quickly beyond the olive trunk into gloom of the deeper cellar, Economous was abruptly brought out of his creative stupor. For there he saw several bogles lurking there – small monsters mostly, many about the size of a child, each in its own bafflingly distinct form. One covered in a segmented grey shell Economous could only be likened to an over-large cousin to the pillboys that infested the danker corners of his garret. Another had the form of a swollen and distorted frog; a third maybe in shape like a pile from a nightman’s cart suddenly sprung to life. Barely discernible in the deepest cellar gloom behind these – as if aloof from such lesser creatures – lurked a taller being whose only fathomable detail was its ill-proportioned head like that of an over-sized magpie or daw. This it appeared to turn oh so bird-like one way then the next as if to get the best view of the frail, foolish vistor.

Economous entire sense of the state of the cosmos lurched and faltered.

It was one shock to find a lord of monsters allowing a city to be built up about it; yet how were such forbidden creatures able to come and go with such unhindered facility? What of the famed might of the city’s guarding war engines? What of her many rings of impassable walls perforated by bastion gates that in a moment could each become a fortress unto itself? What of the white waters of her harbours prowling with countless iron-skinned rams crewed by hundreds of hardened and vigilant vinegaroons?

Economous was so perplexed his stylus quivered in the usually steady pinch of thumb and forefinger. So terribly aware now of these watching bogles, he thought he could make out hushed but urgent conversation from the smaller kind.

“Eat the wombson, I say, and be done with its intrusion! We have talking to be done that cannot wait…”

“Aye, aye, a scrawny pink morsel for evening grubbings…”

“He’ll never let us, oh no…”

In terrified dismay, the would-be fabulist ceased his drafting completely.

“TO HUSH WITH YOU!” the Lapinduce hissed with sudden vehemence over its silk coated shoulder. “I did not ask for you to follow me hence. Be still or I shall send each of you unanswered back to your masters and mistresses…”

There was a frightened tittering, a shuffling of feet – or whatever mode of appendage each beastling might have moved upon – as the squat shadows shoved and poked at each other, then quiet.

“Do not mind my other guests, Master Pen,” the lord of monsters said in tones of pointed – and strangely mundane – impatience. “They have been sent to rupture my peace and pester me to join one cause or the other of my lorded equals to the north who wrestle over some everyman fortress long known as Winstresslewe.”

The would-be fabulist suddenly felt very little and very foolish in a world brim-filled with towering behemoths older and wiser than the stones themselves, who passed so easily through the most staunch of everyman defences like these were mere cheesecloth.

“I beseech you, everyman,” the Lapinduce lifted a velvet-downed paw in supplication and smiled – a weird sight to behold in so impossible a face with a mouthful of over-sized teeth. “Continue…”

Blinking rapidly to focus himself back upon his drawing, Economous pressed on. The day’s shadows grew long indeed when finally he felt that perhaps he might have drawn as much as he could of the marvels of his dread subject. The would-be fabulist held out his numrelogue to stare at it for one long confirming squint, flicking his eyes between the final image to its likeness and back again, over and over, making an adjustment. Despite the great weight of expectation that had knotted and turned in his innards, he had produced as fine a portrait as he had ever made. Indeed in the glow of evening and in the presence of this mighty and prohibited king of beasts he was suddenly awakened to a deep sense of fittingness he had not known in a very long time. Never-the-less, in fear of the crushing of his fragile soul should his monstrous patron prove to be disappointed with the work, Economous hesitated to reveal the finished drawing.

“The day waxes long, son of brevity,” the Lapinduce spoke, his rasping-rich words thrusting in on the would-be fabulist’s prevarications. “By your winkings and starings and the lack of scrawling me thinks you are complete. Come, present to me what I look like to you. Let me see how the count of centuries has tolled upon my face.”

Only now realising with a shocked blink the lateness of the hour, Economous passed his vaunted recording book to the Duke of Rabbits and held his breath half in hope, half in dread. His stomach gave a hungry lurch.

Stroking its chin with one hand while it held out its stylus-drawn portrait with the other, the Lapinduce tilted its bestial head to the left, then titled it to the right, its grey cat’s eyes squinting just as Economous’ had.

Fretting all the errors that suddenly seemed so obvious to him, Economous held his entire being in thrumming, expectant stasis.

Crickets began to call to each other; frogs took up their gurgling song too. The firmament cleared and span now with a billion stars and still the Lapinduce beheld the fresh-scrawled image. Yet as the light failed so the ruined, tree-grown cellar began to glow with bluish moss-light gleaming from the crevices between the ancient foundation stones.

Finally the Duke of Rabbits spoke.

“Such admirable labour deserves rewarding,” the creature pronounced, then clacked its wicked sharp teeth together.

At this summons two over-large rabbits appeared from the darkness beyond, together drawing a long oiled bag along by cords in their mouth. One was the very same which had served that morning as so inconstant a guide, and its aid could have been its twin.

The Lapinduce stood, stooped took up the bag. Stepping to Economous to tower once more over the everyman, it bent an elegant bow and presented the bag to the would-be fabulist. “A wage for honest labour,” it proclaimed.

Taking the yard long bag gratefully, Economous drew out the satin draws and rolled the unfastened mouth of the bag down to show its contents. Here in the wan, fungal light, he found a what was obviously a calibrator. Yet it was like none he had beheld before, fashioned from a dark wood rather than the light oak as his current one was, its graduations – of inlaid silver – not marking the usual quicks, inches or feet but some other span of measure in base five and base ten. By the smell alone Economous knew that this antique item was made from the wood of a nigh-mythic black elder. Did this Lord of monsters realise what a kingly gift he was giving for so simple a thing as the spedigraph just performed?

“I am of the understanding that you call such things wentry,” the Lapinduce observed mildly.

Wentry! Blithely items said to possess qualities beyond any mundane object of similar form. Provoked by such marvels, Economous’ athenaeum-found book-learning come back to him from libraries in his mind he did not previously believe he possessed.

“This –” his voice caught for a moment as he gripped the hallowed wood and felt a prickling sensation in his palm. “This is too much, my lord! I – I shall return again with proper pigments and a full-stretched canvas to make a truly worthy image of you!”

“You have honoured me, womb-born, so why do you refuse my own honouring of you?”

Economous suddenly felt ashamed of himself but was shocked from his chagrin by the abrupt sound tearing of untearable velum from its binding as the Lapinduce carefully but easily parted his portrait from the other pages of the would-be fabulist’s numrelogue. Come with no other equipment, he had – as was his custom – drawn it in his numrelogue, and now the folly of this dawned upon him: for in diligent service of continuity and completeness it was forbidden for any concometrist to tear even one page from their numrelogue, unless driven by direst need.

I am already under reprimand from the athy here for drawing in my log, what will they do to me now it is incomplete?

Stunned by the impossibility of the circumstance, Economous surrendered helplessly to the mutilation of his sacred tome. Perhaps being cast out from the league of metricians for such further defacement might turn to his benefit? There was nought he could do about this current crime that made such ejection likely: the truth would not be a helpful defence.

“The night’s signals pivot above us,” the Lapinduce spoke into the humming night. “It is good for you to return to your usual path of life so long to you, so short to me.”

“But –” Economous began to counter, cricking his neck to look the monster-lord in the face, if not in the terrible eye. He was not ready now to be parted from the melancholy wonder of this mighty creature. He wanted yet to be consumed once more in bliss of that sad, vital and all too brief music, to dwell for a little longer in the strangely discomforting clarity that seemed to radiate from every follicle of the monster-lord’s fur, every fibre of his silken frock-coat, every bole and craggy load of rubble. “But –”

The Duke of Rabbits raised a paw to silenced him. “Each time in its place and each place for its time, womb-born,” it said with an almost fatherly tone. “My servant Ogh will lead you out again,” it continued, the same paw now gesturing to one of the pair of rabbits who had brought the princely prize and now waited amongst the roots of the old olive. “I hope he provesa better guide to lead you out than his brother, Urgh, proved to be on leading you in,” their master added as if talking as much to the dumb beasts themselves as to Ecomomous.

One of the rabbits dropped its ears for a beat as if chastened and its fellow – the one named as Ogh – loped forward, pausing before the would-be fabulist to wink and twitch its nose at him.

Half-standing, Economous tried to formulate some cause, some excuse, some reason to remain.

Ogh seized the strap of Economous’ satchel lying at the would-be fabulist’s feet, and with a startling show of strength, leapt away into the darkening wood, dragging the bag behind.

With a stifled yelp, the would-be fabulist was properly on his feet, yet still unwilling to go his head quickly swivelled as he looked from Lapinduce, calm, silent, waiting, to his hastily departing property and back.

“I…!”

Catching up his hat and numrelogue, his old calibrator and the velvet bag holding the new, the would-be fabulist made a sketch of a bow. With a hurried, incoherently apologetic farewell, Economous chased after the rapidly retreating rabbit and vowed to return to paint a more fitting image of the Lapinduce, Duke of Rabbits, lord of monsters.

Economous Musgrove Chapter 4 Part 1

And here we be again, with Economous perched upon the threshold of dread and wondrous things.

I think I shall now go and have a look at the comments from last week.

Enjoy (oh, I sure hope you do - sorry for the maybe odd break in this weeks words, but the chapter had no easy place to sever it, so I just made shift as best I could...)

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 4 PART 1

An Uncommon request

word ~ definition …………

In a dread of involuntary awe, Economous dropped to his knees, expecting in any beat to feel the crash of crushing violence to come down upon his neck.

It’s true! It’s true! rang with child-like astonishment in his quailing soul.

A peculiar and loud click came from the mighty creature’s mouth, like it was clashing its long front teeth together. “Do not bow to me, son of the short-lived!” it spoke with open dismay, its voice rasping yet somehow rich – a voice no human throat could make and the very same that had compliment his drawing two days gone. “Such worship is not mine to demand nor receive. Come stand again and let me behold so peculiar a creature more fully.”

Economous swallowed and slowly got back to his feet. The back of his neck pinched sharply as trembling, he dared to look the dread thing in the eye.

Is this an eating or a saving kind of monster?

It peered at him closely, almost accusingly, a stare of pale grey from eyes like nothing the would-be fabulist had even gazed into before; eyes that held secrets beyond measuring, that had watched spans of time past reckoning and witnessed calamities that would have driven lesser beings raving mad.

The would-be fabulist wanted to look away, to bow again, to not provoke this eoned creature a mite further. Yet his gaze locked with the mighty beast, he found that he could not move.

“I behold that you are a womb-born,” it spoke again, bending its face close to his so that the perfume of blossom and loam filled his senses, “who is better reconciled to what you would name monstrous things than most of your all-too-brief kind.”

It took a moment to recognise that the rabbit-beast was expecting some form of response. Economous mouth opened, but not a sound came out. He tried again, squeezing at his rebelious vocal organs. “I – I …”

This seemed enough for the creature for it continued: “It has been some time as you brief ones reckon it since an everyman has found peace and sought only gentle occupations in my wooded courts. I have enjoyed you calling on us to scribble and dream: you are a fine draughtsman, sir.”

Economous ducked his head, finding his voice at last. “Y-you are the first to say it so, my lord.” Such an appellation felt awkward in his mouth, yet to call such a magestic creature by anything else seemed profoundly unfitting.

“I am – oh son of vapour – an urchin-lord; the great undying Cunobillin you might have read on in you measurers’ library; the master of this city you Brandenmen think your own, and if I say something is so, then – Providence alone only contradict me – it is so!”

Economous had indeed read upon one named Cunobollin, a dread creature famed for terrorising the wild Piltmen – whom they called the Haraman – before Brandentown’s Burgundian ancestors came from the east to subdue them. There were many books in Athingdon’s three libraries that pronounced on many such beings and Economous had read every one, each several times, whether he had permission to or not. Most texts offered only conjecture as to the existence of any kind of recognisable heirarchy amongst monsters; the most invective refused such notions as being a signal of proper intelligence and consequently impossible. Yet here was one now, defying all common and stoutly held convention.

Refusing to fall to his knees again and incite further ire, the everyman clamped his jaw shut and vowed not to speak again before this dread urchin-lord. Yet questions were piling in his concometrist’s mind like a jam of carriages at high noon on the Spokes.

“I seldom allow any creature into my deeper sanctuaries.” The Lapinduce looked about the ruined, tree-grown cellar. “And few is the count of those whom I have welcomed into my inner courts. Most everymen fool enough to make a determined enterprise into my park find themselves upon the otherside no matter how hard press their explorations. Others come for ill reasons and seldom more than once, yet you linger in my garden week upon week and show yourself happy to do so. How curious, I marvelled to myself as I watched you quietly. But more than benign curiosity, I smell on you that you have met my frair – my brother monsters – before… and been marked by the meeting.” It clacked its teeth together and went silent, letting its observation linger.

Before a dread king of nickers, an ancient creature who so clearly fathomed far beyond the usual ken, Economous found the admission rising easier than ever it had. “Aye, when I… I was a boy, living west in L… Lo.” Even now the old reluctance tried to catch at his words.

“And you won through the encounter.”

Economous could not tell if this was a question or and observation. He answered anyway. “I was rescued by one m-monster –” was that even the right word to use before such a being? “– from – from the hunger of another.”

“And who believed such a story, I wonder…” the monster-lord’s feline eyes glittered with bitter humour.

“It was insisted that such a thing was not possible and my silence for evermore demanded of me.”

Tapping its downy, black chin with an equally swarthy fore-knuckle, the Duke of Rabbits regarded him closely. “So it has long been,” he said at last.

It seemed to Economous that – impossibilities upon impossibilities – this creature truly understood him, that in that moment he had gained the sympathy of this dread nicker-lord and that he in turn was well disposed to it. “Sir, if I may…” he dared in the encouragement of this insight. “What do you want of me?”

“I have seen you draw my little kin, son of brevity, and now I desire that you would draw me too. I would like a graphice, an imago, a spectacle de vue – a portrait– of myself, for it has been many generations as you would reckon them since the last tender soul presented themselves for the task and it pleases me to gain another. It will be a record of your passing to remind me in later centuries.”

Suddenly, Economous’ self-taught, unacademied skills seemed for the first time to him to be scant and dangerously inadequate. Yet to decline was surely worse than what ever feeble image he would produce. “If that is what you wish for, sir, then I shall do my best to grant it,” he replied with firm tone designed to bolster his own failing courage.

To this the Lapinduce perched itself upon a particularly large knobble in an oliveroot, crossed one leg upon the other, folded its long long hands about its knees and stared up into nothing like a person well suited to sitting for a portrait.

“Do – do you have a preferred side, sir?” he asked reflexively, as he did of all customers seeking a spedigraph.

“Side, sir?” the Lapinduce cocked a shaggy brow at him. “Why, my own side always.”

Economous swallowed. “Aye, of course, my lord… and… and which sphere of your face would you have me draw?”

“I think you will find this current one is as good as its twin,” the Lapinduce said with a haughty and slightly wounded air and the sat unnaturally still, chin lifted like some historied heldin from the hailed paintings of Economous' long dead mentors.

Yet the fabulist could not draw; how could he when the impossible was solid and breathing and very much possible before him? Time ceased as Economous just sat and blinked and struggled and failed, struggled and failed to comprehend his situation.

How long it was before the creature stirred could not be told but eventually the monster-lord looked sidelong to the befuddled everymen sat before him and declared dryly, “Unless you have unlocked the lost telegraphic arts of the Phlegmish goests, I do believe stylus must make contact with paper for an image to be forthcoming…”

Economous shook himself as if startled. “Oh… oh, yes - yes, indeed, sir. My apologies…” And, ears ringing and senses reeling with wonder of it all, he began to draw.

Perched upon toppled stonework, numrelogue open upon his knees, the fabulist shook his head and squinted studiously and long at his outlandish sitter, fixing the Lapinduce’ alien form into his inner eye before he dared put stylus to paper. At last – and all too aware of the oddness of his position – Economous began to draw, striving with every line to capture the full-rounded form and render it accurately on the contrary flatness of a single page. Stylus frequently hovering in pent potential mere fractions from paper as he looked long at his subject, the would-be fabulist strove to get the fineness of the glossy felt of the rabbit-lord’s silken black fur down true; to describe as precisely as he could the true relationship between the great protruding front teeth, the rabbits nose, the grand sweep of those mighty ears; to find the exact sit of the gleaming silk collar upon the shaggy neck; to find exactly how to line the profile glimpse of the mighty therian’s eon-seeing eyes.

For his part, the Duke of Rabbits made an excellent subject, sitting with preternatural stillness, never once twitching, itching, looking over to see how the portrait was coming along.

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.