A Small Gathering of Spirits

Once upon a time—

—no, turn around, come walk with me awhile, just a little way down the forest road. You think you know this country well, with all its heroes and dragons and ever-afters, but it's a vast and darkened country and all those shining places here and there you've visited a thousand times? They're of very recent provenance, and they sit on ancient foundations, patient ruins with roots reaching right down into the earth-bones, where the oldest of Creation's children toil half-forgotten.

Yes, this is a fairy tale, but after a century or so of polish and forced smiles and plenty of outright lies told to children, we have forgotten what that really means. A fairy is not necessarily a friendly creature, nor for sure a hostile one, it just is, and also it isn't from here, it's a spirit, really, you can't even see it all the time.

But it sees you, and while it sometimes does interfere in mortal affairs for any of a thousand strange reasons of its own, it always watches, and it sees more of us than we see of ourselves, because it lives a long, long time.

And because we don't know we're being watched, except in that small space near the back of the mind, or maybe the heart, or whatever part of the human soul that adheres closest to the spine. So we behave like ourselves, in our private spaces that aren't really, because the world is deeper than we could ever really guess.

Once upon a time there was a small gathering of spirits.

The Mischief Spirit was the first to speak.

"I have decided," it said, "that I quite like humans after all."

One of the other spirits laughed, a dismaying sound like crystals crumbling even as they chime. She had no name, nor any special role, so we will call her simply the Fell Spirit due to her disposition.

"This is because you do not watch carefully enough, and of late you keep company mainly with children," she said. "Though this is no excuse. You have seen what they do to children. Even I cannot always find it amusing, human suffering loses its small charm past a certain length and depth. Some of these little ones continue to suffer long after their parents are gone, and they pass it on, too."

The Mischief Spirit lit on the petal-tip of a flower, and sighed. "It is true, but it is not always true. They are diverse creatures, after all, more even than we ourselves. And the depth of their nature is astonishing. I followed along with a group of street children for a time. Capable of astonishing cruelty, you understand, hardened by circumstances. Monstrous, sometimes. But even so."

"Even so?" asked another spirit. He was a tall and handsome one, though you understand that both these descriptions are at best approximations for attributes not readily visible to mortal eyes, in those rare instances he could be seen at all. He had a name, but we will not waste time attempting it. Let us call him the Proud Spirit.

"Even so," the Mischief Spirit said. "A few seasons back I arranged for the back door of a pastry shop to be left open, and sang that night to the street children. 'Follow me, and beckon friends, more than simple mischief to be had tonight.' They came, of course, and walked into the shop, one by one, being very quiet, then shut the door behind them, all alone, the five of them, all alone except for me and sweet things all around. Do you know what they did?"

The Fell Spirit leaped up onto a small twig, and made another breaking-crystal laugh. "They stuffed as much food as possible into their mouths, of course, the little swine, and then fought over the rest." Her voices contained delight where disgust would have seemed to belong.

"No, they did not! They stood there in awe. You see, this was an exceptional pastry shop, every morsel made with care and something approaching love, if not for the customers who came than for the craft itself, for the beauty of sight and smell and taste it made. I watched the children pass by shelves, poke their heads behind displays of curved glass, marveling at every fold of dough, every swirl of sugar, each and every stately convocation of selected fruit atop a tart. They ate, but they ate with reverence, and they closed their eyes to appreciate the beauty in the mouth as well as the eye, and I saw through their eyes, smelled through their noses, tasted, tasted, and I learned something that day. Real beauty. I had never known it before."

The Proud Spirit scoffed. "Surely that is nonsense. You have been to the Emerald Palaces, through the ringing portals, you have seen the incomparable spread of Faerie-land, you have known the undercurrent music of the Higher Spheres."

"Yes," the Mischief Spirit said softly, "but I have not felt it the way those children did. I have only seen it, superlative beauty, and known it is there, but in those small ephemeral creations they glimpsed something greater. For a time afterward, I sought it out in other humans, found it here and there. A woman at a concert. A man marveling at the tiny fingers and ears of his child. You will say that none of these things truly compare with the freely-created delights of Faerie, but we do not feel those delights the way the humans sometimes can with their humbler creations, or the sights and sounds of this lesser mortal wilderness they call home."

There was a long silence at that.

Another spirit spoke, though only a little. We will call her the Quiet Spirit, because she is too shy to give her name.

"What did they do, afterward? The children?"

"Ah," said the Mischief Spirit. "That is most remarkable of all. They ate their fill, but afterward they wrapped more of the pastries in boxes and bags, and brought them back for a few of their fellows who had hung back, who had not answered my call. And they stood back and watched in delight, eager to see another appreciate the same beauties they had. It was a sharing of food too, of course, as they all were hungry. And the next week they were back to fighting over scraps. But mainly it was about beauty shared, a shining moment in lives lived mostly within darkness."

"That is a lovely story," said the Quiet Spirit. "It is within their nature to wish to share these things, just as it is within our nature to watch, and sometimes to interfere. We are bound by it, and so are they. I have a story of my own, on natures, and bindings, if you will listen."

And they all fell silent, because she spoke very rarely indeed, and never without much thought.

"I am the oldest among you. I have watched the humans a long, long time, and like all things they are bound by their nature. Kindness to friends, cruelty to enemies, sometimes the other way round as loyalties to the self and ideas and family and all the rest dictate. They eat and drink and sleep and laugh and lose themselves to passion, their nature drags them along the paths of life without any regard for deeper consideration. But sometimes..."

She fell silent again, and they all waited.

"Listen," she said finally. "Think, and remember. I do not have to tell you. Sometimes, they break free. Alone of the creatures of Creation, sometimes they break the finer chains and decide. Think back, and remember."

And the Proud Spirit thought, and remembered the man, filled with a pride of his own, pride of nation, pride of family and place within it. The man had a daughter, and she was his, and she was a part of his pride. And she left, and married a man of another nation, another family, another tribe, one the man had always been taught to despise, believing his elders and parents and peers as was his nature. And the man turned away from his daughter, and she wept but clung to her own choice and begged for her father to meet the person she had decided to love.

And the father relented, but only so that he could hold his great pride over the young man's head, so that he could pour out all his anger and fear and confusion that his daughter, his daughter, his, had so broken with the pride he held so dear.

And then he had seen the man, and the way his daughter had loved him, and how he had loved her in turn and inside he raged and his wife reached out to hold him back seeing the rage and he was ashamed.

But the shame was not enough. He saw his daughter and her new husband and understood, and that was not enough either. Even his own love for his child was not enough.

None of it was enough in that moment. But he chose, he saw what was right and how he had been wrong, saw his own anger and fear and ground-in hate and he chose, chose to stand against, chose to fling it aside.

In that moment he went against all his nature, and broke his chains. And he went to the young man and embraced him and embraced his daughter and wept tears washed clean over the both of them.

And the Proud Spirit turned aside and wept small tears of his own.

The Fell Spirit scoffed, but quietly, not wanting them to hear, because the Quiet Spirit was beloved, and she was not. But memory came for her, all the same.

A battlefield, full of vicious delights. Small mercies, too, from soldier to soldier, but she swept those aside. It was hard for humans to hear the pain of their own kind, even wrapped up in hate and fear and battle-lust. That was only their nature.

But the battle moved on. A town, sacked and looted and burned. A squad of soldiers in a building. A woman, cowering in fear with her children, two men dead by her feet. A narrow hall. Ugly laughter as the soldiers approached, but one young man, no rank to speak of, pushed his way to the front, raised his shield, hefted his spear.

"No," he said. "No, we will not do this."

They ordered him to stand down, and when he would not the woman fled with her children, and they ordered him again, and the Fell Spirit remembered the shame and terror in the young man's heart, the near-certainty of death, and it was true, because they cut him down, and he died in great agony, and was tossed aside and his family was told he had been executed for insubordination and remembered him with shame of their own. Only the woman and her children remembered him with honor, and never knew his name because they did not speak his language.

But before he died, he broke his chains.

And the Fell Spirit turned aside, and refused to weep, but inside she broke a little.

The Mischief Spirit remembered time in a castle's kitchens, and the cruel old lord, and the young man born to him. Remembered the little serving-boy who displeased the lord, and the beatings he was given, until the young man stepped between his own father and the object of his wrath, just a serving-boy, less than nothing really. And the young man knew this would be an end to his inheritance, to his place in the world, cast-out into uncertainty.

But he did it anyway, broke his chains and went off to wander the world, singing and reciting in taverns for a coin here, a meal there, a place to sleep in the hay. Pouring out stories wherever he went, stories he'd learned, stories he'd heard whispered in his ear by a voice only he seemed able to hear, full of mischief and mirth.

And the Mischief Spirit smiled, and did quite like humans, after all.