fiction - brigits_flame - wine
Nov. 7th, 2008 06:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoThis is my entry for the writing activity on the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
brigits_flame community. The prompt for this week was "wine."
As the head of Lord Wincott's household, Allister had seen and heard a lot of strange things, many of which the average man would find impossible or terrifying. When a frantic maid had burst into the kitchen he had assumed that, whatever the problem was, it would be something that he had dealt with before, and that everything would be fine. After she spoke, he continued to cling to this hope by assuming that he had misheard her.
"I'm sorry, I must have misheard you," said Allister. "I thought you said that we've lost the Duke of Burgton."
The servant just stood in front of him, wringing her hands and nodding vigorously.
"You mean that you can't find him. It's a crowded party. I'm sure he's here somewhere," Allister said.
The maid shook her head. "We saw him go into the wine cellar," she said.
Allister imagined the near future of his life. There would be shouting. Lord Wincott would look at him with an expression of profound disappointment. Allister would be released from Lord Wincott's service without a letter of recommendation and thus be unable to obtain a new position. He would be forced out onto the streets where he would starve, go mad, and eventually be mugged for his hat and die bleeding in the dark in some filthy alley. That was assuming that something worse didn't happen to him.
"Why wasn't someone watching him? Why was the wine cellar even open?" Allister said, his voice shifting upwards in pitch ever so slightly as he contemplated his bleak and uncertain future. The maid just looked at him helplessly.
Actually, he could quite easily imagine how this had happened. There were a lot of guests and a lot to do. A great deal of wine was being consumed, and so naturally someone had gone down to the cellar to retrieve some more. In the rush, they had forgotten to lock the door behind them when they left. The Duke had probably decided that his rank and privilege gave him the right to go rooting about in Lord Wincott's wine cellar, and most likely he had no idea that doing so was an unbelievably bad idea.
"I suppose I'll have to…" Allister trailed off. Maybe going mad and dying in a dark alley wouldn't be so bad. No, it would be shirking his duty if he didn't at least try. "I suppose I shall have to go in after him."
The maid's eyes opened very wide. She suddenly crossed the few steps between them and grabbed his arm. Allister looked down at her hands in astonishment. This was wildly inappropriate.
"Sir! No, sir, you musn't!" she cried. Allister was amazed to see that she had tears in her eyes. Then he saw what lay behind the tears, and his amazement turned to shock. He had never imagined that she might have those sorts of feelings for him. Certainly she had never said anything. Allister sighed as he realized that the situation remained unchanged. This was his responsibility.
"I'm sorry, Miss Cole…I'm sorry, Gwynn. But I have to go," he said. She turned away and tried to stifle a sob. "I'll come back. I promise," he said, hoping it was a promise that he could keep. He was about to leave when she hurled herself into his arms and kissed him deeply. Then she was gone, running down the hall with her face in her hands.
It amazed Allister how complicated one's life could become in so short a span of time.
In a bit of a daze, he made his way down to the wine cellar, pausing next to the fireplace in the main hall to retrieve a heavy iron poker. Upon reaching the wine cellar he was immensely relieved to see that someone had thought to lock it again so that no other guests could go wandering inside. He looked at the basket next to the door, and was unsurprised to see that all four iron horseshoes were still there. He took one for himself and another for the Duke, in case he actually found the man, hooking them over his belt. Allister awkwardly unlocked the heavy oak door with his left hand, unwilling to put aside the poker even for a moment. Then he swung the door open, took an oil lantern down from the wall, and stepped inside. He immediately locked the door behind him again, then turned to face the cellar.
The air was cool and pleasant, and reminded Allister of a springtime evening in the garden. He grimaced as he thought about why this was the case.
To Lord Wincott, it all seemed perfectly reasonable. Wine needed to be stored at a specific temperature and humidity to properly age. Other gentlemen settled for the limits of modern architecture when designing their wine cellars. That wasn't enough for Lord Wincott, a man who thought that the fabric of space and time would look much nicer if it were a quilt.
On one of his many journeys, Lord Wincott had discovered a delightful, shaded glade that had the perfect atmospheric conditions for his wine cellar. They were so perfect, in fact, that he arranged for the glade to exist in the place that would normally be occupied by the south wall of the wine cellar.
If that were the whole story, then this might be considered a strange but quite practical use of Lord Wincott's rather specialized talents. Alas, that was not the whole story. Unfortunately, this quite pleasant meadow lay in the Dusklands of the Fair Folk.
A less arrogant gentleman might have had second thoughts about creating a permanent connection between his basement and another plane of existence inhabited by poorly understood, amoral, inhuman creatures of vast and terrible power. But to Lord Wincott it seemed safe enough. As long as one always brought a piece of cold iron with them into the wine cellar and did not stray more than three feet beyond where the south wall should be, there would be no real danger. So far, only one servant had forgotten this rule. His disappearance served as an effective reminder for the others.
Allister peered into the gloom of the cellar and wondered if he should call out to the Duke. There was, after all, the slim chance that he was still there.
"Hello? Your Grace?" Allister called, trying to make his voice loud enough to be heard by the Duke, but not loud enough to be heard by anything else. Only silence answered him. Allister cautiously made his way past the racks of wine. He paused when he noticed a bottle on the floor. Crouching, he retrieved it and inspected the label.
"Hah! The Duke knows his wine well enough," Allister said. It was a fine vintage, indeed. Allister checked the labels on the racks until he found the proper place for the bottle and carefully placed it back where it belonged. It was a small consolation that the Duke had put it down rather than dropped it when…whatever had happened to him had happened.
Allister called out to the Duke a few more times and searched the whole of the terrestrial parts of the cellar, just to be sure. Then, when he could think of no more excuses to postpone it any longer, he made his way south.
The change was disturbingly gradual. Blades of grass poked up through the concrete floor in greater and greater numbers until eventually there was nothing but grass and soft earth. The glade was surrounded by looming trees that were both beautiful and vaguely sinister. A narrow path led away from the cellar and deeper into the trees.
Allister turned around and looked back into the cellar. It looked like a realistic painting hanging in the air. Allister shivered.
"Your Grace?" he called, even quieter than he had back in the cellar. Rationally, he knew that he should be shouting if he wanted to have any real chance of finding the man. But rationality had no place in this situation, and he was terrified of attracting the attention of something other than the Duke.
"Who are you?" said a childlike voice to Allister's left. Allister jumped away from the sound and flailed at the empty air with his poker.
"Stay back!" he shouted, and immediately regretted it. "I don’t want any trouble," he said, much quieter.
"Okay," said the voice.
Allister raised the lantern and peered into the undergrowth. A small hand pushed the branches aside, and Allister got his first look at one of the fae. If not for the circumstances and his present location, Allister supposed he could have mistaken the creature for a human child about seven years of age. Closer inspection revealed sharply pointed ears, eyes like a cat's, and a subtle wrongness about the way it stood. Also, of course, there was the short spear it was holding that appeared to be made of glass and tipped with a blade cut from a single enormous ruby. The thing turned its head on one side and looked appraisingly at him.
"I like the color of your eyes. Can I have them?" it asked politely. Allister tried, with some success, not to whimper.
"Ah…no, I'm afraid I'm still using them," he said. The fae shrugged as if this was unimportant. Then it wrinkled its nose and shook its head.
"Ugh," it said, "You've got an awful lot of iron." Then the creature seemed to lose interest in him as a butterfly landed on the tip of its spear. The fae made a curious noise and held out a hand, and the butterfly fluttered down to land on the tip of its finger. The fae brought its hand closer to its face and stared intently at the beautiful patterns on the insect's wings. Then the fae popped the butterfly into its mouth and swallowed it whole. It looked back at Allister with some surprise.
"Oh, you're still here!" it said.
"Yes," Allister said, wondering why he was still there, when it was so obviously a much better idea to be somewhere else. "I'm looking for someone. A man." Allister could not stop staring at the fae's finger. "He would have come this way not long ago. Have you seen him?"
The fae smiled like it was Christmas morning. "Are you asking for my help?" it asked. Allister was about to answer when he realized that the creature sounded far too eager.
"Um. No. No, thank you, I think I'll just manage on my own," he said. The fae looked extremely disappointed.
"Well, okay," it said. Then its expression brightened again. "Tell you what, I'll help you anyway! If I were you, I'd go that way," the creature said, pointing to the path on the left. Allister considered this for a moment.
"Do you suppose that if you were me, you'd go the correct way?" Allister asked.
"Probably not!" the creature said. "I'd probably blunder into a trap and have all of my fingers cut off! I sure am glad I'm me and not you."
"Ah," Allister said. "I see."
"Well, it was nice talking to you," the creature said, and then it disappeared into the trees.
Allister took the path on the right. He had gone barely ten steps before he found a shoe. As he bent to pick it up, he heard laughter in the distance. Two voices were laughing. One sounded like it might belong to a rather drunk member of the aristocracy. The other laugh sent chills down Allister's spine and made him want to run very fast in the other direction, except that then he would have his back to whatever was laughing. Allister tightened his grip on the iron poker until he could feel his fingernails digging into his palm. Then he took a few nervous steps forward.
Eventually, Allister came to another small clearing in the forest. The Duke was sitting at a small ivory table across from what at first glance appeared to be a beautiful woman wearing a long, flowing gown with leaves woven into its fabric. It was the hair that broke the illusion. It was too thick, had bark on it, and tiny green leaves sprouted from the ends of it.
"Your grace!" Allister called. This immediately attracted the attention of the fae. Its laughter died instantly, and it fixed him with a glare that made Allister flinch. The Duke frowned at her expression and turned to see what she was looking at. He smiled when he saw Allister and gave him a little wave.
"Hello there, my good man!" the Duke said. He tried to get up from his chair, lost his balance, and sat back down. "Come and join us!" he said.
Allister nervously made his way over to the table. The fae was smiling now like nothing was wrong, and Allister was sure that wasn't a good sign. He noticed that there was an empty chair at the table. He was sure it hadn't been there before he'd called out to the Duke.
"Please, sit," said the fae to him once he was closer.
"Ah, no, I'm afraid the Duke and I really should be going," Allister said.
"Nonsense. We've just opened the wine, and it would be a pity to waste it. Stay a moment," the creature said to him. Allister looked again at the table and noticed three wineglasses and an intricately made blown-glass bottle of dark red wine. The fae poured some of the wine into each of the glasses and then set the bottle back on the table. It did not pick up the glass in front of it.
Allister did not sit down. "Your grace, do you know where you are?" he asked, trying to keep his eyes focused on the Duke so he wouldn’t accidentally look at the fae again. "Please, your grace. Do you know where you are?"
The duke looked confused. "I…," his expression suddenly brightened. "I think I'd like some of this wine," he said, reaching for his glass.
"No!" Allister shouted. The duke paused and looked at him in confusion. "Ah…I mean, there's plenty of wine back at the party. You remember? Lord Wincott's party?" The Duke looked confused.
"I'm at Wincott's party. He throws a good party, you know." He looked at Allister more closely. "I say, you're just a servant! You can't tell me what to do!" The duke reached for his glass again. Allister didn't even think about what he was doing. He couldn’t let the man drink any fairy wine. He lashed out with the poker and smashed the wineglass.
The duke tumbled backwards out of his chair, crying in pain. Small shards of glass dotted the flesh of his right hand. The skin surrounding each fragment had already turned an angry red. Allister didn't know if it was the pain or the anger that seemed to clear the duke's thinking, but he seemed more aware of his surroundings. Unfortunately, he was still focusing on the wrong things.
"How dare you!" he cried at Allister. "I'll be speaking to Lord Wincott about you, you can be certain of that!" He turned back to the fae, looking for an ally to join him in his righteous indignation. "Can you believe…" his voice died instantly when he got an unclouded look at his host. "What is this?" he croaked.
"Sir, you've wandered into Fair Folk lands. Please come with me," Allister said. He would have extended a hand to him, but he didn't dare abandon either the lantern or the poker. The duke looked at Allister, then back at the fae, and then back at Allister. He tried to get to his feet, but seemed to be having trouble. Allister thought it was just that he was still drunk, but then he looked closer. Thin vines had wrapped themselves around the duke's legs. Allister followed them with his eyes back to the fae, where they disappeared under its dress.
The fae had not moved since Allister had smashed the glass. It had fixed Allister with a look of pure loathing, but it had not moved.
"Let him go," Allister said. He raised the poker over his head in what he hoped was a threatening manner. "I don't want to use this." This was unquestionably true. Allister tried to keep his eyes on the fae's hands, or its dress, or the vines. His gaze kept wandering back to its eyes, though, and every time they did he felt some more of his scant supply of courage drain away. He took a step back towards the Duke. "Your grace, take one of the horseshoes from my belt. Quickly!"
The duke managed, after a few fumbling tries, to extricate one of the horseshoes from Allister's belt.
"Touch it to the vines!" Allister said, praying that the fae's aversion to iron would extend to the vines. Allister was still watching the fae, and he saw it flinch in pain and hiss like an angered snake. He took that as a good sign, and barely stifled a hysterical laugh at the absurdity of a situation in which one of the Fair Folk being angry with you was the good outcome. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Duke stumble to his feet.
"Give me the poker," the Duke said. Allister's training and place in the social order made him want to obey. However, his sense of self preservation was what was currently running the show. Allister spared the duke an incredulous look. The duke had the grace to look a bit embarrassed.
"Stay close to me," Allister said, and started to back away slowly. The fae began to rise from her seat, and the duke turned and ran. Allister decided that probably wasn't a terrible idea, and ran after him. He quickly overtook the duke, and it took all the willpower he had left to slow down and let the duke keep pace with him.
Allister led the way back to the cellar, and the duke stopped for a moment to stare at the impossibility of the opening to the room hanging in the middle of the glade. Allister screamed at him to keep running, and eventually got the two of them into the cellar. He rushed to the door and practically threw the lantern to the floor so he could get out his keys. He was struggling with the lock when he realized that the duke wasn't next to him again. He turned to look for him, and spotted the man back by one of wine racks, apparently reading one of the labels.
"Get over here right now!" Allister shouted at him, more angry than he'd ever been in his entire life.
Allister turned back to the door to find that it had already been opened. Lord Wincott was standing in the open doorway, staring at Allister in amazement.
"Allister, I expected better of you. That's no way to treat our guests," he said.
Allister imagined the near future of his life. He would shout at Lord Wincott. He would abandon his position and storm out of the building riding a wave of anger and frustration at the monstrous unfairness of it all. Then he saw Lord Wincott give him a small smile and a conspiratorial wink. Lord Wincott walked past him into the cellar holding a horseshoe in one hand and a wineglass in the other, and moved to stand by the Duke. Lord Wincott noted which bottle the Duke had been examining and praised the Duke for his excellent taste in wine. They immediately launched into a discussion of various vintages, all thoughts of impertinent servants forgotten.
Allister staggered out of the cellar and blinked at the crowd of people that were staring at him. He was at a loss for what to say or what to do. Up until a few minutes ago, his life had consisted entirely of just trying to stay alive and get the Duke back to what Allister thought of as "the real world." Allister wondered how he could reconnect with his old life.
Suddenly, Gywnn came barreling out of the crowd and threw her arms around him. Allister realized that his question had been answered. He released his grip on the poker so that he could return her embrace with both arms.
brigits_flame community. The prompt for this week was "wine."As the head of Lord Wincott's household, Allister had seen and heard a lot of strange things, many of which the average man would find impossible or terrifying. When a frantic maid had burst into the kitchen he had assumed that, whatever the problem was, it would be something that he had dealt with before, and that everything would be fine. After she spoke, he continued to cling to this hope by assuming that he had misheard her.
"I'm sorry, I must have misheard you," said Allister. "I thought you said that we've lost the Duke of Burgton."
The servant just stood in front of him, wringing her hands and nodding vigorously.
"You mean that you can't find him. It's a crowded party. I'm sure he's here somewhere," Allister said.
The maid shook her head. "We saw him go into the wine cellar," she said.
Allister imagined the near future of his life. There would be shouting. Lord Wincott would look at him with an expression of profound disappointment. Allister would be released from Lord Wincott's service without a letter of recommendation and thus be unable to obtain a new position. He would be forced out onto the streets where he would starve, go mad, and eventually be mugged for his hat and die bleeding in the dark in some filthy alley. That was assuming that something worse didn't happen to him.
"Why wasn't someone watching him? Why was the wine cellar even open?" Allister said, his voice shifting upwards in pitch ever so slightly as he contemplated his bleak and uncertain future. The maid just looked at him helplessly.
Actually, he could quite easily imagine how this had happened. There were a lot of guests and a lot to do. A great deal of wine was being consumed, and so naturally someone had gone down to the cellar to retrieve some more. In the rush, they had forgotten to lock the door behind them when they left. The Duke had probably decided that his rank and privilege gave him the right to go rooting about in Lord Wincott's wine cellar, and most likely he had no idea that doing so was an unbelievably bad idea.
"I suppose I'll have to…" Allister trailed off. Maybe going mad and dying in a dark alley wouldn't be so bad. No, it would be shirking his duty if he didn't at least try. "I suppose I shall have to go in after him."
The maid's eyes opened very wide. She suddenly crossed the few steps between them and grabbed his arm. Allister looked down at her hands in astonishment. This was wildly inappropriate.
"Sir! No, sir, you musn't!" she cried. Allister was amazed to see that she had tears in her eyes. Then he saw what lay behind the tears, and his amazement turned to shock. He had never imagined that she might have those sorts of feelings for him. Certainly she had never said anything. Allister sighed as he realized that the situation remained unchanged. This was his responsibility.
"I'm sorry, Miss Cole…I'm sorry, Gwynn. But I have to go," he said. She turned away and tried to stifle a sob. "I'll come back. I promise," he said, hoping it was a promise that he could keep. He was about to leave when she hurled herself into his arms and kissed him deeply. Then she was gone, running down the hall with her face in her hands.
It amazed Allister how complicated one's life could become in so short a span of time.
In a bit of a daze, he made his way down to the wine cellar, pausing next to the fireplace in the main hall to retrieve a heavy iron poker. Upon reaching the wine cellar he was immensely relieved to see that someone had thought to lock it again so that no other guests could go wandering inside. He looked at the basket next to the door, and was unsurprised to see that all four iron horseshoes were still there. He took one for himself and another for the Duke, in case he actually found the man, hooking them over his belt. Allister awkwardly unlocked the heavy oak door with his left hand, unwilling to put aside the poker even for a moment. Then he swung the door open, took an oil lantern down from the wall, and stepped inside. He immediately locked the door behind him again, then turned to face the cellar.
The air was cool and pleasant, and reminded Allister of a springtime evening in the garden. He grimaced as he thought about why this was the case.
To Lord Wincott, it all seemed perfectly reasonable. Wine needed to be stored at a specific temperature and humidity to properly age. Other gentlemen settled for the limits of modern architecture when designing their wine cellars. That wasn't enough for Lord Wincott, a man who thought that the fabric of space and time would look much nicer if it were a quilt.
On one of his many journeys, Lord Wincott had discovered a delightful, shaded glade that had the perfect atmospheric conditions for his wine cellar. They were so perfect, in fact, that he arranged for the glade to exist in the place that would normally be occupied by the south wall of the wine cellar.
If that were the whole story, then this might be considered a strange but quite practical use of Lord Wincott's rather specialized talents. Alas, that was not the whole story. Unfortunately, this quite pleasant meadow lay in the Dusklands of the Fair Folk.
A less arrogant gentleman might have had second thoughts about creating a permanent connection between his basement and another plane of existence inhabited by poorly understood, amoral, inhuman creatures of vast and terrible power. But to Lord Wincott it seemed safe enough. As long as one always brought a piece of cold iron with them into the wine cellar and did not stray more than three feet beyond where the south wall should be, there would be no real danger. So far, only one servant had forgotten this rule. His disappearance served as an effective reminder for the others.
Allister peered into the gloom of the cellar and wondered if he should call out to the Duke. There was, after all, the slim chance that he was still there.
"Hello? Your Grace?" Allister called, trying to make his voice loud enough to be heard by the Duke, but not loud enough to be heard by anything else. Only silence answered him. Allister cautiously made his way past the racks of wine. He paused when he noticed a bottle on the floor. Crouching, he retrieved it and inspected the label.
"Hah! The Duke knows his wine well enough," Allister said. It was a fine vintage, indeed. Allister checked the labels on the racks until he found the proper place for the bottle and carefully placed it back where it belonged. It was a small consolation that the Duke had put it down rather than dropped it when…whatever had happened to him had happened.
Allister called out to the Duke a few more times and searched the whole of the terrestrial parts of the cellar, just to be sure. Then, when he could think of no more excuses to postpone it any longer, he made his way south.
The change was disturbingly gradual. Blades of grass poked up through the concrete floor in greater and greater numbers until eventually there was nothing but grass and soft earth. The glade was surrounded by looming trees that were both beautiful and vaguely sinister. A narrow path led away from the cellar and deeper into the trees.
Allister turned around and looked back into the cellar. It looked like a realistic painting hanging in the air. Allister shivered.
"Your Grace?" he called, even quieter than he had back in the cellar. Rationally, he knew that he should be shouting if he wanted to have any real chance of finding the man. But rationality had no place in this situation, and he was terrified of attracting the attention of something other than the Duke.
"Who are you?" said a childlike voice to Allister's left. Allister jumped away from the sound and flailed at the empty air with his poker.
"Stay back!" he shouted, and immediately regretted it. "I don’t want any trouble," he said, much quieter.
"Okay," said the voice.
Allister raised the lantern and peered into the undergrowth. A small hand pushed the branches aside, and Allister got his first look at one of the fae. If not for the circumstances and his present location, Allister supposed he could have mistaken the creature for a human child about seven years of age. Closer inspection revealed sharply pointed ears, eyes like a cat's, and a subtle wrongness about the way it stood. Also, of course, there was the short spear it was holding that appeared to be made of glass and tipped with a blade cut from a single enormous ruby. The thing turned its head on one side and looked appraisingly at him.
"I like the color of your eyes. Can I have them?" it asked politely. Allister tried, with some success, not to whimper.
"Ah…no, I'm afraid I'm still using them," he said. The fae shrugged as if this was unimportant. Then it wrinkled its nose and shook its head.
"Ugh," it said, "You've got an awful lot of iron." Then the creature seemed to lose interest in him as a butterfly landed on the tip of its spear. The fae made a curious noise and held out a hand, and the butterfly fluttered down to land on the tip of its finger. The fae brought its hand closer to its face and stared intently at the beautiful patterns on the insect's wings. Then the fae popped the butterfly into its mouth and swallowed it whole. It looked back at Allister with some surprise.
"Oh, you're still here!" it said.
"Yes," Allister said, wondering why he was still there, when it was so obviously a much better idea to be somewhere else. "I'm looking for someone. A man." Allister could not stop staring at the fae's finger. "He would have come this way not long ago. Have you seen him?"
The fae smiled like it was Christmas morning. "Are you asking for my help?" it asked. Allister was about to answer when he realized that the creature sounded far too eager.
"Um. No. No, thank you, I think I'll just manage on my own," he said. The fae looked extremely disappointed.
"Well, okay," it said. Then its expression brightened again. "Tell you what, I'll help you anyway! If I were you, I'd go that way," the creature said, pointing to the path on the left. Allister considered this for a moment.
"Do you suppose that if you were me, you'd go the correct way?" Allister asked.
"Probably not!" the creature said. "I'd probably blunder into a trap and have all of my fingers cut off! I sure am glad I'm me and not you."
"Ah," Allister said. "I see."
"Well, it was nice talking to you," the creature said, and then it disappeared into the trees.
Allister took the path on the right. He had gone barely ten steps before he found a shoe. As he bent to pick it up, he heard laughter in the distance. Two voices were laughing. One sounded like it might belong to a rather drunk member of the aristocracy. The other laugh sent chills down Allister's spine and made him want to run very fast in the other direction, except that then he would have his back to whatever was laughing. Allister tightened his grip on the iron poker until he could feel his fingernails digging into his palm. Then he took a few nervous steps forward.
Eventually, Allister came to another small clearing in the forest. The Duke was sitting at a small ivory table across from what at first glance appeared to be a beautiful woman wearing a long, flowing gown with leaves woven into its fabric. It was the hair that broke the illusion. It was too thick, had bark on it, and tiny green leaves sprouted from the ends of it.
"Your grace!" Allister called. This immediately attracted the attention of the fae. Its laughter died instantly, and it fixed him with a glare that made Allister flinch. The Duke frowned at her expression and turned to see what she was looking at. He smiled when he saw Allister and gave him a little wave.
"Hello there, my good man!" the Duke said. He tried to get up from his chair, lost his balance, and sat back down. "Come and join us!" he said.
Allister nervously made his way over to the table. The fae was smiling now like nothing was wrong, and Allister was sure that wasn't a good sign. He noticed that there was an empty chair at the table. He was sure it hadn't been there before he'd called out to the Duke.
"Please, sit," said the fae to him once he was closer.
"Ah, no, I'm afraid the Duke and I really should be going," Allister said.
"Nonsense. We've just opened the wine, and it would be a pity to waste it. Stay a moment," the creature said to him. Allister looked again at the table and noticed three wineglasses and an intricately made blown-glass bottle of dark red wine. The fae poured some of the wine into each of the glasses and then set the bottle back on the table. It did not pick up the glass in front of it.
Allister did not sit down. "Your grace, do you know where you are?" he asked, trying to keep his eyes focused on the Duke so he wouldn’t accidentally look at the fae again. "Please, your grace. Do you know where you are?"
The duke looked confused. "I…," his expression suddenly brightened. "I think I'd like some of this wine," he said, reaching for his glass.
"No!" Allister shouted. The duke paused and looked at him in confusion. "Ah…I mean, there's plenty of wine back at the party. You remember? Lord Wincott's party?" The Duke looked confused.
"I'm at Wincott's party. He throws a good party, you know." He looked at Allister more closely. "I say, you're just a servant! You can't tell me what to do!" The duke reached for his glass again. Allister didn't even think about what he was doing. He couldn’t let the man drink any fairy wine. He lashed out with the poker and smashed the wineglass.
The duke tumbled backwards out of his chair, crying in pain. Small shards of glass dotted the flesh of his right hand. The skin surrounding each fragment had already turned an angry red. Allister didn't know if it was the pain or the anger that seemed to clear the duke's thinking, but he seemed more aware of his surroundings. Unfortunately, he was still focusing on the wrong things.
"How dare you!" he cried at Allister. "I'll be speaking to Lord Wincott about you, you can be certain of that!" He turned back to the fae, looking for an ally to join him in his righteous indignation. "Can you believe…" his voice died instantly when he got an unclouded look at his host. "What is this?" he croaked.
"Sir, you've wandered into Fair Folk lands. Please come with me," Allister said. He would have extended a hand to him, but he didn't dare abandon either the lantern or the poker. The duke looked at Allister, then back at the fae, and then back at Allister. He tried to get to his feet, but seemed to be having trouble. Allister thought it was just that he was still drunk, but then he looked closer. Thin vines had wrapped themselves around the duke's legs. Allister followed them with his eyes back to the fae, where they disappeared under its dress.
The fae had not moved since Allister had smashed the glass. It had fixed Allister with a look of pure loathing, but it had not moved.
"Let him go," Allister said. He raised the poker over his head in what he hoped was a threatening manner. "I don't want to use this." This was unquestionably true. Allister tried to keep his eyes on the fae's hands, or its dress, or the vines. His gaze kept wandering back to its eyes, though, and every time they did he felt some more of his scant supply of courage drain away. He took a step back towards the Duke. "Your grace, take one of the horseshoes from my belt. Quickly!"
The duke managed, after a few fumbling tries, to extricate one of the horseshoes from Allister's belt.
"Touch it to the vines!" Allister said, praying that the fae's aversion to iron would extend to the vines. Allister was still watching the fae, and he saw it flinch in pain and hiss like an angered snake. He took that as a good sign, and barely stifled a hysterical laugh at the absurdity of a situation in which one of the Fair Folk being angry with you was the good outcome. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Duke stumble to his feet.
"Give me the poker," the Duke said. Allister's training and place in the social order made him want to obey. However, his sense of self preservation was what was currently running the show. Allister spared the duke an incredulous look. The duke had the grace to look a bit embarrassed.
"Stay close to me," Allister said, and started to back away slowly. The fae began to rise from her seat, and the duke turned and ran. Allister decided that probably wasn't a terrible idea, and ran after him. He quickly overtook the duke, and it took all the willpower he had left to slow down and let the duke keep pace with him.
Allister led the way back to the cellar, and the duke stopped for a moment to stare at the impossibility of the opening to the room hanging in the middle of the glade. Allister screamed at him to keep running, and eventually got the two of them into the cellar. He rushed to the door and practically threw the lantern to the floor so he could get out his keys. He was struggling with the lock when he realized that the duke wasn't next to him again. He turned to look for him, and spotted the man back by one of wine racks, apparently reading one of the labels.
"Get over here right now!" Allister shouted at him, more angry than he'd ever been in his entire life.
Allister turned back to the door to find that it had already been opened. Lord Wincott was standing in the open doorway, staring at Allister in amazement.
"Allister, I expected better of you. That's no way to treat our guests," he said.
Allister imagined the near future of his life. He would shout at Lord Wincott. He would abandon his position and storm out of the building riding a wave of anger and frustration at the monstrous unfairness of it all. Then he saw Lord Wincott give him a small smile and a conspiratorial wink. Lord Wincott walked past him into the cellar holding a horseshoe in one hand and a wineglass in the other, and moved to stand by the Duke. Lord Wincott noted which bottle the Duke had been examining and praised the Duke for his excellent taste in wine. They immediately launched into a discussion of various vintages, all thoughts of impertinent servants forgotten.
Allister staggered out of the cellar and blinked at the crowd of people that were staring at him. He was at a loss for what to say or what to do. Up until a few minutes ago, his life had consisted entirely of just trying to stay alive and get the Duke back to what Allister thought of as "the real world." Allister wondered how he could reconnect with his old life.
Suddenly, Gywnn came barreling out of the crowd and threw her arms around him. Allister realized that his question had been answered. He released his grip on the poker so that he could return her embrace with both arms.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-10 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-10 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-10 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-10 08:30 pm (UTC)I found only one error in your spelling or grammar: Allister called out the Duke a few more times and searched the whole of the terrestrial parts of the cellar, just to be sure. Then, when he could think of no more excuses to postpone it any longer, he made his way south. There should be a 'to' after 'called out' here. Your usage and syntax are great; I have no comments there.
Your story snapped right along at a great pace; not too much detail, just enough description. You did a great job at mingling faerie folk (nicely researched)and a feudal-seeming society with modern images and patois. Nicely done!
I loved loved loved this story. it was wry and witty, two of my favorite things. Allister is a perfect hero: capable, unassuming, able to effectively swing a poker. I hope you write more of his adventures.
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Date: 2008-11-10 11:36 pm (UTC)edit part 1
Date: 2008-11-14 09:54 pm (UTC)"Why wasn't someone watching him? Why was the wine cellar even open?" Allister said, his voice shifting upwards in pitch ever so slightly as he contemplated his bleak and uncertain [“uncertain implies more mystery than worry, downplaying the urgency of “bleak”] future. The maid just looked at him helplessly.
After a moment, Allister remembered to breathe again.[I hope you realize how cheesy the rest of the story will have to be now…]
He looked at the basket next to the door, and was unsurprised to see that all four iron horseshoes were still there. [Very nice, blunt, inexplicable foreshadowing. My interest is increased here.]
The air was cool and pleasant, and reminded Allister of an evening in the garden in springtime [Try “reminded Allister of a springtime evening in the garden.” Shaving down just a few words can make a sentence much smoother.] He grimaced as he thought about why this was the case.[He grimaced as he thought about/contemplated this.]
"Hello? Your Grace?" Allister called, trying to make his voice loud enough to be heard by the Duke, but not loud enough to be heard by anything else. Only silence answered him. Allister cautiously made his way past the racks of wine. He paused when he noticed a bottle on the floor. Crouching, he retrieved it and inspected the label. [Some good suspense-building here.]
Plus [I wouldn’t recommend the term ‘plus’ to match the language in the rest of the story], of course, there was the short spear it was holding that appeared to be made of glass and tipped with a blade cut from a single enormous ruby. [This single detail brings us to a much better place for imagining the rest.]
"Give me the poker," the Duke said. Allister's training and place in the social order made him want to obey. However, his sense of self preservation was what was currently running the show. Allister spared the duke an incredulous look. The duke had the grace to look a bit embarrassed. [This is a particularly mature and thoughtful passage.]
edit part 2
Date: 2008-11-14 09:55 pm (UTC)[Allister staggered out of the cellar and blinked at the crowd of people that were staring at him. He was at a loss for what to say or what to do.=both these sentences could be tightened up] Up until a few minutes ago, Allister's life had consisted entirely of just trying to stay alive and get the Duke back to what Allister thought of as "the real world." How does one make the transition from that back to a normal life?[A question, like most, better asked by the protagonist to himself than by the author to the reader.]
Suddenly, Gywnn came barreling out of the crowd and threw her arms around him. Well, that answered that question. Allister finally let the poker drop from his fingers so that he could put both arms around her.
[I’m not against the relationship between Allister and Gywnn, and ending it on that high note is appropriate enough for this kind of story. I really would trim back some of the romantic cliché’s from their earlier exchange as the rest of the story is not quite farcical enough to absorb it. This is not a bad fantasy story. With a little more tightening of the sentence structures and a little more description (which you are clearly capable of regarding the fae, though I’d strongly suggest using ‘he’ and ‘she’ instead of ‘it’ when including any character at length, unless they are explicitly a/multi-sexual) this can be a fairly good one. Fair-ly. Heh.]
Re: edit part 1
Date: 2008-11-15 03:31 am (UTC)I agree with you about the cheesiness in the romantic elements. I think at the time I wrote the story I was feeling a bit more whimsical and didn't mind using the clichés at full power. Reading it again they don't seem as funny, and just look sort of pathetic.
I think I'll tweak a few other things based on your other suggestions as well. The only one I really disagree with is the use of "she/he" for the fae – I think it helps to reinforce that they aren't human or even semi-human if I stick with "it." It's particularly important for Allister to think of each one as "it" so he maintains the right level of dread and distrust when dealing with it. Still, I appreciate the suggestion.
Thanks again for your time. I think I'll let your comments simmer a bit and then go see if I can make some improvements on what I've got so far.