This is a very brief excerpt of the beginning of "Rhiannon Goes Elsewhere" the novel I'm working on now. It tells the story of a babysitter and the two children she watches, and what happens to them when the babysitter's fairy tales come true. The basic concept came from a nightmare I had (one of the few stories-from-dreams that actually still made sense in the morning) about creatures called wealets who came from the blue in a flame and stole children. It's all linked to fairy tales I read when I was little, and gets a little more whimsical than I normally write. I owe quite a debt to Neil Gaiman for inadvertently helping me keep the tone so far, so Neil, wherever you are, thanks a lot. I owe you.
Dear reader, let me tell you what I know to be true, that which I believe.
When you are young, stories and fables and make-believes slip in and out of your ears like trains through a station. Most of them leave no lasting impression, being purely transitory; some of them stay, though— they lurk in your memory, unwilling to leave. Sudden odd references may bring them partway back to mind, like treasures half-buried in the sand. Later on, they may surface abruptly, without warning, and take on an entirely new meaning, due to circumstances, lend to your life new perspective. Stories have power.
I don’t believe in magic. Not the kind that means spells and charms on people, at least. Not the kind that leads people to dance in circles around a fire in the woods on a dark night. that kind of magic is only as real as you make it, won’t hold good, won’t stay true, won’t help you any as you go through life.
I do believe in words. Words have a different kind of magic; it really mayn’t be magic at all; I believe in the fundamental natures of things, of times alien to our human minds. I believe that children see, hear, and view things that adults cannot, that somewhere along the way you lose your fantastic ability to see the things that so often go unseen.
This story concerns a young woman named Rhiannon, who is a storyteller. Storytelling is perhaps the most ancient art, coming well before the invention of the wheeel and the toaster oven, which rank first and twenty-third respectively on the list of human innovations. Really gifted storytellers change reality as we know it with their words, they warp time and space, create creatures, and mold worlds for them to inhabit. Rhiannon, who had storytelling hin her blood (being descended from the bards of the ancient Celtic world, including both Taliesin and Emrys, who had performed in the courts of King Arthur) didn’t actually do a lot of it, other than brief lies to her parents and school teachers every now and then. Until, that is, she came to babysoit for the parents of two children who, in her opinion, watchd far too much television.
It’s odd how much grew out of a simple attempt at distraction...
When she first started telling them stories, they were simple tall tales, designed to make the children laugh. Later, though, she told of a world which surfaced, whole and complete and fully-formed, in her mind one night while she watched a fire through half-closed eyes. She thought the story was from a dream she had, but the dream itself was a memory of a tale related to her by her mother, when Rhiannon was not more than five years old. The stories fascinated her charges, and she began to invent more.
Rhiannon, over the months that she watched the children, got better and better at storytelling. But it wasn’t until now, as she approached her eighteenth birthday, that her storytelling power got strong, strong enough to begin to change reality, to transform the familiar into the unknown. Abilities like hers are directly linked to childhood, they depend on the suppleness of a child-like mind, and as Rhiannon began to drift into adulthood, her power began to flare up, become briefly strong and bright, like a fire will right before it dies out.
She would speak, and things would change, twist quickly with hardly anyone noticing, and drift out of the way.
Reality altered.
Conscience shifted.
At first she didn’t even realize what she was doing.
Darkness spreads across the land, the darkness of night. A full, alive, aware night, with knowledge and opinions of its own. Some it let pass through it without hindrance; others were swallowed up by it and never seen again.
This world is ancient, far older than ours, born into blackness. When ours came along, the silver light of it attracted the inhabitants, so they came to investigate. They liked what they saw. They saw newborn humans crawling on their hands and knees, laughing in delight at the simplets experiences. So, though they went back to their world, they kept the link, the Eviath, open, the Way Between their world and ours, so as to be able to cross over when they wished.
Sometimes they took things they particularly liked. Sometimes anything that glinted like silver, for they don’t have anything like the coolness of silver in their fire-filled lands. Sometimes food, to bring diversity to their enjoyment of life. Sometimes books, for they put a hight value on knowledge.
Most of the time, children.
Children were an unknown among the culture and class of these people, the wealets. There hadn’t been a child born among them for hundreds of years. They were immortal, or they would have died out long ago. They didn’t worry about becoming extinct— they just wanted te pleasure children bring, their smiles, their joys. The wealets looked to the satrets, a much lower caste on their world, who had their own children. The wealets wished—
So they took—
Many a child has disappeared in the arms of a wealet, falling into the blue of the flame that is our side of the Eviath, perhaps never to be seena gain by their family and friends— unless, somehow they come back.
Who knows?
This story is ingrained in the minds of two small children. It’s been told to them many, many times.
Usually it begins:
Once Upon A Time—
