Will spends some time planning his Ireland trip. He asks for ideas from Fianna folks he knows; they suggest being open about coming there and why so that they don't think he's sneaking in, and taking gifts. He's spent a while collecting Australian stories to take as gifts, and that seems like a good option. He gets given contacts to start him off as well. It sounds like he'll have to let word spread from the kinfolk contacts he has to garou to find the caern he's looking for.
He starts in Dublin and the kinfolk he knows. It takes a couple of days to get word out and someone to come talk to him. He tries to keep the details of what the spirit interaction was that led him having to cross the entire world on the quiet, but after a couple of drinks the story comes out. He looks a bit silly, but it sort of eases the way with the Irish garou that he's on the back foot.
It takes six weeks, staying in backpackers, or family farms and meeting and greeting people. He checks back to Sleeping Lore when he can to make sure nothing's going wrong. He starts taking photos of himself with other slightly drunnk Fianna and sending them back, mostly to Finn. "Yeah, my Fianna packmate was too poor to come, lets send him a photo!" This takes on a life of its own, and after a bit even Fianna Will never met start doing it.
Eventually he meets people from An boladh an gheimhridh i gaoithe de samhradh te - its on the middle western side of Ireland, amidst the moors. Its cold and wet. After a day or two, they say they will send him along to a Loremaster by the name of Simon-Owen who will know stories like the ones he needs. It takes a bit of negotiation for this Loremaster to agree, but Will is eventually given directions to a house a few miles north.
Will is pretty cold and wet by the time he gets there. The house is about half way up a hill, and made of wood. Smoke trickles out the chimney. When Will knocks, the door is opened by an older guy with dark hair and beard and a dour expression. Will introduces himself formally (and is introduced to in turn - Simon-Owen Conlon, rank 4 Fianna homid galliard) and explains why he is here - he has promised a spirit he will come and learn stories of Bridget O'Meary, who lived at An boladh an gheimhridh i gaoithe de samhradh te three hundred years ago. Inside is warm and the smell of roast food drifts out and Will apologises for interrupting his dinner. Simon-Owen says come in, he's letting in the cold.
The door leads into a single room with a large table set out. There is a kitchen on one side, and a red-haired woman dressed very simply looks up at Will, and then down again, continuing to make some kind of food. Will sniffs at thinks she is kinfolk, but maybe with something else there as well (fae maybe? its not a scent he knows, but she does look the Fiana sort). The table is loaded with food - roast chicken and beef, vegatables and the like. Will's tired, cold and hungry and its hard to not let his gaze stray to it.
Simon-Owen sits and starts but does not invite Will to do so. He
brusquely asks what happened. "I promised a spirit I would learn stories
about her to tell to a Get of Fenris sept. I didn't realise it was
possible to summon an ancestor spirit from the other side of the world.
So I am here to fulfil my chiminage."
"Why did you summon a Fianna ancestor spirit?"
"I was at a Fianna caern, challenging to be Fostern."
"Why were you at a Fianna caern?"
"It was a celebration of my pack having found a caern for the Fianna - ",
he launches into the tale of Scars Atoning. While Will tells the story,
Simon-Owen picks up food but eats some of the best bits, and then puts
the rest back half eaten.
Will can't really tell what's going on - is he being tested to see
if he would be rude? Will's will is of iron. He tells the story well,
from start to end, but Simon-Owen almost seems to be deliberately
being distracted. Will ignores this ongoing rudeness.
As Will finishes, Simon-Owen is staring at him and eating as the woman comes over to put food on the table. She pointedly clears her throat and the older garou jestures at the other chair. "Sit. Eat". Will does so with enthusiasm - its pretty delicious, the best he's had for some time.
Simon-Owen launches straight into stories of Bridget O'Meary. The first is her and her pack fighting the monster of Corvid Loch - it was coming up and eating fisherman. They tricked it by putting a straw dummy in a boat attached to a line, and then tracking it that one. The next the pack went to the Umbra to find pieces of a fetish that had been broken and scattered. And the final story is one where the pack died. There were fomori in Cromwell's army, and the pack rather over confidantly thought they could take them all, but got overwhelmed, gunned down and hacked to pieces.
Its clear that Simon-Owen knew these stories, or knew that Will would need to hear them and learned them. He tells them in a way that aids Will's efforts to memorise them rather than in high performance, and Will does well at memorising them.
Simon-Owen finishes with a fourth story. Its a story of Bridget interacting the fae - how before the pack died, they made a deal with the faeries. The fae would provide magic to make it harder to be seen by Cromwell's troops - but there was a requirement for them to do something for the fae as well, and in a weird tangled story, it becomes clear that the pack got it wrong in a technical details, and so it didn't work. Its a weird story, and its not heroic, unlike how they died. Its late when this all finishes. Simon-Owen brusquely says that he should remember the stories clearly, and not it is time to go. There's something werid about his expression, almost resigned. "Go" Will leaves.
As he heads back toward where he is going to meet the other garou, reviewing the stories and the whole encounter in his head, he realises that its not really worth mentioning the woman, or the food. Its just not very important, and no one else would care, so he should sort of forget about it and not think on it. She's not garou, so nothing about the woman is a valuable part of the story.
Late Autumn 2011
Will negotiates to figure out where the Sept that Lise went to after he was banished. It takes some favour swapping and firm oaths, but he finds out that the name is the Sept of Summer's Reward, and its at a place called Darke's Peak. Its quite warm in mid Autumn when he gets out to the nearby town. He asks for 'Carl' but they don't know anyone called Carl. Two hours later, Carl shows up - Carl Jorgensen, Sept Leader and Master of the Challenge (Homid Ahroun, rank 3). (Its probably a small sept, with the doubled up Sept positions). Will is taken elsewhere and meets Carl's children Gretchen (Homid Get of Fenris Theurge 2) and Ivar (Homid Get of Fenris Ahroun 2). Will explains that he's looking for Lise and what happened to her because her behaviour is strange, and gives some examples.
Gretchen says she was behaving oddly for a month before she left - including talking in her sleep (arguing in tone, but nothing clear). She was part of the Sept pack (there's only one). They agree that she was slightly different in personality - more aggressive and argumentative for this time. Ivar says he thinks it is because she was an ahroun, which is not the right auspice for a woman. She went off on her own a couple of times.
Will says he suspects an ancestor spirit is influencing her. After a bit of eye contact, Gretchen says that these things began shortly after they went to the Get homeland in the Umbra (Will gets the vibe that they spend a fair amount of time in the spirit world, dealing with spirits).
Will asks about her fetish axe, to much bafflement from the Sept. They don't think she had any fetishes - they ask about the one he was talking about and he says she had one that she said had been in her family for generations. Will admits that one of his past lives seems to have a connection to the axe as well. Carl says that there are not that many familylines in Australia, perhaps there is a connection.
He asks about her arrival - she wasn't banished here, thought she was strongly suggested to come here for her skills (good at fighting against spirits, and good at symbolic thinking) and for the experience the Sept could provide.
Will thanks them and heads back to Sleeping Lore. Gretchen escorts him back to the town - she quietly says that Lise was not happy here, in a quiet backwater sept. That just makes more questions - the disputed caern is even *more* in the middle of nowhere, and doesn't even have a sept.
Will takes his theory to Ends-the-Quiet back at home. He agrees that a visit to the homeland may have triggered something in Lise's subconscious, but its more likely to have been a subtle thing than she ended up with a spirit dogging her. Will asks if she remembered the fetish or something? It is impossible to tell. Going to the Ettadunna caern mightn't have been a coincedence - the caern spirit said some portentious things when Will arrived that made no sense. ("I have an axe in my head")
Will toys with going to Ettadunna but the objections of Lise and the Jindabyne council with regard to Bunyip things makes it a bit of a awkward proposition. He decides to hang off.
Will finds that the fog is not as thick as his packmates seem to believe, although it does swirl occasionally into dense drifts. Camhain appears in front of him out of one of them and puts his fingers to his lips, and offers his hand. They walk less than 50m through the swirling mists and emerge onto the road. Camhain points at the moon and bows, then scampers back into the forest. Will changes to lupus and runs.
Will runs toward the moon along the cobbled road through early spring. He hits a crossroad with a dirt trackway and on the far side the vegetation is at the start of autumn - rich greens just starting to fade into yellows and reds. Its a very stark change, skipping all of summer. He continues to run, and the seasons progress, trees becoming richly red, gold and brown, and the temperature dropping. The terrain is more varied than in Lysander's realm, with the road travelling over hills, with mountains in the distance, and down into marshes where lights dance over ponds.
Just as snow starts to appear, he sees 6 knights riding toward him. They slow and split up. As he runs between them, two wheel and ride as an escort while the other four ride on. The horses are not struggling to keep with Will as he's running in glabro to hold onto the metal case.
The temperature is solidly in freezing as the road begins to ride gently toward a castle silhouetted against the Moon. It is not the same style as Lysander's castle - it is solid lumps of dark stone making a fortress. The lands around the castle are not tilled, but closer in there are frozen, stark gardens, and hedges of holly and conifers
(In terms of style: Tir na Nog https://i.huffpost.com/gen/1492252/original.jpg vs Tir Calleach https://i.pinimg.com/736x/75/5c/98/755c98884ac837f7f9e88644e8a94554--fortification-the-fortress.jpg)
As her approaches the castle, torches and witchlights illuminate things. The drawbridge is down and Will runs in followed by escorts. People approach him cautiously (as he's 7.5 foot tall and holding steel box) and offer him food and drink. Will declines. The drawbridge closes behind him as from one of the stair wells sweeps down an elegantly dressed woman, followed by courtiers.
She approaches Will with a smile - she has dark hair and very pale skin, like many of the other fae he can see (with the occasional blond with a warmer complexion, who stand out like the brunettes in Lysander's court). Despite the different hair colour and change in costume, he can see that this is the same woman who cooked for him and Simeon-Owen Conlon in Ireland.
She is announced as Princess Marianna of the Unseelie Court, and she greets Will effusively, thanking him for bringing their trapped sister here. She asks him to release the item from within the box. Will is a little bit unsure, and says it would be safer if she stayed there? Marianna insists, saying that she will be safer out of the iron box. Will knows she has to be safe. He is still unkeen, but Marianna pushes him a bit further and he agrees reluctantly. He changes to crinos and unwinds the iron pokers from around the box, keeping them near him, and forces the box open. Marianna takes the piece of the sky within the box carefully.
Marianna offers Will some rooms and refreshments, but he suggests that he should return to his pack. Marianna frowns and says that would complicate matters that need to be kept simple. He should stay here for a short time... he should stay here for a short time... he should stay here for a short time. Will agrees he should stay here for a short time, and that he should rest. He picks up the pokers and heads to the rooms prepared for him.
Will awakes, having found that he has been resting for some time. He is invited to a meal with Marianna - its a sumptuous meal laid out on a table with a few guests. Will's natural caution is offset somewhat by his hunger (and by Marianna's clear, unsubtle glamouring at this point). She explains that it is important that he remains at the fortress for the moment. He says he needs to get back, he has other obligations he needs to attend to. Marianna agrees; she wants the matter resolved as soon as possible. But if he returns to his pack, that may return some protection from the Elder fae. So, it is necessary for him to stay, but they need to resolve the issue as fast as possible. Will agrees. The prison should stay here. The matter should be resolved quickly, so that he can return to his duties.
The day is spent at the negotiating pavillion. The others are a mix of cross and worried.
home | chronology | characters