#a new england folk tale

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Anya Taylor-Joy - The VVitch (2015)

[vanalex]

Credit: drea.d.art | IG

[edelweiss-maiden]

𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖓𝖔𝖙 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖙, 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖓𝖊𝖊𝖉. 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖓𝖔𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖓𝖊𝖊𝖉𝖘, 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖒𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖉𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖒𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖎𝖗𝖊𝖘. 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖎𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖜𝖎𝖘𝖍 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖉𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖒 𝖔𝖋?

[lucifers-cuvette]

@zeroatthebone @kelcipher

[theoutcastrogue]

Ballads of the Hanged: Swinging from the Gallows Tree

A mixtape of execution ballads and assorted tales of guilt, wrath, terror, and defiance on the gallows, where all men are brothers.

[on spotify]

21 tracks, 1h 15min in full (spotify lacks one song)

I teased this many moons ago, and I finally finished it. No booklet in PDF form (too much hassle), but I got extensive liner notes, which you can also read here, for more pictures and a wider format. Enjoy!

LINER NOTES

1. Hans Zimmer - Hoist The Colours

Heave ho thieves and beggars never shall we die

What a heartbreaking thing to say on the scaffold. But we have to start with theatrics and a drum roll, and our introduction needs no introduction.

2007, from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End OST lyrics: Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio music: Hans Zimmer & Gore Verbinski

2. Shirley Collins - Tyburn Tree (Since Laws Were Made)

Next stop, Tyburn: England's most notorious gallows. In The Beggar's Opera, the highwayman Macheath (later also known as Mack the Knife) observes that if they hanged rich criminals like they hang the poor ones, "'twould thin the land". Shirley Jackson subtly changed this to the better.

Since laws were made for ev'ry degree to curb vice in others as well as me, I wonder there's no better company on Tyburn Tree.

But since gold from laws can take out the sting, and if rich men like us were to swing, it would rid the land their numbers to see upon Tyburn Tree.

recorded 1966, released 2002 in Within Sound lyrics: John Gay, from The Beggar's Opera, 1728 music: traditional ("Greensleeves"), 16th century

3. Joan Baez - Long Black Veil

A country ballad about a man falsely accused of murder, who lets himself get dragged to the gallows because he won't reveal his alibi: an affair with his best friend's wife. It's been covered by a million people, here's Baez live.

The scaffold is high, eternity near, She stands in the crowd, she sheds not a tear, But sometimes at night, when the cold winds moan, In a long black veil she cries o'er my bones.

1963, from In Concert Part 2 lyrics & music: Lefty Frizzell, 1959

4. Oscar Isaac with Punch Brothers & Secret Sisters - Hang Me, Oh Hang Me

A poor boy who got "so damn hungry he could hide behind a straw", made his last stand with a rifle and a dagger, and has been all around this world, and is positively done with it.

They put the rope around my neck, they hung me up so high Last words I heard 'em say, won't be long now 'fore you die Hand me, oh hang me, and I'll be dead and gone Wouldn't mind the hanging, but the laying in the grave so long

2015, from Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of "Inside Llewyn Davis", after Oscar Isaac's rendition in Inside Llewyn Davis, 2013, in turn after Dave Van Ronk's rendition in Folksinger, 1962 lyrics & music: traditional American/unclear origin, folk song with various titles (I've Been All Around This World, The Gambler, My Father Was a Gambler, The New Railroad), first recorded by Justis Begley, 1937

5. Chapel Hill - Seven Curses

Cover of a Bob Dylan song, telling us the dark tale of a judge who's about to send a man to the gallows for stealing a horse, promises his daughter he'll show clemency if she agrees to sleep with him, and then reneges on his promise.

The next morning she had awoken to know that the judge had never spoken she saw that hanging branch a-bending she saw her father's body broken These be seven curses for a judge so cruel

2013, from One For The Birds lyrics inspired by Judy Collins's "Anathea" (1963), in turn inspired by the traditional Hungarian ballad "Feher Anna", who curses the judge "thirteen years may be lie bleeding" lyrics & music: Bob Dylan, recorded 1963, released 1991 in The Bootleg Series

6. Ewan MacColl - Go Down Ye Murderers

A song about Timothy Evans, a man accused of murdering his wife and child, which he denied until his last breath. They convicted him and hanged him in 1950. He was 25 years old. Three years later the real murderer, his neighbour John Christie, confessed, and the case played a major role in abolishing capital punishment in the UK.

The rope was fixed around his neck, and the washer behind his ear And the prison bell was tolling but Tim Evans did not hear Sayin' go down, you murderer, go down

They sent Tim Evans to the drop for a crime he didn't do It was Christy was the murderer, and the judge and jury too Sayin' go down, you murderers, go down

1956, from Bad Lads and Hard Cases: British Ballads Of Crime And Criminals lyrics & music: Ewan MacColl

7. Jennifer Lawrence - The Hanging Tree

One of the stranger things that can happen at the hanging tree is camaraderie. "On the gallows tree, all men are brothers", to quote A Feast for Crows, and when the state murders, then in defiance, an execution ballad can become a protest song. Many have in real life, this one is fiction, from The Hunger Games. Wisely, the director asked the composer for a simple tune, nothing elaborate, something that could be "sung by one person or by a thousand people".

Are you, are you coming to the tree? Wear a necklace of rope side by side with me Strange things have happened here, no stranger would it be If we met at midnight in the hanging tree

2014, from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 OST lyrics: Suzanne Collins music: James Newton Howard

8. Let's Play Dead - Heaven and Hell

A fairly traditional execution ballad written recently for the series Harlots. Margaret Wells sings it to herself for consolation and courage, as she sits alone in a cell, waiting to get dragged to the gallows.

I'm no more a sinner than any man here I'm no less a saint than the priest at god's ear But now I am snared, they will punish me well With a ladder to heaven and a rope down to hell

2018, from the single Heaven and Hell, for Harlots Season 2 Episode 7 lyrics & music: Let's Play Dead

9. Odetta - Gallows Pole

Probably the most well-known execution ballad of the 20th century, thanks to several iconic renditions. This one remains my favourite.

Hangman, hangman, slack your rope, slack it for a while I think I see my father coming, riding many a mile Papa did you bring me silver, did you bring me gold? Or did you come to see me hanging by the gallows pole?

1960, from At Carnegie Hall lyrics & music: traditional (Child 95 / Roud 144), known under many other titles ("Hangman", "The Maid freed From the Gallows", "The Prickle-Holly Bush"); this version is directly influenced by Lead Belly's "Gallis Pole" (1930s), and they both informed Led Zeppelin's 1970 version

10. Johnny Cash - 25 Minutes to Go

Peak gallows humour, uproariously funny and defiant, and somehow still conveying the terror of a man who's about to die and emphatically doesn't want to. Performed live at Folsom Prison.

Then the sheriff said boy I'm gonna watch you die, 19 minutes to go So I laughed in his face and I spit in his eye, 18 minutes to go Now here comes the preacher for to save my soul, 13 minutes to go And he's talking about burning but I'm so cold, 12 minutes to go

1968, from At Folsom Prison lyrics & music: Shel Silverstein, from his 1962 album Inside Folk Songs

11. Johnny Cash - Sam Hall

A classic execution ballad with many versions (see here for its complicated history), some of which are stoic and dignified, and others humorous. But this one brims with rage. Sam Hall will not be repenting on the gallows, and he'll see you all in hell.

My name it is Sam Hall and I hate you one and all And I hate you one and all, damn your eyes

2002, from American IV: The Man Comes Around lyrics & music: : traditional, 18th century broadside ballad, Roud 369

12. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Up Jumped the Devil

A song about a man doomed from the start to play the villain’s part, and the origin of this blog’s #swinging from the gallows tree tag.

Who's that hanging from the gallow tree? His eyes are hollow but he looks like me Who's that swinging from the gallow tree? Up jumped the Devil and he took my soul from me

1999, from Tender Prey lyrics: Nick Cave music: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

13. NOT ON SPOTIFY: Dead Rat Orchestra - The Black Procession

This ballad imagines a sinister procession of 20 criminals (black tradesmen brought up in hell!), each with their own specialty (it's mostly thieves of some sort), on the way to the gallows. The last and worst of them is the thief-catcher, and if one of them is innocent, they'll all go free. But of course none of them are. It's written in thieves' cant (lyrics and more context here), and the chorus means: "Look well, listen well, see where they are dragged, up to the gallows where they are hanged."

Toure you well; hark you well, see where they are rubb’d, Up to the nubbing cheat where they are nubb’d.

2015, from Tyburnia: A Radical History Of 600 Years Of Public Execution lyrics: from The Triumph of Wit by J. Shirley, 1688 music: Robin Alderton, Daniel Merrill & Nathaniel Robin Mann

14. John Harle & Marc Almond - The Tyburn Tree

And where does the Black Procession lead? To Tyburn, of course. The dark gothic side of Marc Almond.

The Tyburn Tree, I weep for thee, blood in the roots 'Tis not a tree with bark and leaves of spring awakening 'Tis not a tree with blossom and fruit, 'tis not a tree No boughs to bend beneath the unruly breath of winter No memories of woods warmed by spring's sweet touch 'Tis not a tree — take a ride to Tyburn and dance the last jig

2014, from The Tyburn Tree (Dark London) lyrics: Marc Almond music: John Harle

15. CocoRosie - Gallows

Speaking of dark and gothic.

They took him to the gallows, he fought them all the way though And when they asked us how we knew his name We died just before him, our eyes are in the flowers Our hands are in the branches, our voices in the breezes And our screaming is in his screaming

2010, from Grey Oceans lyrics & music: Sierra Rose Casady & Bianca Leilani Casady

16. The Tiger Lillies - Hang Tomorrow

In their Two Penny Opera, the pioneers of dark cabaret reimagine Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, and take all the suaveness out of Mack the Knife. Here they also take all the fight out of him. What's even left? A pathetic empty husk, a bastard (let's not forget that Brecht's MacHeath is no rogue with a heart of gold, he's a horrible man) who can't even be intriguing. How disturbingly pedestrian.

So here I am in jail again, oh god it stinks of piss I've been in here since I was young, so I can reminisce It's looking rather grim this time, it's looking rather bad But if I swing tomorrow in some ways I'll be glad

2001, from Two Penny Opera lyrics & music: Martyn Jacques

17. Tom Hollander - Ballad In Which MacHeath Begs All Mens' Forgiveness

In The Threepenny Opera, Mack the Knife stands on the scaffold and asks for pity. No point being judgmental now, that he's about to die. He morbidly describes how his dead body will end up, and then he lashes out at everyone, cops and criminals (same difference), while still begging them all for forgiveness. Very VERY sarcastically. The ballad's concept is borrowed from François Villon (see below), and this translation is unusually bold (honorific, see here and here for other translations and context).

You crooked cops with your Mercedes, your mobile phones, your trendy jackets, your cuts from drugs and dice and ladies, your Scotland Yard protection rackets.

Let heaven smash your fucking faces, slash you and let the blood run free and break you in a thousand places. I've pardoned you. You pardon me.

1994, from The Threepenny Opera - Donmar Warehouse Original Cast lyrics: Bertolt Brecht 1928, loosely inspired by François Villon's "Ballad of the Hanged" c. 1489, translated by Jeremy Sams 1994 music: Kurt Weill 1928

18. Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock - Ballade des pendus

And here's the OG Ballad of the Hanged, written in the 15th century by the OG poète maudit, François Villon (translation here). It paints an indelible picture of strung up corpses swaying in the wind, decaying, pecked by birds, ravaged by the elements and time. And crucially, it's in the first person. The hanged speak, begging their fellow-humans for pity, and god for forgiveness.

Frères humains, qui après nous vivez, N'ayez les cœurs contre nous endurcis, Car, si pitié de nous pauvres avez, Dieu en aura plus tôt de vous mercis. Vous nous voyez ci attachés, cinq, six: Quant à la chair, que trop avons nourrie, Elle est piéça dévorée et pourrie, Et nous, les os, devenons cendre et poudre. De notre mal personne ne s'en rie; Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

recorded 1979, released 1999 in the Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock reissue lyrics: François Villon, c. 1489 music: Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock

19. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Mercy Seat

Honorary inclusion, a song not about hanging: the mercy seat is the electric chair. But the lyrics are a punch and this is a torrent of a song, a whirlwind, a masterpiece, a 7-minute cynic snarl. So it couldn't possibly get left out of this compilation.

And the mercy seat is awaiting, and I think my head is burning And in a way I'm yearning to be done with all this measuring of proof An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (a life for a life and a truth for a truth) And anyway I told the truth, and I'm not afraid to die (and I'm afraid I told a lie)

1999, from Tender Prey lyrics & music: Nick Cave

20. Graveyard Train - Ballad For Beelzebub

And after? Welcome to Hell, ladies and gents, and bards. (Bards are rogues, too.) The Graveyard Train play a kind of Southern Gothic (but very southern, they're Australian), and here they entertain the thought of a band that ends up in hell and has to keep playing, without end, for an audience that can't hear. What a bleak prospect.

Well the air on the stage is burning our lungs And we're all going deaf from the beating drums And you can't see a thing for all the blood and the sweat in our eyes

Well we played till we died, and now we're all dead But the Man says we got to get up there again And you can't come down till the brimstone turns to ice

2008, from The Serpent And The Crow lyrics & music: Graveyard Train

21. Samuel Kim feat. Colm R. McGuinness - Hoist the Colours

Yo ho, all together Hoist the colours high Heave ho, thieves and beggars

But we won't end in hell. The only acceptable ending to this compilation is the triumphant version (wait for it) of its beginning: a pirate's end. Traditionally the gibbet, yes, but also the ghost ship that still sails, the ripple that still travels, and the story that still gets told.

Did I stutter the first time?

NEVER SHALL WE DIE

[thatswhywelovegermany]

Frau Gauden

In the German region of the Prignitz, Frau Gauden (Mrs. Gauden) is the leader of the Wild Hunt. She leads this army of supernatural hunters together with her 24 dog-shaped daughters.

The Wild Hunt, also known as the Wild Army or the Wild Ride, is the German name for a folk tale widespread in many parts of Europe, particularly in the north, which usually refers to a group of supernatural hunters who hunt across the sky. The sighting of the Wild Hunt has different consequences depending on the region. On the one hand, it is considered a harbinger of disasters such as wars, droughts or illnesses, but it may also refer to the death of anyone who witnesses it. There are also versions in which witnesses become part of the hunt or the souls of sleeping people are dragged along to take part in the hunt. The term “Wild Hunt” was coined based on Jacob Grimm’s German Mythology (1835).

The phenomenon, which has significantly different regional manifestations, is known in Scandinavia as Odensjakt (“Odin's Hunt”), Oskorei, Aaskereia or Åsgårdsrei (“the Asgardian Train”, “Journey to Asgard”) and is closely linked to the Yule season here. The reference to Wotin/Odin in the name Wüetisheer (with numerous variations) is also clear in the Alemannic and Swabian dialects; In the Alps, people also speak of the Ridge Train. In England the train is called the Wild Hunt, in France it is called Mesnie Hellequin, Fantastic Hunt, Hunt in the Air, or Wild Hunt. Even in the French-speaking part of Canada, the Wild Hunt is known under the term Chasse-galerie. In Italian, the phenomenon is referred to as caccia selvaggia or caccia morta.

The Wild Army or the Wild Hunt takes to the skies particularly in the period between Christmas and Epiphany (the Rough Nights), but Carnival, Corporal Lent and even Good Friday also appear as dates.

Christian dates have superseded the pagan dates, which see the Wild Hunt moving, especially during the Rough Nights. This period of time is assumed to be originally between the winter solstice, i.e. December 21st and, twelve nights later, January 2nd. In European customs, however, since Roman antiquity, people have usually counted from December 25th (Christmas) to January 6th (High New Year).

The ghostly procession races through the air with a terrible clatter of screams, hoots, howls, wails, groans and moans. But sometimes a lovely music can be heard, which is usually taken as a good omen; otherwise the Wild Hunt announces bad times.

Men, women and children take part in the procession, mostly those who have met a premature, violent or unfortunate death. The train consists of the souls of people who died “before their time”, that is, caused by circumstances that occurred before natural death in old age. Legend has it that people who look at the train are pulled along and then have to move along for years until they are freed. Animals, especially horses and dogs, also come along.

In general, the Wild Hunt is not hostile to humans, but it is advisable to prostrate yourself or lock yourself in the house and pray. Whoever provokes or mocks the army will inevitably suffer harm, and whoever deliberately looks out of the window, gaping at the army will have his head swell so much that he cannot pull it back into the house.

The first written records of the Wild Hunt come from early medieval times, when pagan traditions were still alive. In 1091, a Normannic priest named Gauchelin wrote about the phenomenon, describing a giant man with a club leading warriors, priests, women and dwarfs, among them deseased acquaintances. Later references appear throughout the High and Late Middle Ages.

[hd-wireless]

📻🎶 H/D WIRELESS 2024 - WEEKLY WRAP-UP #1

🎶  Just a perfect week

Read fanfiction in the park And then later When it gets dark, look at art. Just a perfect week Reading at work in the loo, And then later a podfic, too And then home.

Oh it's such a perfect fest We're glad to share it with you Oh, such a perfect fest It just keeps us reading on, It just keeps us reading on.   🎶

🎤 Welcome to the 8th round of H/D Wireless Fest!

The time has finally come to start posting all the fantastic entries we’ve received this year!

We’ve revealed 9 top hits so far, with many more to come. The mods have been working non-stop since December to make this happen, so we’re beyond excited to finally be underway 🤩

As always you can listen to the prompted songs for the works we post on a playlists:

Click here for the YouTube playlist.

And now without further ado, our Wrap-up for the first week of posting:

🎶 H/D Wireless Art 🎶

📻 Fly Away with Me Tonight? [Gen, Digital Art]

�� Song Prompt: Levitating by Dua Lipa  🎵Summary: A chance meeting, an invitation to dance

📻 ghost (might as well be gone) [Gen, Digital ]

🎵 Song Prompt: Might as Well Be Gone by Pixies  🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy retired from the Auror force and left England a decade ago, but he still receives the Daily Prophet. Today’s issue provides closure on the one case he was never able to officially solve.

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic and Art 🎶

📻 Trade My Heart For Honey [M, 64.170, Digital Watercolour]

🎵 Prompt: Water Under The Bridge by Adele  🎵 Summary: A Witch who thinks she’s a Seer, a Seer who thinks she’s a Witch, a former nemesis-turned-something-turned-acquaintance who thinks they could be friends, and a Scottish village full of Muggles who think this is as much their business as the fair folk in the woods. Draco is going to prove them all wrong.

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic 🎶

📻 You're on Your Own, Kid [E, 44.274] 

🎵 Song Prompt: You're on Your Own, Kid by Taylor Swift  🎵 Summary: In August of 1998, Draco leaves behind everything he’s ever known. With the help of two middle-aged lesbians, a Muggle bookshop, and a new best friend, Draco’s future is finally looking up. That is, until Harry Potter wanders back into his life a year later, undoing everything Draco has worked towards.  Or, a tale about healing, forgiveness, and living for no one but yourself.

📻 Heartbeat [E, 22,791]

🎵 Prompt: Heartbeat by Childish Gambino  🎵 Summary: Harry hates Draco, and Draco hates him in return. Only it's not hate, not even a little bit. Featuring: a cooperative independent study, golden hour on wrecked sheets, strawberries in the summer at Grimmauld Place, water from fountains of (dubious) origin, purple Mardi Gras beads, and a bird with silly legs.  Also featuring: heated arguments, infidelity, unquenchable desire, and heartbreak. Over and over again.

📻 Long for Bliss! [E, 9,400]

🎵 Song Prompt: This Must Be It by Röyksopp  🎵 Summary: Harry has a tough decision to make: take the blue pill or the red pill. He chooses a pink one instead and throws caution to the wind. What blows back comes in the form of a blond fallen angel that talks like he’s the Devil and moves like he’s fucking.  Or: Harry tries MDMA for the first time and unexpectedly encounters a mysteriously captivating Draco at KOKO London.

📻 Going Down Swinging [E, 4,661 ]

🎵 Song Prompt: Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! by Allan Sherman  🎵 Summary: “Who are you?” he asked, feeling around for a truly abominable pair of glasses he fixed firmly above his nose.  “I’m Draco,” he answered. “Draco—” He paused. It wasn’t that he couldn’t remember; it was that the memory wasn’t there.

📻 The Most He’s Ever Said [E,16,431]

🎵 Song Prompt: One of Your Girls by Troye Sivan  🎵 Summary: It takes them twenty years.

🎶 H/D Wireless Podfic 🎶

📻 [Podfic] A Different Kind of Meaning by p1013 [E, 01:42:57]

🎵 Song Prompt: 'Outnumbered' by Dermot Kennedy  🎵 Summary: The ceiling doesn't hold any answers, but there are cobwebs scattered across the corners with shadows tangled in their threads. The rug against his back is rough and scratchy, threadbare and devoid of colours other than various shades of brown. Harry takes it all in, absorbs the dingy and depressed state of his home. There's a pointed moment of decision, a note about to be played, a silence about to end, and then he rolls to his feet and sets to cleaning.  It's the first constructive thing he's done in years.

[glorianas]

I am that very witch

THE WITCH: A NEW ENGLAND FOLK TALE (2015)

[stonergirlfilmcanon]

on the decolonial/postcolonial gothic

'introduction: decolonising gothic' by rebecca duncan in gothic studies vol 24 no 3 (2022, pp. 219-227)

'the gothic origins of anti-blackness: genre tropes in nineteenth-century moral panics and (abject) folk devils' by maisha wester in gothic studies vol 24 no 3 (2022, pp. 228-245)

'decolonial gothic' by sheri-marie harrison in the edinburgh companion to globalgothic (2023, pp. 23-37)

'jean rhys's wide sargasso sea (1966) - postcolonial gothic' by tabish khair in the gothic: a reader edited by simon bacon (2018, pp. 25-30)

'gothic tales of postcolonial england' by sarah ilott in new postcolonial british genres: shifting the boundaries (2015, pp. 54-94)

'arundhati roy and the house of history' by david punter in empire and the gothic: the politics of genre edited by a. smith and w. hughes (2002, pp. 192-207)

[olympeline]

Love love love the omega verse fruk content! But, what do we think about omega Arthur accidentally getting pregnant in the 16th century and voila, FACE fam is born… something something “nation people don’t get pregnant even if they’re presenting omega and going through heat” but then new land is discover and “oops” turns out there is a reason why nation people have reproductive cycles

Oh nonny, do not unleash these thoughts on me! I tell you they will take root 🥺

See? Now I’m posting about it. I hope you’re happy! 😩

If this happened, I’m guessing it would be because of a very specific sets of circumstances. Otherwise nation-people don’t reproduce like humans do. When a new land is discovered, a successful settler population is established, with the main bulk of the settlers coming from an omega nation, and a significant portion coming from their alpha partner. And it had to be part of the New World, maybe? Like the clue is in the name. Just something about the Old World that makes it so no new nation-people are born the human way there any more. They used to be but it happened so long ago, when the Old World was new, that now not even China remembers. It’s become like an old wives’ tale to the nation folk. Anyway, all these boxes have to be ticked otherwise the new colony/nation-person comes into being the “normal” way and just appears one day. I kinda like this idea actually. Like a/b/o nations can have kids but such rare situations have to arise that they almost never do? And reproductive knowledge is still a loooot of guesswork back then too, so.

Soooo Francis and Arthur don’t bother with even the primitive precautions they had at the time. Why would they? The NA twins are the first new nation-people born this way in thousands of years, so the Dover pair had no idea they needed to be careful. Just carried on with their usual fooling around every time Arthur’s heat came, including on the shores of the New World. Like, literally on the shore, maybe? Francis is already there with the French colonists when he senses Arthur is near. Goes miles down the coastline close to where the English settlers are. Headcanon here that nation-people can travel much faster than normal humans so this doesn’t take him months, lol. Finds an English ship anchored and their personification alone on the beach. In heat and giving off an aura of STAY AWAY NORMAL HUMANS I LOVE YOU BUT FOR NO SPECIFIC REASON ENGLAND NEEDS SOME ALONE TIME WITH HIS FUTURE MATE ANCIENT ENEMY WHO HE STILL TOTALLY HATES SO GO INTO THE SETTLEMENT AND LEAVE YOUR MOTHERLAND BE UNTIL HE CALLS YOU, OKAY?

Arthur is all curled up in the sand like an overheated, grumpy merman. Scolds Francis for making him wait, then pulls him down and won’t even let Francis move them off the beach until they’ve done it a few times. Something about this heat has made it almost as bad as the first one and it started coming on halfway across the Atlantic. No amount of whining from Francis about sand in his hair or his new clothes getting ruined is going to make Arthur wait a moment longer for that knot. Even after Francis puts his foot down when the tide starts coming in and drags Arthur inland, they still keep at it. Marathon session that goes on and on until they’re both sore, sticky, and totally exhausted.

Francis: Needy this time weren’t we, mon lapin?

Arthur: Mmmm…*Sated omega sounds followed by three day sleep*

Francis stays by Arthur’s side and brings him food when he wakes up. He can’t explain why. He just…really wants to. Struts and sashays right into the English settlement, commandeers a kitchen and supplies, and just dares them to object, lmao. No one is that dumb! So Arthur gets a French feast when he wakes up. Then Francis keeps hanging around and staying close. Eventually a secretly pleased but outwardly embarrassed tsundere Arthur has to shoo him away back to his own lands. The food and aftercare are nice but people might start to talk and suspect, you know? They’re still supposed to be enemies.

Afterwards life carries on and things go back to normal. They get distracted by the day-to-day routine of being nations. So much so that Francis fails to notice when Arthur doesn’t call on him for help with his heats. It’s only when Arthur misses a third time that he starts to wonder. But then, Arthur was a late bloomer and their cycles are always a little wacky. Not so weird to skip a heat or two then have several close together. Francis isn’t too worried and neither is Arthur. Then he starts getting other weird symptoms. Often at hilariously inopportune times:

Arthur: *Mid Anglo-Spanish naval battle* Die, Catholic dog! You…

Antonio:….Yes?

Arthur:…One moment, please. *Dashes to the side of the ship to throw up*

Antonio:…Comida inglesa, ni siquiera una vez.

We’ve basically entered a pregnancy focused romantic comedy at this stage, lol. Not that anyone realises for a long time, Francis and Arthur included. It should be obvious: Arthur throwing up, not getting his heats, the alphas around him (even his enemies) suddenly not wanting to hurt him as much and pulling their punches when they fight, Francis wanting to stick around and be by his side, etc. It shouldn’t take a genius to work out what’s happening. But remember, hardly anyone knows Arthur is an omega at this point. Plus this kind of nation-person pregnancy is something that had passed into antiquity and become a myth. So everyone’s density is justfied.

In the end, it’s Alasdair who works it out first. He’s an alpha and Arthur’s older brother so his own protective instincts had to be going crazy. Which, on top of all the other changes Arthur is going through, the biggest telltale is his scent. Arthur’s brothers know him best out of everyone and, as the group’s sole alpha, Alasdair’s nose picks up what should be impossible. He thinks he’s wrong for months but the evidence keeps piling up. One morning he comes in to find Arthur slumped over with his head in a bucket as has become a common occurrence lately. Then, while Arthur’s good and distracted, Alasdair sneaks up to scent him. Then rips up his shirt and sees that barely there, slightly rounded middle. There’s no denying it then. Arthur’s omega nature and his “arrangement” with Francis was an open secret in the British Isles family. Arthur’s hastily put together potions and spells could disguise his scent enough to fool other nation-people, but not them. They all suspected but none of them, not even Alasdair, ever said anything out of respect for Arthur’s feelings. They knew what a blow it must have been for him. In spite of everything, they still care for the idiot, you know? He’s still their little brother.

Alasdair accuses Arthur in his ordinary, ultra blunt, Scottish way. Arthur brushes him off as being crazy. Alasdair leaves and comes back with Dylan and one of his books on the ancient history of their kind. Dylan is convinced, Arthur isn’t. You know how he is: denial all the way, baby! Dylan says Arthur is sick because the child needs to spend time in the New World where it will be born. Needs to soak up the energy of the land and the like. Otherwise…bad things, for both of them. Arthur says “you’re all crazy stop being crazy go away, crazy acting brothers of mine” but Alasdair says “right, then!” and just grabs Arthur up. Then, with Dylan’s help, they bundle their furious, spitting sibling onto a ship headed for Virginia. Alasdair goes with him. Meanwhile Dylan heads across the channel to tell Francis (“DYLAN DON’T YOU DARE DYLAN I WILL KILL YOU I SWEAR IF YOU SAY ONE WORD TO THE FROG-” - Arthur, probably). Francis is stunned by the news. Stunned and…cautiously ecstatic? I know he really wishes he could have a family in canon. Oh man, he would so want to believe this is real. But also be so afraid to get his hopes up because it sounds impossible. The drama! We love it. 🥺 Francis jumps on the fastest ship they have and sails to the English settlement to be reunited with Arthur. After a hilariously awkward conversation between the Auld Alliance duo (“…so, seems ye knocked up my little brother” “…oui, seems I did” “…aye, carry on, then” “merci”) Francis is allowed into the bedroom to see Arthur. Who’s still a Scottish prisoner, still in denial, and sulking like mad in a nest he made. Don’t ask him why he keeps wanting to make nests these days even though he hasn’t had a heat in ages. Well, you can ask but the only answer you will get is shut up and go away, dickhead. Arthur Bloody Kirkland is the face of the United Bloody Kingdom and he can make bloody nests if he bloody wants to! *Hissy tsundere noises*

Arthur tries to bluster at Francis to go away or better yet help him throttle Alasdair who’s obviously gone mental, but Francis doesn’t give him the chance. Just pounces and kisses Arthur, cheats shamelessly by using wicked lips and fingers on the omega spot on Arthur’s neck, making him go all loose and purry. Then Francis presses both their hands to Arthur’s stomach and they feel something move.

One of the NA twins - probably Alfred, I mean let’s be honest - waking up to say hello.

Even Arthur can’t deny it after that. Shocked and furious, he tries to rant at Francis (“WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO ME YOU FUCKING FROG! THIS IS YOUR FAULT! I’LL FUCKING SKIN YOU FOR THIS-!” - Arthur, definitely) but Francis is crying too hard to notice. Then he’s laughing and sobbing at the same time: hugging Arthur, professing his love, and kissing his lips off. Arthur’s shock and fear based rage stands no chance in the face of Francis’s thousand years plus heartfelt yearning for a family. He gives in and lets Francis have his moment of ecstasy. The kissing soon evolves into something else and Francis almost loses control and gives Arthur a mating bite, but pulls back at the last second. They’re not ready for that. Arthur noticed. Arthur didn’t say he did. Arthur is secretly grateful and feels his heart flutter even so.

Things go pretty smoothly after the big revelation, all things considered. High emotions settle and they start planning. Arthur stays in the New World and so does Francis. They have their people build a small cabin on the border between their territories so Arthur can have some peace away from curious human eyes. Alasdair goes back to Britain and takes over as leader of the UK for the time being. Dylan scrapes together every bit of knowledge about nation-person pregnancy he can (not much and not all of it useful) and brings it to the FrUK couple along with the usual books on human birth. They all decide to keep it secret from the rest of their kind. Otherwise everyone would want to come and see this miraculous anomaly. Arthur is stressed enough as it is even if he is starting to come round to the idea. No one wants him and the baby to become objects of curiosity. Then the time comes and Francis is with Arthur for it. Getting screamed at, getting his fingers crushed, taking promises that Arthur will FUCKING MURDER HIM FOR THIS-AAAAARRGGHHH!!! without complaint. It goes just like an ordinary human birth. The only surprise is two babies pop out instead of the one they expected. Arthur names the oldest Alfred, after his great king. Francis, when he finally stops sobbing, names the other Matthew. They know by instinct that their true names are America and Canada. When Francis nuzzles Arthur’s neck and kisses that special place with a soft whisper of “mon amour” Arthur knows he’s asking permission. He says “yes” and Francis bites him, leaving his mark as their new sons sleep between them.

Afterwards Arthur moans and complains that the bite was a stupid idea and now he has to wear a damn neckerchief or cravat even in the fucking tropics, but he doesn’t really mind. It’s him who orders a pair of gold rings for them to wear, hidden by gloves or else worn on chains under their shirts. ❤️ Yeah, they become mates much sooner in this version of events, heh. It’s still a secret though, even to their kids before their old enough not to accidentally reveal it to anyone else. Alfred belongs to America, so he lives in the English colonies. Matthew is of Canada, so Francis raises him until the British win the French Canadian territory and Matthew moves in with Arthur instead. They’re still national personifications and have to obey the politics of the day. So they can’t live together as a family as if they were human. Sad, but we know it turns out all right in the end. Peace comes eventually and they can be a family then. And that’s where I’ll leave this AU, I think. This post is already pretty long.

Hope you enjoyed reading! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

[duckprintspress]

Let’s Get Spoopy! 6 Queer Gothic Books for Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone! We did a queer horror-themed rec list in August to celebrate Frankenstein Day, so we thought we’d try something a little different: queer gothic stories! Here are our six recommendations for queer gothic works. Five Duck Prints Press folks contributed recommendations to this list.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

In a lonely castle deep in the Styrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her elderly father for company – until a moonlit night brings an unexpected guest to the schloss. At first Laura is glad to finally have a female companion of her own age, but her new friend’s strange habits and eerie nocturnal wanderings quickly become unsettling, and soon a ghastly truth is revealed.

What Manner of Man by St. John Starling

This is What Manner of Man, a queer vampire romance novel about an innocent priest sent to a remote island to exorcise the demons that are allegedly tormenting the villagers — but what happens when the priest begins to suspect his host, the mysterious, nocturnal lord of the local manor, may have invited him another reason entirely? And what happens when the supposedly celibate priest finds he cannot resist his host’s powerful charms?

Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology

Unspeakable contains eighteen Gothic tales with uncanny twists and characters that creep under your skin. Its stories feature sapphic ghosts, terrifying creatures of the sea, and haunted houses concealing their own secrets. Whether you’re looking for your non-binary knight in shining armour or a poly family to murder with, Unspeakable showcases the best contemporary Gothic queer short fiction.

Even dark tales deserve their time in the sun.

A Dowry of Blood by S. T. Gibson

Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets.

With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.

When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past, both the green magic of the woods and the dark things that rest in its heart.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde’s most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.

TELL US MORE QUEER GOTHIC BOOKS!

These books have been added to our queer horror shelf on Goodreads and our affiliate recommendation list on Bookshop.org!

[merinsedai]

For @dreamlingbingo

Square/Prompt: A1: Sticks and Stones

Title: The Shepherd and the Stones

Rating: G

Ship(s): Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling

Warnings: n/a

Additional Tags: fairy tale, shepherd Hob, faerie Dream, inspired by folklore, standing stones and treasure 

Summary: This is the tale of a lonely shepherd and a cunning sorcerer; of a stone circle and a faerie treasure.

One Midsummer Eve, the giant stones of the high plain will rise from their pits and leave their treasure unguarded, ripe for the taking .

But for a faerie's treasure to exist in the mortal world, it requires a human sacrifice...

Link: Read on ao3 here or below the cut :)

Once upon a time, on the high fells of England, there lived a lonely shepherd. Once, he had had a family and there had been love and laughter in his home, but a great sickness had come to the land and stolen his joy. Now there was just him.

Alone and sad, the shepherd had left his village and journeyed to the North, away from the memories and any who knew him. He settled in a small village, nestled amid the wild hills and the wilder weather.  He moved amongst the villagers like a ghost, quiet and unnoticed, taking his small flock up to pasture every day on a high and windy plain and every evening returning to his sad and silent home.

Upon the plain, one could see for miles in every direction: there was the village to the south, the far off mountains to the west, and in the north- a distant, winding river. And right in the middle of the plain there stood a circle of 7 giant stones. No one knew how they had gotten there: the villagers were afraid to approach as there were tales that the stones had once been giants, turned to rock and moss as a punishment; and that the fairies who dwelt amongst them, and whose duty it was to care for them, would curse or trick any mortal who dared approach. 

But the shepherd was not afraid of the stones, nor the stories of the fair folk. Each day he took his sheep to graze on the high plain and there the weather was often harsh. The stones were the only shelter when the freezing winds blew in from the East bringing the rain and snow in winter; they were the only shade in summer when the sun beat ceaselessly down upon him; and moveover they were familiar, comforting, and constant. The shepherd began to regard them as friends, and whilst he rested his back against their craggy sides to eat his meagre fare, he talked to them and told them tales of adventure and romance.  And though he was lonely still, there was a happiness of sorts to be had there, alone amongst the stones.

Then there came a day, in the fading warmth of autumn, where the shepherd found he was no longer alone. For whilst he was preparing to take his midday meal, settling in against the biggest of the stones, he sensed a presence above him and looked up. 

Before him stood a strange and ethereal creature, shaped much like a man but quite evidently not one, not if the large and delicate wings at his back were any measure. They were beautiful, waving slightly in the wind, and he stared openly. At first they looked black, but as the sunlight caught upon them, they shimmered in shades of purple and green. And the creature they belonged to was himself a sight to behold: his skin gleamed palely-perfect, like moonlight on new fallen snow, his hair was long and black as night, and his eyes… his eyes were piercing and blue as a clear midwinter sky, and glowed as if lit from within. He was barefoot and wore a flowing robe that gleamed with the same iridescence as his wings. 

“Hallo,” said the shepherd, surprised but not frightened. He babbled on a bit when the stranger merely stared at him. “I’m Hob. The shepherd. Bring my sheep up here a lot. Though I’m guessing you already know that. You’re one of the fair folk, right?  Lovely spot you have here. What’s your name?”

“I have been listening to you,” the stranger replied, not answering Hob’s question. “You like to talk. You tell… interesting stories.”

“Well, I’m glad someone’s been appreciating them.” Hob said. “Not sure what Old Mighty here thinks, but he’s a good audience.”

The stranger's eyes flicked to the giant stone, then back to Hob.

“You are bold, to linger here.”

“Am I?” Hob said unconcernedly, paring his apple carefully.  

“Yes. Most mortals fear to tread lands touched by fae magic. And yet, you are here every day and you are not afraid. Instead you treat our stones with reverence and bring us gifts of stories and song. Why is this so?”

Hob shrugged. “Never found anything to be afraid of. Not yet anyway.” he added with a chuckle. “And I love it here. It fills me with peace. Would you like some apple?” 

The stranger was wary at first, recoiling slightly from Hob’s outstretched hand. But Hob merely placed the slice of apple upon his kerchief and put them on a rock to his side, then continued talking. Gradually he drew the faerie man in to him as he spun another wild tale while continuing with his meal. He spoke to the rocks, the sky, the grass, eyes occasionally darting to his companion, who eventually settled on the ground a few feet away, listening intently.

When Hob eventually wound his story down, he found the faerie suddenly closer than he expected. Eye to eye, they stared at each other.

“A fine tale, Hob,” the stranger said softly. “I thank you for sharing.”

“Anytime, stranger.”

The stranger smiled, a small secretive thing. “My name is Dream.” he said softly, and between one blink and the next, he was gone. 

And when Hob gathered the wits to look round, so was the apple. 

From that day on, Hob would often find Dream awaiting him amongst the stones. And while Hob would share his stories and food, Dream would weave him crowns of moorland flowers (whatever the season, he had flowers of white and purple and yellow; of mouse ears, tormentil and willowherb) and teach him faerie songs. When they were together, the time passed more happily and Hob wasn’t lonely anymore.

For he had found he had a friend.

***

Living in the same village as Hob was an old sorcerer who could understand the language of the animals and birds. The sorcerer’s name was Burgess and he was a cold and cruel man, though that was well hidden beneath a veneer of charm and amiability. The people of the village were in awe of the sorcerer, but they did not fear him. He had dwelled amongst them many years, studying the ways of magic, and they came to him for healing and advice when their crops failed. In return they gave him what they could, and he lived a life of some comfort, though as with many men he desired much more: wealth, acclaim and power. 

One day in early summer, the sorcerer was busy with his arcane workings when he happened to overhear the excited chatter of two sparrows who were sitting on his windowsill. Burgess made a habit of leaving tidbits for the animals to eat so he could eavesdrop on all their tales.

“Did you hear?” said one of the little birds to the other. “The stones are stirring! This Midsummer Eve, at midnight, they will rise from their pits and go to the river to drink!”

“I know!” answered the second, fluttering its tiny wings madly. “The whole flock is atwitter about it. The stones have not risen  for many turns around the sun! And did you hear that there is treasure in the pits where the stones stand?”

“Everyone knows that, silly,” tutted the first bird. “It is the faeries’ treasure! The stones guard the treasure and the faeries tend the stones. The magpies were very excited, they would love to steal it. But of course, they will be fast asleep come midnight.”

“They would be very foolish if they did, but that’s magpies all over.” The second bird hopped along the sill, searching for the last of the scattered crumbs. “The faeries’ treasure will turn to dust come morning unless the stones are given a human sacrifice in return. No hope of that happening! Come on, we’ve finished here… I heard the miller’s wife has been baking again…-”

And with that, the two little birds flew off. 

Burgess snapped his book shut and rubbed his hands, a gleeful smile spreading on his face. Faerie treasure, as he had long suspected! And it was his for the taking… but what to do about the human sacrifice…? The sorcerer sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers in thought. Well, there was only one choice, really. Only one person in the village who had no family or friends to ask awkward questions when they disappeared. It would have to be the shepherd.

***

That evening, Burgess went in search of Hob and found him finishing shutting his flock away for the night. 

“Robert,” purred the sorcerer, lacing his voice with just enough magic to make the other man suggestible and not suspicious. “I have the most wonderful proposition for you. Let us talk.”

Spellbound, Hob invited Burgess into his home and, over a cup of braggot ale, the sorcerer told the shepherd all that he had overheard. All, that is, except for one small detail. He made no mention of the human sacrifice.

“It is agreed then?” said Burgess with his wicked smile. “We shall meet on the plain at midnight and when the stones go to drink we will have treasure beyond our wildest imaginings.”

With another flick of his power, he swore Hob to secrecy- “We must tell no one; this is our little secret, Robert.”- and then he left, chuckling to himself at his own brilliance.

***

At first, Hob was excited at the idea of the treasure, imagining all the things he could do with it- all the places he could go. But later the next day, as he sat in the shade of Old Mighty waiting and hoping for a visit from his friend, he began to feel bad about it instead.

It would be very unfair to steal the stones’ treasure whilst they are drinking and unable to protect it. They are guarding it for the fae folk, and Dream is my friend… I could never steal from him, he thought, beginning to feel angry at himself for even considering it. It was just that the sorcerer had been so friendly, so convincing…. He pressed his palm into Old Mighty’s sun-warmed side and sighed. I will not do it. I don’t care if I stay poor my whole life. I will not do it.

A rustling in the brambles announced the arrival of the faerie, and Hob looked up at him, chewing his bottom lip.

“You look very thoughtful today, my friend,” said Dream, eyeing him closely with his head tilted to the side.

“I..-” Hob wanted to tell Dream of Burgess’s plan, but the sorcerer’s magic kept the words locked in his throat. “I was just thinking it was a most marvellous day! And I found some wild strawberries on my walk up here today. I was hoping you would share them with me.”

Dream favoured him with one of his small, secret smiles, folding his legs to sit neatly beside him, both of them resting with their backs against Old Mighty. They shared strawberries and stories, and Dream taught Hob a counting game with dandelion clocks. It was a beautiful day, peaceful and still. As always, Hob delighted in his fae friend’s company. He wished he could tell him of Burgess’s plan but he could not, and so that evening he departed with the words unsaid and an unhappy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

***

A few days later, Hob was awoken from a restless sleep in the deep watches of the night by a touch to his dreaming mind that brought him gasping back to awareness. Dream was there before him, bending over the bed and drawing his hand back from Hob’s forehead.  Hob had never before seen his friend outside the vicinity of the stones, and never at night. Dream was more otherworldly here, his features sharper, his hair wilder. The moonlight painted his pale skin with an ethereal glow and his eyes- so blue in the day- were washed to full black. Hob had never been afraid of Dream but now he felt a thrill of fear to know that fae magic had been at work upon him.

“You are correct in what you think,” Dream said without preamble or explanation.  “It would be wrong to steal from us and from the stones.”

“I...I know,” Hob said, trembling slightly. He did not question how Dream knew of his conversation with the sorcerer: the ways of the fair folk were mysterious and always surprising. He could not read Dream’s expression and he wondered if even his brief consideration of helping Burgess was enough to condemn him in the faerie’s eyes. “I wasn’t-”

“But you are our friend,” Dream interrupted calmly, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “And we give you leave to take some of our treasure.”

“What-”

“But first,” Dream holds up a finger, forestalling Hob yet again. “You must cut a long trail of honeysuckle and lay it beside Old Mighty, and you must only take treasure from Old Mighty’s pit. For he is the stone that I tend, and it is by my invitation that you may enter.”

Hob struggled to sit up in the bed. “ Dream, I am not going to do it. I swear I am not! I admit I thought about it but I- I can’t do it. I’m going to tell Burgess tomorrow; try to persuade him of the wrongness of this deed.”

“I know you would try to refuse the sorcerer, my friend, because I know your heart,” said Dream.  “But Burgess’s magic sits deep within you still, and he will compel you whether you will it or no. To steal from a faerie treasure is the riskiest of ventures, and without the grace I now grant you, your death would be almost assured.”

Hob gaped at him. Dream sat down next to him on the bed, unexpectedly close. He pressed his hand to Hob’s chest and looked upon him with an unreadable expression.

“For the friendship you have offered me, I would give you a reward,” he said.

“I don’t need a reward-!”

“A gift then. One friend to another. Take it, please,” Dream said, pressing closer, his hand moving up from Hob’s chest to cup his cheek. Hob’s breath caught in his throat at the gesture, and the serious look in his friend’s eyes. 

“Yet one word of warning,” Dream continued quietly. “Do not let greed drive you, Hob. Be mindful of what you take. A faerie’s favour is hard won, and easily lost.”

Hob nodded shakily. He had no desire to lose this faerie’s favour. 

“But what about Burgess?” he asked after a moment.

Dream’s smile was back, only  grimmer now. Hob shivered.

“Leave the sorcerer to me.”

***

Late at night on Midsummer Eve, the sorcerer and the shepherd met on the plain to await the moving of the stones. Burgess performed some magic- a simple bending of the light- to make them invisible to any watching eyes, and in silence, they waited. As the church bells in the village began to chime out the midnight hour, clouds scudded over the moon and the earth began to tremble.  Hob watched in awe as the seven massive stones stepped from their pits and began to move across the plain, rocking gently from side to side as though walking on invisible feet. Peering closely, Hob could just make out some smaller, darker shapes flitting about amongst the stones: the faeries were escorting their charges to the distant river. Soon, only he and Burgess remained on the plain and all was silent once again. 

“Quickly,” hissed the sorcerer, pushing Hob onwards. “We haven’t much time.” They ran to the empty pits and Hob stopped dead- they were much, much deeper than he had anticipated.

“How will we get out?” he breathed, turning anxious eyes on Burgess who waved his worries away impatiently.

“Do not concern yourself with that,” he snapped. “Do you believe I came here so unprepared? I will lift you out with my magic, just as I will do with myself. Now go!” A sudden force propelled Hob forward and he stumbled, dropping down into the pit with a startled oath. The hard landing knocked the breath out of him, and he lay there gasping for a moment, listening to the sound of Burgess entering his own pit and the clang of metal as the sorcerer clearly began gathering his booty. 

The clouds cleared from the sky as Hob sat up and looked around. The sudden bright moonlight illuminated a hoard of treasure beyond Hob’s wildest imaginings. Gold and silver in every form: ingots and jewellery and goblets; gem encrusted scabbards and armour and torques; strings of diamonds and pearls; jewels in every cut and hue; and coins of every weight and denomination under the sun. Hob stared in amazement, picking things up and marvelling at their beauty. Then, mindful of Dream’s words, he gathered enough treasure to fill his pockets, whispering his thanks as he did, and settled down to wait for the sorcerer’s aid in escaping.  

Meanwhile, in a nearby pit, Burgess was shovelling treasure into sacks as fast as he could, heedless of what he stole. And all the time he was shovelling, he was smiling to himself and thinking that no one would miss that lonesome shepherd.

Time passed and Hob was growing nervous. He paced the pit, constantly looking up. He tried shouting for Burgess but heard nothing in response. What was the sorcerer up to?! Presently, there came the sound of a distant rumble which began growing louder and louder… the giant stones were returning from the river. 

Hob’s heart was beating triple time in his chest. I must get out of this pit, or I’ll be squashed by Old Mighty! he thought frantically. He began trying to climb out but the sides of the pit were steep and slippery, and he couldn’t gain a foothold anywhere. His fingernails were bleeding from his desperate scrabbling at the walls and over his own panting breaths Hob could hear Burgess screaming with fear, clearly unable to use his magic to escape his own pit.

Sighing, Hob resigned himself to his fate and sat down amid the treasure. It had been a decent life all told. His family had been a bright spot, and Dream… Dream was a bright spot still. Hob wasn’t ready to go, he wasn’t done with living yet. Blinking back frightened and angry tears, he looked up at the sky one last time…

… and leapt to his feet when he saw Dream peering over the edge of the pit.

“Dream!” he shouted, shock and elation both clamouring for dominance within him. “What-”

“Take hold of this,” Dream interrupted brusquely, and lowered the trail of honeysuckle which Hob had cut and laid beside Old Mighty earlier in the day into the pit. “I will pull you up.”

It was a very close thing. As Hob fell gasping onto the grass, Old Mighty stepped into the pit with a heavy thud. All around, there were echoing thuds as the stones returned home, and when the earth stopped trembling… Complete silence. 

“I apologise,” Dream said calmly, pulling Hob to  his feet. “I was delayed… and I have heard it is impolite to keep a friend waiting.”

Hob gaped at him, then laughed with the kind of relieved giddiness that only a near-death experience could bring. “You-! You mad creature!” he exclaimed. “I really thought that was the end for me…! And then you-! Oh, I could kiss you, I really could!”

There was a hand on his cheek, and his laughter stopped abruptly. Hob found himself caught in thrall to those gleaming black eyes.

“If you mean it…” Dream said quietly, “If you do not speak in jest or high spirits-”

“I have never meant anything more in my entire life,” Hob said somewhat hysterically and then he couldn’t say anything more because he quite suddenly had his arms full of Dream and his mouth thoroughly occupied. It was a glorious, beautiful thing. Dream tasted like starlight should and he kissed like Hob was the most desirable thing on the Earth. Hob would be quite pleased to do this forever: kiss his faerie love in the shadow of the great stones…

He pulled back, struck by a sudden thought. “Wait, what of Burgess? He had spells ready to get him and his loot out of the pit, but he never answered my calls and I heard him screaming…?”

“You stopped kissing me to ask me that?” said Dream petulantly, but with a smug smile tugging up his lips. “Worry not, the sorcerer is dealt with. His paltry magic was nothing compared to my own. The moment he stepped into the pit, he doomed himself, for I trapped him there and there he shall remain., until such time as I deign to remove his bones.”

From that day on, the sorcerer was never seen or heard of again. Hob, the shepherd, became a rich and benevolent land owner, beloved of his tenants. And although he never again took sheep to graze upon the high plains, he could often be seen up by the stone circle, resting in the shade of Old Mighty. And though mortal eyes could not see it, he was never, ever alone. He had found his happily ever after.

[talonabraxas]

Sun in Aries II – (30 March – 9 April 2024)

The Sun enters Aries II The Crown on March 30 at 1:25 am EDT. The Crown contains the degree of exaltation of the Sun; Austin Coppock certainly noted this association when he gave this decan this name, and T. Susan Chang called it Kingdom of Gold when comparing it with Tarot’s three of wands — the man staking his claim to the high ground as he watches ships travel on a sun-touched sea toward the destinations he commanded. The descending Chaldean order gives this decan to the Sun to administer under Mars’ overall dominion — and there’s indeed something golden about the weather of early April, at least where I live, as the trees of New England burst into leaf and the understory of bushes and wild perennials erupts again.

The Chaldean order gives this decan to the Sun, appropriately enough. The astrological year begins and ends under the administration of Mars, cutting away the last deck lines of Pisces and hoisting the sails for a favorable breeze at the start of Aries — but the middle ten degrees of Aries belong to the Sun. While it starts a little early this year, on March 30 instead of the 31st or even April 1 — it’s still usually the season when the spring’s promise starts to make itself felt in quotidian experience: the sun on the arms in short sleeves, the sudden redness of your cheeks after a day in the garden, the signs of greenery in the woods. This is the young Sun, coming into his power, at least in my neck of the woods. No less than Geoffrey Chaucer cited this in the first few lines of the Canterbury Tales,

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, […] and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye, So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages, Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages… --Canterbury Tales, General Prologue

That bolded line, the “yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne” means “when the sun is at the half-way mark of Aries,” five days from now. If you feel an urge to get up and go to Canterbury — whether England, New Hampshire, Connecticut or elsewhere — you’ll know that it’s in part an honest reaction to the arrival of April’s sweet showers, and the end of March’s dryness. The green ones are returning. --Wanderings in the Labyrinth

[dianasson]

Witches on the Wind: Weather Magic in New England Folktales

Zephyros Craven, 2023

".... The young shipmaster known as Skipper Perkins is about to set sail from Kittery with his fishing crew. Old Betty Booker, a known witch from the town, asks him to bring her back some halibut. He laughs at her and chastises her for begging, so she promises to take her revenge. Sure enough, old Betty Booker scratches her way into his house one stormy night, strips him naked and bridles him, then rides him ragged through the wind and rain down to York Harbor and back before sunrise. In the end, Skipper Perkins “more dead than alive” has learned to be kinder to his neighbors. But before old Betty Booker bridled the shipmaster, she had performed a feat of weather magic: she had summoned a storm, which had battered his ship, ripped his sails, driven away the fish, and made his men sick. Her use of weather magic endangered the safety and livelihoods of these sailors. As striking as this story is, what surprised me most was not its peculiarity but rather how commonplace it is among the region’s tales. The coast of New England is teaming with folk stories of witches summoning storms or holding the wind hostage, of wicked men buying wind from the sea, and of Finnish wizards selling their skills for shaping the waves and weather. The motifs encapsulated in these tales and their presence in English, Scottish, and Irish stories tell us about their history. Europeans brought these stories with them when they made new homes here, but New England was not the only region inhabited by people from those countries. What factors made weather magic stories so prominent in New England? ...."

Comment or DM for a link to the full essay!

[kilmiel]

The contest ahead promises challenges far beyond simple combat as they navigate the unique cultures of Tuliyollal's many and diverse clans. Little by little will their journey unravel the mystery of the legendary golden city, and so begin a new tale for a new decade of FFXIV!

For this one, I was inspired by a childhood book of English folk tales. The cover of the book was a map of England and Ireland, with stories marked on it in simple drawings. Instead of drawing a map of a new continent, I made a high hill with a few locations and a golden city on top. I really liked the story about Downtrail :P

[vaguelyhumanshapedbeing]

tumblr is great because yeah yeah yeah curse of Lovecraft upon ye

THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

By H. P. Lovecraft

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran straight where the blasted heath is now; but people ceased to use it and a new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir. Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep's secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.

When I went into the hills and vales to survey for the new reservoir they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because that is a very old town full of witch legends I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. The name "blasted heath" seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself, and ceased to wonder at anything besides its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

In the open spaces, mostly along the line of the old road, there were little hillside farms; sometimes with all the buildings standing, sometimes with only one or two, and sometimes with only a lone chimney or fast-filling cellar. Weeds and briers reigned, and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa; too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley; for no other name could fit such thing, or any other thing fit such a name. It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region. It must, I thought as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire; but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side. I felt an odd reluctance about approaching, and did so at last only because my business took me through and past it. There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long, dark woodland climb beyond seemed welcome in contrast, and I marvelled no more at the frightened whispers of Arkham people. There had been no house or ruin near; even in the old days the place must have been lonely and remote. And at twilight, dreading to repass that ominous spot, I walked circuitously back to the town by the curving road on the south. I vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.

In the evening I asked old people in Arkham about the blasted heath, and what was meant by that phrase "strange days" which so many evasively muttered. I could not, however, get any good answers, except that all the mystery was much more recent than I had dreamed. It was not a matter of old legendry at all, but something within the lifetime of those who spoke. It had happened in the 'eighties, and a family had disappeared or was killed. Speakers would not be exact; and because they all told me to pay no attention to old Ammi Pierce's crazy tales, I sought him out the next morning, having heard that he lived alone in the ancient tottering cottage where the trees first begin to get very thick. It was a fearsomely ancient place, and had begun to exude the faint miasmal odour which clings about houses that have stood too long. Only with persistent knocking could I rouse the aged man, and when he shuffled timidly to the door I could tell he was not glad to see me. He was not so feeble as I had expected; but his eyes drooped in a curious way, and his unkempt clothing and white beard made him seem very worn and dismal.

Not knowing just how he could best be launched on his tales, I feigned a matter of business; told him of my surveying, and asked vague questions about the district. He was far brighter and more educated than I had been led to think, and before I knew it had grasped quite as much of the subject as any man I had talked with in Arkham. He was not like other rustics I had known in the sections where reservoirs were to be. From him there were no protests at the miles of old wood and farmland to be blotted out, though perhaps there would have been had not his home lain outside the bounds of the future lake. Relief was all that he showed; relief at the doom of the dark ancient valleys through which he had roamed all his life. They were better under water now—better under water since the strange days. And with this opening his husky voice sank low, while his body leaned forward and his right forefinger began to point shakily and impressively.

It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again despite the summer day. Often I had to recall the speaker from ramblings, piece out scientific points which he knew only by a fading parrot memory of professors' talk, or bridge over gaps, where his sense of logic and continuity broke down. When he was done I did not wonder that his mind had snapped a trifle, or that the folk of Arkham would not speak much of the blasted heath. I hurried back before sunset to my hotel, unwilling to have the stars come out above me in the open; and the next day returned to Boston to give up my position. I could not go into that dim chaos of old forest and slope again, or face another time that grey blasted heath where the black well yawned deep beside the tumbled bricks and stones. The reservoir will soon be built now, and all those elder secrets will lie safe forever under watery fathoms. But even then I do not believe I would like to visit that country by night—at least not when the sinister stars are out; and nothing could bribe me to drink the new city water of Arkham.

It all began, old Ammi said, with the meteorite. Before that time there had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, and even then these western woods were not feared half so much as the small island in the Miskatonic where the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older than the Indians. These were not haunted woods, and their fantastic dusk was never terrible till the strange days. Then there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley far in the wood. And by night all Arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside the well at the Nahum Gardner place. That was the house which had stood where the blasted heath was to come—the trim white Nahum Gardner house amidst its fertile gardens and orchards.

Nahum had come to town to tell people about the stone, and had dropped in at Ammi Pierce's on the way. Ammi was forty then, and all the queer things were fixed very strongly in his mind. He and his wife had gone with the three professors from Miskatonic University who hastened out the next morning to see the weird visitor from unknown stellar space, and had wondered why Nahum had called it so large the day before. It had shrunk, Nahum said as he pointed out the big brownish mound above the ripped earth and charred grass near the archaic well-sweep in his front yard; but the wise men answered that stones do not shrink. Its heat lingered persistently, and Nahum declared it had glowed faintly in the night. The professors tried it with a geologist's hammer and found it was oddly soft. It was, in truth, so soft as to be almost plastic; and they gouged rather than chipped a specimen to take back to the college for testing. They took it in an old pail borrowed from Nahum's kitchen, for even the small piece refused to grow cool. On the trip back they stopped at Ammi's to rest, and seemed thoughtful when Mrs. Pierce remarked that the fragment was growing smaller and burning the bottom of the pail. Truly, it was not large, but perhaps they had taken less than they thought.

The day after that—all this was in June of '82—the professors had trooped out again in a great excitement. As they passed Ammi's they told him what queer things the specimen had done, and how it had faded wholly away when they put it in a glass beaker. The beaker had gone, too, and the wise men talked of the strange stone's affinity for silicon. It had acted quite unbelievably in that well-ordered laboratory; doing nothing at all and showing no occluded gases when heated on charcoal, being wholly negative in the borax bead, and soon proving itself absolutely non-volatile at any producible temperature, including that of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. On an anvil it appeared highly malleable, and in the dark its luminosity was very marked. Stubbornly refusing to grow cool, it soon had the college in a state of real excitement; and when upon heating before the spectroscope it displayed shining bands unlike any known colours of the normal spectrum there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the unknown.

Hot as it was, they tested it in a crucible with all the proper reagents. Water did nothing. Hydrochloric acid was the same. Nitric acid and even aqua regia merely hissed and spattered against its torrid invulnerability. Ammi had difficulty in recalling all these things, but recognized some solvents as I mentioned them in the usual order of use. There were ammonia and caustic soda, alcohol and ether, nauseous carbon disulphide and a dozen others; but although the weight grew steadily less as time passed, and the fragment seemed to be slightly cooling, there was no change in the solvents to show that they had attacked the substance at all. It was a metal, though, beyond a doubt. It was magnetic, for one thing; and after its immersion in the acid solvents there seemed to be faint traces of the Widmänstätten figures found on meteoric iron. When the cooling had grown very considerable, the testing was carried on in glass; and it was in a glass beaker that they left all the chips made of the original fragment during the work. The next morning both chips and beaker were gone without trace, and only a charred spot marked the place on the wooden shelf where they had been.

All this the professors told Ammi as they paused at his door, and once more he went with them to see the stony messenger from the stars, though this time his wife did not accompany him. It had now most certainly shrunk, and even the sober professors could not doubt the truth of what they saw. All around the dwindling brown lump near the well was a vacant space, except where the earth had caved in; and whereas it had been a good seven feet across the day before, it was now scarcely five. It was still hot, and the sages studied its surface curiously as they detached another and larger piece with hammer and chisel. They gouged deeply this time, and as they pried away the smaller mass they saw that the core of the thing was not quite homogeneous.

They had uncovered what seemed to be the side of a large coloured globule embedded in the substance. The colour, which resembled some of the bands in the meteor's strange spectrum, was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all. Its texture was glossy, and upon tapping it appeared to promise both brittleness and hollowness. One of the professors gave it a smart blow with a hammer, and it burst with a nervous little pop. Nothing was emitted, and all trace of the thing vanished with the puncturing. It left behind a hollow spherical space about three inches across, and all thought it probable that others would be discovered as the enclosing substance wasted away.

Conjecture was vain; so after a futile attempt to find additional globules by drilling, the seekers left again with their new specimen—which proved, however, as baffling in the laboratory as its predecessor. Aside from being almost plastic, having heat, magnetism, and slight luminosity, cooling slightly in powerful acids, possessing an unknown spectrum, wasting away in air, and attacking silicon compounds with mutual destruction as a result, it presented no identifying features whatsoever; and at the end of the tests the college scientists were forced to own that they could not place it. It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws.

That night there was a thunderstorm, and when the professors went out to Nahum's the next day they met with a bitter disappointment. The stone, magnetic as it had been, must have had some peculiar electrical property; for it had "drawn the lightning," as Nahum said, with a singular persistence. Six times within an hour the farmer saw the lightning strike the furrow in the front yard, and when the storm was over nothing remained but a ragged pit by the ancient well-sweep, half-chocked with caved-in earth. Digging had borne no fruit, and the scientists verified the fact of the utter vanishment. The failure was total; so that nothing was left to do but go back to the laboratory and test again the disappearing fragment left carefully cased in lead. That fragment lasted a week, at the end of which nothing of value had been learned of it. When it had gone, no residue was left behind, and in time the professors felt scarcely sure they had indeed seen with waking eyes that cryptic vestige of the fathomless gulfs outside; that lone, weird message from other universes and other realms of matter, force, and entity.

As was natural, the Arkham papers made much of the incident with its collegiate sponsoring, and sent reporters to talk with Nahum Gardner and his family. At least one Boston daily also sent a scribe, and Nahum quickly became a kind of local celebrity. He was a lean, genial person of about fifty, living with his wife and three sons on the pleasant farmstead in the valley. He and Ammi exchanged visits frequently, as did their wives; and Ammi had nothing but praise for him after all these years. He seemed slightly proud of the notice his place had attracted, and talked often of the meteorite in the succeeding weeks. That July and August were hot; and Nahum worked hard at his haying in the ten-acre pasture across Chapman's Brook; his rattling wain wearing deep ruts in the shadowy lanes between. The labour tired him more than it had in other years, and he felt that age was beginning to tell on him.

Then fell the time of fruit and harvest. The pears and apples slowly ripened, and Nahum vowed that his orchards were prospering as never before. The fruit was growing to phenomenal size and unwonted gloss, and in such abundance that extra barrels were ordered to handle the future crop. But with the ripening came sore disappointment, for of all that gorgeous array of specious lusciousness not one single jot was fit to eat. Into the fine flavour of the pears and apples had crept a stealthy bitterness and sickishness, so that even the smallest of bites induced a lasting disgust. It was the same with the melons and tomatoes, and Nahum sadly saw that his entire crop was lost. Quick to connect events, he declared that the meteorite had poisoned the soil, and thanked Heaven that most of the other crops were in the upland lot along the road.

Winter came early, and was very cold. Ammi saw Nahum less often than usual, and observed that he had begun to look worried. The rest of his family too, seemed to have grown taciturn; and were far from steady in their churchgoing or their attendance at the various social events of the countryside. For this reserve or melancholy no cause could be found, though all the household confessed now and then to poorer health and a feeling of vague disquiet. Nahum himself gave the most definite statement of anyone when he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow. They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be. Ammi listened without interest to this talk until one night when he drove past Nahum's house in his sleigh on the way back from Clark's Corners. There had been a moon, and a rabbit had run across the road; and the leaps of that rabbit were longer than either Ammi or his horse liked. The latter, indeed, had almost run away when brought up by a firm rein. Thereafter Ammi gave Nahum's tales more respect, and wondered why the Gardner dogs seemed so cowed and quivering every morning. They had, it developed, nearly lost the spirit to bark.

In February the McGregor boys from Meadow Hill were out shooting woodchucks, and not far from the Gardner place bagged a very peculiar specimen. The proportions of its body seemed slightly altered in a queer way impossible to describe, while its face had taken on an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before. The boys were genuinely frightened, and threw the thing away at once, so that only their grotesque tales of it ever reached the people of the countryside. But the shying of horses near Nahum's house had now become an acknowledged thing, and all the basis for a cycle of whispered legend was fast taking form.

People vowed that the snow melted faster around Nahum's than it did anywhere else, and early in March there was an awed discussion in Potter's general store at Clark's Corners. Stephen Rice had driven past Gardner's in the morning, and had noticed the skunk-cabbages coming up through the mud by the woods across the road. Never were things of such size seen before, and they held strange colours that could not be put into any words. Their shapes were monstrous, and the horse had snorted at an odour which struck Stephen as wholly unprecedented. That afternoon several persons drove past to see the abnormal growth, and all agreed that plants of that kind ought never to sprout in a healthy world. The bad fruit of the fall before was freely mentioned, and it went from mouth to mouth that there was poison in Nahum's ground. Of course it was the meteorite; and remembering how strange the men from the college had found that stone to be, several farmers spoke about the matter to them.

One day they paid Nahum a visit; but having no love of wild tales and folklore were very conservative in what they inferred. The plants were certainly odd, but all skunk-cabbages are more or less odd in shape and hue. Perhaps some mineral element from the stone had entered the soil, but it would soon be washed away. And as for the footprints and frightened horses—of course this was mere country talk which such a phenomenon as the aerolite would be certain to start. There was really nothing for serious men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious rustics will say and believe anything. And so all through the strange days the professors stayed away in contempt. Only one of them, when given two phials of dust for analysis in a police job over a year and a half later, recalled that the queer colour of that skunk-cabbage had been very like one of the anomalous bands of light shown by the meteor fragment in the college spectroscope, and like the brittle globule found imbedded in the stone from the abyss. The samples in this analysis case gave the same odd bands at first, though later they lost the property.

The trees budded prematurely around Nahum's, and at night they swayed ominously in the wind. Nahum's second son Thaddeus, a lad of fifteen, swore that they swayed also when there was no wind; but even the gossips would not credit this. Certainly, however, restlessness was in the air. The entire Gardner family developed the habit of stealthy listening, though not for any sound which they could consciously name. The listening was, indeed, rather a product of moments when consciousness seemed half to slip away. Unfortunately such moments increased week by week, till it became common speech that "something was wrong with all Nahum's folks." When the early saxifrage came out it had another strange colour; not quite like that of the skunk-cabbage, but plainly related and equally unknown to anyone who saw it. Nahum took some blossoms to Arkham and showed them to the editor of the Gazette, but that dignitary did no more than write a humorous article about them, in which the dark fears of rustics were held up to polite ridicule. It was a mistake of Nahum's to tell a stolid city man about the way the great, overgrown mourning-cloak butterflies behaved in connection with these saxifrages.

April brought a kind of madness to the country folk, and began that disuse of the road past Nahum's which led to its ultimate abandonment. It was next the vegetation. All the orchard trees blossomed forth in strange colours, and through the stony soil of the yard and adjacent pasturage there sprang up a bizarre growth which only a botanist could connect with the proper flora of the region. No sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen except in the green grass and leafage; but everywhere were those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone without a place among the known tints of earth. The "Dutchman's breeches" became a thing of sinister menace, and the bloodroots grew insolent in their chromatic perversion. Ammi and the Gardners thought that most of the colours had a sort of haunting familiarity, and decided that they reminded one of the brittle globule in the meteor. Nahum ploughed and sowed the ten-acre pasture and the upland lot, but did nothing with the land around the house. He knew it would be of no use, and hoped that the summer's strange growths would draw all the poison from the soil. He was prepared for almost anything now, and had grown used to the sense of something near him waiting to be heard. The shunning of his house by neighbours told on him, of course; but it told on his wife more. The boys were better off, being at school each day; but they could not help being frightened by the gossip. Thaddeus, an especially sensitive youth, suffered the most.

In May the insects came, and Nahum's place became a nightmare of buzzing and crawling. Most of the creatures seemed not quite usual in their aspects and motions, and their nocturnal habits contradicted all former experience. The Gardners took to watching at night—watching in all directions at random for something they could not tell what. It was then that they all owned that Thaddeus had been right about the trees. Mrs. Gardner was the next to see it from the window as she watched the swollen boughs of a maple against a moonlit sky. The boughs surely moved, and there was no wind. It must be the sap. Strangeness had come into everything growing now. Yet it was none of Nahum's family at all who made the next discovery. Familiarity had dulled them, and what they could not see was glimpsed by a timid windmill salesman from Bolton who drove by one night in ignorance of the country legends. What he told in Arkham was given a short paragraph in the Gazette; and it was there that all the farmers, Nahum included, saw it first. The night had been dark and the buggy-lamps faint, but around a farm in the valley which everyone knew from the account must be Nahum's, the darkness had been less thick. A dim though distinct luminosity seemed to inhere in all the vegetation, grass, leaves, and blossoms alike, while at one moment a detached piece of the phosphorescence appeared to stir furtively in the yard near the barn.

The grass had so far seemed untouched, and the cows were freely pastured in the lot near the house, but toward the end of May the milk began to be bad. Then Nahum had the cows driven to the uplands, after which this trouble ceased. Not long after this the change in grass and leaves became apparent to the eye. All the verdure was going grey, and was developing a highly singular quality of brittleness. Ammi was now the only person who ever visited the place, and his visits were becoming fewer and fewer. When school closed the Gardners were virtually cut off from the world, and sometimes let Ammi do their errands in town. They were failing curiously both physically and mentally, and no one was surprised when the news of Mrs. Gardner's madness stole around.

It happened in June, about the anniversary of the meteor's fall, and the poor woman screamed about things in the air which she could not describe. In her raving there was not a single specific noun, but only verbs and pronouns. Things moved and changed and fluttered, and ears tingled to impulses which were not wholly sounds. Something was taken away—she was being drained of something—something was fastening itself on her that ought not to be—someone must make it keep off—nothing was ever still in the night—the walls and windows shifted. Nahum did not send her to the county asylum, but let her wander about the house as long as she was harmless to herself and others. Even when her expression changed he did nothing. But when the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic. By July she had ceased to speak and crawled on all fours, and before that month was over Nahum got the mad notion that she was slightly luminous in the dark, as he now clearly saw was the case with the nearby vegetation.

It was a little before this that the horses had stampeded. Something had aroused them in the night, and their neighing and kicking in their stalls had been terrible. There seemed virtually nothing to do to calm them, and when Nahum opened the stable door they all bolted out like frightened woodland deer. It took a week to track all four, and when found they were seen to be quite useless and unmanageable. Something had snapped in their brains, and each one had to be shot for its own good. Nahum borrowed a horse from Ammi for his haying, but found it would not approach the barn. It shied, balked, and whinnied, and in the end he could do nothing but drive it into the yard while the men used their own strength to get the heavy wagon near enough the hayloft for convenient pitching. And all the while the vegetation was turning grey and brittle. Even the flowers whose hues had been so strange were graying now, and the fruit was coming out grey and dwarfed and tasteless. The asters and goldenrod bloomed grey and distorted, and the roses and zinnias and hollyhocks in the front yard were such blasphemous-looking things that Nahum's oldest boy Zenas cut them down. The strangely puffed insects died about that time, even the bees that had left their hives and taken to the woods.

By September all the vegetation was fast crumbling to a greyish powder, and Nahum feared that the trees would die before the poison was out of the soil. His wife now had spells of terrific screaming, and he and the boys were in a constant state of nervous tension. They shunned people now, and when school opened the boys did not go. But it was Ammi, on one of his rare visits, who first realized that the well water was no longer good. It had an evil taste that was not exactly fetid nor exactly salty, and Ammi advised his friend to dig another well on higher ground to use till the soil was good again. Nahum, however, ignored the warning, for he had by that time become calloused to strange and unpleasant things. He and the boys continued to use the tainted supply, drinking it as listlessly and mechanically as they ate their meagre and ill-cooked meals and did their thankless and monotonous chores through the aimless days. There was something of stolid resignation about them all, as if they walked half in another world between lines of nameless guards to a certain and familiar doom.

Thaddeus went mad in September after a visit to the well. He had gone with a pail and had come back empty-handed, shrieking and waving his arms, and sometimes lapsing into an inane titter or a whisper about "the moving colours down there." Two in one family was pretty bad, but Nahum was very brave about it. He let the boy run about for a week until he began stumbling and hurting himself, and then he shut him in an attic room across the hall from his mother's. The way they screamed at each other from behind their locked doors was very terrible, especially to little Merwin, who fancied they talked in some terrible language that was not of earth. Merwin was getting frightfully imaginative, and his restlessness was worse after the shutting away of the brother who had been his greatest playmate.

Almost at the same time the mortality among the livestock commenced. Poultry turned greyish and died very quickly, their meat being found dry and noisome upon cutting. Hogs grew inordinately fat, then suddenly began to undergo loathsome changes which no one could explain. Their meat was of course useless, and Nahum was at his wit's end. No rural veterinary would approach his place, and the city veterinary from Arkham was openly baffled. The swine began growing grey and brittle and falling to pieces before they died, and their eyes and muzzles developed singular alterations. It was very inexplicable, for they had never been fed from the tainted vegetation. Then something struck the cows. Certain areas or sometimes the whole body would be uncannily shrivelled or compressed, and atrocious collapses or disintegrations were common. In the last stages—and death was always the result—there would be a greying and turning brittle like that which beset the hogs. There could be no question of poison, for all the cases occurred in a locked and undisturbed barn. No bites of prowling things could have brought the virus, for what live beast of earth can pass through solid obstacles? It must be only natural disease—yet what disease could wreak such results was beyond any mind's guessing. When the harvest came there was not an animal surviving on the place, for the stock and poultry were dead and the dogs had run away. These dogs, three in number, had all vanished one night and were never heard of again. The five cats had left some time before, but their going was scarcely noticed since there now seemed to be no mice, and only Mrs. Gardner had made pets of the graceful felines.

On the nineteenth of October Nahum staggered into Ammi's house with hideous news. The death had come to poor Thaddeus in his attic room, and it had come in a way which could not be told. Nahum had dug a grave in the railed family plot behind the farm, and had put therein what he found. There could have been nothing from outside, for the small barred window and locked door were intact; but it was much as it had been in the barn. Ammi and his wife consoled the stricken man as best they could, but shuddered as they did so. Stark terror seemed to cling round the Gardners and all they touched, and the very presence of one in the house was a breath from regions unnamed and unnameable. Ammi accompanied Nahum home with the greatest reluctance, and did what he might to calm the hysterical sobbing of little Merwin. Zenas needed no calming. He had come of late to do nothing but stare into space and obey what his father told him; and Ammi thought that his fate was very merciful. Now and then Merwin's screams were answered faintly from the attic, and in response to an inquiring look Nahum said that his wife was getting very feeble. When night approached, Ammi managed to get away; for not even friendship could make him stay in that spot when the faint glow of the vegetation began and the trees may or may not have swayed without wind. It was really lucky for Ammi that he was not more imaginative. Even as things were, his mind was bent ever so slightly; but had he been able to connect and reflect upon all the portents around him he must inevitably have turned a total maniac. In the twilight he hastened home, the screams of the mad woman and the nervous child ringing horrible in his ears.

Three days later Nahum burst into Ammi's kitchen in the early morning, and in the absence of his host stammered out a desperate tale once more, while Mrs. Pierce listened in a clutching fright. It was little Merwin this time. He was gone. He had gone out late at night with a lantern and pail for water, and had never come back. He'd been going to pieces for days, and hardly knew what he was about. Screamed at everything. There had been a frantic shriek from the yard then, but before the father could get to the door the boy was gone. There was no glow from the lantern he had taken, and of the child himself no trace. At the time Nahum thought the lantern and pail were gone too; but when dawn came, and the man had plodded back from his all-night search of the woods and fields, he had found some very curious things near the well. There was a crushed and apparently somewhat melted mass of iron which had certainly been the lantern; while a bent pail and twisted iron hoops beside it, both half-fused, seemed to hint at the remnants of the pail. That was all. Nahum was past imagining, Mrs. Pierce was blank, and Ammi, when he had reached home and heard the tale, could give no guess. Merwin was gone, and there would be no use in telling the people around, who shunned all Gardners now. No use, either, in telling the city people at Arkham who laughed at everything. Thad was gone, and now Merwin was gone. Something was creeping and creeping and waiting to be seen and heard. Nahum would go soon, and he wanted Ammi to look after his wife and Zenas if they survived him. It must all be a judgment of some sort; though he could not fancy what for, since he had always walked uprightly in the Lord's ways so far as he knew.

For over two weeks Ammi saw nothing of Nahum; and then, worried about what might have happened, he overcame his fears and paid the Gardner place a visit. There was no smoke from the great chimney, and for a moment the visitor was apprehensive of the worst. The aspect of the whole farm was shocking—greyish withered grass and leaves on the ground, vines falling in brittle wreckage from archaic walls and gables, and great bare trees clawing up at the grey November sky with a studied malevolence which Ammi could not but feel had come from some subtle change in the tilt of the branches. But Nahum was alive, after all. He was weak, and lying in a couch in the low-ceiled kitchen, but perfectly conscious and able to give simple orders to Zenas. The room was deadly cold; and as Ammi visibly shivered, the host shouted huskily to Zenas for more wood. Wood, indeed, was sorely needed; since the cavernous fireplace was unlit and empty, with a cloud of soot blowing about in the chill wind that came down the chimney. Presently Nahum asked him if the extra wood had made him any more comfortable, and then Ammi saw what had happened. The stoutest cord had broken at last, and the hapless farmer's mind was proof against more sorrow.

Questioning tactfully, Ammi could get no clear data at all about the missing Zenas. "In the well—he lives in the well—" was all that the clouded father would say. Then there flashed across the visitor's mind a sudden thought of the mad wife, and he changed his line of inquiry. "Nabby? Why, here she is!" was the surprised response of poor Nahum, and Ammi soon saw that he must search for himself. Leaving the harmless babbler on the couch, he took the keys from their nail beside the door and climbed the creaking stairs to the attic. It was very close and noisome up there, and no sound could be heard from any direction. Of the four doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this he tried various keys on the ring he had taken. The third key proved the right one, and after some fumbling Ammi threw open the low white door.

It was quite dark inside, for the window was small and half-obscured by the crude wooden bars; and Ammi could see nothing at all on the wide-planked floor. The stench was beyond enduring, and before proceeding further he had to retreat to another room and return with his lungs filled with breathable air. When he did enter he saw something dark in the corner, and upon seeing it more clearly he screamed outright. While he screamed he thought a momentary cloud eclipsed the window, and a second later he felt himself brushed as if by some hateful current of vapour. Strange colours danced before his eyes; and had not a present horror numbed him he would have thought of the globule in the meteor that the geologist's hammer had shattered, and of the morbid vegetation that had sprouted in the spring. As it was he thought only of the blasphemous monstrosity which confronted him, and which all too clearly had shared the nameless fate of young Thaddeus and the livestock. But the terrible thing about the horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble.

Ammi would give me no added particulars of this scene, but the shape in the corners does not re-appear in his tale as a moving object. There are things which cannot be mentioned, and what is done in common humanity is sometimes cruelly judged by the law. I gathered that no moving thing was left in that attic room, and that to leave anything capable of motion there would have been a deed so monstrous as to damn any accountable being to eternal torment. Anyone but a stolid farmer would have fainted or gone mad, but Ammi walked conscious through that low doorway and locked the accursed secret behind him. There would be Nahum to deal with now; he must be fed and tended, and removed to some place where he could be cared for.

Commencing his descent of the dark stairs, Ammi heard a thud below him. He even thought a scream had been suddenly choked off, and recalled nervously the clammy vapour which had brushed by him in that frightful room above. What presence had his cry and entry started up? Halted by some vague fear, he heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestably sticky noise as of some fiendish and unclean species of suction. With an associative sense goaded to feverish heights, he thought unaccountably of what he had seen upstairs. Good God! What eldritch dream-world was this into which he had blundered? He dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the black curve of the boxed-in staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned itself into his brain. The sounds, the sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow steps—and merciful Heaven!—the faint but unmistakable luminosity of all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides, exposed laths, and beams alike.

Then there burst forth a frantic whinny from Ammi's horse outside, followed at once by a clatter which told of a frenzied runaway. In another moment horse and buggy had gone beyond earshot, leaving the frightened man on the dark stairs to guess what had sent them. But that was not all. There had been another sound out there. A sort of liquid splash—water—it must have been the well. He had left Hero untied near it, and a buggy-wheel must have brushed the coping and knocked in a stone. And still the pale phosphorescense glowed in that detestably ancient woodwork. God! how old the house was! Most of it built before 1700.

A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly, and Ammi's grip tightened on a heavy stick he had picked up in the attic for some purpose. Slowly nerving himself, he finished his descent and walked boldly toward the kitchen. But he did not complete the walk, because what he sought was no longer there. It had come to meet him, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external forces, Ammi could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour, but collapse, greying, and disintegration were already far advanced. There was a horrible brittleness, and dry fragments were scaling off. Ammi could not touch it, but looked horrifiedly into the distorted parody that had been a face. "What was it, Nahum—what was it?" He whispered, and the cleft, bulging lips were just able to crackle out a final answer.

"Nothin' ... nothin' ... the colour ... it burns ... cold an' wet, but it burns ... it lived in the well.... I seen it ... a kind o' smoke ... jest like the flowers last spring ... the well shone at night.... Thad an' Merwin an' Zenas ... everything alive ... suckin' the life out of everything ... in that stone ... it must o' come in that stone ... pizened the whole place ... dun't know what it wants ... that round thing them men from the college dug outen the stone ... they smashed it ... it was that same colour ... jest the same, like the flowers an' plants ... must a' ben more of 'em ... seeds ... seeds ... they growed ... I seen it the fust time this week ... must a' got strong on Zenas ... he was a big boy, full o' life ... it beats down your mind an' then gits ye ... burns ye up ... in the well water ... you was right about that ... evil water ... Zenas never come back from the well ... can't git away ... draws ye ... ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use ... I seen it time an' agin Zenas was took ... whar's Nabby, Ammi? ... my head's no good ... dun't know how long sence I fed her ... it'll git her ef we ain't keerful ... jest a colour ... her face is gittin' to hev that colour sometimes towards night ... an' it burns an' sucks ... it come from some place whar things ain't as they is here ... one o' them professors said so ... he was right ... look out, Ammi, it'll do suthin' more ... sucks the life out...."

But that was all. That which spoke could speak no more because it had completely caved in. Ammi laid a red checked tablecloth over what was left and reeled out the back door into the fields. He climbed the slope to the ten-acre pasture and stumbled home by the north road and the woods. He could not pass that well from which his horses had run away. He had looked at it through the window, and had seen that no stone was missing from the rim. Then the lurching buggy had not dislodged anything after all—the splash had been something else—something which went into the well after it had done with poor Nahum....

When Ammi reached his house the horses and buggy had arrived before him and thrown his wife into fits of anxiety. Reassuring her without explanations, he set out at once for Arkham and notified the authorities that the Gardner family was no more. He indulged in no details, but merely told of the deaths of Nahum and Nabby, that of Thaddeus being already known, and mentioned that the cause seemed to be the same strange ailment which had killed the livestock. He also stated that Merwin and Zenas had disappeared. There was considerable questioning at the police station, and in the end Ammi was compelled to take three officers to the Gardner farm, together with the coroner, the medical examiner, and the veterinary who had treated the diseased animals. He went much against his will, for the afternoon was advancing and he feared the fall of night over that accursed place, but it was some comfort to have so many people with him.

The six men drove out in a democrat-wagon, following Ammi's buggy, and arrived at the pest-ridden farmhouse about four o'clock. Used as the officers were to gruesome experiences, not one remained unmoved at what was found in the attic and under the red checked tablecloth on the floor below. The whole aspect of the farm with its grey desolation was terrible enough, but those two crumbling objects were beyond all bounds. No one could look long at them, and even the medical examiner admitted that there was very little to examine. Specimens could be analysed, of course, so he busied himself in obtaining them—and here it develops that a very puzzling aftermath occurred at the college laboratory where the two phials of dust were finally taken. Under the spectroscope both samples gave off an unknown spectrum, in which many of the baffling bands were precisely like those which the strange meteor had yielded in the previous year. The property of emitting this spectrum vanished in a month, the dust thereafter consisting mainly of alkaline phosphates and carbonates.

Ammi would not have told the men about the well if he had thought they meant to do anything then and there. It was getting toward sunset, and he was anxious to be away. But he could not help glancing nervously at the stony curb by the great sweep, and when a detective questioned him he admitted that Nahum had feared something down there—so much so that he had never even thought of searching it for Merwin or Zenas. After that nothing would do but that they empty and explore the well immediately, so Ammi had to wait trembling while pail after pail of rank water was hauled up and splashed on the soaking ground outside. The men sniffed in disgust at the fluid, and toward the last held their noses against the foetor they were uncovering. It was not so long a job as they had feared it would be, since the water was phenomenally low. There is no need to speak too exactly of what they found. Merwin and Zenas were both there, in part, though the vestiges were mainly skeletal. There were also a small deer and a large dog in about the same state, and a number of bones of smaller animals. The ooze and slime at the bottom seemed inexplicably porous and bubbling, and a man who descended on hand-holds with a long pole found that he could sink the wooden shaft to any depth in the mud of the floor without meeting any solid obstruction.

Twilight had now fallen, and lanterns were brought from the house. Then, when it was seen that nothing further could be gained from the well, everyone went indoors and conferred in the ancient sitting-room while the intermittent light of a spectral half-moon played wanly on the grey desolation outside. The men were frankly nonplussed by the entire case, and could find no convincing common element to link the strange vegetable conditions, the unknown disease of livestock and humans, and the unaccountable deaths of Merwin and Zenas in the tainted well. They had heard the common country talk, it is true; but could not believe that anything contrary to natural law had occurred. No doubt the meteor had poisoned the soil, but the illness of person and animals who had eaten nothing grown in that soil was another matter. Was it the well water? Very possibly. It might be a good idea to analyse it. But what peculiar madness could have made both boys jump into the well? Their deeds were so similar—and the fragments showed that they had both suffered from the grey brittle death. Why was everything so grey and brittle?

It was the coroner, seated near a window overlooking the yard, who first noticed the glow about the well. Night had fully set in, and all the abhorrent grounds seemed faintly luminous with more than the fitful moonbeams; but this new glow was something definite and distinct, and appeared to shoot up from the black pit like a softened ray from a searchlight, giving dull reflections in the little ground pools where the water had been emptied. It had a very queer colour, and as all the men clustered round the window Ammi gave a violent start. For this strange beam of ghastly miasma was to him of no unfamiliar hue. He had seen that colour before, and feared to think what it might mean. He had seen it in the nasty brittle globule in that aerolite two summers ago, had seen it in the crazy vegetation of the springtime, and had thought he had seen it for an instant that very morning against the small barred window of that terrible attic room where nameless things had happened. It had flashed there a second, and a clammy and hateful current of vapour had brushed past him—and then poor Nahum had been taken by something of that colour. He had said so at the last—said it was like the globule and the plants. After that had come the runaway in the yard and the splash in the well—and now that well was belching forth to the night a pale insidious beam of the same demoniac tint.

It does credit to the alertness of Ammi's mind that he puzzled even at that tense moment over a point which was essentially scientific. He could not but wonder at his gleaning of the same impression from a vapour glimpsed in the daytime, against a window opening in the morning sky, and from a nocturnal exhalation seen as a phosphorescent mist against the black and blasted landscape. It wasn't right—it was against Nature—and he thought of those terrible last words of his stricken friend, "It come from some place whar things ain't as they is here ... one o' them professors said so...."

All three horses outside, tied to a pair of shrivelled saplings by the road, were now neighing and pawing frantically. The wagon driver started for the door to do something, but Ammi laid a shaky hand on his shoulder. "Dun't go out thar," he whispered. "They's more to this nor what we know. Nahum said somethin' lived in the well that sucks your life out. He said it must be some'at growed from a round ball like one we all seen in the meteor stone that fell a year ago June. Sucks an' burns, he said, an' is jest a cloud of colour like that light out thar now, that ye can hardly see an' can't tell what it is. Nahum thought it feeds on everything livin' an' gits stronger all the time. He said he seen it this last week. It must be somethin' from away off in the sky like the men from the college last year says the meteor stone was. The way it's made an' the way it works ain't like no way o' God's world. It's some'at from beyond."

So the men paused indecisively as the light from the well grew stronger and the hitched horses pawed and whinnied in increasing frenzy. It was truly an awful moment; with terror in that ancient and accursed house itself, four monstrous sets of fragments—two from the house and two from the well—in the woodshed behind, and that shaft of unknown and unholy iridescence from the slimy depths in front. Ammi had restrained the driver on impulse, forgetting how uninjured he himself was after the clammy brushing of that coloured vapour in the attic room, but perhaps it is just as well that he acted as he did. No one will ever know what was abroad that night; and though the blasphemy from beyond had not so far hurt any human of unweakened mind, there is no telling what it might not have done at that last moment, and with its seemingly increased strength and the special signs of purpose it was soon to display beneath the half-clouded moonlit sky.

All at once one of the detectives at the window gave a short, sharp gasp. The others looked at him, and then quickly followed his own gaze upward to the point at which its idle straying had been suddenly arrested. There was no need for words. What had been disputed in country gossip was disputable no longer, and it is because of the thing which every man of that party agreed in whispering later on, that strange days are never talked about in Arkham. It is necessary to premise that there was no wind at that hour of the evening. One did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless calm the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some allied and bodiless line of linkage with sub-terrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots.

Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness the watchers saw wriggling at the treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that come down on the apostles' heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was that same nameless intrusion which Ammi had come to recognise and dread. All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter, bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious minds could form. It was no longer shining out; it was pouringout; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky.

... and in the fearsome instant of deeper darkness, the watchers saw wriggling at that treetop height, a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo ... and all the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter and bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality.... It was no longer shining out; it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well, it seemed to flow directly into the sky.

The veterinary shivered, and walked to the front door to drop the heavy extra bar across it. Ammi shook no less, and had to tug and point for lack of a controllable voice when he wished to draw notice to the growing luminosity of the trees. The neighing and stamping of the horses had become utterly frightful, but not a soul of that group in the old house would have ventured forth for any earthly reward. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now, and presently a policeman dumbly pointed to some wooden sheds and beehives near the stone wall on the west. They were commencing to shine, too, though the tethered vehicles of the visitors seemed so far unaffected. Then there was a wild commotion and clopping in the road, and as Ammi quenched the lamp for better seeing they realized that the span of frantic grays had broken their sapling and run off with the democrat-wagon.

The shock served to loosen several tongues, and embarrassed whispers were exchanged. "It spreads on everything organic that's been around here," muttered the medical examiner. No one replied, but the man who had been in the well gave a hint that his long pole must have stirred up something intangible. "It was awful," he added. "There was no bottom at all. Just ooze and bubbles and the feeling of something lurking under there." Ammi's horse still pawed and screamed deafeningly in the road outside, and nearly drowned its owner's faint quaver as he mumbled his formless reflections. "It come from that stone—it growed down thar—it got everything livin'—it fed itself on 'em, mind and body—Thad an' Merwin, Zenas an' Nabby—Nahum was the last—they all drunk the water—it got strong on 'em—it come from beyond, whar things ain't like they be here—now it's goin' home—"

At this point, as the column of unknown colour flared suddenly stronger and began to weave itself into fantastic suggestions of shape which each spectator later described differently, there came from poor tethered Hero such a sound as no man before or since ever heard from a horse. Every person in that low-pitched sitting-room stopped his ears, and Ammi turned away from the window in horror and nausea. Words could not convey it—when Ammi looked out again the hapless beast lay huddled inert on the moonlit ground between the splintered shafts of the buggy. That was the last of Hero till they buried him next day. But the present was no time to mourn, for almost at this instant a detective silently called attention to something terrible in the very room with them. In the absence of the lamplight it was clear that a faint phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire apartment. It glowed on the broad-planked floor where the rag carpet left it bare, and shimmered over the sashes of the small-paned windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-posts, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and furniture. Each minute saw it strengthen, and at last it was very plain that healthy living things must leave that house.

Ammi showed them the back door and the path up through the fields to the ten-acre pasture. They walked and stumbled as in a dream, and did not dare look back till they were far away on the high ground. They were glad of the path, for they could not have gone the front way, by that well. It was bad enough passing the glowing barn and sheds, and those shining orchard trees with their gnarled, fiendish contours; but thank Heaven the branches did their worst twisting high up. The moon went under some very black clouds as they crossed the rustic bridge over Chapman's Brook, and it was blind groping from there to the open meadows.

When they looked back toward the valley and the distant Gardner place at the bottom they saw a fearsome sight. All the farm was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul flame, and lambent tricklings of the same monstrous fire were creeping about the ridgepoles of the house, barn and sheds. It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well—seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognizable chromaticism.

Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a rocket or meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before any man could gasp or cry out. No watcher can ever forget that sight, and Ammi stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the others, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. But his gaze was the next moment called swiftly to earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, and not an explosion, as so many others of the party vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from that doomed and accursed farm a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glance of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours they followed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which the men dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted woods in a mad cosmic frenzy, till soon the trembling party realized it would be no use waiting for the moon to show what was left down there at Nahum's.

Too awed even to hint theories, the seven shaking men trudged back toward Arkham by the north road. Ammi was worse than his fellows, and begged them to see him inside his own kitchen, instead of keeping straight on to town. He did not wish to cross the blighted, wind-whipped woods alone to his home on the main road. For he had had an added shock that the others were spared, and was crushed for ever with a brooding fear he dared not even mention for many years to come. As the rest of the watchers on that tempestuous hill had stolidly set their faces toward the road, Ammi had looked back an instant at the shadowed valley of desolation so lately sheltering his ill-starred friend. And from that stricken, far-away spot he had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. It was just a colour—but not any colour of our earth or heavens. And because Ammi recognized that colour, and knew that this last faint remnant must still lurk down there in the well, he has never been quite right since.

Ammi would never go near the place again. It is forty-four years now since the horror happened, but he has never been there, and will be glad when the new reservoir blots it out. I shall be glad, too, for I do not like the way the sunlight changed colour around the mouth of that abandoned well I passed. I hope the water will always be very deep—but even so, I shall never drink it. I do not think I shall visit the Arkham country hereafter. Three of the men who had been with Ammi returned the next morning to see the ruins by daylight, but there were not any real ruins. Only the bricks of the chimney, the stones of the cellar, some mineral and metallic litter here and there, and the rim of that nefandous well. Save for Ammi's dead horse, which they towed away and buried, and the buggy which they shortly returned to him, everything that had ever been living had gone. Five eldritch acres of dusty grey desert remained, nor has anything ever grown there since. To this day it sprawls open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields, and the few who have ever dared glimpse it in spite of the rural tales have named it "the blasted heath."

The rural tales are queer. They might be even queerer if city men and college chemists could be interested enough to analyze the water from that disused well, or the grey dust that no wind seems ever to disperse. Botanists, too, ought to study the stunted flora on the borders of that spot, for they might shed light on the country notion that the blight is spreading—little by little, perhaps an inch a year. People say the colour of the neighboring herbage is not quite right in the spring, and that wild things leave queer prints in the light winter snow. Snow never seems quite so heavy on the blasted heath as it is elsewhere. Horses—the few that are left in this motor age—grow skittish in the silent valley; and hunters cannot depend on their dogs too near the splotch of greyish dust.

They say the mental influences are very bad, too; numbers went queer in the years after Nahum's taking, and always they lacked the power to get away. Then the stronger-minded folk all left the region, and only the foreigners tried to live in the crumbling old homesteads. They could not stay, though; and one sometimes wonders what insight beyond ours their wild, weird stories of whispered magic have given them. Their dreams at night, they protest, are very horrible in that grotesque country; and surely the very look of the dark realm is enough to stir a morbid fancy. No traveler has ever escaped a sense of strangeness in those deep ravines, and artists shiver as they paint thick woods whose mystery is as much of the spirits as of the eye. I myself am curious about the sensation I derived from my one lone walk before Ammi told me his tale. When twilight came I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.

Do not ask me for my opinion. I do not know—that is all. There was no one but Ammi to question; for Arkham people will not talk about the strange days, and all three professors who saw the aerolite and its coloured globule are dead. There were other globules—depend upon that. One must have fed itself and escaped, and probably there was another which was too late. No doubt it is still down the well—I know there was something wrong with the sunlight I saw above that miasmal brink. The rustics say the blight creeps an inch a year, so perhaps there is a kind of growth or nourishment even now. But whatever demon hatchling is there, it must be tethered to something or else it would quickly spread. Is it fastened to the roots of those trees that claw the air? One of the current Arkham tales is about fat oaks that shine and move as they ought not to do at night.

What it is, only God knows. In terms of matter I suppose the thing Ammi described would be called a gas, but this gas obeyed laws that are not of our cosmos. This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.

I doubt very much if Ammi consciously lied to me, and I do not think his tale was all a freak of madness as the townsfolk had forewarned. Something terrible came to the hills and valleys on that meteor, and something terrible—though I know not in what proportion—still remains. I shall be glad to see the water come. Meanwhile I hope nothing will happen to Ammi. He saw so much of the thing—and its influence was so insidious. Why has he never been able to move away? How clearly he recalled those dying words of Nahum's—"can't git away—draws ye—ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use—" Ammi is such a good old man—when the reservoir gang gets to work I must write the chief engineer to keep a sharp watch on him. I would hate to think of him as the grey, twisted, brittle monstrosity which persists more and more in troubling my sleep.

THE END