Spiced Cakes

In addition to the Fae Honeyed Mead, the villagers have another traditional food, baked, it seems, for all festivals.  While the women have been tending their hearths with baking, what I thought to be simply festive spiced rolls are not.

Throughout the year, as they visit the Sleepers' Meadow, mourners gather flowers not only to bring color into their homes and remember the Sleepers, but also for cooking. Particularly, roses are gathered and dried for use in the winter, and used fresh in the summer and autumn months.

The roses are bunched with twine and hung inverted to dry, then they are crushed to flakes. These are then used in baking the spiced rolls. It is common practice to sing while tying, sing while crushing, and sing while baking, though it is not anathema to speak during the process. May explained that in this way the Sleepers are always with them, a part of them, in a way they can feel. It reminds me somewhat of the Eucharist, if the Eucharist were delightful even to the epicure.

May has shared with me the recipe for these rolls.

* * *

The Spiced Cakes of the Sleepers' Meadow

Warm one-half cupful of butter in a pint of milk; add a teaspoonful of salt, a tablespoonful of sugar, and seven cupfuls of  sifted flour; beat thoroughly until the mixture is blood warm, add four beaten eggs and then, last of all, half a cup of good lively yeast. Beat hard until the batter breaks in blisters. Set it to rise over night. With the sunrise, dissolve half a teaspoonful of soda, stir it sunwise into the batter and turn it into a well-buttered, shallow dish to rise again about fifteen or twenty minutes. Tear egg-sized balls of dough apart and press flat on floured board. Coat top side of each circle of dough with butter. Separately, mix two tablespoonsfuls crushed roses, a tablespoonful ground cinnamon, half that much ground nutmeg and lavender, and a pinch of ground clove with two tablespoonfuls of dried dandelion and two tablespoonfuls of sugar, save when the roses are in bloom, when the roses must be omitted from this mixture. Each dough flat should be pressed, butter side down, in the spices. Then they are rolled. In spring and autumn, three fresh rose petals should be laid across the dough before rolling.  Bake about fifteen to twenty minutes in the buttered dish. Bake a light brown in a quick oven.

* * *

I admit, that in all the preparations and with the Longest Night itself, I am in no state to elaborate, but rather, must say that it is well time we left this place. May has entrusted to me the diary of Geraldine, Mayor Green's second wife. Tomorrow May intends to walk with me to find Everett's mother, with regard to the expected child. It isn't every day one is invited on a journey to meet with the Old Ones. In the few short days before we depart for home, I hope to glean as much as I can from the history of Geraldine and further observance.

It is possible these pages will reach you after I do. In any case, I shall, as always, distill these interactions further for my reports. 

From the edge of Faerie,
Portulaca
 

On This Longest of Nights

In preparation for the Yule festival here, the villagers gather all manner of greenery and the children trek into the forests hunting for winter berries. It reminds me of the preparations for Christmas back home, only where there is no church, there is no nativity, and where there is no Christmas, there is instead a festival to honor the darkness and the returning of the light. The customs do not differ greatly from those with which I am acquainted enough to justify elaboration, save one. While May and many of the other women of the village bake treats to enjoy through the long night, and the men erect a veritable tower in the commons of twigs and split logs, Mayor Green walks into the woods, every year. Preparations begin many days before the Longest Night, and with them, he takes to the woods. According to the villagers, they have never seen him take more than his overcoat with him, and D and I both saw him off at the forest's edge and can attest that indeed, he  traveled with only what a man might keep on his person. A walk through the woods, of course, requires little else, however, it is said that he sometimes returns that night, and sometimes he does not return until the sun sinks early low and red on the horizon, marking the beginning of the Longest Night itself.

I stopped at the apothecary to procure more ink the day he left, where Shorts, who has proved good natured, but has a lackadaisical relationship with the truth, at best, spun a tale as to where Mayor Green was off to. As Shorts tells it, Everett, who, understandably, has gained a fair amount of prestige within his village, and seems to be regarded as something of a feudal lord, with all the marked attention one would presume may come with a title, does not venture far into the wood at all, but merely steps between the world of our people and his mother's people. Once within the realm of the Old Ones, Shorts insists he meets with his fae lover, whose gleam is so bright that she can not dwell among us mere mortals. There he stays, for one night, which sometimes stretches into as many as a week, for time does not flow the same in the realm of the fae, before he returns to us, as obliged by the curse set upon he and his kin by the Old Ones when his father first came here.  Returning every year with a cask of the finest honey mead, always by the festival, he is ever forgiven for his adulteries, for how can a man who is not of men be held to their rules?

I asked neither May nor Everett any questions regarding the veracity of this tale. It is peculiar, honestly, dealing with legends that are both inherited generationally, as well as the fact of the persons about whom said legends are spun. Typically, even when dealing with families of witches and inherited possessions, the tales are about the people who have already passed, and contemporaries will often repeat the same salacious tales which have been told to them in the cradle. Here, however, I have a marvelous opportunity to see both what is said by others and what is said by the subject, so to speak. Of course, ultimately, I am always limited by what is said, when in all instances, the mouth which says anything has a reason for saying anything at all.

Reluctant to pry into the affairs of the Greens so directly, I was overjoyed when we were invited to dinner with them that evening whereby I did enjoy a piece of their own tale.Dwas enjoying a tart, and I was sipping an elderberry tisane after dinner when Everett cleared his throat. "I'll be leaving tonight. Yule is coming, and I go every year. I don't know how many nights I'll be gone, but I expect you will still be here when I return, surely in time for the festival."

Still intrigued by the tale Shorts had spun, I inquired, "Where will you be off to?"

Everett laughed, "Haven't you heard?" He wrapped his arms around his wife, hands lingering on her growing belly while she was clearing the table, "I'm off to see my faerie lover, or is it demon lover? I can never recall."

Laughter bubbled out of May, and I realized my face must have blanched. "Indeed, I had heard some construction to that end, however, I do not lend credence entire to every tale. I simply write them down." I do believe D nearly choked on his tart. I had not mentioned this story to him before our coming, there hadn't been time, and so I do believe he was taken aback by the seeming lack of propriety. Ever since the succubus, jokes regarding infidelity have not sat well with him.

Everett's open smile put D somewhat at ease, and he began to nibble at a second tart. "No, I will be off to the land of my mother, but only for a brief visit, to greet my family, and bring home a keg of mead for the holiday. It's a tradition I've kept every year, though when you write the tale of my lover, can you make her pretty? I'm tired of overhearing people jest that she's beastly and too hideous to be beheld by mortal men."

May raised an eyebrow, but I told him, "Never fear, the story I had heard was that her gleam was too bright for the eyes of mortal men."

"Gleam too bright, I like that. Yes, definitely write that down. It's much more interesting than sitting with my grandfather and exchanging tales of the hunt and the iron beasts."

"Might I ask though, I had been told that to eat or drink anything from the realm of Faerie meant that one might never leave, how is it that you bring from there a cask of mead for the villagers?"

The light went out of his eyes for a moment. "Of course, so they can never leave me here."

May dropped a saucer of fine bone china, which, although delicate, did not break. "It will be a lovely festival, and the mead is a tradition."

Everett's eyes moved between mine and D's, the gravity of the statement settling in. I looked at the tea I held in my hands, eyed the fresh apples on the counter top, D stopped chewing. How many times had they extended our stay? Even well preserved apples will be soft this far into winter, how were theirs so fresh? One loses track of the oddities when so often presented with them.

"Never leave?" D asked, brushing the crumbs of the tart from his lip.

"No. Who knows how long I'll live? Another fifty years? Another hundred? Two hundred? The number of years and by whose reckoning? I hardly can be asked to spend it alone, and who would stay if they could leave? Would you?"

"In all frankness, I'd return home to my children and to my work."

"Of course you would. Everyone would."

"But we're not within the Realm-"

"You are, and you aren't. You'd never have found my village uninvited. No one does. Instead they scratch their heads confounded at the directions given them and return to the next village over. No, we're not fully within the Realm of the Old Ones, but we are near to it. You need not fear, you have dined only on mortal food, and the mead will not bind you to this village anymore than I hope our hospitality has, not in this life. But they who drink the mead of the Old Ones, their spirits will linger in the Sleepers' Meadow, and I will walk among them until they rouse to move on, and even when no one dwells in these few streets, I will not be alone." He turned and put a hand on May's shoulder, and wiped a tear from her cheek, then kissed her forehead.

Their intimacy was palpable, we should have excused ourselves. "I'd like to think that when I return you will join us in lifting a cup to herald the coming of the sun. I'd like to think that you've come to think of us as friends enough to consider that letting your spirit sleep in the meadow for a time would, perhaps, be a welcome thing. No, you don't have to decide today. It is a decision for the Longest of Nights, but I know ever song I've ever been asked to remember, and I sing them for the Sleepers. I do not forget." He frowned. "I hadn't set out to leave on a somber note, but it is late, and I must get going if I have any hope of returning before the sun. Won't you please walk me to the edge of the forest before retiring to the inn?"

We walked in silence, my hand in D's, May's hand in her strange husband's. Beside the trees he shook D's hand and mine, kissed his wife's cheek, and strode into the wood just as Shorts had said, armed against the night with only his jacket and a solid pair of brogans.

Turning back toward the village, May and I linked arms and D lingered near the woods a while. "Please, don't cry, May."

"I'm sorry, it's just you see," her breath was short, "he doesn't want to be alone, and it's my fault."

"What do you mean?"

"When I was little, although he scared me, he was a very happy man. He'd go sing in the Meadow almost every day, happily dealing with the living and taking great joy in singing for the sleeping. But then one day, he stopped. They weren't with him any more, the sleepers. His first wife, his baby girl, his second wife. They were gone, because I woke them up."

She pulled away and I couldn't ask any more questions as she hurried through the snow like a doe born to it. The inn was nearly empty that night and the fire could not warm me. D and I retired in silence, though I am sure we were both occupied with wondering whether or not to raise a cup to herald the return of the sun. How could anyone choose?

The Sleepers' Meadow

Since my first meeting, here with the Greens, D and I have been extended the hospitality of the village, which invited us to stay through Yule. This did somewhat impinge upon our original plans which were to travel by locomotive back east to spend Christmas with the children, and at the Institute. However, when a man purportedly over a hundred years old who doesn't look an hour past his prime asks one to stay and get to know the village in more detail, one can hardly argue. Well, one who catalogs the peculiar can hardly argue. D argued long that it was imprudent to remain beyond our original plans, citing the regions propensity to be blessed with thick snows into the deep of winter which can slow even locomotive travel. Of course, this excursion is not one of mechanical advancement, thus I empathize with his reluctance.

May Green, Everett's wife, whom upon first glance I had taken for a woman somewhat elder than her husband, perhaps by as much as fifteen years, though that is an uncommon practice, invited D and I to stay within their own home, but I did not want to impose. We have, therefore, retained our rooms at the inn.  However, while taking luncheon with May, I learned that indeed, she is a woman of some forty-six years. She is Everett's third wife, the first two long dead. His first wife died when both she and Everett were young, in child bed. Her name was Eliza. She and the child were laid in the Sleepers' Meadow. Here the villagers follow the traditions of the old ones who, while they do practice internment within the folds of the earth, mark the resting places of the departed by planting flowers. There is a book which Green and his father kept in which the names of all children born are written, and the names of the fallen. It is really quite the genealogical work, however, in the Sleepers' Meadow, there are no markers. However, it is said that because of her fae blood, the flowers over Everett and Eliza's daughter, who, like her grandmother, bore no name, those flowers grow taller and brighter than those over the resting places of men.

Though I have walked with May through the Sleepers' Meadow, I can only confirm that indeed, there is a rosebush which still clings somewhat more heartily to it's green than the other plants resting beneath the snow, I can not say for certain that indeed the nameless babe lies beneath. What cause for dissemblance May may have, however, is unclear.

Even in the winter, the Sleepers' Meadow is beautiful. The path from the village is laid in river stone which cuts a narrow line through the copse into a clearing surrounded by dense trees. Much of the wood here consists of the pines and spruces so common to these colder latitudes, and their snow draped greenery abuts and defines the edges of the Meadow. It is a very private place, and before entering May bade me respect the rule of Silence and Song. By May's word, it is a tradition among the Old Ones who dwelt here before that the Sleepers must not be awakened, and thus one only comes to them quietly, or with song, as music soothes the resting of the Sleepers much as it does a child.

Per the local custom, May brought with her a sprig of evergreen to lay at the feet of her father, and she sang a sweet yet wordless tune while clearing away the detritus of the most recent windstorm from both her mother and father's resting places.  When she finished she waved her hand in circles toward me, which first I took for a symbolic gesture relating to the cyclic nature of life and death, as D and I observed in our recent trip into the Smokey Mountains, however, the solicitous look on her face informed me of my mistake. She was inviting me to sing as well. As I did not know any songs for the occasion, I merely offered a Kyrie Eleison, before we left.  We were halfway back to the village when May broke the spell of quiet.

"I'm afraid, you know."

"Why?"

She placed a hand on her abdomen, "I don't want to lay beside Eliza yet."

"Are you ill?"

"Expecting."

"Are you certain?"

She smiled darkly. "My age, of course. I hardly believed it myself, after all these years, but yes. I'm certain. I know that Everett was born to one of the Old Ones, and he does have a daughter, by his second wife, Geraldine, may her Sleep be whole, but I'm old to be having my first child."

What does one say to that? Surely she read my mind, for she continued, "I am telling you this because I know what you do. You keep our stories, and I want you to know, should you come back this time next year, perhaps you will find me with a tiny child with wisps of blue light on the brow, or perhaps you will find a new daffodils peeking up in the earliest thaw." She took my hands, "Daffodils, not tulips, not roses. Daffodils. When you return, I feel in my whole self you will, then if you find Daffodils in the Sleepers' Meadow, will you greet me with song?"

"Of course I will. But can I ask, why song? I understand, to help the Sleepers remain asleep, but what if, I mean, could they..." I trailed off. I still struggle, at times, to ask the questions which most ardently pique my curiosity when I know the answers are dear.

"Could they wake?" She asked, her eyes wide.

"Yes, could they wake?"

She laughed. "You needn't look so flustered. I don't think I've ever met a child who doesn't ask it. Could they? Of course I don't know. Everett once told me, I believe it was the first thing he ever told me- my sister had called me a coward and said that if I wanted to prove that I wasn't, that I'd go to the Sleepers' Meadow and shout. Of course, I knew it was wrong, but I didn't want to be a coward, so I went. I snuck out early in the morning, before the light had fully cleared the trees. I must have been eight. I thought I was alone. I wasn't even sure if I could follow through until I got there.  Alone, I strode as bravely as I could feign, in case my sister or one of the other children might have followed, and yelled with a voice much louder than I knew I could, 'WAKE UP!'"

"Well, immediately up stands this blue haired giant in the meadow where surely there'd been no one. Before I could scream, he was moving toward me far too quickly. I ran as fast as my little feet would carry me. Of course, so many plant roses, and my skirt caught on the thorns. I tugged twice then tried to run on, hoping the branch would break. It did, but I fell. I tried to grab the grass to help me pull myself back to my feet faster. I hadn't meant to wake anyone, and then there I was, this little waif of a child; I couldn't have weighed more than fat turkey, and I was being lifted by two cold hands around my waist. I kicked and screamed, wriggling to get away. I managed to turn my head enough to bite the arm that was holding me, and I bit hard, but the grip around me only tightened, so I bit again, and this time the grip loosened. I tried to pull free, but found instead that I couldn't get a foothold before I was being dragged by the shoulder. Where was my help though? Surely they should have heard me in the village. Surely someone would come before whatever I had raised could eat me, or whatever it was dragging me off to do.

"As quickly as the struggle had begun, I found myself being dropped on the path, only a few yards from the mouth of the Meadow. Terrified I looked up to see Everett, he was gripping his left arm tightly with his right, right where I'd bitten him. I could see the gray of his shirt was red. 'What do you think you're doing.' he yelled, pacing back in forth quickly, and squeezing his arm.  I just started crying.  He really is quite a frightening sight when angry, and I'd always been scared of the tall and quiet man who was the mayor. But then he did the strangest thing. He apologized for scaring me, offered to help me up, and walked me back to the village before a soul even awoke.  Later that day he stopped by the house. I was sure he was there to tell on me. I hid in the cellar, but of course, I always hid in the cellar. When I heard the footsteps on the steps, I was certain that it would be my father, switch in  hand, or worse yet, maybe he'd make me pick the switch. It was my father, but instead he was looking for me to let me know that all of the village children were invited to join him for a walk. He wanted to tell us all about the traditions of the Old Ones and the Meadow. Of course I went. So what he told us, but he was talking to me, and it was the first thing he ever truly told me, was that his mother had told him that when we die, our spirits go to sleep, and as long as they slumber, they dream beautiful dreams, but if we rouse them, sometimes they wake up and know they need to be born again somewhere else, and they leave us. So long as they are sleeping, they are here with us still. If we were to wake them, then we'd be alone and we couldn't spend time with their spirits anymore, and that would be even more sad than simply not being able to see them and hold their hand anymore, so it was very important we try not to wake them.

"It was a comforting tale, but of course Everett never leaves well enough alone. He then said, 'though once, a long time ago, my mother told me of a time when a very naughty little boy went into a Sleepers' Meadow and yelled to wake the Sleepers, and indeed, they did wake, and pushed forth from beneath the flowers to take the naughty little boy down with them, and they'd been sleeping a very long time, and were very hungry, so one must be careful not to rouse them, in case their spirits do not wake to find a new life, but claim yours instead.'"

"Was he jesting?"

"I never knew. I'd like to think so, but I've never uttered a word that wasn't song in that place since."