#iwen

He woke before the sun, fortifying his resolve with black coffee before leaving his little cottage for the terraced garden.  One hand stole a thistle leaf from the plant by the gate, and as he walked he worried it in his teeth.

It was a lovely morning, cool and humid in the dove-gray light before the sun limned everything gold.  Late summer was upon them, brown and slightly withering despite the gardener’s best efforts, but it was merely a time of transition.  Iwen looked forward to it as he did the change of every season, half of his nature preferring chaos and upheaval even while the other half craved the succor of calm.  He was two halves of a puzzle never really meant to fit.

He made a brisk line across the patio, through the iron gate with its creaking hinge and down the orchard path.  The shadows of the trees slithered over him, always happy to have him, as if with the sense he belonged.

Not far down the piecemeal flagstone path sat Sincilla’s cottage, barred in wattle and daub, always looking as if the weight of moss and thatch was too heavy for its modest frame.  The windows glowed gold in the gloom, the light dancing with the suggestion of a roaring hearth, though no smoke curled from the chimney.

“No fires in the orchard”, he’d told her when she first arrived with all her bags and boxes, her bottles and skins.  “I can’t have the whole place burn down because someone left an ember unquenched.”

She’d looked at him slyly, as she always did, and with a hint of a smirk.

“As if we need fire.”

Iwen stood a moment on her front step, an ear turned to the door, but there was only noise enough inside to confirm she was awake.  His knuckles fells sharply twice.

Silence.

He waited, frustrated and impatient until Sincilla’s voice griped at him from the far side.

“Well?”

He sighed. “Well what?”

“Do it again!”

“Do what again?”

“Knock!  You have to knock three times. I mean knock once more, don’t start the series all over again or the whole thing will be off.”

Another sigh.  He rapped again, just once more, and she drew back the door with a satisfied flourish.

“There, better!”  She stood aside to let him in, head shaking.  “Honestly, who knocks twice?  What’s the matter with you?”

Iwen squeezed past her, sizing up the cabin’s interior with the bewildering sense that it was -- always, somehow -- larger than it should have been.

Sincilla closed the door behind him, turning in place so that her skirts twisted heavily about her ankles.  She looked deceptively tall under the low cottage roof, a rust-colored shayla framing the aristocratic angles of her face.

“Can we not argue,” he begged.

“It takes two to argue,” she reminded him.  “I’m of no mind to argue.  Take off your mantle, would you?”

Iwen stopped, a hand spreading open at his chest as he looked himself over.

“What? I’m not wearing--”

“Not a cloak.  A mantle.”

Ah.  Right.

He gestured -- a little scratch behind one ear -- and in the flicker of the hearthlight his appearance changed: the shape of his nostrils flaring and curling back, distinctly goatlike.  Likewise his ears tapered and pointed at the tips, two ribbed horns appearing from out his unruly curls.

Sincilla watched all this approvingly until he cast his gaze shamefully aside.  She came nearer, turning his chin toward her in one hand, revealing to the light his peglike pupils.

He was in all other ways still human, lacking either tail or ruminant legs, but also clearly not.  Two puzzle halves never meant to fit.

“Better,” Sincilla said.  He removed her hand from his chin as politely as possible, needing her in a good mood for what was to come.

“Not better,” he corrected.  Just different.”

She shrugged a shoulder.  “So you say.”  Her arms folded high on her chest as she walked past him to the hearth -- alight, just not with fire.  “Why is it you come to trouble me in your man suit?”

“It isn’t--”  He stopped himself, clearing his throat, and fixed his posture.  “There’s been a letter.”

She eased to a tuffet by the hearth, holding her shayla back with one hand as she stretched to stir the glowing cauldron.

“From whom?”

“From the solicitor.”

Her poise fractured, hand hesitating on the spoon handle before she quietly tapped it out and returned it to its hook.  Her eyes gleamed gold as sunlit amber as she turned.

“And so?”

Iwen stepped nearer, hands opening and closing at his sides.

“He’s located Beatrice’s next of kin, and alerted her to the disposition of the estate.”

Sincilla sat forward, eyes bugging impatiently.

“And so?”

He swallowed.

“And so she’ll be here in a week’s time.  Sooner, if she can… disengage herself from her affairs.”

Most of the housekeeping staff, although protected by glamours to make them appear human, are Brownies / house sprites.  Iwen can remark to the narrator that they’re of a culture that don’t take kindly to critique or even gifts, and so if there’s something that they’re doing wrong it’s best to just let him handle it.  They have a penchant for storming off if crossed.  She can ask why they keep such difficult help, and he explains that good help is exceedingly hard to find and keep in those parts.

Iwen lives in a small cottage alongside the main house with a low wall surrounding it and a garden that seems composed almost entirely of weeds.  She asks why he doesn’t have the gardener tidy it up for him, but he explains vaguely that he’s just fond of unusual plants.  He chews thistle when he’s stressed or nervous.

There is a terraced garden behind the main house and, beyond that, a hedge wall with a gate that leads into what appears to be a wooded orchard.  This is where the bulk of the fae folk live.

Chief among them is the gardener / groundskeeper, a sassy middle-aged witch who lives in a small cabin on the far side of the wall and acts as the liaison to the wooded fae folk who don’t have access to the main house.  There’s a colony of Fairies, a marsh with a Kelpie.  Still trying to decide what else lives there.

There’s a crossroads down the road from the estate, and at it a graveyard guarded by a Black Dog spirit.  He was originally a highwayman who was cornered on the road by a mob of fed-up townspeople.  When he shifted into a black dog to escape they set upon him and decided to use him as the guardian spirit for the new burial grounds, “saving his soul” in the process.  The chapel has long since been abandoned, but the graveyard remains.  He has a black cat companion with a white spot on her forehead, named Chaos (and if you get that reference I will give you a cookie).

Importantly, Iwen cannot leave the estate.  I haven’t worked out the details of it yet, but he’s under a curse which keeps him confined to property (the house and the surrounding grounds, including the small woods)  To that end he requires assistance with anything that must be done in town, or basically anywhere outside the estate’s property lines.  It is of particular interest to him that the narrator keeps and maintains the estate rather than selling it off to God-only-knows who, as he has no idea what would happen to him if he was forced to leave.

Like Iwen, the Black Dog gravekeeper cannot go any further than the stone wall of the graveyard.