#notchfolk

SKIP LASKOE

Time to meet another one of the publicans for The Wayside….

The Halloween Solar Storm of 2003 had a dramatic impact on the village – on that Friday night, bartender Andy Laskoe was walking Skipper, his West Highland Terrier puppy, past one of the vortex portals which lead to the Flatlands dimension. And when that exploded because the energy from the solar flare was so intense, Laskoe and Skipper were caught in a “fireball” which magically fused them genetically. They became one anthropomorphic, sentient canine who would have been right at home as a disciple of the St. Christopher of legend, or among the inhabitants of Angamanain when Marco Polo visited.

They were no longer Andy Laskoe and Skipper. Instead they became “Skip Laskoe”.

           Just as people are doing around the world at this time of year, the Notchfolk of Notchborough are getting ready for the holiday season, for which they have another name from Sgailick, their Notch-Chat – “Yulin”. It is of relatively recent coinage, probably around 1970 maybe, when folks began to take notice of an actor named Harris Yulin; I think maybe beginning with ‘Doc’, in which he played Wyatt Earp.            (There is a philologist at Notchborough’s upstart of a community college which calls itself a university – Sothern’s Quinnetukut University – who believes “Yulin” was the first time a name was chosen to replace a standard word from the English language which sounded almost exactly like the word being replaced. The traditionalists among the old-timers in Notchborough feel that it defeats the purpose of a secret language, but it has become a trend which quickly caught on.)            Yulin stands for exactly that – the Yuletide season, Yule, Yül….  And it is used liberally in connection with all things connected to the season – Yulin logs, Yulin carols, Yulin cards, the Yulin Cat, the Yulin Goat, the Yulin Opossum.            Just about everything associated with the Yuletide festivities in the vast world outside that village in northmost Connecticut is considered fair game for Yulin – the exchange of gifts (mostly attributed to Santa Claus); the trees invited into homes to be decorated; stockings hung (whether there’s a chimney or not); plus good food, good drink, and good company.

           What you won’t find in Notchborough during the season of Yulin are reference to the birth of Jesus. It’s not that they don’t believe in the Christ; many of them follow Christian teachings, and quite a few of them – mostly those descended from the Fògarraich who were Catholic – still consider themselves to be Catholic as well.            They just refuse to buy into a lot of rulings which had nothing to do with the original teachings of Jesus. Many of the tenets with which they have problems are recognized as public relation ploys (to put a modern spin on it) to make it easier to ensnare new followers from those “pagans” still clinging to the Old Ways. The way they see it, to achieve peace on Earth and good will towards Man, it’s best to cut out the middle man. (Especially since, back on those Scottish skerries, they were followers of the Old Ways as well, practitioners of their own low magicks.)            Take St. Brigid, for example. The congregation at St. Lidwina’s Church gave up venerating her long before the Catholic Church removed her from their universal calendar in 1969.  In fact, their ancestors never accepted her as a saint, even before they abandoned the Pentland Skerries to flee the Harriers. They saw her as just a trick by the Church to fool the followers of Breo-Saighit, goddess of the forge, into thinking the supposed saint was the same person.            While the Scottish firthfolk were in hiding at the Abbey of H’Braseel during the winter of 1634, the Irish clerics admitted as much to the one man whose word was unimpeachable as a source on the teachings of the Christ.             He may have been claiming to be the fictional picaro known as Lazarillo de Tormes, but those monks recognized him as a figure to be found in one of their own stained glass windows – Lazarus, the friend of Jesus Himself, who had been raised from the dead.

           And that alone made Lazarus an unimpeachable source – for this rogue brigand, who just rescued an entire clan of Scots when he should have been long since moldering in a grave some 1600 years earlier… many of the monks accepted his word on the subject. Despite what the established church had those monks believing, they nevertheless knew there were still a few holes in the established doctrine.            Lazarus claimed it took nothing away from his friend’s claim of divinity if He was prone to making mistakes. And Lazarus was the prime example of that – Jesus brought him back to the Land of the Living, but He apparently forgot to rewire his organic off-switch. And now he was stuck as an immortal.            The sanction against eating meat on a Friday? That was just to help out the fishmongers to get through some marketing downtimes.            And bringing it back around to Christmas vs. the Yuletide? Even after all those centuries, Lazarus remembered celebrating Jesus’ birthday usually in September, sometimes around the Festival of the Trumpets – but not always, since that never seemed to fall on the same date from year to year. But definitely it was in the late summer, early autumn. After all, the accepted story was that there were shepherds in the field, out watching their flock, which was not something they would be doing on a cold winter’s night.            But hey! If it meant one more way to persuade the pagans to abandon the observance of the Winter Solstice, who cared if it meant insulting the Son of God by ignoring His real birthday?            And so, at least in Notchborough, Connecticut, Christmas is observed in early September. And it’s strictly a religious ceremony, complete with the liturgical services (including midnight mass) at St. Lidwina’s and the relevant scripture readings. But all that fun stuff – rockin’ around the Christmas tree in a new old-fashioned way, etcetera etcetera etcetera…. That still happens as they celebrate their good old-fashioned New England Saturnalia.

THE CANTERVILLE LEXICON 5

More verbiage from Canterville:

ABBISTOCK – Slang term, used mostly in Pooticuck County, the Flatlands, where the Scottish heritage is still pronounced, but it is used on occasion in Canterville (although they have a Hays Code word with a similar definition.)  It is a corruption of the Scottish Gaelic word “àbhaisteach” which means “Ordinary, Habitual, Normal, Usual”.  Usually it is used to describe the ordinary people back on Earth, but it has come into general, derisive, use to describe anyone with no powers or “bents”.  (Other terms of a similar nature – the “Ordinaires” and the “Mundayns”.)

BENT – A talent, a knack, usually of a magical nature, and sometimes unique to one particular person  (Timjimmy Auxberon’s bent is that he can see and speak to the Nearly Departed in Canterville who are trapped and prevented from moving on to the next plane in their spiritual journeys.  See ENDIES.)

BLEMMYES – (Plural: BLEMMYAE) Blemmyes are humanoids lacking a head, with their facial features embedded on their chest. They are still remembered (barely) in folklore, but all of them were whiskaways captured by the Toddler Godling.  (Astiph wanted them as his playthings on his flat planet.  This happened at some point before the middle of the 17th Century.)  The Blemmyae live for the most part in the stolen country of Dudenya, where they are renowned for their skills in technology.  They are the creators and manufacturers of all the vehicles in the Flatlands, which all run on faesmic energy as there are no fossil fuels.

ENDIES – This is a slang term for the ghosts which have been trapped in Canterville since the Great Vanishment of 1678, when the walls between worlds was realigned to the Flatlands dimension and is no longer a conduit to the spirit world.  (It is derived from the acronym for “Nearly Departed.”)

REPTOIDS – There has long been a belief that reptilian humanoids live among us on Earth.  This is not true… anymore.  There used to be a great underground empire of the Reptoids beneath Los Angeles, and the city government actually financed a search for the access to that realm.  However, by then, the Toddler Godling had whisked them away to the Flatlands, where they now are ensconced in a hot, mountainous region on the Eastern shores of the Sundering Seas.  The majority of the countries in the Flatlands consider their country of Nisssiruu a rogue terrorist state, with their only allies being the Albiyun Empire.

I should point out that the rumor that they still walk among us on Earth is actually true.  Those who were not in the subterranean chambers at the time of the Whiskaway, those who were above ground, escaped detection.  This was because they are shape-shifters, able to perfectly mimic the human form.  Their one tell is the nictating eyelids.  Gives them away every time.  The other rumor about them is also true – those Reptoids still on Earth are in the United States.  They are most numerous in Hollywood and Washington D.C. where they control the entertainment business and the federal government.

SAITOPSI – The first “peoples” who were disappeared from Earth were several species of ceratops dinosaurs, the herbivores who would eventually develop horns and protective shields on their heads.  (The triceratops were the first of those types of dinosaurs to capture the attention of the Toddler Godling.  He grabbed up many from Earth while the basic foundation of his flat planet was still being stitched together from stolen chunks of Gondwanaland and Pangaea which had broken off.  He placed them in a jungle/savannah terrain on the Southern shores of the Sundering Seas where their nearest neighbors would be the Bruces and Sheilas of the Grand Speewah… but not for millions of years.  With no predators like T-Rex to impede their development, those “tribes” of the various ceratops species were able to evolve into sentient, anthropomorphic beings, who identify themselves as “Saitopsi”.  (Because the skeletal structure of their mouths do not lend themselves to human speech, “Saitopsi” is the best they can do in saying “Ceratopsi”.)

WERE-BEARS – Men who can take on the shape and nature of bears, usually black bears, also known as ursathropes.  There are actually two species of the were-bears, one in Canterville, and the others are to be found in Pooticuck County.  Those in Canterville are originally from the Allansburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, where they were members of a Jewish synagogue, B’Nai Esau. The others were to be found in the town of Wampaug, eponymously named after the tribe which had been whisked away to the Flatlands along with most of the Fort Kathlyn settlement.

The main difference between the two groups is the nature of their ursathropy.  The Jewish were-bears, who call themselves “Bermensch”, is that it is part of their cellular structure and is passed down through their genetics.  For those of the Wampaug, who are known as “Wasoosin” (a portmanteau of the words “Awohs” for bear, and “In”, the suffix denoting “Man”), it confers the ability to magically transform from one bodily form and nature to the other due to a highly ritualized ceremony, very religious in nature.  For the most part, the two species of ursathrope are kept separate from each other, but it has been deemed vital for the gene pool that unions between the two groups of ursathropes should be encouraged but never forced.

THE CANTERVILLE LEXICON 3

More verbiage from the lexicon of Canterville:

CAERDANNYN – This is the umbrella clan surname for the Scottish Highland travellers who had the misfortune of visiting the Firthfolk of Clan Craffinaech to sell their wares when they were attacked by the Harriers of Young Cromwell’s employ.  Those who survived the ordeal and finally found themselves in northmost Connecticut, knew a settled life was not for them.  They liberated three wagons and set off for the wilderness.

Their surname is not their original clan name, which is lost to Time now.  “Caerdannyn” is one which they adopted during the sea voyage to Quinnetukut to show their pride in who they were, after some in Clan Craffinaech tried to belittle them by labeling them as “Ceàrdannan” which translates to “Craftsmen”.

One other note of interest about their names: they have a tradition dating back to the Highlands in which they are baptized with the name of the location in which they were born.  The Caerdannyn who assumed the role of Clan Chief during their flight from the Pentland Skerries was Scalloway.  The ones who show up most in Timjimmy Auxberon’s life are his Cousin Holly’s husband, Gregg Darroway, and their son Naugatuck Darroway (who prefers to be known as “Tuck”.)  Gregg Darroway was born prematurely on his mother’s fishing boat while she took a chartered group of anglers out to sea.  The boat was above the Gregg Seamount at the time.

THE CAUL – This is the nickname given to the membranous wall of energy which surrounds Canterville and keeps it in a bubble outside the earthly plane of existence, yet still tethered to Earth at the Connecticut Notch borderline.  The Notchfolk can leave and return through it, but those with no connection to that town which should be found between Granby and Suffield will find no access.

FÒGARRAICH – “Fògarraich” is the Scottish Gaelic term for “refugees”.  Those practitioners of simple low magic on the Pentland skerries back in the early 1600s became homeless refugees driven from their homes.  This was not the intention of Young Cromwell’s secret army of Harriers, the precursors to the official counterparts to the Nazis of the Future, the English Roundheads.  When speaking of their Scottish forebears nowadays, the Notchfolk use the term “Fògarraich” with pride.

GAIABOUT – Similar to “Rumspringa” in the Amish community, Gaiabout is a time in an adolescent’s life growing up in Canterville. They are given the chance to go out into the world and explore what it might have to offer.  They are also given the opportunity to then travel to Pooticuck County and see if that would be more suitable for their spiritual growth.  (Taking their cue from an early 1990s movie, many people nowadays refer to the Gaiabout as “Walking the Earth”, which ties in to “Gaia” being the personification of the Earth.)

They would also have the option to travel throughout the Flatlands, every parent’s worst nightmare for their children - having grown up in a virtually mundane world (what’s an other-dimensional barrier between friends?) and then find yourself thrown into the deep end of the pool in a world where Magic reigns.

Timjimmy Auxberon was born in Canterville, but forced to relocate to the Flatlands. (Somebody tried to kill him as a child because his bent of talking to ghosts had been revealed.) Timjimmy chose to take his Gaiabout to Earth after graduating from PU.  His friend Killian Vellinge had already moved there and found them an apartment in the Allansburg section of Brooklyn.  Neither one had any intention of returning to the Flatlands.

GISH – As an example of the Hays Code, “gish” refers to the geas (which is pronounced “gish”), also known as a taboo, which was laid upon the Canterville people. This was after the Great Vanishment caused the Fort Kathlyn farmlands to snap off and get left behind.  (Astiph was trying to steal the entire landmass when that semi-god was only a few days old, but it proved too heavy for that deity in diapers.)  It was decided by Merlin Ambrosius and the full Council of Mages that the secret of Canterville’s dimensional separation should be kept hidden from the outside world….  And the Notchfolk would have no say in the matter.

LETHE SPELL – Along with the “gish” which was laid upon the entire community after the Great Vanishment, the Council of Mages infused the Caul with the Lethe Spell, one which causes amnesia about where the victim just came from.  It can be neutralized if the one crossing over to Earth is equipped with a countermand ward of some kind – a charm, an article of clothing, a whispered turn of phrase.  The river of forgetfulness by this name is pronounced “LEE-Thee”.  But in its current Canterville parlance, it’s pronounced as one syllable, “Laithe.”

MONITAURS – This is the name for the security/intelligence agency for both Canterville and the micro-nation of Pooticuck County in the Flatlands.  Their headquarters are located on the border of the Riftwood in the town of Thacham.  Those who work in Canterville are designated as agents, with their main duties being to secure the access to the vortals, patrolling the borders of the “Caul” (especially at the border with Southwick), and monitoring the rogue wormholes in the White Woods.  Over in Pooticuck County, they are trained adepts, because the Flatlands is a hotbed of magical activity.

The two groups began as separate entities; in Canterville, the organization was known as B.U.M.P.P.O. after the publication of “The Pioneers” in 1823.  The agency refuses to divulge what that stood for, even though the meaning has no relevance today.  (I can only assume that “O” was for “Organization”.

THE CANTERVILLE LEXICON 2 More verbiage from Canterville:

CAIT SIDHE – See “Cawtshee”

CAWTSHEE – This is the Canterville pronunciation of “Cait Sidhe”, the Scottish Fairy Cat.  In the established legends, the Cawtshee is somewhat larger than ordinary house cats, all black save for a white blaze of fur on their chests.  This could not be further from the truth. It is claimed that it was the cait sidhe who established that legend to keep them safe in public. Sadly, it has caused problems for ordinary black cats ever since.   Cawtshee have all styles of fur colors and patterns; in fact, the Cawtshee who is the current “guardian” of The Wayside arrived looking like the classic “Tuxedo Cat”.  It was soon evident that Talisker had unique magical properties to her fur patterns – while the base was always white, the black patches tend to shift around, so that she never looks the same from one moment to the next.  (Timjimmy Auxberon calls her a “feline lava lamp”.)

It is not clear how powerful their magic is, but they do display a high level of intelligence, and on rare occasions, they can thought-cast… but only to a select few.

FIRBOLGS – In the early mythos of Ireland, the Firbolgs were descended from an early group of settlers on the Emerald Isle but who were driven off, only to return.  If you read the account as described in Wikipedia, you will find all of the groups mentioned – especially the Firbolgs and the Tuatha de Dannan, are treated as being early humans.  But the historians and folklorists in Canterville and the Flatlands argue that this was an attempt, mostly a successful one, by the fervent missionaries of the early Christian faith to erase the presence of magic in the world.  They were unable to eradicate its power, but they drove it deep into the shadows.

In the account shared by the Firbolg descendants, they were basically humanoid, with the difference of having six inch tails.  (Somehow Cromwell knew this and used it as a propaganda weapon to get his soldiers to massacre a million Irishmen.)  Once they were driven out of Ireland, some traveled northwards to Scandinavia, while most sailed into the West and established colonies along the entire length of the Eastern seaboard.  (There were three underground realms in Connecticut alone.)  There are theories that the “evil sheep” mentioned in British Columbia folklore were Firbolgs… and they were a tribe who had gone bad….

THE HAYS CODE – In some isolated communities, cut off from the outside world, the people who lived there created a form of language to further separate them from outsiders.  The best example of that would be Boontling, the artificial argot from Boonville, California.  It first came into play at the turn of the 20th Century, but only about 100 people still speak it today.

The other-dimensional village of Canterville also developed their own private lingo which is known as “the Hays Code” (because it originated when the hidden village was known as Haysville.)  Its source of inspiration is people’s names, first from those among their neighbors and then from the outside world, such as presidents and other newsmakers.  With the advent of vaudeville leading into silent movies, talkies, television, and now online content including influencers, the Hays Code has burgeoned into a healthy folk lingua.   However, old-timers, who see the Hays Code as something to be enshrined with no expansion, are dismissive of a trend which began with the advent of movies but which has blossomed with the dominance of television in their homes.  It is becoming more frequent that the name of a character is being employed rather than the name of the actor.  However, there are others who argue that the actor could be associated with any number of roles which might lead to the coinage of a new Hays Code word, but a character’s name narrows down the reasons for it.

HAYSVILLE – This was the name by which Canterville was known once the Notchfolk finally accepted that the Fort Kathlyn farmlands would never be reunited with the other half of the Fort Kathlyn settlement, one way or the other.  It remained Haysville for 158 years; that’s when Canterville adopted their current name in 1949, thanks to a campaign by “The Children’s Crusade”.  Before then, the Fort Kathlyn farmlands bore the name of Haysville in dedication to a colonial man from one of their Earthbound neighboring towns, a man who had led an adventurous life.  The town's name was changed when the children in 1949 pointed out that the adventurous life led by that settler named Hays was also a problematic, politically incorrect, one.)

M’GAFFIN – A word in the Hays Code which is based on an actor, but was inspired by one specific character.  A m’gaffin is what the Notchfolk call a stranger in their midst.  I should know; that epithet was bandied often when I first started hanging out at The Wayside.  The name is a corruption of “McGavin”, as in Darren McGavin, who played the lead role in an old TV series entitled “The Outsider”.

NEMED - In some accounts of Irish “history”/legend, Nemed was the leader of the third group of people to colonize Ireland, the Muintir Nemid. (That translates to “the people of Nemed”.)  But what those 11th Century accounts, heavily influenced by the Church, did not want the people to remember is that “the people of Nemed” meant that the Firbolgs had arrived in Inisfail via a portal from another dimension – the world of Nemed.   Those Nemedians took the name “Firbolg” which means “Men of Bags”.  At Pooticuck University in Acton, Pooticuck County, the Flatlands, many papers have been written as to why they chose that name.  The most popular theory is because Merlin Ambrosius was their protector and he would later be known among the Kaska Dena peoples of British Columbia as “Wḗdé gwę̄́ł gégeh” – “He was always packing a bag around.”   The late Killian Vellinge, once Timjimmy Auxberon’s roommate and companion, wrote his paper on Tolkien drawing upon the Firbolgs in his visualization of the world in which the Hobbits lived – Bag End, Bagshot Row, the surname of Baggins.  But J.R.R.’s Hobbits were not influenced in their look by the Firbolgs.  The Hobbits, on average, were about three feet tall and they wore no shoes as they had very hairy feet with thick leathery soles; the Firbolgs were about the same height as humans and they sported six inch tails.  (Killian could attest to that if pressed on the matter, as he had been one himself.)  But he advocated that theory when he was sweet on a fellow student at PU whose family had built their lives around an adoration of Tolkien.  This was back when he was still struggling with his own sexual identity….

While the Firbolgs in several of their splinter groups, like the Wonnix who once lived in Connecticut, have carried on the scientific knowledge of teleportation jump-points, with the use of thauma-doors throughout the world, none have any memory of the coordinates back to the Nemed dimension.  

BIG BAD VOODOO DOGGIE

In tomorrow’s edition of the weekly newspaper The Canterville Portal, they are publishing a warning to all dog lovers and/or dog owners (sadly, there is a difference) that they should avoid purchasing imported chew toys which were made in the Flatlands dimension.

The world is not a nice place, and the same holds true for those ancillary worlds of Canterville, the pocket dimension which is a limbo state still tethered to the Connecticut Notch, yet inaccessible to its neighbors; and the Flatlands, a flat planet in its own, larger, dimension, where it is stitched together by a crazed toddler godling who stole whole landmasses and civilizations to add to its collection, countries forgotten now by Earth save as fiction in myths, Bible stories, and a few works of literature.

The news story was initiated because of recent events in Canterville, and it has mushroomed into a wider investigation which – allegedly – has spread into the Flatlands.

Apparently there is a practitioner of the Dark Arts somewhere in the Flatlands who has been crafting chew toys which have a vaguely human appearance. But when handled by the purchaser, these chew toys not only resemble the pet owners, but they absorb a reflection of their personality as well. In effect, they become voodoo doll chew toys.

No harm comes to the dogs; it is only the humans who would be injured, and possibly even killed, by such a vicious spectral mauling.

The Monitaur agents working out of Pooticuck County in the Flatlands have been investigating, and they embargoed a huge shipment of these chew toys (under various brand names) which had been scheduled for export into Canterville. There was more than ever would be needed by dog owners in the former Fort Kathlyn farmlands, so it appears that the original scheme was to smuggle the rest through the thin walls between worlds and inflict these chew toys on the populace of the United States.

Such business is controlled by the Simcooth Conglomerate (unfortunately, Canterville has no regulations against monopolies), but they claim innocence in the matter. Of course they do.

The Monitaurs are working to discover who the thaumaturge might be who is capable of such villainy, but there are so many repressive states and evil empires in the Flatlands, and the resources for the Monitaurs to work undercover espionage in those foreign lands is limited.

And the possibility exists that it could be a “freelance” necromancer plotting their own machinations.

Of course, because of interdimensional diplomacy protocols, the Monitaurs can neither confirm nor deny those reports.

Luckily the Monitaurs assigned to the Canterville dimension, mostly to safeguard access to the vortals back to Earth and to the Flatlands, were quick to respond when somebody did fall victim to the voodoo chew toys.

Emil deWintrie is a Canterville expatriate, now living down South in Candletop. (There are reclusive communities of relocated Notchfolk throughout the country.) But he had returned to Canterville to visit family and do a big favor for two of his friends….

Those friends are Blake Wiyomin, a public relations consultant (who is descended from those blue-skinned aliens who crashed in Connecticut under cover of a meteor explosion in 1807) and his husband, Gabriel Knoft (music teacher at Canterville High School.)   They were going to spend their honeymoon in the Flatlands, touring several of the islands in the archipelago of the Sundering Sea, which cleaves the Flatlands nearly in half. But they needed someone to watch over Damosel, their puppy, for those two weeks.

Damosel and Emil got along great, bonding almost as if they always belonged together. On the day before Blake and Gabriel were to come back home through the vortals, Emil stopped into Swedyon’s pet supply shop to find a toy to give Damosel, in hopes that she would remember their time together whenever she played with it.

One of those malefic chew toys caught his eye and he bought it for her.

When they got back to Blake and Gabriel’s home, Emil was surprised to find that the chew toy looked something like him. He thought that might help in imprinting memories of him in Damosel’s mind, but to further seal that deal, he rubbed the toy all over himself to make it his perfect avatar.

I will spare you the details.

When he gave it to the puppy, Damosel eagerly grabbed it in her mouth, her teeth lightly clenching the doll in its midriff.

Emil suddenly felt the slight pangs of intestinal distress, but couldn’t determine if he needed to go to the bathroom or to the kitchen to make a sandwich. The puppy meanwhile happily tossed her new toy in the air in the living room and suddenly Emil was gripped by the rush of vertigo.

And that’s when Damosel sank her teeth into the doll’s left leg.

Emil screamed in agonizing pain.

When Damosel’s parents walked back into their home the next morning, they found Emil on the kitchen floor, unconscious, with Damosel solicitously lying across his stomach, whimpering quietly as though she also was in pain.

While Blake called eleventy-one to report the emergency, Gabriel noticed that aside from all the blood soaking the left pant leg, the pants were otherwise unmarked. There was no indication that they had been chewed.

Emil deWintrie recovered quickly, although there is some scarring. (Canterville physickers have access to medical… “talents,” which are only the stuff of legend in the outside world.)

Let this stand as a word of warning to all Abbistocks* - never give your pets chew toys which resemble you.  (And I would be remiss in my lapsed Catholic upbringing if I didn’t warn that using one against your enemies would be a sin.)

* “Abbistock” is a corruption of an old Scottish word, “àbhaisteach”, meaning “mundane”, “ordinary”.  (In other words, humdrum humans like you and me.)  In fact, there is a village in Pooticuck County with that name.  Abbistock began as a commune, a kibbutz if you like, for all the displaced “Whiskaways” kidnapped from Earth.  They were whisked away even though they didn’t have special bents which usually caught the attention of Astiph, that petulant toddler godling who created the Flatlands.

Pooticuck County already had towns with populations of Firbolgs with tails, blue-skinned extraterrestrials, circus folk descendants, werewolves, were-bears (both Native American and Brooklyn Jewish), people cursed with bad luck, people stuck forever in a time loop, two different First Nations, descendants of escaped slaves (many of whom have the ability to fly), travelers, rich folk, mobsters, and cowboys.

RESPECT THE DRYAD!

A sure fire way to be ejected from The Wayside is to harangue the staff. Especially its manager, Elleri MacBeithe.

Elleri does not have to be concerned with suffering fools, gladly or otherwise. Not that she minds the slurs tossed her way when she makes the decision to shut off some uber-imbiber for the night; she is assured in her sense of self as a… woman… enough to ignore the insults hurled.

Besides, she has Geobarr the bouncer there, always ready to come to the defense of the boss.

Many of “the Waysiders” who are regular patrons of the tavern are actually visitors to Canterville from the Flatlands, specifically from Notchboro in Pooticuck County.  Notchboro is Canterville’s other half which was swept off to that other dimension in 1678.  (It has since become the seed from which the micro-nation of Pooticuck County bloomed.)

Those Flatlanders, many of them Monitaur security agents, come through the back door vortal which sits directly on the Connecticut Notch.  That borderline is infused with the energies of the dimensional rift which it siphons off to not only power up the vortal, but also to render the backside of the tavern to Canterville’s neighbors to the North, the Southwickers of Massachusetts. (The Notchfolk hold the original Massachusetts colony responsible for them being trapped in their own pocket dimension because of the Bay Colony’s theft of Connecticut territory.  That’s the reason why they frequently use a specific epithet for the people of Massachusetts. But as this post is a warning against the use of such slurs, I will not repeat it here. You can probably guess what is, however.  It’s a good’un.)

Where was I? Oh yeah.

So with the Waysiders clientele being mostly from the Flatlands, they think nothing of the fact that Elleri is actually a dryad, a protective spirit for the woods.

In her case, she was a dryad for the birch trees of the White Woods in Canterville. But as it turned out, there proved to be more dryads than trees, so Elleri sought a new way to use her skills. This brought her to The Wayside, where she serves as the manager for the bar.

In that function, she is attuned to the wood which had been used in building the structure. That way, she can relate The Wayside’s concerns to the owners, Timjimmy Auxberon and Hyoond the meteor. (That Hyoond is considered one of the owners remains a formality, since nobody is exactly sure if the standing stone from space is sentient or not.)

For the most part, the people of Canterville itself tend to avoid The Wayside. They prefer frequenting those bars in town more in keeping with having the Abbistocks (the humdrums, the ordinaires, the mundanes, you know – humans) as patrons – for instance, the Duck and Peacock, or even the wine bar owned by a couple of semi-gods, Plump Jack’s.

But those Notchfolk who do rub elbows with the regulars are familiar with, if not comfortable with, the idea that Elleri is a dryad.  (I can only think their reasons are sexist.  They don’t seem to care that of the three bartenders in the place, one is a man who resembles a pig due to an ancient curse by a Greek sorceress; another is the result of a solar flare fusion of a man and his West Highland puppy; and the lead publican is the great-grandson of the Winsted Wildman.  And like the others in his family tree, he’s a Squatch.)

Usually they keep their prejudices in check, but sometimes over-indulgence brings the worst out in them, usually exemplified in how they address her.  There will always be those knuckle-draggers who stick to the standards like “Hon,” and “Sweetie,” and “Toots.”  But when she “dares” to cross the ones who have had too much, out come the more personal of the verbal daggers.

The slurs start out easy, like “Twiggy Stardust.” (Although she will never give them the satisfaction of admitting to it, Elleri is rather partial to that one.)

Soon they soon get nasty, however – “Rosie Palmtree”, “Moms Mapley”, and striving to hit close to home, somebody will always snarl “Birch Bitch” at her.

Hopefully before that happens, Geobarr is grabbing them by the scruff and tossing them out the front door into the streets of Canterville.   (Of course, he first makes sure to rub their faces, roughly, against the surface of the meteor in order to pay obeisance to the tradition of rubbing the co-owner of The Wayside as a token of farewell.)

CONNECTICUT SLAVERY TIMELINE

It's sad to say, but the Nutmeg State has a piss-poor history when it comes to slavery....

1650: Connecticut legalizes slavery 1779: Prime and Prince are the first slaves in Connecticut to petition the General Assembly for the abolition of all slavery in Connecticut. 1784: Connecticut passes law for gradual emancipation, freeing slaves born after March 1st when they turn 25. 1790: The First Federal Census showed that there were 3,763 people held in bondage throughout New England, and 2,648 of them lived in Connecticut. The same census shows that 2,771 free blacks now lived in Connecticut. By 1790 the state had become, quite literally, half free and half enslaved.   1798: Former slave Venture Smith’s autobiography is published in Haddam Neck, Connecticut where he lived as a successful and prosperous freeman. His account is among the only that includes life in Africa, slavery, and freedom. 1818: Connecticut’s new constitution specifically bans African-Americans from voting 1833: The Black Law of Connecticut was passed in legislation. This came as a result of Andrew Judson, a local politician, who pushed legislation through the Connecticut Assembly outlawing the establishment of schools "for the instruction of colored persons belonging to other states and countries." 1848: Connecticut passes final legislation abolishing slavery, becoming the last state in New England to fully abolish slavery.  

At least in the original Fort Kathlyn settlement, there was only one family of slaves, brought in by one of the most wretched of carpet-baggers in the Simcooth family of "Land Speculators" in 1691.  Most of the Notchfolk were vehement in their opposition that anybody should live enslaved in their community, remembering only too well the yoke of oppression they endured from their English overlords.  (And even that they knew was naught in comparison to the "life" under which the Negroes chafed.)

Unfortunately, Bezaleel Simcooth, with a lifetime of his family's history and mentorship upon which to draw, had planned in advance for such a situation - he had quietly paid off many of the already corrupt members of the ruling town council to champion his right to own slaves.  (Which wasn't difficult to support - as you can see in the timeline above, slavery had been legal in the Connecticut colony for just over forty years by that point.)  He also bought and paid for the services of the sheriff and his constables, none of whom had any qualms in taking sides – and arms – against their neighbors and kinfolk… as long as the money was good.

However, on February 13, 1678, the world centered around the Fort Kathlyn settlement on both sides of the Connecticut Notch was thrown into chaos, becoming known thereafter as the “Great Vanishment”.  The northern half of the town, claimed by both Connecticut and Massachusetts, disappeared entirely, including the many hills and forests, and the most southern of the four Congamond Lakes.  No one outside the lower section of Fort Kathlyn, its farmlands, even remembered that those topographical landmarks had ever existed.

As for those farmlands, they were separated from actual contact with Earth, but the Notchfolk were still able to pass through the dimensional veils which shielded the community from outside contact.  The farmlands had become a “thin place” and one which didn’t need to wait until the seasonal changes in order to gain access for the passage through the dimensional rift.

The loss of the northern lands created a shift in the balance of power for the farmlands.  Although they still called themselves Fort Kathlyn, the actual fort was now gone.  So too were the homes surrounding the fort, as well as the Hooklein chandlery and the meeting house in which church services were held on the Sabbath, in which the town council meetings every Wednesday… or whenever the need arose in case of emergency.  Well, now the need had arisen, but the meeting house no longer existed.

With the traditional clan chief for the Fògarraich gone as well, Thijs Hooklein took it upon himself to helm an emergency council, despite the attempts by Bezaleel Simcooth’s son Boaz to wrest control.  But as would always be the case with the Simcooths to this day, everyone had taken an instant dislike to Boaz.  With Thijs, on the other hand, he was the son of Valentijn and Ealasaid Hooklein, the star-crossed lovers of two different worlds who had led the Scottish magickers to a safe conclusion in their great adventure.

The Notchfolk made it plain that they would follow Thijs’ lead.

The first order of business was to determine their status in the world.  While few answers were forthcoming, their investigations revealed that the main section of Fort Kathlyn was gone, along with the Wampaug tribal village.  The farmlands were now enclosed in some sort of otherworldly, membranous caul which cut them off from the outside world.  But at least that “thin space” was permeable for them to return to Earth if they so desired, while the reverse did not hold to be true.  In fact, it appeared, based on their interactions with their former neighbors in Suffield, Granby, and East Granby, that those townsfolk had no memories of them at all, even if they had been close friends just the day before.

Hard decisions had to be made.  It would have been easy to abandon the farmlands altogether, but their people had already sacrificed so much to get them there in the past.

Societal changes were decided upon that week, leading with the declaration that every man must pull their own weight.  That meant that Boaz Simcooth and his kin, should they decide to stay, would have to engage in manual labor like everyone else, and not on their slaves to carry the load.

To that end, by unanimous acclamation, the Notchfolk declared that slavery would be abolished in the farmlands.  Several of the Simcooths balked at this loss of their “property” and declared their intentions to depart for a return to Earth on the other side of the dimensional barrier.  Several of the Notchfolk, blessed with the low magic of the Sight, foresaw the dark intent in their hearts – that they planned to raise a private militia and return to take the farmlands by force.  As such, a spell was fashioned by the most powerful of the hearth witches in the community, one who could carry the legend of The Boireannach from back on the Pentland Skerries with pride, and she laid it upon every departing Simcooth before they crossed over.  As soon as they arrived back through any of the riftgates in East Granby, or Suffield, or Granby, they lost all memory of the Fort Kathlyn farmlands.

Unaware of this, Boaz and his brothers chose to remain behind, gambling on the potential to be gained from this miniature world despite the loss of their human assets.

For the greater good, there was an equitable division of land so that the new freemen could work their own small acreages with the eventual repayment for the boon to come out of future profits from their crops at reasonable percentages.  Other civic matters were adjudicated at that time so that by the end of the week, the foundations for the future Canterville were laid down.

The Fort Kathlyn farmlands also foresaw the Future when it came to the limits on their gene pool, although they did not know the scientific explanations behind the concern at the time.  For the time being, they were thinking in terms of the former slaves living among them, perhaps remembering a time when several of the early Scottish settlers sought to marry members of the Wampaug tribe, their neighbors and hosts (most of whom now lost due to the “Great Whiskaway.”