Story: Fellyans (part two)

Fellyans

(part two)

Something was amiss, where once Fellyans had collected alms, left for them under hollies. As hollies were grandfathered neutral, exiles could pass the length of two truncas inside the Queendom’s border, watched and well-grudged by various self-appointed proctors—but the food, warm clothing, odds and ends of wobbly cooking pots, individual shoes, bladeless hafts…and cracked lanterns with smidges of oil left to burn, had been permitted them.

All charity had dried up.

Like other Fellyans, Alma had joined a gang. At first, herself and the sprite Marshhawk (“two aitches”). Marshhawk was under a curse—a great source of pride, as the Queen had laid it on him personally. “With her very lips.”

He had been stripped of wishing powers, but tossed a contemptuous book of spells. Every idle hour, he plied himself at the learning of them. Alma admired learning, and the gift of wellspokenness. To read books, after all!

To have soft hands, fair clothing.

She was put across for failing the Oath of Realmship. Toting her basket on her back, watching her feet, as the cobblestones were not cleaned until the rousters waked the muckers in their alleys…

Cock’s crow was the hour for this, when the rooster alone knew the sun was near…

She had wended her cautious zigzags. This mind-on-steps made to Alma a prayer, to a Kindness she believed in, though girls who grew up to be washerwomen were not taught of deities. A washerwoman suffered; but a mucker no doubt suffered more.

Two Queen’s soldiers, in Elfenrang, asked the Oath. They could, at random, of anyone.

“Ah. Sirs… I don’t understand you.”

In ordinary words: “The Oath, laundress.”

“Keeping my arms and legs covered, then. Curtseying at Highness, not talking back, at all…”

“Entirely ignorant of form. Come along.”

She pulled her arm free. “Why not have it on a sign, then…? Or if you’d let me write it down…though I don’t write much…”

“It is a subject’s duty to guess the law correctly. What sort of order would the Realm maintain if we did your job as well as ours?”

Alma’s sleeve-cuff pinched, she muttered abstinence, from all foreign stimulations. Detaining of any stranger, using allowable force, who made claim to engage in quests, ventures, rescues of persons or objects, or unauthorized pioneering. All Acts of Magic performed to be registered within 30 days. The impounding of no swan known to bear the Royal tattoo.

The elves at their small heights spoke below in their own language. Alma’s voice petered down to, “Life’s Blood to the Fairy Realm, and all entities and properties appertaining thereto, etc., etc.”

“Right. That’s rubbish. You are guilty of resisting arrest; you have displayed bodily motions indicative of violent intent. A magistrate will sentence you. ”

2

Fellyans

Fellyans (part three)

(2021, Stephanie Foster)