Under the Pendulum Sun

by Jeannette Ng

Those longest associated with them, and most intimately acquainted with their character and habits, never expect an Arcadian to speak the truth when there is a chance for them to tell a lie. Yet this very people will tell you by their own laws, and by their own lips, that it is a vile sin to lie and deceive.

We are safe in concluding that the Fae, without exception, are guilty of some or all of these

There was a madwoman half wild, half imprisoned in this castle and I had no idea by whom or why.

BERTHA!

In her rambling, the woman in black had said that she would not be stolen away again. She said that she was the original. Turning the word over in my mind, I thought of copies and forgeries. I thought of Ariel Davenport, the changeling, the false one. The original.

what became of the children the fae spirit away.

This place was too full of secrets.

It expressed bewilderment at the edifice’s architectural styles and how it reminded the writer more of a grand folly than a true ruin, likening it to James Wyatt’s Spring Hill Tower with its nonsensical turrets and balconies and gargoyles.

began to notice imperfections in the illusion.

this is how madness comes: seeing the faeland as a human would

The long and storied history of this edifice had been forged.

thought of the artificial infinite that the columns, ribs and arches were meant to create. It evoked the very sublime that my brother so desperately wanted to do with words.

Beaked and feathered, the courtiers had changed their plumage to darker, more sombre shades.

It was so obvious to me now that Paracelsian theory of elemental fae was wrong. Or at least unhelpful as a model to understand them. It could still be that each of these creatures were aligned to a classical element, but it could bring no further illumination. It was a thought that made me question the assumptions I had made of Mr Benjamin or the elusive Salamander based on their alleged elemental associations.

“Otherwise,

“She wants them to see him. Is not quite the same.”

She wore a dress of snow-white feathers and even whiter fur. It trailed for yards behind her and yet remained impeccably, impossibly pristine. White down framed her pale, flat face and on her brow was a strange wooden coronet with a carved wing stretching sharply above each ear. That and her round yellow eyes briefly reminded me of an owl.

The lectern was held aloft by the wings of a pelican feeding its own blood to its savage-beaked young.

the kingdom of heaven, or rather its bewildering nature.

each one was more gnostic and opaque than the last.

if the fae would be anything, they'd be gnostic

“I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.”

the paradoxical nature of parables, that they are riddling by design and yet are meant to convey the mysterious with clarity. Jesus once explained that it was so that some may seeing, see not and hearing, hear not.

thunder, the perfect mind

Arcadia had changed him. Perhaps it was simply a nervousness or his desire to temper his teachings for fae ears, but he spoke with a bitterness and an absence of consolatory gentleness.

The unfocused nature of the parables gave him little structure. He was in command of his own subject but he was sprawling; there was too much he wanted to say. He had too long been alone with his own thoughts. He cited Bede in one breath and then Aquinas in the next. He made Calvinistic allusions to reprobation and predestination, and then Newmanian arguments for bodily privation and chastisement.

the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

passion that fuelled his eloquence was drawn from great depths where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations.

“But unlike all others who have asked that question, I have before me a parliament of owls.”

Laon had found a place for the fae in the Bible and it was not in the ancient past nor in the angels and devils, but in the very parables of Jesus. It was, in its own way, a powerful, resonant truth.

Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

There Elphane shines in illusory gold;

The cadence of the ritual brought me comfort; it felt like home.

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

In my mind, I always imagined him furtive, desperate, casting about something to make sacred, the way Laon and I would swear promises on handfuls of broken heather.

i don't think you're wrong; although, it was a passover meal

It was a bite of forbidden food that cast Mankind from the garden, perhaps it is only right that a bite of the sacred should return us.

The rules of Arcadia did not make exceptions for our faith.

a tree masquerading as itself.

giving the impression of a discarded cocoon.

They were white linen with faded green ribbons.

the pale queen probably conjured them up she said she hears more than words

Those were Laon’s sheets on Mab’s bed.

And sheets were meant to be used.

The ceiling was painted a brilliant blue and scattered with gold and silver stars. This false sky was interrupted by the gilded ribs that held it aloft and ornately moulded pendants.

Another architectural illusion.

The skirt was made of vast petals patterned like the wings of an owl butterfly, round black yellow-rimmed eyespots staring and dappled with the mimicry of layered feathers.

She sat closer to me and as her dress brushed against mine, like the wings of a butterfly, her skirts shed a pale, dry dust.

wondered then as I had before if that was the laugh of a being who could steal a child and imprison them.

I enquired her preferences for sugar and lemon and milk, a ritual that seemed to calm her.

“I cannot bear milk, though I suppose it’s more that it cannot bear me.”

“It spoils in changelings, don’...

Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given them. Have you ever thought who the you and who the them are?”

“I mean, little one, that for there to be an elect, for there to be those who understand, there must be those who do not. Your Jesus speaks in riddles to utter things which have been kept secret since the foundation of the world. He speaks in riddles so that some may understand, but more importantly, so that some may not.”

Things can only be a secret if someone doesn’t know it.”

What I mean is that you need someone to be different. It doesn’t matter who they are, just that they are. Different. Be it the heathens or the pagans, the Catholics or the Papists… Or, really, the fae.”

welcome to the foundation of alterity