Under the Pendulum Sun

by Jeannette Ng

Whilst the sea whale is a true creature, its presence on land is but a form of the Fata Morgana, a superior mirage, a result of the reflecting and refracting of the whale’s image from its native sea inland, especially into the more misty parts of Arcadia.

the stove boy with the green thumb. “Did you mean to say he’s a changeling?”

Behind the high, embattled wall was a half-wild garden, artfully overgrown.

welcome to the secret garden

I had stepped into a medieval manuscript, an illumination of the hortus conclusus.

Unlike the faded grandiosity of the castle, the walled garden had been reclaimed by something greater. It gave an illusion of a sublime infinity imperfectly captured and imperfectly held, like rainbows in water.

“No one.”

This place is built on secrets, after all.”

This verbal tug of war reminded me all too much of luring answers out of teachers at school, when ambushes worked better than stubborn interrogations.

Laon and I used to crush mint in our hands until they were stained with scent.

And, like the garden, it seemed a moment suspended in time, drawn from the imagination of a long-dead monk.

suspended dust in seeming timelessness.

the triple frame

triptych

Only their holiness remained.

A chill came upon me as I wondered who could have desecrated this chapel. Popish it may be, I could not believe the hands that wrought this destruction meant me and my brother anything but harm.

I thought I could make out the outline of Christ upon the Cross in the central panel, the huddle of three by his feet the three Marys. The left panel depicted a kneeling, haloed Christ within the garden of Gethsemane, begging his heavenly father to spare him the cup of suffering. Behind him were his apostles, barring the way of the shadowed, benighted figure of Judas. From that, I had expected the right panel to show Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, but the composition of figures was wrong: Only one large shining figure stood at the fore of a red door of sorts with a small, paler figure clambering either in or out. Blocky birds swarmed behind.

It was not a red door, but the yawning maw of a monstrous beast. The small, pale figures were fleeing, even as the beast’s lashing, forked tongue was wrapped around one such figure. The birds that blacked the sky behind were demons.

Yet the answer became inescapable: it was the Harrowing of Hell.

The Harrowing was not a popular subject for altarpieces, after all.

“It doesn’t really matter, just another old place in a place full of old places.” She gave a nervous laugh. “None of it is real anyway.”

“It’s just a folly. The fae stage these all the time. Like how you might arrange teacups in the woods to trick children into thinking fae are picnicking there. Or arrange toy soldiers in a scene of escape from their tin. It’s a game.”

“But who was meant to see it? If it’s a game, there must be a player.”

“No one yet. It’s no...

“Changelings don’t really need food. For all the feeling of hunger, we just like it. And unsalted food doesn’t–” She took a deep breath. “Why do you ask me to invoke the covenant of salt for you then?”

There was a rustling noise: a jostling of wings or the rippling of leaves. I turned. But for my shadow, the space behind me was empty.

about the dangers of fickle fire

was, after all, well acquainted with the theories of Paracelsus that proposed all fae were fundamentally elemental in nature, and I had no reason to believe this untrue at present.

Jean-François Champollion reading hieroglyphs for the first time.

It was a sort of madness.

those letters were the name God.

I had thought anagrams to be a sort of verbal magic that would make one thing into another.

There were those who would not write divine names or made taboo their pronunciation. There were those who forbade His depiction. Perhaps this was like that, writing the name of God in a way that was alien to the rest of the script.

But I wanted it to mean more. I wanted it to confirm my wild theories of this being the language of angels, stolen and preserved by the fae. I wanted this to be that sacred first language that God spoke to create the world, that He taught to Adam and that was sundered at Babel.

There was something I had forgotten.

re-latching the door

Iron or steel, in the shape of needles, a key, a knife, a pair of tongs, an open pair of scissors, or in any other shape, if placed in the cradle, secured the desired end. In Bulgaria a reaping-hook is placed in a corner of the room for the same purpose. I shall not stay now to discuss the reason why supernatural beings dread and dislike iron. The open pair of scissors, however, it should be observed, has double power; for it is not only of the abhorred metal, – it is also in form a cross.

The days themselves did not grow shorter, of course, as the length of time it takes for a pendulum to complete its swing remained constant – that much I remembered from my lessons.

The walls, the windows, the walls. None of them make sense. There is a history here but I cannot read it. A story told by a madman. Their promises, their oaths, their geas are there to hinder you, to hobble you, to hide you. They are there to blind you and to bind you. Their truth is not our truth. They wield it only as a weapon.

My nails dug into my skin and the pinpoints of pain only reminded me how my skin could not contain myself. I wanted to be everywhere at once, anywhere but here.

The Reverend’s warning was more prophetic than he could know.

However, those longest associated with them, and most intimately acquainted with their character and habits, never expect one of the Fair Folk to speak the truth when there is a chance for them to tell a lie. Yet they will tell you by their own laws, and by their own lips (usually two), that it is a vile sin to lie and deceive.

They shed dandelion tears as they unfurled like wings.

Startled, the half-formed creature effervesced.

feathery mist-ferns

A black dog

the dog seemed to burn with a hellish intensity.

the Gytrash and the Barghest,

They devoured each other in a coiling mass.

The beast reared, leathery wings unfurling as its knife-hooves pawed the air. Its rider toppled from its back. The beast pranced forwards, shaking free its mane.

I saw my fear as a golden-eyed beast much like the one under my hands, and as I stroked it, over and over, I soothed my own fear. Its golden eyes seemed to soften as it regarded me, and then with an abrupt blink they turned

The mists swirled like water and huge shadows glided above.

The feeling of discomfort which insensibly creeps over one upon entering a fae dwelling is produced