Grandma's Attic

Chapter One

It was said that if it couldn't be imagined then it couldn't be invented and magicked into existence. Yet someone, at some distant aeon past, had imagined a device for recording smaller divisions of time than the cascades that in their fullness and noise provided a means of defining the year as the wet part and the dry. Thredwyl supposed that was the inventor's inspiration. But whoever it was, that magician needed stringing up.

Thredwyl had just ten days left before he relinquished his two-hundred-years of immature status, but that wouldn't be known without those wretched clocks. In these, his last days, he'd rather be running the caverns with his cousins than attending a Mothers' Meeting. But Grandma Nari had issued the invite and an invite from Grandma Nari was really a summons.

"That'll be to arrange your wedding," said Chrean, the wisest of his young cousins.

"Nay – nay nay nay nay nay," Thredwyl nay'ed so much he nigh tripped over his tongue. "No way, never no never no not."

"Bet I'm right." Chrean said. "Bet you a big bag of diamonds."

"Nix-nay, I'll bet you don't have any, not even a diddy speck of a one." Then hearing the dong that reverberated off the magickly refashioned cavern walls, he squealed, "Out of my way, I'm late."

Thredwyl ran the rest of the way, his long silken hair slipping the ribbon-held queue. His high-sheen boots clattered. While Thredwyl detested the magician who'd invented the clock, he very much admired the magicians who had first imagined clothes and invented a means to produce them – from stone. Ingenious.

At Grandma Nari's door, Thredwyl figured late is late, so he took a moment more to regain his composure. He tugged at his sparkling white cravat – not his usual attire. He rearranged the folds of his full-skirted iridescent blue coat. He checked the laces were tied on his breeches; it wouldn't do to gape in front of the mothers. Not that attendance was restricted to only mothers – all genders were welcome.

Not knowing the form – whether to walk straight in, or rather to knock and to wait – he dithered yet longer. His dithering paid off. The heavy door groaned open, apparently all of its own accord but most likely operated by someone's magic.

Magic. Aye, and if the mothers didn't speak to him of marriage, then sure as shit soon fossilised in the limestone caverns, they'd speak to him about his magic. What special use would he make of it now that he was soon to be an adult? How would he use it to benefit all the inhabitants of Dolstone? But if ideas were that same said shit, he'd be constipated for life.

"Well?" Grandma Nari's cavern-deep voice rolled across the chamber and all-but bowled him over. "Are you to stand there like some kind of fancy-dressed stalagmite? Or will you grace us with your presence?"

Thredwyl responded with what he hoped would be the perfectly performed bow, his long blue-black hair sweeping the high sheen of the mica floor. He rose to face the surprising sparsity of the attendees. Were these the only adults interested in him? He didn't recognise many, only his closest family. Yet they all were of his own clan, denoted by the blue.

His mother held out her hand to him – exceptionally supportive of her considering he hadn't visited her since her great aunt's funeral. She probably added a touch of magic too, since he found himself irresistibly drawn to her. Did Grandma Nari know? Only, that kind of manipulative magic was forbidden. And now of a sudden he was at the centre of the chamber with all their sapphiric eyes staring right at him. He gulped, hands withdrawn into his sleeves to hide his trembles.

"Marriage," Grandma Nari said. Thredwyl was glad he hadn't accepted that bet. "With your transition into adulthood, this now must be your thought. I dare say, as with all you males, it's not high on your list of priorities. I dare say it's something you'd prefer to escape." Hah, she was right on that one. "But it is inescapable."

"It's not for your benefit," his mother put in, "but the females. They need tying down."

"A loose Stone," said Grandma Nari, "is trouble awaiting. Too many rolling around, attracting, gathering, before we know it we have an avalanche. Think on that, Young Thredwyl."

Thredwyl winced. After two hundred years with almost exclusively his male cousins for company, the thought of a female terrified him – though nary as much as the prospect of a female Nixie. And an entire scree rumbling towards him, burying him beneath their hard cold bodies? Nay, nay, nay.

"You have," said Grandma Nari, "until this same day a year around to find the Stone to whom you'll be bound."

"It's not to be shirked," said one of the other mothers, and several of the males grunted support.

"Next," said Grandma Nari, "magic."

"He's not well endowed," his mother said, clearly abashed at that admission. "Light, his strongest skill is light."

For sure, Thredwyl waffled to himself, he could light up a cavern. His cousins used him to light the passages whenever they went exploring, which was often. But what else could light-magic do? Not create clothes, shiny as diamonds yet soft as water. And neither create a despicable freedom-limiting clock. He couldn't refashion rock into elegant forms, nor make it appear as something other – except brighter. Though he had discovered that the seeds which Grandma-the-Creator sometimes sprinkled into their caverns would entirely change their appearance beneath his light. But they never retained that configuring; always they flopped, curled and shrivelled – and often stank.

Maybe his talent was to be an explorer? But how would that benefit the folks of Dolstone? And did he really want to venture into the lands of the Nixies or the Fernamon? One was too wet, the other too hot.

While Thredwyl had been mulling, a jawman had appeared. Perhaps he'd been there from the beginning yet how Thredwyl had failed to notice his gaudy multi-coloured draggled get-up, Thredwyl couldn't say. Anyway, the jawman now sat on a hugely softly padded chunky boulder and held out his arms.

"Jawman Arion is my name," he said. "Unlikely stories are my game."

Thredwyl resisted the desire to bury his face in his hands. Why must jawmen always tell stories in rhyme?

The jawman, Arion, slowly rubbed his palms down his thighs as he leaned specifically towards Thredwyl. "Today – for your special day – I'm to regale you with the Myth of Creation."

What, not a rhyme in place? Was it that his audience here were adults, and not the immature Kupies such as Thredwyl and his cousins?