Way back when I first wrote Summer Sorcery (in that no-one-else-gets-to-see-ever first draft) I imagined a backstory scene with Faltha and Malachite. There’s a nod to it on p125, but the book didn’t need derailed with the plot-irrelevant personal history between two important but ultimately secondary characters. However what made it into the book planted a mental seed that has been quietly asking to become something ever since.
So here goes. A wee look into one of the events that made Faltha and Malachite who they became…
January 25th 1804…
Faltha swerved between the trees towards Malachite’s ruins. The large bag of supplies swung awkwardly from her clenched hands. It wasn’t that the sack was too heavy for her. She could manage many times its weight comfortably. If put to it she could probably manage all two metres of Malachite’s stone body. The problem was that it swung as she wove her path through the woods. Compensating for its persistent tug in exactly the wrong direction was a chore.
The stone man had been worrying her recently. While he had never been the life and soul of the party, Malachite was seeming even more withdrawn than usual. He hadn’t spoken in three days. Despite Faltha’s best efforts to strike up a conversation. She’d managed to wring a vague grunt from him on Sunday which as far as she knew was the last sound he’d made.
In her opinion, what Malachite needed was a celebration. Nothing too lavish. That would just irritate the poor man. A wee dinner with a few select friends. Perhaps some of that new poetry that was going around. As luck would have it the humans had recently invented the ideal thing. Burns night. With its blend of weird food and fancy new poetry the celebration was perfect for Malachite: an evening filled with new experiences to learn about.
“Malachite!” she called as she entered the clearing where his ruins lay.
He always insisted on referring to them as ‘The Tower’ but with one and a half stories of crumbling stone it was hard to see how that was an appropriate label. A few centuries ago it might have been fair enough and before the wars, when the Wizards had still been in residence, The Tower had been a sight to behold. These days Malachite had managed to maintain a couple of chambers in usable condition. Through sheer stubbornness as far as Faltha could see.
The stone man sat up from his reading and half turned to watch Faltha as she flew to his desk. As she deposited her bag on the table with a solid thud, he sighed theatrically and turned back to his book.
A scowl twisted the tiny faery’s brow. She pushed it away with an effort of will, and only a little glamour. Stropping at him was hardly going to lift his mood. Malachite’s sighs were irritating in the extreme, though. Made of stone, as he was, it wasn’t like he needed to breathe. The sighing was just rudeness for rudeness sake.
“What’s in the bag Faltha?” she asked herself in as deep a voice as she could manage.
“I’m glad you asked Malachite,” she replied in her normal voice. “It’s ingredients. We’re having a wee celebration this evening.”
“Faltha,” said Malachite, “you know very well that I do not eat.”
“No, but the rest of us do.” She was about to start scolding him, but forced back her growing annoyance. “We’re doing something called ‘Burns Night’. We have a dinner with some fascinating new human food. I know you wont eat it, but I figured you’d enjoy learning about new human customs. This things only been going on for a couple of years, but I reckon it’ll last.
“Anyway, after dinner, there’s some poetry by this guy called Robert Burns from over on the west coast. So I hear, he’s all the rage just now.”
“That does actually sound rather fascinating,” said Malachite.
Faltha fluttered down next to her bag. She opened it and started pulling out the contents which Malachite silently intercepted before anything landed on his precious books.
“So we’re having haggis, leeks and tatties,” said Faltha excitedly. “Haggis is really weird. You’ll love this! It’s basically the insides of a sheep, and they stuff it with… uhm, well… they stuff it with something anyway. Then they—”
“I’m sorry, Faltha, haggis, what and tatties?” Interrupted Malachite.
“Leeks.” Faltha pulled a fat leek from the bag and waved it at Malachite.
“It’s neeps, Faltha. Haggis, neeps and tatties.”
The leek stopped mid-swing. “Oh… oops. Uhm, well, we’re having leeks. Our own wee twist on tradition. We can do the neeps next year. Unless the leeks are fabulous, of course!”
“The real question is, where do the eggs feature in tradition?” asked Malachite. “I haven’t heard about that one.”
“Oh, they’re not part of tradition. My sister, Grunda, is terribly fussy, so I thought it best to have a backup plan in case she won’t eat the haggis.”
“Ah, I see.” Malachite seemed disappointed, but there was nothing to be done about it. Making up some fake tradition wouldn’t end well. Faltha wouldn’t go down that route again.
The stone man’s attention drifted back to his books.
“Do you need anything from me?” he asked.
“No you go back to your books, I’ll take care of it all. Just you wait, its going to be great.” Faltha was confident that he’d already stopped listening. That didn’t matter. He’d see. It was going to be great.
She took her supplies out of Malachite’s room and busied herself building a makeshift oven against one of the outer walls. That done she cast about for some firewood. Being January in Scotland most things were damp. Luckily Malachite had built a sort of pergola around the corner from Faltha’s oven. It provided enough shelter that the tangle of thorny twigs within were reasonably dry.
Hacking them out was a task in itself. It took several minutes for Faltha to emerge with enough firewood, triumphant but for a few rips in her dress. A small price to pay to help a friend.
She assembled a fire and, after a few attempts, got it lit. It occurred to her to wonder at that point why Malachite had replaced the beautiful rose garden that he’d had under the pergola with a bunch of dried thorn-bushes. She’d have to ask him some time.
Once the vegetables were all prepared, Faltha placed them in a wide stone bowl that she’d borrowed from the Seelie Court palace. It was of cunning dwarvish design, with a lid that sealed tightly in place. She half filled a second bowl with water and dropped the three dozen eggs in. Obviously they weren’t all for Grunda. Faltha had a few guests joining them and, frankly, she was a bit sceptical about the haggis. She sealed the lid and put both bowls into the oven. That done, she stoked up the fire and set about decorating the ruins to make them seem at least a little inviting.
Evening had set in by the time she was finished sprucing up the place. She nodded to herself in satisfaction. No one could do fairy-lights like an actual faery. The old ruin was looking almost nice. A bit more of this and Malachite might have an actual home.
Her musings were interrupted by an explosion that knocked Faltha back to the tree line. She recovered in time to avoid a collision with an ancient elm. Dust clouded the area around Malachite’s ruins. Faltha felt her blood run cold. She darted back to the ruins to find out what had happened. Presumably some experiment of Malachite’s had gone wrong.
Visibility dropped alarmingly as she approached the ruins. She desperately hoped Malachite was alright. She hovered over the splintered fragments of his desk. No sign of him there. That was a relief. With any luck it meant he had moved away in time. Faltha turned, surveying the damage. The back wall of the room had collapsed inward, covering most of the floor and piled in a heap on the remains of Malachite’s bed.
She jumped as a pair of loose stones shifted and clattered to the ground. Something moved beneath where they had been. Peering through the dust filled gloom Faltha could just make out a hand.
“Malachite!” Faltha screamed as she flew in to help her friend. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, Faltha. It will take a little more than a wall collapsing to harm me.” More of Malachite emerged from the rubble as he spoke. “What happened?” he asked as he finally sat up.
“You don’t remember? Poor thing,” said Faltha. “Maybe you’ve come to more harm than you think. Whatever experiment you were doing exploded.”
“Experiment? What experiment?” Malachite sounded confused. Poor thing. “I wasn’t doing an experiment. I’d gone to bed.”
“Oh,” said Faltha. That explained the wall falling inward. The explosion was from outside.
“Faltha,” said Malachite, “by any chance did you cook the eggs in their shells?”
“Well how else would I boil eggs?”
“Not in a sealed vessel, for starters,” said Malachite. “Otherwise they explode.”
“Okay, nice tip,” said Faltha. “If I ever do any more cooking I’ll try to remember. Now shouldn’t we try to figure out what blew up your bedroom.”
Malachite reached behind him and liberated something from the rubble. The cracked remnants of a dwarven cooking bowl. Powdered eggshell was surprisingly identifiable within.
“It’s a mystery,” said Malachite.
“Oh,” said Faltha. “Sorry.”
Brandon Lim 