Myrken Wood Explored

[Treadwell]

It was a dark and cloudy night in Myrken. Nothing much was going on, and nothing much was going anywhere. Everywhere but the tavern seemed to be nicely and wholesomely at peace. A light, refreshingly cold rain was just starting to slip down from the sky in an incessant trickling to water the grass and fill the gaps in the dusty North Passage Down.

The North Passage Down! Highway of sorts for traffic through Myrken Wood proper and into other fantastic realms! Fantastic in the meaning of evoking fantasy, invoking curiosity, and striking up a touch of wanderlust amid the ordinary, dulled citizens of Myrken. The occasional carriage loaded with a pompous, rotund noble would occasionally pass through, but usually?

Usually the road itself was devoted and dedicated to the little man--the average man, the salesmen and merchants and farmers and soldiers and guards and otherwise ordinary folk who made up Myrken and brought it glowingly to life. These are the folks who've survived zombies and spires and odd snowfalls and demons and warfare and boycotts from outside and Aloisius H. Treadwell.

But the time is not now for learning more of these ordinary folk, these nameless, faceless, and sometimes shirtless masses. What else lies out there in Myrken Wood? There's the town! No singing and dancing lads and lasses in the streets, of course, but no one calling Myrkenites to bring out their dead, either! Most days, it's only reasonably hectic; most nights, reasonably dull.

Reasonably hectic. Ha! People hustling and bustling and shuffling about in search of groceries and cookies and horsies and goods for their families! During the day, the streets were packed with a moving bunch, a restless and anxious crowd of citizens eager to do their daily jobs and earn their daily bread.

Dusty streets and houses and shops--bakers and butchers and tailors and chandlers and smiths and such--would be packed by day with bodies doing business. At night? Oh, at night, it's a very different story. What sort of trickery lurks in Myrken Wood town at night?

At night in Myrken Wood, the streets are generally empty. Most in town are superstitious folks, wary of witches and demons and ghouls and creepy-crawlies and boogie-men. That leaves the town criers belting out nightly news and the guards patrolling every so often to keep trouble from stirring up. But, of course, in a town like Myrken Wood, trouble stirs up whether folks try to stop it or not.

[channe]

Speaking of superstitious folks...

Mrs. Cornelia Black, the baker's wife, has taken a substantive dislike to her neighbor, a certain Channe Carter -- for reasons she delineated rather loudly to the Myrkentown Ladies' Quilting Society one chilly Thursday afternoon over tea and piece-work.

"I don't like that woman," she says, needle in hand. "For one, she hasn't held a single tea for any of us -- quite uppity, if you ask me."

"Maybe she's just shy," piped up the recently-married Mrs. Bunce, a slender, high-strung wisp of a woman. "After all, you haven't been very nice to her, Cornelia. She's quite new to the area."

Mrs. Black -- the reigning doyenne of working-class drama in Myrkentown -- silenced the skinny Mrs. Bunce with a withering gaze. She lifted a scone and ate it haughtily.

"Mrs. Bunce," she said, after swallowing, "there must be something wrong with a woman who, although widowed, does not wear the black and invites known vagrants to her home -- not you nor I nor our husbands or families. She has been known to engage in public drunkenness at the --" and here, she spit the name out -- "Broken Dagger, and although she claims to be a seamstress I've not seen a single gown of hers on any of you, mm?"

The gathered women nodded to each other, and confirmed that this was so.

"She leaves at the strangest hours, and leaves via the North Passage on that rented carriage of hers. Stays away for days. Grows the strangest herbs in her backyard -- and --" her voice grew low -- "it's said that she can write."

There was a mild stir at this.

"Cornelia," said Mrs. Bunce. "Many of us can write. We're enlightened, now -- it's not like last century."

Mrs. Black nodded. "That is true," she mused. "But you don't fill volumes and volumes of blank books with your scribblings. That's quite unbecoming. Nevertheless --" her voice became low again, as if she was imparting some great secret -- "I think we all know what kind of woman needs to write that much, yes?"

The assembled ladies nodded their heads, clucked their tongues, and decided amongst themselves by general consensus that this could be a bad thing -- a very bad thing, indeed.

[Treadwell]

Mrs. Cornelia Black isn't entirely an island as she'd like to be. By a fickle whim of fate, she'd happen to be an aunt to some in Myrken Wood: three in particular, and those three?

Those three, plus their good-for-nothing lower-classed parents, are all at Tready's Toys. The least of the three, one three year old Lulu Black, is snuggled up into the lap of one Aloisius Treadwell with her tiny arms hugged tight around his mountainous gut. He, in turn, is in one of his rocking chairs by his fireplace, working on the second of three gifts for the bunch. The other two--John and Edward, Jr.--hang onto the sides of the seat, listening with all their attention to the words of the portly toymaker.

"But Councila Tread'ell," Ed Junior would pipe up in his quivery treble voice, being little more than five himself, "what 'bout all the boys an' girls who don't believe in Father Winter? They'll not get no presents this year, will they? That's what my pop there says!"

The question struck Tready as being an odd one, completely brought up out of the blue. A moment's thought, a second or two of rocking back and forth in his chair, and then he seeks to reassure the youngin.

"Well, Ed! What sort of question is *that?* You go out and find even one child your age who doesn't believe in Father and Mother Winter! Now, I'll be honest," he smiles and leans forward a touch, one hand still carving away at the wooden knight he's making while the other holds Lulu in place. "Not everyone out there calls them that. Where *I'm* from, up on the coast of Fisherman's Bay, they've an entirely different name for 'em, and a little different story about 'em both!"

Eyes go wide. The children huddle up even closer to the big man in the dark green robe lined with an excessive amount of white fur.

"For starters, back home, they don't call them Father and Mother Winter; instead, there's this funny little name of 'Santa Claus' for him and a simple 'Mrs. Claus' for her for the lack of anything better to call her. Where they got those names, no one really knows. Some folks think it's their real life honest-to-goodness names, and others say that the names mean something or other, and others say that they're secretly dwarves that got too tall, saying that 'Claus' is some sort of dwarven family name." He snorts a bit, here. "Whatever the case, they're very much the same folks we know and love here in Myrken Wood. There are a couple changes, though."

"Changes?" John Black peeps out as Treadwell seems to stare absently off into space.

"Changes! Oh yes! Minor things, really. For one, they say that the dear old gent dresses differently. Instead of wearing the white, furry robe and cap we're all used to here in Myrken Wood, the folks where I'm from, in Westenford, say he wears. . . ." A pause here as he looks down in a little bit of surprise and a massive grin. . . .

"Something like this very robe I have on right now, oddly enough! And instead of his going out alone in his sleigh with its horses pulling it about, the stories go that his wife goes out with him. You see, I was raised hearing that he was even bigger around the tummy and even jollier than what you're used to hearing about here. Because of that, he supposedly gets around a bit slower, and his dear wife is there to help him out on occasion and to tell him where to go to next."

Tready's voice drops a bit and a mischievous sort of smirk comes to his face. "It's said he doesn't have a very good head for direction, that he's a tad absent-minded in everyday life. Poor chap."

"But Councilor," comes the voice of older Edward, Sr. from a few feet distant. He and his wife, Louise, have been there the whole time, listening and shuffling their plump selves around the shop. Plump? Yep. He because of sloth, she because of childbearing. "With all these different names and stories, what are they s'posed to believe, eh?"

Treadwell chuckles, looking from children to father. "Whatever they durn well please. They'll get their presents this year and any other well enough."

"You sound mighty sure about that, sir."

"I've good reason to! You see," a wink, here, "I know the two of them quite personally!" At this, the children perk up, the boys on the floor leaning closer to Tready's sides and the girl on his lap hanging on even tighter for dear life to that middle of his. "Now, this toy here's finished. . . . John has his, Ed has *this*, and Lulu. . . ."

Tready stands up, expertly holding Lulu up in his pudgy arms and wheezing his way about the shop. His choice of gift for her is an overstuffed doll of himself, dressed much like he is at present--much like the Claus fellow he'd just talked about. There's a reason Tready sells the toys he does. He presents it to the girl with a wiggling of its plush form.

"That ought to do it! Mrs. Black, your daughter--" and so Lulu changes arms "and that's that!"

"How much for all this, Misser Tread'ell?"

"Nothing at all, madam. You two stayed here and listened to me babble enough. That should do!"

With that, Tready grins and sends the group on their way. Rest assured Mrs. Cornelia Black of the Quilting Society would hear quite enough of all this in the days to come.