A market fair pulls EVERYONE in, and the tavern that night was wall to wall with people I had not yet catalogued, which for most people is a crowd and for me is a FEAST.
I should say, before anything else, that I was working with a brand-new notebook — a whole fresh book, first-page smell and all — because Ook has already numbered the old one. That is not a boast. Well. It is a small boast. Ook took my first book, blessed it with a number, and threw it upon his shelf, and I was straight-up goofy, giddy, DELIGHTED, because that is how one becomes a published author, and I had brought him a banana, which I maintain helped.
So: new book, full room, and my four questions. Favourite colour. Favourite snack. Favourite weapon. Superpower. Always the same four, always in the same order, and that is the POINT — you cannot compare answers that were not asked the same way. I went round the room. I am told I was audible.
The first interview of the evening was not with a person. Rascal presented his bonsai tree and answered on its behalf, and I want it understood that I conducted that interview with complete seriousness, because the tree had ANSWERS. Its name is Bonsai. Favourite colour, pink. Snack, soil. Superpower, growth. And then — the part I have not stopped thinking about — the tree’s own statement, delivered through Rascal, plain as anything: “I’m a vessel.”
A vessel. I wrote it down and looked at the little tree for a while, and it did not elaborate, being a tree.
Jareth smells of cherry blossoms and does not know it — several people confirmed this over his objections, which is the best kind of confirmation. Blue. Bard trainee. Raised by dwarves. And his cap — an excellent black cap with an enormous blue feather — is named “Jerry for short.” That is the name. The WHOLE name. It is not called Jerry, for short; it is called “Jerry for short,” in full, and it is short for NOTHING — the name has the words “for short” living inside it. I asked twice, to be sure the joke was load-bearing. It is. I have rarely admired a piece of nomenclature more.
When I asked Nora for his superpower, he did not answer me. He turned and asked PANLAN — and Panlan, without a heartbeat of hesitation, gave his professional opinion: “Best meat shield.” And Nora AGREED. So let the record show that Nora’s superpower is being the best meat shield, as assessed by an expert witness and ratified by the shield himself, which is more corroboration than most of my entries get. Blue. Chocolate. Sword. He is a gaunt undead big snarly blue dog barghest glimmerling, and I have written every one of those words down because dropping any of them would be inaccurate. And then he added, unprompted and with real feeling: “Nora has done nothing wrong.” Nobody had suggested he had! Which is, of course, the interesting part. I have started wondering, quietly, in the margin, what it is that some people might THINK he has done. That denial arrived remarkably pre-assembled.
Felix: green, anything with cheese, a one-handed blade, and he can pass right through things. He also carries fuzzy handcuffs. I did not ask.
Toh has grown a new and luscious beard. Red — red ochre, of the Soul Monastery. Hummus. His weapon is his FISTS, which he demonstrated by making two of them. Superpower: debating. He is opposed to slavery, and he told me that life is really cool, and I believe he meant every word of both.
Ariana carries no weapon at all, only a book, and the book is her spell list. Blue. Anything strawberry. Superpower: not sure yet — which I think is the most honest answer anyone gave me all night.
Yamato: red, rice, “whatever’s in my hand,” and “I heal people good and I hurt people good.” He then volunteered, entirely without prompting and to nobody in particular, that he is not in any relationship with Lord Ember. I wrote that down and drew a small box around it.
Nulem is pale blue, eats dried meat, carries a battle scythe, and gave his superpower as “making mistakes.” He elaborated: “I am not particularly competent and should not be trusted with important tasks.” I asked what he does. He ferries the dead to Lord Black. I have not resolved those two facts and I am not sure I am meant to.
Æ — pronounced “ash,” and written as the ligature, which is the letter historically CALLED ash, and I want everyone to appreciate that his name is a joke that only works out loud and he records it in the form that loses it. Colour: sky blue. Snack: my favourite answer of the night — not for what it is, which is berries, a perfectly ordinary snack, but for how precisely he located it. Not berries generally. Berries from the tree out by the Dragon’s Blood River. That tree. A snack with a BEARING to it. I have met people less specific about where they live. Weapon: fists, or claws, depending. And the depending IS the superpower: TRANSFORMATIONS. Partway through all this, Rom leaned in and asked to have something formally documented about the subject — which is exactly the sort of civic participation I encourage — so let the record additionally show, per Rom: Æ is “very slippery sometimes.” Between the claws and the transformations, I am inclined to file that as both character reference and field observation.
And Rom. Rom cannot feel pain — none at all — and has no emotions of his own, yet he feels everyone ELSE’s, which seems to me by some distance the harder half of that arrangement. The proof of the pain part is four years old: a cannonball shattered his hip, and he simply kept walking on it until he crumbled. He keeps his soul in a spirit bottle. And he keeps a kid — sixteen, taken under his wing, looked after properly. For a man with no feelings of his own, he has arranged his life remarkably full of other people’s.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, the DUKE came up in conversation — Emeric Bearkiller, whom I have not yet met, and whom I have added to the list on the strength of everything that followed the mention. He calls himself Governor now. He killed six werebears and wears the name for it. He wants control of Varos — and, I am told, to protect it. And when I asked why such a man would say no to peace, the answer came back: because of what Yremmel did. Killing thousands, and draining them of life to heal himself.
All of it secondhand — I record my sources as carefully as my facts, and these facts are tavern-told. But it was the first time that evening somebody told me a thing about Yremmel they did not seem to enjoy telling. It would not be the last of the weekend.
Branuk managed to sleep through the whole conversation!
That was the evening. A new book a quarter full before midnight, a room of people on the record, a tree on the record. And the fair had not even properly begun.
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