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The rain had poured again and again, across the night, with short fits of howling winds. There had been no sign of Eleri or Gorrash, and people in the cabin had waited for the first ray of light to venture outside to find them.
The newcomer, the quiet potion maker, stayed in her small quarters and hadn’t really mingled, but Margoritt wasn’t concerned about it. She was actually quite protective of her, and had continued her own chatter all through the night, doing small chores or being busy at her small loom, stopping at times in the middle of painful walking. She would however not cease speaking to whomever was listening at the time, or to her goat, or at times just to the wind or herself.

Rukshan had had several dreams during the night, and could tell he wasn’t the only one. Everyone had a tired look. Images came and went, but there was a sense of work to be done.

There were a few things he had managed to gather during that time awake when meditative state brought some clarity to the confused images.
First, they were all in this together.
Then, they probably needed a plan to repair the old.
As soon as they would find the two missing ones, he would share it with everyone.

‘Hng hng’ — Rukshan opened his eyes to find Olliver drawing on his sleeve. The boy wasn’t very eloquent, but his postures would speak volumes. He was pointing to something outside.

Rukshan looked at the clearing just outside the cabin, at first not realising two things had happened. Then they both dawned on him: the first ray of light had come across the cloudy sky, and second, the clearing was empty of the vengeful God.

“Grumpf” he swore in the old Elvish tongue “that rascal is surely going after Eleri — Eleri who he now knew was the laughing crone of the story, rendered younger by the powers of her goddaughter, the tricked girl. Eleri, who having inherited of the transmutation powers, had turned the angry God who had been left behind into stone to protect all of them.
If the God would find her before they could get her to extract her Shard, at best they would be condemned to another cycle of rebirth, or worse, he would try to kill all of them to extract the other Shards from the others, one by one, until the Gods old powers would be his…

Rukshan had stayed awake for the most part of the night, slowly and repeatedly counting the seconds between the blazing strokes of lightning and the growling bouts of thunder.
It is slowly moving away.

The howling winds had stopped first, leaving the showers of rain fall in continuous streams against the dripping roof and wet walls.

An hour later maybe, his ear had turned to the sound of the newly arrived at the cottage, thinking it would be maybe the dwarf and Eleri coming back, but it was a different voice, very quiet, somehow familiar… the potion-maker?

He had warned Margoritt that a lady clad in head-to-toe shawls would likely come to them. Margoritt had understood that some magical weaving was at play. The old lady didn’t have siddhis or yogic powers, but she had a raw potential, very soundly rooted in her long practice of weaving, and learning the trades and tales of the weaving nomad folks. She had understood. Better, she’d known — from the moment I saw you and that little guy, she’d said, pointing at Tak curled under the bed.
“He’s amazing,” she’d said “wise beyond his age. But his mental state is not very strong.”

There was more than met the eye about Tak, Rukshan started to realize.
For now, the cottage had fell quiet. Dawn was near, and there was a brimming sense of peace and new beginning that came with the short silence before the birds started again their joyous chatter.

It must have been then that he collapsed on the table of exhaustion and started to dream.

It was long before.

The dragon is large and its presence awe-inspiring. They have just shared the shards, each has taken one of the seven. Even the girl, although she still hates to be among us.
The stench of the ring of fire is still in their nostrils. The Gods have deserted, and left as soon as the Portal closed itself. It is a mess.

“Good riddance.”

He raises his head, looking at the dragon above him. She is quite splendid, her scales a shining pearl blue on slate black, reflecting the moonshine in eerie patterns, and her plastron quietly shiny, almost softly fiery. His newly imbued power let him know intimately many things, at once. It is dizzying.

“You talk of the Gods, don’t you?” he says, already knowing the answer.
“Of course, I am. Good riddance. They had failed us so many times, forgot their duties, driven me and my kind to slavery. Now I am free. Free of guilt, and free of sorrow. Free to be myself, as I was meant to be.”
“It is a bit more complex th…”
“No it isn’t. It couldn’t be more simple. If you had the strength to see it, you would understand.”
“I know what you mean, but I am not sure I understand.”

The dragon smiles enigmatically. She turns to the lonely weeping girl, who is there with the old woman. Except her grand-mother is no longer an old crone, she has changed her shape to that of a younger person. She is showing potentials to the girl, almost drunk on the power, but it doesn’t alleviate her pain.

“What are you going to do about them?”

The Dragon seems above the concerns for herself. In a sense, she is right. It was all his instigation. He bears responsibility.

“I don’t know…” It is a strange thing to say, when you can know anything. He knows there are no good outcomes of this situation. Not with the power she now possesses.

“You better find out quick…” and wake up,

wake up, WAKE UP !

“So, that’s where the gardener has been hiding all this time…” Godfrey thought, quietly stepping out of the shadows into the sinkhole tunnels. “Maybe I’ll just tell Liz’ he has resigned. Although she seemed more taken by this one than with the previous guys…”
While the gardener was snoring loudly, he took time to look around, and noticed the sprouting sack.
“How curious that those old books have started to come to life again…”

An idea had crossed his mind, both dreadful and exciting. The portal…

Leaving the gardener to his dreams, and taking another secret exit out of the dark tunnel, opening another succession of doors with the turn of a key hanging from the watch chain of his burgundy waistcoat, he soon found himself reappearing into a deep secret place. A small round room, almost like the inner chamber of a burrow, with no visible door, no window, seemingly lit only by a single ray of light coming from the pinhole in the ceiling, reflected on the glittering curved walls. At one side, was a well, and one could hear the humming sound of flowing underground water.
On the well, where deeply carved words : “HC SVNT DRACONES”. Just below them, painted in white in Godfrey’s flowering handwriting : “Here be dragons!”

There still was the heavy latch, bolted by a large futuristic-looking lock.

Phew, still closed. Godfrey sighed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t imagine the damage to Liz’ frail hold on reality, where she to find about what was lurking behind.

Popping a peanut in his mouth, he smiled wryly, reminisced of what Finnley had said about her “discovering” of the attic; yes, their secret was fine with them for now. At least so long as what was locked on the other side stayed there of course…

“I don’t have time for that” Godfrey said loudly, grumpy at being woken up by the smikst alert. “There are some people who do actually have real work to do.”

It was not difficult for him to ignore the “come back here right this instant!” of Liz’ when he walked away to the secret passageway that let him pop in and out of scenes like a peanut from its shell. He still had earplugs from his sleeping attempt, and thought they were actually quite useful.
Liz’ was far more than capable of handling the German and her ex without him.

Before he closed it to prepare for the dinner, the page of the book had said “She is coming, heralded by Sunshine, and thus will the Gathering start”. Rukshan could be quite literal and thought that she wouldn’t come today, since the sun was about to set.
He wasn’t sure how the words had found their way into the book, and if the She was who he thought She was. In short, he was getting confused.

Back there, the Hermit’s message had been so clear, so urgently present.
Find who you were, find what you stole, and give it back. Then the threads will unravel and the knot of all the curses will be undone.

And yet, he started to doubt his path.

The high-pitched cry of “Circle of Eights” pierced through the fog of his mind, and Rukshan realised suddenly that… that was it. Why else, all these people would be around this place at this auspicious moment?

The trees’ messages had been shown right. He was the Faying Fae. The Sage Sorceress was probably still on her path, but the Teafing Tinkeress hunted by a god, the Gifted Gnome, on his way to become his own maker under the protection of a Renard Renunciate looking for lost souls… They were there. Five in total; with himself (Rukshan) — the potion-maker, Eleri, Gorrash, Fox, these were the rest of the names, and they made the five first strands. Who were the last two? Olliver, Tak?

Olliver would surely have rounded everyone around for the dinner by now.
Rukshan placed the book back into the bag. He would explain to everyone then, read the old tale of the seven thieves and their curses, and maybe they could all formulate a plan for remembrance.
Yes, remembrance was the first step. How to know what to do if you didn’t know who they were, what they stole…

He wasn’t too sure what to do with the God in torpor yet. He seemed less of a danger in his current state. That a God had been left behind, stuck in stone for so long, and right under their nose was mind-boggling. Another mystery to be revealed.
Surprisingly —and luckily— Olli had explained, Hasamelis seemed to believe that the young boy was a genius wizard, so he would maybe listen to Olli.

The second ‘Circle of Eights!’ seemed closer this time.

As the night was coming on the party, lanterns were lit around the place, and Gorrash started to wake up.
He felt grumpy, and ready to take on the world, but suddenly realized there was quite a crowd assembled around the long table set up in front of the shack.
He would have grumpfed and grumbled and sworn angrily that they had started without him, but someone had put a nice plate of pebbles in front of him.
He couldn’t help but smile Nice touch, pointy ears!

His friend the owl hooted as if in approval.
“Oh there you are…” he said, seeing it was perched on… what exactly?
There was another statue, a big old winged thing that wasn’t there yesterday.

“Fox has some explaining to do…” he thought, wondering about this… Then he was startled to realise that said statue was just a strange large being, stuck in a sort of hypnotic trance.

“Has he woken yet?” the dwarf turned around to see the young lad who had addressed him, coming in his direction. “The witch’s magic mushrooms are very strong… it’s his fault; he wouldn’t calm down…” the lad said sheepishly.
As the dwarf was looking at the owl for explanation, she just decided to fly away for some vole hunting.
“Hello, I’m Olli… Olliver is the name.”
“Well, I’m Gorrash. You can call me Gorrash.”
“Mr Go- go-gorrash, the Fae has called all of us to tell us something, could you come please…”

Gorrash pointed at the tranced out god “and what about this big guy?”

Olli shrugged, “Ruk- Ruk-, Rukji said we can leave him there, he will join us later on the trip…”

“What was in the bag, Finnley, tell us!”
Everyone was looking at the maid after the Inspector had left hurriedly, under the pretext of taking care of a tip he had received on the disappearance of the German girl.

Godfrey was the most curious in fact. He couldn’t believe in the facade of meanness that Finnley carefully wrapped herself into. The way she cared about the animals around the house was a testimony to her well hidden sweetness. Most of all, he thought herself incapable of harming another being.
But he had been surprised before. Like when Liz’ had finished a novel, long ago.

“Alright, I’ll show you. Stay there, you lot of accomplices.”

Godfrey looked at Liz’ sideways, who was distracted anyway by the gardener, who was looking at the nearby closet.

“Liz’, will you focus please! The mystery is about to be revealed!”

“Oh shut up, Godfrey, there’s no mystery at all. I’ve known for a while what that dastardly maid had done. I’ve been onto her for weeks!”
“Really?”
“Oh, don’t you give me that look. I’m not as incapable as you think, and that bloodshot-eyes stupor I affect is only to keep annoyances away. Like my dear mother, if you remember.”
“So tell us, if you’re so smart now. In case it’s really a corpse, at least, we may all be prepared for the unwrapping!”
“A CORPSE! Ahaha, you fool Godfrey. It’s not A corpse! It’s MANY CORPSES!”

Godfrey really thought for a second that she had completely lost it. Again. He would have to call the nearby sanatorium, make up excuses for the next signing session at the library, and cancel all future public appear…

“Will you stop that! I know what you’re doing, you bloody control machine! Stop that thinking of yours, I can’t even hear myself thinking nowadays for all your bloody thinking. Now, as I was saying of course she’d been hiding all the corpses!”
“Are you insane, Liz’ —at least keep your voice down…”
“Don’t be such a sourdough Godfrey, you’re sour, and sticky and all full of gas. JUST LET ME EXPLAIN, for Lemone’s sake!”

Godfrey fell silent for a moment, eyeing a lost peanut left on a shelf nearby.

Conscious of the unfair competition for Godfrey’s attention Elizabeth blurted it all in one sentence:
“She’s been collecting them, my old failed stories, the dead drafts and old discarded versions of them. Hundreds of characters, those little things, I’d given so many cute little names, but they had no bones or shape, and very little personality, I had to smother them to death.” She started sobbing uncontrollably.

That was then that Finnley came back in the room, panting and dragging the sack coated in dirt inside the room, and seeing the discomfit Liz’ with smeared make-up all over her eyes.

“Oh, bloody hell. Don’t you tell me I brought that dirty bag of scraps up for nothing!”

She left there, running for the door screaming “I’m not doing the carpets again!”

And closed the door with a sonorous “BUGGER!”

In the past twenty days since he got out of the forest, backtracking on his steps, Rukshan didn’t have much luck finding or locating either of the six others strands.
At first, he thought his best hint was the connection with the potion-maker, but it seemed difficult to find her if she didn’t want to be found.

So, for lack of a better plan, he had come back to Margoritt’s shack and was quite pleased at the idea of meeting the old lady and Tak again.
Her cottage had been most busy with guests, and in the spring time, it was a stark contrast with the last time he was there, to see all the motley assemblage she had gathered around her.

First, there was Margoritt of course, Emma the goat, then Tak, who was a very convincing little boy these days, and looked happy at all the people visiting. Then, there was Lahmom, the mountain explorer, who had come down from her trek and enjoyed a glass of goat milk tea with roast barley nuggets.
Then there were a couple of strange guests, a redhair man with a nose for things, and his pet statue, a gnome with a temper, he said. Margoritt had offered them shelter during the last of the blizzard.

With so many unexpected guests, Margoritt quickly found her meager provisions dwindling, and told Rukshan she was about to decide for an early return to the city, since the next cargo of her benefactor Mr Minn would take too long to arrive.

That was the day before she arrived to the cottage with her companion: Eleri and Yorath, had arrived surprisingly just in time with a small carriage of provisions. “How great that mushrooms don’t weigh anything, we have so many to share!” Eleri was happy at the sight of the cottage and its guests, and started to look around at all the nooks and crannies for secret treasures to assemble and unknown shrooms.
While Yorath explained to Margoritt how Mr Minn had send him ahead with food, Margoritt was delighted and amazed at such prescience.

Rukshan, for his part, was amazed at something else. There seemed to be something at play, to join together people of such variety in this instant. Maybe the solution he was looking for was just in front of his nose.
He would have to look carefully at which of them could be an unknown holder of the shards of the Gem.

He was consigning his thoughts on a random blank page of his vanishing book, not to store the knowledge, but rather to engage on a inner dialogue, and seek illumination, when some commotion happened outside the cottage.

A towering figure followed by a boy had just arrived in the clearing. “Witch! You will pay for what you did!” pointing at Eleri, backed behind Yorath who had jumped protectively in front of her.

That can’t be another coincidence Rukshan thought, recognizing the two new guests: the reanimated god statue of the tower, and Olliver, the boy who, he deduced, had managed to wake up the old teleporting device.

Not particularly pleased with himself for that inelegant distraction, Godfrey swiftly used the opportunity to usher Melon and Liz out of the way of the glass shards, and into the next room, a gloomy winter garden kept moist and dark by all the vines and carnivorous plants covering the walls.

“Now, it makes me wonder sometimes, when I see you and the fine inspector here, you always seem to have trouble with your endings Liz’ —not that I am judging…”
“Are we talking about literature or my sex life here?” Liz’ raised an eyebrow fine as a line in the sands of her fury.

The Inspector, nicely framed in a corner by colorful and dangling carnivorous plants, started to lose his legendary composure by the minute, wondering if he shouldn’t hand over the case to a less interest-conflicted party.

It didn’t take much time for Godfrey to figure out that Walter may have been one of the missing husbands of Liz. She’d been always rather discreet about the total number of her past marriages, and she wasn’t very good at keeping archives either, so it was mostly guesswork from his part, but some signs were unmistakable, such as the spellbound speechless face on Liz’ and Walter.
Frozen in time as they were, Godfrey could probably say anything, without fear of breaking that spell.

“Well, that is rather awkward, Inspector.” Godfrey said, dropping the empty peanut butter jar into Finnley’s hands before she could make her escape for the sideway door.
“Weren’t we all worried sick about that poor child since she left hurriedly from the mansion.”
He felt compelled to add “our dear maid Finnley the most, I believe. She had all her belongings stacked in a safe place, for when she would return. Isn’t it, Finnley? That would surely help the Inspector if you could fetch those in the garden, wouldn’t it Inspector.”

“Well, the backdoor was opened, you see, like my wife says…” Inspector Melon started to explain Finnley how he managed to be in the house no sooner had she turned back to dusting duties, or rather turned her back to the door and said duties.

“Stop it!” she interrupted, “and put those shoe covers on your muddy shoes, damnit, I’m not going to do the floors again on your behalf, you miscreant.”

“Finnley, what’s this racket about?” Godfrey appeared from behind the massive last last century clock licking his fingers off the peanut butter.

Finnley put her fists on her hips with a defiant air, not gone unnoticed by Godfrey, “Well, THIS dripping wet gentleman pretends to be a policeman investigating on the Jingly girl disappearance… Not that we know anything about that anyhow.”

Inspector Melon couldn’t help but say “Interesting you should mention it, did I say I was looking for Ms Jingle Bells?”

Godfrey couldn’t help but give a sideway look of “what have you done” to Finnley, who replied by her usual “why look at me like I did something wrong” look.

After days and days, there was no signs of the others.

Rukshan had hoped they would manifest as easily as the Hermit had, without much effort on his part.
But they had remained silent, and even the ghosts seemed to have subsided in another dimension. He couldn’t feel them any longer. It was as though his realisation had made them disappear, or change course for a while.

He hadn’t come any closer to the inner ring of trees though, and he’d come to the conclusion that there was surely some piece missing. He was reminded of the map that the cluster of seven had found at the beginning of the story, so they could reach the magic Gem inside the Gods’ Heartswood. There was no telling if such a map existed or if it did, what form it had —after all, the story seemed to be a little too simplified.

He was trying to figure out which was his character, and which of the curse he had inherited. The curse was rather easy he’d thought… Knowledge. It had always been his motivation, and the encounter with the Queen and the taking of the potion had keenly reminded him that for all his accumulated knowledge, he was missing the biggest part. The knowledge of himself, and who he really was. It was constantly eluding him, and he was starting to doubt even his own memories at times.

For the past few days, having finished the last morsel of fay bread in his bag, he was subsisting on roots, mushrooms and fresh rainwater cupped in leaves and last bits of snow in treeholes. It was time to get moving, as the weather had started to change. The snow was receding too.

Even if his quest wasn’t as sure as before, he knew he had to find a way to reach these six others, and try to figure out what they could do, or undo.

He had a strong suspicion that the potion maker was linked to this story. Her potion had activated something deep in him, and it seemed to share the same source of power.

With that resolution in mind, he took the path retracing his steps back to the cottage and the outside world.

“I had the most awful nightmare”

Godfrey was taking his morning ginger tea, and talking to himself as usual, although it may have seem he was taking to the new gardener who had come inside for a glass of lemonade. The gardener raised his head, not sure what to answer.

“The neighbour had left corpses in front of the house, and I had to bury them so people wouldn’t think we’d killed them. It was night, but then I realized it was our dear friends, one had lost an arm even. I then realized they were after the money, and has simply settled there in their place. And then I woke up wondering why is that I hadn’t just called the police instead of making it more of a mess than it was.”

The gardener was still at the door, unsure if the pause meant he could finally go outside.

“Truth is, by burying the corpses, I not only became complicit, but also probably made the murderer’s work easier…”

“I’m sorry Sir, but I have to go back to work now,” the gardener finally said rather awkwardly. “Your bossy maid has ordered me to bury a rather large sack in the garden. I can’t let it sit in the sun like that.”

Godfrey looked at the gardener in mute horror.