Investigator of the Supernatural, Brewer of Tea (sedulus) wrote in shadowlands_ic, @ 2018-03-08 23:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | bertie eden |
Who: From Bertram Eden to (NPC) Matthew Hill
What: A letter
When: Arrives 8th March, 1889
Rating: G
Dear Matthew,
I hope this letter finds you well, and looking forward to spring at Black Park. For myself, I find winter a bitter season, but cannot help thinking fondly of it when I remember inescapable summer in London. I should be grateful for the opportunity to visit you in the country, during the warmer months.
I write not only to speak of the weather, but to keep you informed of events here in the city. I have reported to Lord Black and am sure he has told you all in turn, but there are details I would not trouble him with, on which I would value hearing your mind.
I cannot speak of forthcoming events in a letter, for fear it might fall into the wrong hands somehow and endanger the safety of others, but I believe you know of what I would speak when I mention there was recently a conference between myself, Lord Black, and some other notable persons regarding a future event. At my suggestion, there will be created for this purpose a facsimile of a device crafted by the Unseelie Sidhe, which has recently fallen into my own hands, and from there been returned to its proper place.
It is this of which I wish to speak. You may know from Lord Black that I have now twice retired from consciousness, both occasions unintentional and only once by the will of another, but no less alarming for that. I have been secured now, and the specter that walked my nightmares no longer haunts me, but I have been told these events have changed me.
I do not know that I feel it yet myself, but on coming into contact with this artifact of the Sidhe, I did accomplish unusual actions in commanding the restless and vengeful spirits of those trapped within. It was not well done, nor were my actions guided by more than instinct, which for such a purpose can rarely be enough. Afterward, when provided aid by a friend, he told me he did not know that he could trust me, for whatever he saw in me then. I am told his opinion is shared by another, Miss Bakst, whom you know, though she has helped me to overcome some other of these new challenges in recent weeks.
The difficulty is this: The person to whom they would have me speak, to entrust myself into their care and tutelage, is one I trust not at all. I fear her. I cannot be more plain than that, nor dissembling on the matter. I fear her power, and her hold over those I hold dear. I fear for Black Park, and for the London House, though I hope those fears are groundless. I have felt her shadow looming in the land of the dead, cast over its denizens and darkening my thoughts. I fear she knows me, and has marked me already.
Lord Black has offered the sanctuary of Black Park in the most intimate way, should I wish to strip myself of any powers over the dead by shedding my humanity along with them. I have not chosen yet, one way or another. Is it better to clasp the asp close to one's bosom, knowing it may bite but able to see it, perhaps, before it strikes? That is a poorly-done analogy, but then I am a poor Cleopatra.
Those I consider my friends believe any other course of action might lead to my death. More than that, to the destruction of my soul. I cannot help but wonder if all paths might lead to that one end, but that is a maudlin thought, and leads nowhere. I will return to thinking of spring.
Yours ever,
Bertram Eden
Flowers in Winter
by John Greenleaf Whittier
How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of flower,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!
How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower-sown home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of bloom!
It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season's frost and rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summertime.
Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy's age renews its youth,
And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of present truth.
A wizard of the Merrimac, -
So old ancestral legends say, -
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.
The dry logs of the cottage wall,
Beneath his touch, put out their leaves;
The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
Played round the icy eaves.
The settler saw his oaken flail
Take bud, and bloom before his eyes;
From frozen pools he saw the pale
Sweet summer lilies rise.
To their old homes, by man profaned
Came the sad dryads, exiled long,
And through their leafy tongues complained
Of household use and wrong.
The beechen platter sprouted wild,
The pipkin wore its old-time green,
The cradle o'er the sleeping child
Became a leafy screen.
Haply our gentle friend hath met,
While wandering in her sylvan quest,
Haunting his native woodlands yet,
That Druid of the West;
And while the dew on leaf and flower
Glistened in the moonlight clear and still,
Learned the dusk wizard's spell of power,
And caught his trick of skill.
But welcome, be it new or old,
The gift which makes the day more bright,
And paints, upon the ground of cold
And darkness, warmth and light!
Without is neither gold nor green;
Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing;
Yet, summer-like, we sit between
The autumn and the spring.
The one, with bridal blush of rose,
And sweetest breath of woodland balm,
And one whose matron lips unclose
In smiles of saintly calm.
Fill soft and deep, O winter snow!
The sweet azalea's oaken dells,
And hide the banks where roses blow
And swing the azure bells!
O'erlay the amber violet's leaves,
The purple aster's brookside home,
Guard all the flowers her pencil gives
A live beyond their bloom.
And she, when spring comes round again,
By greening slope and singing flood
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain
Her darlings of the wood.