At last the tale gets going!
Names of creatures
Any fantasist writing today faces the problem of naming his magical races. The words of common folklore from medieval Europe such as ‘elf’ and ‘troll’ and ‘dwarf’ and ‘dragon’ and ‘ogre’ and ‘fairy’ have a certain power that comes only from words of ancient provenance: since so many generations of men have used these words in so many lands, it seems the things the words name must be somehow real – more real than any new-fangled creation.
And yet, they are clichés. This is of small problem for tales meant for children ages 4–8, as this is an audience that never tires of them, but merely outgrows them. But for teens and older, who may have been reading fantasy works for a decade or more, the old ‘elf’ is so tired, that it lacks its original power; it is tangled up in recent comics, videogames, movies, and genre adventures, more than the ancient concepts of long ago. It seems more like a current ‘brand’ that has outgrown its welcome.
So another path beckons today’s fantasist, and that is to create his own creatures. Or rather, he can simply give the old creatures new names, and hope to capture some freshness thereby.
This is the path we who write under the rubric ‘Asotir’ have generally adopted. Bardelys here uses the word ‘wicken’ to indicate the general class of magical creatures, and magic itself, in the tale of The Magic Key. In general we can consider that if Bardelys had been writing 100 years ago, he might have used ‘fairy’ or ‘faëry’ or ‘elvish’ instead, and been much better off. But after Professor Tolkien’s huge popularity with The Lord of the Rings, these words have cluttered up every pastiche and homage and genre-work of the fantasy tale, and so many clichés have gathered up about them, that the word ‘fairy’ has lost all its antique charm and power.
Let us then look at the word Bardelys coined, wicken. I rather like it, as it seems to combine ‘wiccan’ and ‘wicked’ in the single word. Bardelys evidently intends the word to cause chills to run up his readers’ spines when they glimpse the word, and he has set about ‘charging’ the word with this sense – indeed, we can go back to Chapter Three and see now that the tale of the East-men that Hans hears from his Father might have been put in there not only to enhance the weirdness of the Schwarzwald, but to connect that weirdness to the ‘wicken-things’ that dwell in the Forest, and that have presumably been behind the destruction of the great and powerful army of antiquity.
Too Many Taps?
I fear the answer is, ‘Yes.’ There are indeed too many trips to the well of tap … tap in the opening of this chapter. It seems one of Bardelys’ flaws, when he wants his readers to feel something, he goes on rather too long about it.
The Crow, the Herald
The Green Crow functions in The Magic Key in the role that Joseph Campbell called ‘the Herald’ in his study of what he termed the ‘Monomyth.’ The Herald was that person or creature (or event) that summoned the hero on the adventure, and would not take No for an answer. In Chapter Three it was looking almost as though Father would be the Herald; in Chapter Two, Mossbeard seems to almost fall into the role as well. So we can say again that Bardelys has dilly-dallied overlong with his opening: one Herald was enough, man!
The Green Crow wins the Herald-sweepstakes, because he summons Hans to the window; had the Crow not appeared like the Raven in the poem of Edgar Allen Poe (was that what inspired this scene?) then Hans would have fallen asleep and been awakened by his Father in the morning (unless he would have died in his sleep like the rest of his family seems to have done).
Instead Hans sees the Charcoal Burners, and experiences yet another of his visions as the poor wretches are transformed under his eyes into a band of robbers and murderers, who openly threaten Hans with death.
Excited, baffled, half in a dream, Hans slips out of his attic room, and goes to see where the band has gone. Something catches his eye – he fancies he has found the start of Lost Souls Path (another explanation must follow, slowing the action somewhat) and then…
The Dream Come True
–Hans goes to the Mankiller tree, finds the silver glove, and suddenly breaks into the awareness that he has been living his old nightmare – only this time he has touched the tree, the forbidden, taboo act the nightmare always led him to.
What then will happen?
The answer comes right away: trees and roots and bushes and vines burst from the ground, swarm over the house, smash it, and murder all those trapped inside. Hans rushes to try to help his Mother, whose dying scream fills him with dread, but the roots and brambles get in the way. Hans is only able to save himself, and overcome with terror, he runs for his life up the Road.
The intent here in ending the chapter in this fashion seems to be to present us with a welter, a very storm of nightmarish happenings, a bad dream from which there is no waking. No explanations are given, and the chapter break thus is of the kind to make us want to know ‘Why?’
(Composed on keyboard Tuesday 4 November 2008)
