This will be the final time I have anything to say about my journey. I am a queen now so I have to attend to queen things. I haven’t time for a foolish journal anymore. Katie Kora told me that only humans write things down anyway. They are forgetful. The rest of us just remember and tell the stories with our lips. But I like to write so I will.

I am angry. Neos is dead. My friend .. my advisor .. my ally .. my master .. protector .. is dead. I would wish him alive again. I did wish it. The faeries said he doth refuse it. He wold rather be adead than alive with me. But I would have set him free, in time. I’ll find another wish. A better one. Wishes aren’t that hard to find. Making them come true is the hard part.

I’m always mixed up when I try to put these words down. I feel my human ‘taint’ slipping into a dream. Time is stopping again.

The Heart Tower
An long face Ladie they called Pony Pony weeping over her father a Lord Beck with a sleeping sickness. They nice to us enough. She could make sugar rain, she says. Everyone will get hungry and sad in the winter. I played with the lordling children wondering which of them would starve before the springtime.

An old servant hag human with hate in her tongue pulled at my hair. She sayed “She is the one. She is bastard daughter of Luria.” she spit on my neck so excited and pointed to everyone to look. They say I am a Ladie too. A Swiftwater Air. ? I don’t want to be some swift water air. I am Lurna. I am second in line to some big human land and my father yet lives. ? ! I don’t want any of it and I call her a liar. But know her. I remember her.

And so do Lily and Rose. They know. And this time they say they do know it. I call them liars too even though i know they speak the truth.

Both Neos and my teacher Mirra have advise to me. If this is true it is great power they say. I don’t want human power. Bloodlines? (and I learn ‘heir’ over air) Mirra explains bloodline. They bleed out and I rule. She offers to kill them for me. My grandfather and my father (neither whom I even know). Neos says I should declare myself. Prove my claim first. And Pony Pony has her wax-seal to ready. Makes the hag sign a parchment. They all say it is very special and valuable. I don’t understand it. Where is there power in the wax seal of a human stamp? I don’t feel any power. But they all bow before me. Even Lily Geneen and Rose Red .. even the bear prince. I think in my minds eye ‘yes’ … it feels right they bow, but I don’t really know why.

The valley elf Druid speaks wisdome to me. He reminds me that I will live longer than any human mortal alive. I can wait for my grandfather to die .. and my father after them. It will be a blink in the eye of time. Patience. His advise is patience. I will go to Tithus Wood and let patience rule the day.

The Sentinal Tower
We pass the 4th tower and they are all drunken sots. I don’t like the way the men look at me or my friends. I tell one man I will stab his eyes if he keeps looking at me. He laughs and walks to drink more ale. I am glad when we leave that place. The master of the tower, Lord Ogden, was so fat he could not look down. Birds were nesting in his great beard. But he told us a story:

“The sun and wind argued who was strongest. A traveler was walking in a long cloak. The wind tried to blow off the cloak. A contest. Who can make him remove his cloak. As the wind blew stronger and stronger the man only held his cloak tighter to his chest. The wind finally gave up. The sun came out smiling and friendly and beaming brilliantly. Eventually the man removed his cloak from the heat.”

He warned the wind is still angry in these mountains and that persuasion is better than force.
He was right.

Poldark Castle
This Lord John has a sick wyfe/Ladie named Tobynn. She is cursed by fairy magik. Lord John Poldark did a bad thing. He traded his wife in a dance to a Fey named Alastair for a knightly jaunt upon the Gray Road. The price was steep and Ladie Tobynn will now die. He asked us to help him. Master Neos took pity and tried to set things right.

… to be continued …