The Bard – Chapter One
So here I am. Saturday afternoon, and I have nothing better to do than stand here at the Valby train platform, waiting on the next train to Nørreport, lucky me. Ahh well, at least its summer here now, and there’s some nice scenery in the area, like the red-head in the short shorts who just walked by. Finding myself about to whisper into the air, the overhead speakers on the station announce that the next train will be delayed. Figures, I’m supposed to meet Johann in a few minutes.
Then I catch the hint of something else in the voice. I sense the presence of something moving behind me. Turning slowly, Words coming to mind unbidden, I catch a glimpse of a young kid running in behind one of the benches at the station. Smiling, I reach into my pocket and take out one of the cookies I always keep on hand and offer it to the boy. Slowly he makes his way back over to me, and reaches out for the cookie, and it is then I notice that he is quite a bit older than he appears.
With a practiced hand he brushes the silver grey hair from his eyes, tucking it in behind his ears, which I notice are slightly pointed. Grinning elfishly, he flashes slightly pointed teeth, and snatches the cookie. Bowing low, he speaks with an accent that is an odd mix of the Nordic tongues, “Tusind tak Skjald. There be not many who remember us, or the courtesies of the olden days.”
With that he again bows low, and greedily eats the cookie, before turning off and disappearing into the crowd who are disembarking from the train which just arrived. Looking up I notice it’s the train I need to catch for Nørreport. Seems the old stories are true after all; treat a Nisse well and good things happen to you.
Ok. I can just picture it now, you thinking like I’m some kind of idiot. I mean, who really believes in things like Nisse anymore? Or the tooth fairy? Or any of the hundreds of folk stories and myths of the world?
I do.
Don’t get me wrong, I was much the same as you about five years ago. All “Santa isn’t real, neither is the Easter Bunny”, or any of the hundreds of other stories one hears growing up in anywhere in the world. I learned the hard way that most, I almost daresay all, of those stories are true (yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus, but he isn’t anywhere near as jolly as you may think, although the Easter Bunny is pure Hallmark propaganda).
It would be all well and good if just the Good Things(tm) were around. Trouble is they’re not. All those old folk tales of little people who wreck your homes, or of the old lady in the woods who eats little children, or the trolls who hide out under bridges, those are all true too. Well – mostly true. While the little people are most certainly real, that nasty old lady was put down some time ago I hear…but you hear strange stories even today about that strange house on the end of the block – you know the one, the one people always avoid.
That’s not to say everything you’ve ever read is real. Like the idea of angst ridden vampires trying to save the world (most of the bloodsuckers I’ve ever met would just as soon eat you for dinner as bore you to tears over how tormented a soul they are). That all said, chances are, if it had a place in some old wives tale then it is very much likely a part of the real world.
But I think I’m getting a little ahead of myself again, I tend to do that when people ask me about these things. How is it possible then, that all these beings of legend are real, and living alongside computers, cell phones, and the 7-11 down the road?
Well folks, buckle your seat belts.
Magic is real.
Don’t get the idea that there are all these fireballs and lightning bolts flying around like you see in the movies. Most Magic is a lot more subtle than that, Magic is more about persuading things to do what you want them to do. Think the scene in Star Wars when Obi-Wan is trying to convince those Stormtroopers. Yah…Magic is more like Star Wars. Boy do I feel a dolt. Took me long enough to figure that all out. Ah well.
There’s more to it than that though. See, words have power. Well, the right words do at any rate. After all, if all words had power, then everything ever written about would be true. When man first began beating their chests, grunting and communicating to his cave-men friends about the big furry beast down the canyon, the first inklings of Magic appeared. Then slowly through the ages these grunts became words, and these words were then used to explain what was going on around us. When man first began using actual words, we began Naming things. It’s through these Names that Magic takes its shape.
There I go again, rambling on about something totally unrelated to the original topic. While yes, Magic has something to do with how these beings, which you thought were part of your imagination, survived. It is not the only reason. See, as much as we’d like to think that we’ve been the only sentient being on this earth, that wouldn’t be entirely accurate.
Ask yourself this, despite everything you’ve ever been taught in school about evolution and all that, do you honestly believe, that in the millions of years there has been life on this planet, that mankind has been the only sentient being to walk the Earth? If you do truly believe that then you are far more arrogant than people tell me I am, which if all accounts are to believed is pretty damn arrogant.
The short explanation is that, we’re in the fifth cycle of this world. Now I don’t pretend to know a whole lot about all this, only what I’ve heard second (and in some cases third) hand. So what makes a cycle? I’m not really sure to be honest. Some have said that some traumatic event often spells the end of one cycle, and the start of another. For instance, some point to the sighting of the comet at the Battle of Hastings to be a changing of cycles, or the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II. While those of a more mystical mindset tend to be more subtle in how they track the changing of a cycle. For these folks it could be anything from the way a butterfly flaps its wings, to the way a snowflake lands on the tip of a kid’s tongue.
Yah, mystics are a strange lot.
In any event, life as we know it on this planet has been around a lot longer than anyone has ever suspected. But how is it possible that all these strange creatures have survived all this time without being noticed?
Well people have this tendency to live inside their own little bubbles. Accepting only what has been told them by the media, church, or wherever they get their information from. Unless it’s been spelled out for them sometimes single syllable words, they just don’t get it. So as such they just blindly accept what’s in front of them. Take for instance, the Nisse. Most who see him walking around, would just think “what a strange looking boy”, others might think, “what an odd little man” – rarely would anyone truly believe that it truly is a being from the story books.
So basically you’ve likely been talking to Trolls, Werewolves, and a whole host of other creatures and just never realized it. And for the most part they’re quite happy with that. Live and let live is their motto.
For the most part…
See that’s where I come in.
My name is Brandon Taylor, I’m a Bard. Welcome to my world.
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