Beginnings - Who was Neline Peltsprit?
Orginally written for musemuggers 04/07/2004
Prompt #43 - Tell us the story behind the ledgend of Neline Peltspirit.
Prequel to Any Right Minded Stephen King Fan
Beginnings - Who was Neline Peltspirit?
Gerald watched as May pushed against the soft spot--as she liked to call it--wincing in concentration. She was unsteady on her feet and Gerald had to support her under the arms in order for her to reach.
Slowly, under her gnarled hands, the air began to ripple, like she'd dropped a stone in water, and the rip began to form in the space in front of them. Just as the hole was big enough for a human body, Gerald stepped through, pulling May behind him so that he could push his way through the thick overgrown hedge on the other side. May, gasping quietly as she moved, almost fell through and managed to hold herself up only just long enough to close the portal before collapsing into Gerald's arms.
"I think I may have done something to my insides," she said as Gerald laid her down in the meadow.
"Magic that strong, I expect you have," he thought back to the backlash that had hit her in full force, so strong that the nimbus of it was visible to the naked eye. Gerald had caught a little of it and ached liked a bitch. It had to have done some serious damage to the old woman.
"Come on Gerald love," she said, holding a hand out to him, "I think I need to be at home."
"You can't move now, you need to go to a hospital!" he tried to push her back to the ground but she summoned some surprising strength from somewhere and brushed him away.
"No hospitals. I don't think they can help me. I want to go home, Gerald love, that's all I want."
Gerald helped her to her feet and supported her as she walked. They kept to the field at first, not wishing to be seen on the single-track lane, but as they neared the town they moved onto the pavement. Under his grasp Gerald could feel May begin to falter, he tried to get her to talk to him and take her mind off the journey.
"Perhaps you'll retire now," he said.
"Oh, I don't think I have much choice," she said lightly.
"Don't say that." Gerald cursed under his breath. He hadn't meant that.
"No. This was my last crossing." She paused, "well, almost my last."
They walked along again in silence and May's breath began to come in shallow bursts as they walked in shambling steps to the outskirts of the town.
"Almost as exciting as the first I expect."
"Your first?" He wrapped and arm around her waist, feeling a little self conscious but too aware that she had begun to sway on her feet.
"No, not my first. The first. Back when all this began."
"Oh, that was back in the dark ages though."
"Yes. My ancestor made the first trip, quite by accident." She pushed away him as they walked past the first house of the village; desperate to walk unaided and avoid drawing attention.
"How do you do it by accident."
"Well, that's what young girls do. They go poking around where they shouldn't--she been flat on her back in a field all afternoon by all accounts--and they discover things they shouldn't."
Gerald blushed at the mention of sex. It always made him uncomfortable when May said things like that; he was of the opinion that old ladies ought not think about sex in the same way that young guys should be obsessed with it. Still, he was thirty-one now and he didn't seem to be getting any less obsessed as the years rolled on; perhaps it was because he wasn't getting any.
"Neline Peltspirit her name was." May carried on, "quite a name don't you think?"
"It's pretty impressive." He thought it was stupid.
"She'd been enjoying the summer afternoon with one of the boys from the village--not my ancestor, so I'm told--and noticed
the rip form. Then one of those little bastards snuck through."
"My god! Did it attack her?"
"No, it went to the village--there was a village here even back then--and she followed it. It took a human shape and stole one of the children away. Neline now knew what had caused the spate of disappearances in the village. The villagers blamed it on a local hag who was burned along with her cottage. On Tinder Lane. That's where it gets it's name y'know."
They passed the little collection of houses and May allowed Gerald to support her once more. She seemed to lean on him even more this time and she struggled to breath and speak at the same time. Gerald doubted the wisdom of encouraging her to talk, but didn't dare stop her now she'd got started.
"Neline knew better of course and she waited by the hedge every day afterwards. She became a bit of a local lunatic according to stories. The beasts she saw came at the end of the soft time so it was the full five years before the portal opened again and something else came through. But she was there waiting for it."
"Did she kill it?" he couldn't imagine she'd had much chance. An untrained human against one of those beasts. Even weak as they are, after five years of being trapped in a world with no untapped magic.
"No. The beast had magic and Neline didn’t know of such things at the time. It came through the portal and, when it noticed her, hurled a spell that knocked her cold before she could even do anything."
"Did she die from the force of it?" He managed not to say
like you're going to?
"Good lord no! How would she be an ancestor if she didn't survive."
"I don't know. She could have had sister."
"Well, she didn't. Shut up interrupting anyway. I don't have all day." They were into the village proper now and May hadn't stopped him from supporting her this time. She leaned on him more with every step and seem to focus all her attention on speaking.
"Anyway. Neline awoke in the other world, pretty busted up by the magic--and I understand how she must have felt now--surrounding by them. All different shapes and sizes they were--well you've seen them--some of them had the wingspan of a field according the book. Although I don't believe that for a minute."
"Must have been a small field."
May purse her lips and gave Gerald a cold look as they paused in the doorway of her shop. She opened the door, jangling the bell above, and did not speak again until they had made it up the stairs to her flat. Gerald walked behind her, holding her up and trying not to touch her in any inappropriate places.
"They had her on a altar in the rocky temple." She said as she made her way across the lvingroom, clinging to the wall. She indicated with the hand at a large photo album on the dresser. "She hadn't been strapped down, I suppose they didn't expect her to wake up, but when she tried to escape one of the biggest beasts pinned her to the ground with talon the size of one of them standing stones at Stone Henge.
"They began to chant, in their own language, and Neline felt as if something were being drawn from her. We know now it was magic, but she must had been terrified at the time."
"How did she escape?" said Gerald, fetching the album for her.
"Well, that's the surprising bit." May sat gingerly in the old couch and smiled as gerald laid the album next to her. "Just as Neline thought she had no life force left. That they'd drawn everything from her. A light appeared. Strong and bright like the coming of the lord himself. Strong white magic, drawn from the earth, drove the beasts away from her. All of them. Can you imagine that?"
Gerald had trouble dealing with just one at a time and said so.
"Oh, you don't do so badly. But this was the strongest magic ever reported, even since that time."
"Neline was scooped up by big strong hands--I'm sure she added that embellishment herself--and she was carried away, deep into the mountain. There, living in the caves, was a whole tribe of people."
"The Sallis?" Gerald pictured their allies in the other world, highly skilled magicians all of them, descendant of those that had been kidnapped from this world and had escaped the clutches of the beasts. They'd left the beasts latest rescued victim with them to recover strength and had planned to go back and reclaim him before the portal closed again. But the beasts had attacked them on their return home.
"The very same. The man who had rescued her, the boy really, was the same boy that had been taken from the village those five years before."
"No way!"
"It's true. He had been rescued from the beasts and taken into the tribe. He was their strongest magician and had grown into quite a man." May's eyes twinkled a little as she spoke, despite her ragged breaths.
"Let me guess, they fell in love?"
"Aye, they did. It was five years before the portal was weak enough for Neline to break through and come home. By the time she returned she was almost as powerful as he was. She returned with a bairn too. Must've caused quite a scandal because he didn’t come back with her."
"Why not?"
"Well, the Saliss needed him. He couldn't leave them. But Neline missed home. The fields and the woods and couldn't bear the mountains. So she came back to keep watch on this side of the world and they met only every five years when the portals weakened."
"That's terrible!" Still, he reflected, she was still getting more than he was.
"Oh, I don't know. She managed to have four children by him. Four by another too, mind you, but we don't talk about that."
"I think your last adventure was more exciting." It was just a shame it had left her so weak un unable to protect herself. Gerald felt a pang of guilt for not being more useful.
"You do?"
"Yeah. I mean Neline sounds like quite a woman, but it's a bit cliched isn't it? Being saved at the last minute by a long lost child and falling in love?"
"I don’t think cliché had been invented back then dear. No, Neline started us off. She was the one that kept this village safe throughout her life and the lives of her decendants. I'm just sorry her line dies with me.
May sucked in a deep ragged breath and clutched at her stomach.
"I have a niece you know?" she croaked.
"I didn't know that."
"About your age. She's a pretty girl. Or she was the last time I saw her. Lives in London by all accounts." She waved a hand around the room, "I expect all this will go to her."
"Does she know about this? Will she carry it on." Gerald hated to admit he was terrified of being left with the responsibility.
"I don't know. Maybe you could guide her, eh?"
"I'll try."
"You might even like her."
"I hope your not trying to turn my life into another cliche."
"Pah! Listen boy, when you're as old as I am you begin to see that some things are cliched for a reason. Good reasons. And not to question the good things." Her body shuddered and she hacked a cough, tiny fleck of blood flying from her mouth onto her hands. Gerald pretended not to notice.
"I'm sorry, May."
"Don't be silly boy." Her voice was raspy and thin now. "You've been a great comfort to me these last few years."
"Thank you."
"Now, I think I'd like to be alone." She tipped her head backwards and laid it on the sofa. Closing her red rimmed eyes. Gerald noticed dark patched, peach bruises, under them.
"I can't leave you."
"No, you should go. Dying is like going to the toilet, boy, I don’t want people watching me while I'm doing it."
"May!"
"Really, Gerald love, I want to be alone. And don't come back. You have to go back through the portal before it closes. And it's better if someone else finds me."
"May, I can't leave you here to die. I won't. No one will come for days, you can't sit here alone!" he was almost crying. He felt like a bastard for pointing out how alone she was in the world, but he couldn't leave her. He knew she'd have none of it though.
"Leave boy. I came into the world kicking and screaming. I want to go out in peace." Her voice rang strong and clear now. Now quivering or raspiness betrayed her intent and Gerald knew he wouldn't be able to change her mind.
"I love you May." Gerald clasped her hand and May patted it with her other one.
"That means a lot to me. Now go!"
He rose and gave her a kiss on her dry cheek and wiped his own, which was not so dry. He backed away to the door, willing for her to call him back, but she merely smiled at him and then turned her attention to the photo album. She coughed violently into her hand as he left but didn't look up once before he close the door.
Prompt #43 - Tell us the story behind the ledgend of Neline Peltspirit.
Prequel to Any Right Minded Stephen King Fan
Beginnings - Who was Neline Peltspirit?
Gerald watched as May pushed against the soft spot--as she liked to call it--wincing in concentration. She was unsteady on her feet and Gerald had to support her under the arms in order for her to reach.
Slowly, under her gnarled hands, the air began to ripple, like she'd dropped a stone in water, and the rip began to form in the space in front of them. Just as the hole was big enough for a human body, Gerald stepped through, pulling May behind him so that he could push his way through the thick overgrown hedge on the other side. May, gasping quietly as she moved, almost fell through and managed to hold herself up only just long enough to close the portal before collapsing into Gerald's arms.
"I think I may have done something to my insides," she said as Gerald laid her down in the meadow.
"Magic that strong, I expect you have," he thought back to the backlash that had hit her in full force, so strong that the nimbus of it was visible to the naked eye. Gerald had caught a little of it and ached liked a bitch. It had to have done some serious damage to the old woman.
"Come on Gerald love," she said, holding a hand out to him, "I think I need to be at home."
"You can't move now, you need to go to a hospital!" he tried to push her back to the ground but she summoned some surprising strength from somewhere and brushed him away.
"No hospitals. I don't think they can help me. I want to go home, Gerald love, that's all I want."
Gerald helped her to her feet and supported her as she walked. They kept to the field at first, not wishing to be seen on the single-track lane, but as they neared the town they moved onto the pavement. Under his grasp Gerald could feel May begin to falter, he tried to get her to talk to him and take her mind off the journey.
"Perhaps you'll retire now," he said.
"Oh, I don't think I have much choice," she said lightly.
"Don't say that." Gerald cursed under his breath. He hadn't meant that.
"No. This was my last crossing." She paused, "well, almost my last."
They walked along again in silence and May's breath began to come in shallow bursts as they walked in shambling steps to the outskirts of the town.
"Almost as exciting as the first I expect."
"Your first?" He wrapped and arm around her waist, feeling a little self conscious but too aware that she had begun to sway on her feet.
"No, not my first. The first. Back when all this began."
"Oh, that was back in the dark ages though."
"Yes. My ancestor made the first trip, quite by accident." She pushed away him as they walked past the first house of the village; desperate to walk unaided and avoid drawing attention.
"How do you do it by accident."
"Well, that's what young girls do. They go poking around where they shouldn't--she been flat on her back in a field all afternoon by all accounts--and they discover things they shouldn't."
Gerald blushed at the mention of sex. It always made him uncomfortable when May said things like that; he was of the opinion that old ladies ought not think about sex in the same way that young guys should be obsessed with it. Still, he was thirty-one now and he didn't seem to be getting any less obsessed as the years rolled on; perhaps it was because he wasn't getting any.
"Neline Peltspirit her name was." May carried on, "quite a name don't you think?"
"It's pretty impressive." He thought it was stupid.
"She'd been enjoying the summer afternoon with one of the boys from the village--not my ancestor, so I'm told--and noticed
the rip form. Then one of those little bastards snuck through."
"My god! Did it attack her?"
"No, it went to the village--there was a village here even back then--and she followed it. It took a human shape and stole one of the children away. Neline now knew what had caused the spate of disappearances in the village. The villagers blamed it on a local hag who was burned along with her cottage. On Tinder Lane. That's where it gets it's name y'know."
They passed the little collection of houses and May allowed Gerald to support her once more. She seemed to lean on him even more this time and she struggled to breath and speak at the same time. Gerald doubted the wisdom of encouraging her to talk, but didn't dare stop her now she'd got started.
"Neline knew better of course and she waited by the hedge every day afterwards. She became a bit of a local lunatic according to stories. The beasts she saw came at the end of the soft time so it was the full five years before the portal opened again and something else came through. But she was there waiting for it."
"Did she kill it?" he couldn't imagine she'd had much chance. An untrained human against one of those beasts. Even weak as they are, after five years of being trapped in a world with no untapped magic.
"No. The beast had magic and Neline didn’t know of such things at the time. It came through the portal and, when it noticed her, hurled a spell that knocked her cold before she could even do anything."
"Did she die from the force of it?" He managed not to say
like you're going to?
"Good lord no! How would she be an ancestor if she didn't survive."
"I don't know. She could have had sister."
"Well, she didn't. Shut up interrupting anyway. I don't have all day." They were into the village proper now and May hadn't stopped him from supporting her this time. She leaned on him more with every step and seem to focus all her attention on speaking.
"Anyway. Neline awoke in the other world, pretty busted up by the magic--and I understand how she must have felt now--surrounding by them. All different shapes and sizes they were--well you've seen them--some of them had the wingspan of a field according the book. Although I don't believe that for a minute."
"Must have been a small field."
May purse her lips and gave Gerald a cold look as they paused in the doorway of her shop. She opened the door, jangling the bell above, and did not speak again until they had made it up the stairs to her flat. Gerald walked behind her, holding her up and trying not to touch her in any inappropriate places.
"They had her on a altar in the rocky temple." She said as she made her way across the lvingroom, clinging to the wall. She indicated with the hand at a large photo album on the dresser. "She hadn't been strapped down, I suppose they didn't expect her to wake up, but when she tried to escape one of the biggest beasts pinned her to the ground with talon the size of one of them standing stones at Stone Henge.
"They began to chant, in their own language, and Neline felt as if something were being drawn from her. We know now it was magic, but she must had been terrified at the time."
"How did she escape?" said Gerald, fetching the album for her.
"Well, that's the surprising bit." May sat gingerly in the old couch and smiled as gerald laid the album next to her. "Just as Neline thought she had no life force left. That they'd drawn everything from her. A light appeared. Strong and bright like the coming of the lord himself. Strong white magic, drawn from the earth, drove the beasts away from her. All of them. Can you imagine that?"
Gerald had trouble dealing with just one at a time and said so.
"Oh, you don't do so badly. But this was the strongest magic ever reported, even since that time."
"Neline was scooped up by big strong hands--I'm sure she added that embellishment herself--and she was carried away, deep into the mountain. There, living in the caves, was a whole tribe of people."
"The Sallis?" Gerald pictured their allies in the other world, highly skilled magicians all of them, descendant of those that had been kidnapped from this world and had escaped the clutches of the beasts. They'd left the beasts latest rescued victim with them to recover strength and had planned to go back and reclaim him before the portal closed again. But the beasts had attacked them on their return home.
"The very same. The man who had rescued her, the boy really, was the same boy that had been taken from the village those five years before."
"No way!"
"It's true. He had been rescued from the beasts and taken into the tribe. He was their strongest magician and had grown into quite a man." May's eyes twinkled a little as she spoke, despite her ragged breaths.
"Let me guess, they fell in love?"
"Aye, they did. It was five years before the portal was weak enough for Neline to break through and come home. By the time she returned she was almost as powerful as he was. She returned with a bairn too. Must've caused quite a scandal because he didn’t come back with her."
"Why not?"
"Well, the Saliss needed him. He couldn't leave them. But Neline missed home. The fields and the woods and couldn't bear the mountains. So she came back to keep watch on this side of the world and they met only every five years when the portals weakened."
"That's terrible!" Still, he reflected, she was still getting more than he was.
"Oh, I don't know. She managed to have four children by him. Four by another too, mind you, but we don't talk about that."
"I think your last adventure was more exciting." It was just a shame it had left her so weak un unable to protect herself. Gerald felt a pang of guilt for not being more useful.
"You do?"
"Yeah. I mean Neline sounds like quite a woman, but it's a bit cliched isn't it? Being saved at the last minute by a long lost child and falling in love?"
"I don’t think cliché had been invented back then dear. No, Neline started us off. She was the one that kept this village safe throughout her life and the lives of her decendants. I'm just sorry her line dies with me.
May sucked in a deep ragged breath and clutched at her stomach.
"I have a niece you know?" she croaked.
"I didn't know that."
"About your age. She's a pretty girl. Or she was the last time I saw her. Lives in London by all accounts." She waved a hand around the room, "I expect all this will go to her."
"Does she know about this? Will she carry it on." Gerald hated to admit he was terrified of being left with the responsibility.
"I don't know. Maybe you could guide her, eh?"
"I'll try."
"You might even like her."
"I hope your not trying to turn my life into another cliche."
"Pah! Listen boy, when you're as old as I am you begin to see that some things are cliched for a reason. Good reasons. And not to question the good things." Her body shuddered and she hacked a cough, tiny fleck of blood flying from her mouth onto her hands. Gerald pretended not to notice.
"I'm sorry, May."
"Don't be silly boy." Her voice was raspy and thin now. "You've been a great comfort to me these last few years."
"Thank you."
"Now, I think I'd like to be alone." She tipped her head backwards and laid it on the sofa. Closing her red rimmed eyes. Gerald noticed dark patched, peach bruises, under them.
"I can't leave you."
"No, you should go. Dying is like going to the toilet, boy, I don’t want people watching me while I'm doing it."
"May!"
"Really, Gerald love, I want to be alone. And don't come back. You have to go back through the portal before it closes. And it's better if someone else finds me."
"May, I can't leave you here to die. I won't. No one will come for days, you can't sit here alone!" he was almost crying. He felt like a bastard for pointing out how alone she was in the world, but he couldn't leave her. He knew she'd have none of it though.
"Leave boy. I came into the world kicking and screaming. I want to go out in peace." Her voice rang strong and clear now. Now quivering or raspiness betrayed her intent and Gerald knew he wouldn't be able to change her mind.
"I love you May." Gerald clasped her hand and May patted it with her other one.
"That means a lot to me. Now go!"
He rose and gave her a kiss on her dry cheek and wiped his own, which was not so dry. He backed away to the door, willing for her to call him back, but she merely smiled at him and then turned her attention to the photo album. She coughed violently into her hand as he left but didn't look up once before he close the door.