🪔 Lundra: The Falling Rain – Part 6

The fireplace was barely untended.     
It was swept, a bucket of kindling was stacked by its side, there was an expectant readiness to the fireplace that doom, the hearth sprite, felt unsettled by. It looked so barren, the sprite thought as it gazed into the cavernous maw of a thankfully soot-crowded chimney. To properly haunt a fireplace doom would want at least one month of built-up ash, some rust to the fire poker, a general feeling of abandon to the part of a home that should always bring comfort. Hearth sprites loved neglect, dust that you could really build a bed on.
doom kicked at the grout line of a brick and tutted, seeing that they all had recently been re-lain.

‘It’s got potential,’ the sprite to the empty room, surmising its temporary home and wishing for a better foundation, ‘high arch for drafts, easily clogged flue, looks like the central heating pipework has been cut off too.’
Rubbing its hand against the iron gate of the ash pit, doom saw a faint glint in the darkness below an began to lean in closer for a look.

‘There’s only one person here.’

A deep voice unexpectedly replied beside doom as the sprite bent over the hole into the ash pit below.
Leaping in fright, the small spirit of ash tumbled downward past the iron grating and into darkness below, landing heavily on all too thin a layer of soot for its liking. Standing up, doom tried to jump and could only frown when it found that a weight was pressing it down.
Iron, why did the ash pan had to be made of iron? How does a rectangular box get to count as a circle? Kicking the pan in disdain, doom cursed the old fairy stories and any superstition that turned out to be true. From the first embers of its existence, doom knew that it couldn’t freely leave an iron circle, but this just seemed to be unfair.   

‘That’s a shame,’ the voice continued from somewhere above, ‘first spirit to come and visit in over a year and they’d rather run than talk to a dust bunny. Well, no bother, serves me for thinking I’d have anything worth saying.’
It was a lonely voice, slow and progressively losing the energy to speak after each word. doom peered up and tried to see what was talking above.

‘Hello?’ the sprite yelled floundering in the soot and searching for a way out of the pan, ‘who’s up there?’

‘Who? I’m not much of a who,’ said the voice, ‘I’d almost barely be a what, you’d be better to forget me.’

‘I don’t care if you’re a who, what, where, or why. Get me out of this pit!’ doom was angry now. It had been pulled into existence, given a task that was tied to its name–it had been given a name–, and worst of all it had been lumped with a clean fireplace. Whoever that tall spirit was who had dumped all this misfortune on the sprite, well they were going to curse their rotten luck if doom ever found them again.

‘Can’t,’ the voice replied after a moment, ‘Looks like the grill is iron. Didn’t you know that house spirits can’t move iron?’
Peering down, a ball of dust, vaguely shaped like a badly stuffed rabbit, stood above the gloom.

A dust bunny, doom realised, while lamenting the embodiment of true unhelpfulness to be his rescue. They were another spirit. A sullen kind of creature who lived in the corners of rooms and made a house look untidy by simply existing. Dust bunnies were found in almost every home across the tapestry of existence, and they were barely even a nuisance.
‘Dusty, don’t suppose you can find a string?’ shouted doom, hoping to coax the dust bunny into action, ‘A loose bit of yarn?’

‘My name is Garret,’ the dust bunny sighed, seemingly upset about having to remember its own name, ‘you can call me that, but not many do. I’ll go look for some yarn, but I won’t find any. Things usually hide when you need them most.’
Loping off, Garret the dust bunny seemed to carry its own personal raincloud of gloom along with it. Many house spirits didn’t have names and it was rare that they should be given one.  

‘Bugger.’ doom sighed, pacing across the thin film of soot and struggling to recall a time before the tall spirt had spoken to it. There were outlines of a memory there, but they were blurred. Buckets, a key, a kettle full of water. Shuddering, the hearth sprite pushed these memories inward and sullenly kicked at what it thought to be a clump of unburnt wood.  
THUD, a sharp pang rocked up the sprite’s foot as it tripped, a cloud of ash plumed upward into the air, grey flecks floated dreamily back down as if they were feathers. Gold caught the light as the hearth sprite turned over and saw that it had just kicked a ring.    

It was plain, as far as rings were concerned.
doom recalled hiding a dozen nicer rings in its life before receiving a name, but even these memories were becoming foggy. This ring was thin, scuffed from being worn on working hands and inscribed with line cut so raggedly at a faint angle that it seemed to be more of a scratch than anything purposeful.
Picking up the ring and hoisting it over its shoulder, doom began to shift through the remaining pan, wondering if anything else had fallen into this sad place along with it.
Finding nothing of interest, the hearth sprite began absentmindedly rolling the ring across the pan, enjoying the gentle crunch as it passed over the ash and then the echoing ding as it clanged upon the iron walls. Garret had been gone for an hour now, it may be days before the owner of the home returned.
That wasn’t a bad thing, not really. With a circle of gold to stand in, doom might be able to appear in another neglected fireplace. The one above was still awhile from being a suitable home, but things could change in a week. Closing its eyes, doom then tried to focus on another hearth, a disused oven, anything that it could use to leave this bloody pan.
Nothing, there was nothing but the fireplace above. A light of such brightness that all the others seemed to be as shadows. He was tied to this hearth, there was a datum firmly fastened into the fireplace above that doom took to mean as home.   
Falling down in a huff, the hearth sprite lay back and contemplated its week ahead.

~

There were voices, different voices than the grey-haired lady who never dusted and occasionally got to singing after her legs got dizzy.
Pattering along with a dusty silence, Garett peaked out from behind a stack of books and saw two humans arguing in the dark.

‘But I don’t want to leave,’ one said with an earnest sadness that the dust bunny felt in every ounce of its fluff. The man was chimney tall and barrel wide, he had a gentle fear to his posture in a way that kept his gestures close. His hands were held together nervously, almost afraid as if they might break something.      

‘Look, ain’t nobody going steal the bookshop while we’re away. Ain’t nobody thought about this place for years. See how dusty it is?’ Drawing his finger along the counter, the second, shorter man, lifted his arm up so that the first could see the dirt clearly. ‘And plus, The Watcher is here, any thief that isn’t you or I is going to have a hard time just getting out the door without their ear being talked off. Or their heart being cut out.’ the second man added almost contemplatively.

Folding itself inward through the weave Garret, the dust bunny, popped into existence on the second man’s finger just seconds before it was then flicked away as a gesture. With a terrifyingly long arc for such a small creature, Garret flew through the air, landing upon the shop counter with a dusty plop.
‘No one cares for dust,’ the spirit muttered to itself after a time, then rolling painfully over onto its feet and hopping toward the till.
There was a roll of twine there, Garret had seen it once been used to hold paper over a book. A present. Shaking a memory away that was not its own, the dust bunny found the ball and nosed it towards the edge of the counter. The store was quiet now. The two men had finished with their argument and disappeared into the night, the bell by the shop door ringing, the lock locking. Everything was silent but Garret was dimly aware of another presence. A thing that lurked without speaking.
Back to the floor now, and a level that felt more comfortable, Garret, once again remembered a time when the shop door would ring merrily, the picture of a person smiling as customers arrived. These were memories; stray memories that lingered long after they had been forgotten. Many would walk past a memory, but a dust bunny felt drawn to them, drawn to the dust. They were, in essence, a spirt of time passing, time having passed.  
Everything collects dust, the spirit thought as it began the long trek back towards the fireplace, flaked either side by mountainous bookshelves. It seems unfair that the dust should collect things as well.

~

‘Are still you there?’ Garret called into the darkness of the firebox, ‘I found some string.’

There was a moment of silence and the dust bunny wondered if the new spirit had managed to escape, but a scrabbling was then heard, and a shimmer of gold was caught in the light.
‘Drop it down.’ the sprite yelled, still half-asleep and unsure of what direction was up in the darkness. ‘I’ve thought of a way out. And don’t say that it won’t work, I know your type.’

Affronted but admitting to itself that it probably was about to suggest something of that nature, Garret nudged the twine over to the hole and slowly prodded at the ball until it fell between a gap in the grate.
Being without hands, the lowering of the twine lacked grace but eventually enough was dropped in so that doom could reach it. There was a sharp tug as the twine was fastened around the discarded ring.

‘Ok, pull me up.’
Nothing followed. doom tugged at the twine a few times and more slack was pulled down. ‘Hello? Garret?’

‘Too heavy.’ the dust bunny panted, slumping down away from the ball, losing form, and collapsing into a pile of dust. Its voice, smaller now, whispered past the grate, ‘don’t suppose you could be lighter?’
There was not much twine left above the grate now, one more tug and it could–

The twine fell quickly downward, the requisite parts of Garret sprung in differing directions as the house spirit was unable to convene its form quickly enough for aligned movement. With slackened fall the ball unfurled fully, and a wooden peg was dragged across the hearth. The peg skittered, skipped against the rough brick, all the while threatening to release the twine. With a clunk, it landed against the grate, turning once more and holding the knotted end precariously between the split wood.
The moment exhaled.

After a time of heated discussion, the house spirts were then able drop the end of the twine over another section of the grate, and doom was able to haul itself upward within the cradle of the ring. The sprite felt a strange tug as it left the confines of the iron. It was as if the tapestry didn’t want to allow the sprite to break from the circle, that an enclosure of another metal had cheated it in some way, contravened its weave. But fair was fair. A house spirt couldn’t leave a circle of iron, but doom sat within a circle of gold. Where do nesting circles end? Is a house a circle of brick? The horizon a circle of land?
Scrambling past the confines of the grate and allowing the ring to fall back to the ash box below, doom lay upon the familiar stone of the hearth and cried for a moment. This was too much. In half a day it had been killed, reformed, given a name of binding, lumped in a clean fireplace, and then thrown into an iron cell.
Feeling a forgotten knot of coal gently rolled against its side, the hearth sprite hugged at the comfort of ash and felt quiet for a moment.

‘Well, that’s that,’ said Garret after a deep sneeze, a splutter of coal still sticking to its nose and causing the dust bunny to twitch in agitation, ‘I suppose you’ll be leaving now? Not much here for a house spirit.’

doom wanted to lay on the hearth for a while longer. It had never felt how truly big the world was, it had never been given the purpose of existence before. Overwhelmed, the little sprite sat up, still cradling the stray fleck of coal.
It had a task. The tall spirit wanted it to write its name somewhere visible. Holding the coal tightly now, the hearth sprite looked up at the mantle above the fireplace.

~

‘What does it say?’ the mostly reconstituted fuzz of Garret asked, turning its head to the side in trying to decipher the strangely scrawled symbol, ‘it looks wrong somehow.’

‘Says doom,’ beamed the hearth sprite proudly, ‘that’s my name that is.’
doom couldn’t remember where it had learnt Lundrian but knew that it had written something that at least looked Lundrian. Anyway, there it was, “doom”, just like in how it looked in the books.

Garret sniffed at the dust and saw the memory of a friar. A jolly looking fellow who loved to read on sun draped afternoons. A fellow who would lie in his chair all afternoon, until his eyes were heavy, until he would fall asleep. doom had spent hours peaking over the top of books at the friar, just waiting to steal the man’s glasses. It must had picked up a few words along the way.

‘doom!’ the hearth sprite said once again while pointing upward towards its work ‘No mistake about it!’

---

J. McCray
2023