Chapter XXIV - The Woodbound Players

The Legend of Leanna Page: Vol. I

You’re reading The Legend of Leanna Page, the page-turning mythopoetic queer literary fantasy. *Click here for the Table of Contents and start of Volume I*

Previously: Leanna and Kennedy were finally getting married, but Guiomar’s wickedness interrupted the ceremony with a stroke of lightning which left Queen Okalani dead.

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“See what thou hast brought upon us!” Elder Cassius stormed into the wedding circle in a paroxysm of indefatigable remonstrance, and all those around listened intently. “Thou villain; base, caitiff demon! It is not unknown, thine antagonism with the king of Pavoline, nor how he makes use of the Nebulous Jewel. This attack was meant for thee! Thou hidest among us and bring only strife.”

“Speak not to her so; this is not her doing,” Kennedy said, and turned a pleading look to Leanna to defend her innocence.

“He is right,” Leanna said, now lifting her terrorful eyes from the body of Queen Okalani. Cassius ceased his shouts, looking to Leanna anew.

“Say not so, my love,” Kennedy begged, but Leanna motioned for her silence.

“Guiomar doth strive for my death,” quoth she, “and his only recourse is the utilization of the Jewel, but I shall never die by its hand. Despite Guiomar’s intentions, the weapon refuses to kill me. I realize only now how I have survived it thrice.” She looked at the Sky, remembering, and was horror-struck by her new understanding. She turned to the only eyes which might give her comfort. “Kennedy, I was merely frightened – and it spared me!” Leanna gazed upon Kennedy’s grave visage that, so recently, had shone with such glee, and she regretted her next words before she spoke them. “So long as I remain hither, the storms above us shall never cease.” Kennedy shook her head in plea, but Leanna went on. “I cannot stay. I cannot watch more be harmed where I was meant to be destroyed.”

“No, thou cannot leave,” Kennedy said, a sob shaking the stability of her voice. “Whither art thou to go?”

Leanna turned from her a moment. “Please, inquire not on what thou knowest I have no answer for.”

“I meant thee to be safe here.” Kennedy took Leanna’s hand, and Leanna gripped it tightly.

“So I was! But it is now thy safety I must care for, and to do so I cannot be by thy side.” She thought a moment, then added, “I can be by no one’s side.”

Kennedy again took on her stern, determined countenance. “Thou art no monster,” she said, but Leanna pulled away.

“I feel it calling for me, Kennedy. The Jewel of Nebulous is mine, or it wishes to be, and I fear, as time waxes on, it will take every part of my heart to deny it.”

“Thy heart?”

They each gazed upon the gaze of the other, feeling a fracture deep within. Leanna nodded and tears called out to be released from her eyes, but she denied them.

“For the world now, Kennedy, and all my dear friends,” she looked to those around, “I cannot be among you.”

“Then wherever thou dost go, I shall go with thee.”

“No!” Elder Oorweg interjected, rising from having knelt before the fallen royal, and the sentiment was echoed throughout the crowd. “Okalani hath gone from us, Kennedy. You are now our Queen.”

As the realization came upon her, she looked out at the fairies of Alquoria and they began to crowd in around her, whispering words of consolation and awe. She turned back to find Leanna’s eyes, but the wingless one had run off and disappeared amidst the crowd.

In their bedchamber, Leanna pulled on her trousers and tightened her belt around her tunic. She took up her wedding gown, holding it before her, memorizing every stitch of the enchanting evening it was born from, then draped the gown gently over her place in Kennedy’s bed. On her pillow now lay the vial Madrick had gifted her, holding the enchanted liquid from the Aldorian Waterfall. Again taking up the familiar piece, she tossed the chain around her neck and tucked the vial beneath her collar, then, without daring to glance at any more of the place, she walked out of the apartment and into the labyrinth of castle caves, all now just as known to her as the halls of the Masor castle had become those several years ago.

“Leanna,” a voice called from behind. She turned to face him, and sighed.

“Elder Cassius, I shall no longer be the cause of your troubles, and I shall ask you for no forgiveness over the tragedy of tonight.”

“A good thing too, for none was to be given.” Leanna curiously noticed a slight affable tone about him, as though he meant the words more kindly than they implied. His countenance offered her sincerity without anger. “Thou hast displayed great honor tonight, and I thank thee for it.”

Shocked, Leanna knew not how to reply. He continued.

“Think me not ‘friend,’ for I shall never be so, but— Here.” He held out his hand, opening it to reveal a bolt-spear, shrunken for the use of a fairy in miniature. “It retains its power despite its size. I believe thou hast been trained in its use?” She nodded. “May it offer thee protection from what the world might have in store.”

“Gramercy,” Leanna said, otherwise speechless, as she accepted the boon and tucked it within her belt.

“After thy choice tonight, if, by a twist of fate, we meet again, I may not wholly regret it,” he confessed.

She could not help but let loose a short laugh. “Same to you, Cassius,” she said. He nodded and Leanna smiled as, newly allied, they parted ways.

The chaos that had broken out on the Anwansi Pool made her precaution gratuitous; still, Leanna took care to remain, when at all possible, out of sight, following close to the cliffside and running her fingers across its smooth surface as she approached her little ladder. She reached its peak and stepped out into the Wood. Then, turning back, with a heavy heart, she stooped to the ropes securing the ladder to surrounding Trees, and loosed them, allowing the ladder to fall. In its descent, it tumbled off the side of the walkway and sunk beneath the surface of the pool. Leanna stood, staring at the ripples. Her gaze then shifted up and she took in all of the watery city, another of her homes she was to leave behind. She watched as several of the older warriors lifted Queen Okalani’s body to their shoulders and carried her into the castle cave. An emptiness now washed over Leanna’s mind as she shut out the world entire and willed an eerie silence to overcome her previously all-hearing consciousness. Only what her small ears could convey would be heard in her mind; all else, she determined, was to be silenced. She took a great inhale and allowed it to stammer out of her chest before she pivoted to the north and, with lethargic paces, strode into the Infinite Wood.

She walked in darkness, and light, and darkness again, she could not say for how long, allowing hours and days and weeks all to become the same, the light inside her ever darkening. She gave no care to whither she walked, so long as she remained alone. She did not stop when she came to The Dead Lands of Pavoline. She did not stop when she paced through Brutivan, or when a person of the town asked if she needed aid. She did not stop when amoral sandstorms blinded her in the desert, and she did not stop when she stepped again between Infinite Trees, walking ever westward, leaving behind the World Within the Woods, and moving ever further into the infinities of the Woods themselves. As time passed, weeks, perhaps months, she found more ease in maintaining a clear mind as the pressures of thought she had learned to absorb from the world began to fade into the distance. She began to return to herself and realized, with a slight smile, that she was dreadfully tired. When at last, one night, she could walk no longer, she brought herself to the Forest floor and allowed herself to find repose, recumbent within the crook of a large, sturdy Tree.

She awoke before she might have preferred. Was it the light? Or was it— she winced again, the toe of a sturdy boot entering her side.

“Ow!” Leanna curled into herself, looking up now wide-eyed to see a gruff visage staring down at her, curiously.

“Thou’rt new here,” it said.

“And thee?” she responded, appalled to have discovered anyone in her path.

“Older than I look,” The visage smiled, revealing bits of leaf in their teeth, and they offered Leanna a hand. “I called these Woods home for the most of it.”

Accepting the hand, she rose to her feet and saw now a whole company of characters standing varying distances away.

“My name is Fantázo Fiala,” said the one who’d kicked her, a clear tone of personal pride shining through their rough countenance. “Friends like to call me Táz,” they said with a humble shrug, then turned with a grand gesture to introduce the others. Leanna could do naught but marvel as each waved to her upon mention.

“This here’s Penny of Ord,” Fantázo raised a salute to a woman who was about the same middle age as themself. She leant in comfort against a Tree with a gleam in her eye that meant she knew all the rules yet was unafraid to break them, and held an oddly long series of scrolls in her belt. “She takes care to see the rest of us do our parts and don’t wander off cliffs,” Fantázo explained, and moved on to the next.

“Then there’s Dilan-a-Jove,” They gestured to a younger man, and took on a tone of exaggerated facetiousness. “He’s always looking to put himself in the center of the grandest sunbeam.” Dilan-a-Jove wore a grand colored cape, worn only over a single shoulder, stitched with intricate designs. This, in combination with his perfectly kempt hair, gave him an appearance only slightly more lavish than all the others whose garbs, Leanna now noticed, were also bright and sumptuous. “But he looks out for the rest of us,” Fantázo confessed. “As our tailor, and resident costumer, he ensures the whole of us always shine.” On this last word, Fantázo put up their hands beside their hips with fingers spread wide, and shimmered them slight.

Dilan-a-Jove scoffed. “I cannot very well appear so marvelous without some visual support from the company. It would toss our entire stage picture out of balance.”

Fantázo shared a knowing glance with Leanna, or so attempted. She returned only a befuddled awe. In further explanation, the leader went on:

“Next to him there’s Gillian Roughhand, our carpenter; good heart in her, but she’ll beat thee bruised if thou star’st at her wrong, and that there’s Hanker Reed. He might look a bit big and frightful, but the most he aggravates is a little spat now and again with himself when he has trouble mixing the spices for a Forest stew.”

“But he’s much too hard on himself,” Penny of Ord chimed in. “He’s brilliant over a pot.” The whole of the company agreed, making Hanker blush.

“Then beside him stands the glorious Lady Laborious,” Fantázo said, delighting in their turn of phrase. Lady Laborious smiled slight to Leanna then paced toward Dilan-a-Jove, hoping for a new perspective on the odd stranger. Fantázo turned to speak hushed to Leanna. “She is usually perfectly pleasant when we aren’t working on a piece, but she does become a bit tiresome once we begin, for once she has a part in her hand there’s nothing she’ll do in all a day but rehearse her lines with varied alterations in emphasis and pronunciation. Every player tends to have the Lady’s part recorded in mind long before they do their own.”

Leanna grew increasingly curious, but introductions continued before she could inquire.

“And last of those who dared approach!” They called aloud to encourage those who had stayed further behind to come nearer then, as the rest began to shuffle forward, Fantázo gestured graciously to the last standing nearby. He was a very young man, condensed same in energy as he was in size. “This here’s Big Li, our favorite star, even Dilan-a-Jove must admit. Might look like a scrawny thing, but the power in his voice— oh, a song from him could reach the top of the Infinites.”

Leanna shook her head and turned to Fantázo. “Forgive me, I believe I may be lost.”

“Figured thou must be, this far out in the Woods.”

“No, I mean not in location, but in mind.”

“Ah, are not we all?” Dilan-a-Jove asked, though he neither expected nor wished for a response. Leanna turned back to the apparent leader beside her.

“Who are all of you?” She asked.

Fantázo took on their grandest smile and threw open their arms in a gesture of ceremony. “We’re the Woodbound Players!” they said, and the others cheered.

“A playing company? In the Woods?” Leanna confirmed, and all the many players grinned, wide-eyed. “All of you perform?”

“Each and every one!” The remainder of the company had now approached and Fantázo gestured to them each in turn. “Here now comes Taut, the weaver; Citron, the painter; Bellum, the tinker; Spark, the fire-tender; Duck, the mender; Slink, the joiner; Dizzy, the wheelwright; and, my personal hero, Quiliss, the scribe. All of them players in their own right when they want to be. Myself, I am the writer.” Leanna merely watched in amazement. Fantázo turned to her, jolting her to attention. “And thou art?”

“Me?”

“Indeed!” Fantázo remarked. “‘Tis thee who’s stumbled into our playing ground; it seems a reasonable query.”

“Yes, I suppose so, forgive me. I am Leanna.” The company looked to her expectantly, anticipating a complete title. “Oh. Leanna, the— Well, I suppose I’m not much of anything anymore.”

“Hast thou come from East or West?” Penny of Ord inquired.

“North or South!” Hanker Reed included enthusiastically.

“Is it possible to have come from so many directions when one is so far from the World Within the Woods?” Leanna responded.

Several players groaned in disappointment and whispered to each other. “Another Withiner,” Duck, the mender, assured the group.

“Are there those from without?” asked Leanna with new fascination.

“Well, however are we to know such a thing now that thou cannot provide any information on the idea?” said Lady Laborious.

Leanna’s brow only wrinkled more deeply.

“Calm, all, please.” Fantázo implored. They spoke to Leanna: “Dost thou have a home, my friend?” Leanna thought to respond in the positive but, upon consideration, merely shook her head. The leader offered a sad smile and appeared to understand. “Then count thyself a player,” they said.

Leanna stepped back in vigorous decline. “I have done no such thing in all my life.”

“Thou hast never played?” asked Dizzy, the wheelwright, astounded.

“Is it so odd?” Leanna asked.

“I would hope everyone might have played as a child in the least,” Dizzy explained.

“That, I have, but it is not the same. I mean that I have never performed upon a stage.”

“We have no stage!” Slink, the joiner, assured her.

“But I know nothing of the art,” Leanna resisted.

“That can be swiftly altered,” said Quiliss, the scribe.

“You could never be assured of any quality,” she tried.

Penny of Ord shrugged. “Then perhaps thou shan’t be cast in a role.”

“Still, thou shalt be among us,” Gillian Roughhand gave her a nod.

“Our meal-pot will be thine!” Hanker offered.

“And thy clothing soon entirely new,” Dilan-a-Jove declared.

“Our camp can be thy home, if thou wilt have it,” Fantázo finished.

Leanna gazed upon the many novel visages before her, each, in their way, thrilling at the prospect of welcoming her into their fold. It had been so very long since she last interacted with others and, in a moment of weakening constitution, she forgot her vow of solitude. She lifted her shoulders nearly to her ears before speaking aloud her entirely mad conclusion.

“Very well!” She smiled.

She was thereupon surrounded by the company and showered with chatter and friendly inquiries as she followed them back to their camp.

That evening, she sat amongst the players in their nightly circle around the fire, Spark sitting especially near to it with pokers and a pile of cut branches, and Hanker standing above the raised pot, filling and dispersing bowls of stew.

“Tell me true, new one,” Hanker began, taking another bowl in hand. “Dost thou enjoy an extra spot of licarga root?”

She shrugged. “I’m afraid I haven’t heard of it.”

“Ah! Of course. I sometimes forget the limitations of a withiner’s palete. The root reminds one of garlic, except it has a touch of undying spice that erupts on the roof of one’s mouth near the throat.” Leanna only smiled, confounded, and Hanker brushed off the inquiry, coming to his own conclusion. “I shall give it thee, and if thou likest it not I shall give thee none tomorrow.”

At last receiving a bowl and devouring a spoonful, Leanna gasped and exclaimed “This is magnificent!” while aiming her awe at the now beaming Hanker.

“The inner bark adds to the meatiness,” he explained, “and it’s the Infinite Herb which gives it that everlasting savor.”

“Each one of these stews is like a new fire,” said Spark. “No two are quite the same, but in all the years never has one failed to amaze.” The company nodded with various mumbled affirmations in between swallows.

“For how many years have you all resided hither?” Leanna asked.

All eyes drifted to Penny of Ord, as though she was the only among them who could have possibly kept record; however, upon feeling the many gazes and looking up from her bowl, she shrugged.

“Impossible to say, really,” she said. “Although, with the quantity of scripts we’ve begun, prepared, and archived, I think it must have been now over a century.”

“A century! Then there have been many a generation of Woodbound Players?”

“Oh no,” Fantázo said, for in this remembrance they required no record keeper. “We each met in Tradetown of Pavoline. It was not until working with one another for several a year that we decided to migrate to the Wood.”

“Decided— Ha! Were expelled, more like,” Quiliss said.

“Never legally,” Penny of Ord clarified.

“We were chased from the town!” Lady Laborious exclaimed.

“There would certainly be no performing if we were to ever return,” said Dilan-a-Jove.

“The people took a bit of offense to a play we had put up,” Fantázo explained.

“Said as though thou wert not the writer of the piece, Táz,” Big Li chimed in. “That was thine own fault, that was.”

“‘Twas thee, Li, whose voice carried the offense to their ears. Thou art as much to blame as they,” said Duck, the mender.

“‘Twas I who decorated the offensive scenery! Forget not my blame as well,” Citron, the painter, implored.

“Nor mine, for ‘twas I that built what he painted,” said Slink.

“And ‘twas I that designed what she built!” Gillian added.

“Well, ‘twas I who built the costumes!” said Taut, the weaver.

Dilan-a-Jove scoffed. “Darling, the costuming was the one aspect of our performance the public didn’t abhor.”

“That cannot be said for certain,” Taut pouted. “We never read a single review.”

“The pitchforks were review enough for me,” said Bellum, the tinker. ‘Twas she who played the second lead.

“Pardon,” Leanna broke in. “Do you all mean to say you lived entire lives in Pavoline before now residing a century in the Wood?”

The players looked to one another with little nods.

“The sound of it seems in the realm of correct,” Fantázo said.

“But it isn’t possible!” Leanna exclaimed.

“It isn’t?” Fantázo furrowed their brow, and then seemed to remember. “Oh, no, I suppose it wouldn’t be. Alas, it really is impossible to say.”

Leanna laughed as the players returned to their soup, entirely unconcerned with their previous subject of discourse. Infinite queries fought to break free from Leanna’s imagination, but the most curious now won against the rest.

“Players, what is it that gave you cause to wonder whether I might be from without the Wood?” She turned to Fantázo now, following the gazes of the others. “Hast thou discovered an end to them?”

“No,” they said, “But I did once reach the mist.”

“The mist?”

They nodded, and leant forward, whispering to conceal their words from the Trees. “Walk far enough into the Wood, and one day thou wilt reach a suddenly great density of mist. When I discovered it, the sun was shining so, even through the Trees, that I was able to vaguely make out my own form reflected on the vapor. The Trees went on forever beyond it, but they appeared so alike to those I had passed that it was not truly certain whether those I saw now were ahead, or merely reflections of what was behind. I reached out—” Fantázo demonstrated now with a quivering hand. “I reached out and sank just the very tips of my fingers into the surface of the mist, and in a fraction of the briefest moment, I saw everything.” They paused, remembering.

“Everything?”  Leanna asked, encouraging them on, and they snapped back into their tale.

“Everything! Not of what was at the time, but everything that had been before it; before me! Before all of us. I saw of a time when there were kingdoms of which I never knew tale; languages – several! – of which I had never heard; and world maps, far from the likes of ours. There was food I would never have imagined (much less eaten), but there were also beauteous landscapes, such sights, the likes of which I thought could never be. There was magic like none that we’ve known of, and violence like none that we’ve known of, and destruction, and goodness, and hate, and love. So much love, and yet never enough, since the beginning of time. All this, see, I saw with my fingertips!”

“High as a kite, they were,” Hanker laughed, and Fantázo confessed as such in a small grin.

“Still,” they went on. “It was in that moment I knew there would be no returning to Pavoline, nor moving our practice to Masor. The Woods needed us to tell their stories, and to question every answer that had been hitherto decided upon. No one is better suited to such a task than a company of theatrical players. ‘Philosophy’s Art,’ we call our work; for, what is philosophy beside posing impossible questions, debating the answers between a variety of minds, and preserving the discourse for posterity to consider and speak anew? Before this time, we had been merely fellows with a common pastime, but after we understood our duty. Henceforth, we were the Woodbound Players!, ever in search of that which resides beyond what we can yet imagine.” Fantázo finished with a grand smile as the rest of the company cheered and howled with great pride. Leanna mirrored their glee.

“I wonder if I could see it,” she thought aloud.

“The mist is a mighty journey out from here,” Hanker told her. “Think not of attempting it tonight.”

“No,” Leanna laughed. “I need not travel a single step.” She closed her eyes, sitting back against the large, felled branch behind her, and those sitting atop it leaned forward over their stew to observe her. She opened her mind to seek the world but, remembering the Jewel, closed it again, sitting up and reopening her eyes with terror. She looked to the Sky, fearing wrath, but none came. She waited, and even after moments all was still. Cautiously, she closed her eyes once more and sought with care, first thinking of Kennedy, then Esta, then even the dreaded Jewel, but every vision was hazy and indeterminate, every sound indistinguishable. She began to laugh, marveling at the mysterious Wood that could dampen her power, grateful and frightful all the same. She wept and laughed all at once, finally free to let in the world around her without danger. When she began to return to her sense of the present, the players all looked to her, frozen in countenances of varying concern and bemusement.

“Thou hast a story, hasn’t thee?” Fantázo asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Leanna confessed.

They smiled, Fantázo and all the players alike.

“We do love a story,” the company said at once.

Leanna smiled with a soft sigh, and, at their eager behest, began to tell her tale.

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Chapter XXV - Philosophy’s Art