Ox's Thoughts When He Meets 10-year-old Joe Bennett:

Ox's thoughts when he meets 10-year-old Joe Bennett:

Ox's thoughts when 17-year-old Joe Bennett finds out Ox finds him attractive:

Tam Lin retelling??????!!?!

I love Tam Lin, and I love Janet, but there are no retellings that take advantage of the fact that a) Janet was the kind of weirdo who set out one morning to lose her virginity to the mystical creature squatting on her land with a reputation for having sex with and/or demanding tolls from maidens, b) Tam Lin is what you get when a fairy queen takes a changeling, i.e., a badly-socialized, magic-addled waif of a Romantic poet, with more dramatic instincts than common sense.

All I want in my life is for to Janet march into the ruins of Carterhaugh, yanking up roses by their roots, and for Tam Lin to show up, demanding her kirtle green or the price of her maidenhead—

Only for her to—stay? afterwards???

And there’s this weird three-week span where Janet just…doesn’t leave, but keeps having sex with him, and looks at him with her serious dark eyes and a scowl, and then laughs at him—at him! Tam Lin, beloved of the Fairy Queen!—and Tam Lin falls inexorably and horribly in love. (He likes her ankles, and the unlovely knob of her knees; he kisses the pox-scars at her cheek and though Tam Lin is beautiful and fair beyond measure, he is jealous of her, the scar where the shears cut into her hand.)

She scoffs when he shows her magic. “What use is it?” she asks as he offers her the dazzling armful of jewels. “I can make cheese and parse a contract, speak a little Latin for the church-men and add up my father’s yearly taxes. Can your magic do that?”

She is different than everything he’s ever known, and Tam Lin is in love. Then she leaves.

She leaves.

Tam Lin spends exactly eight months pining, panicking, wondering if she will ever come back—and yes, writing epically bad poetry about Janet, His One True Love, Whom He Shall Tragically Pine For His Whole Life Long. He compares her to a dove. It’s bad. (The Fairy Queen has him sit beside her at Midsummer, and studies him with cool eyes, flat and lovely as silver. He shudders beneath them, he didn’t used to.)

(Afterwards, he is sick in a bush, his stomach trying to empty itself of the rich fairy sweets, the meats he loved in his youth, that taste of ash and nothing more on his tongue. Is it real? Janet had asked. I want nothing that is not real.)

Tam Lin pines so long and so longingly that he’s shocked when Janet herself shows up on the even of Halloween. “Are you sick?” he asks, because he’s never seen anyone’s middle swell up like that, like she swallowed something huge, and it sits in her stomach still.

“No, you ass,” Janet, His One True Love, says. “I’m with child.”

Tam Lin blinks. “Oh,” he says faintly.

……and she held him fast and feared him not, and afterwards, he’s curled up against her side in the weak morning light of All Souls’ Day. He’s still shivering from the feeling of his skin tearing off and then twisting up around him, twisting him into another shape. It’s fine, it’s fine, he just has to keep his paws—claws—hands fisted in Janet’s kirtle. Until he remembers that his throat is human can only make faint guttural noises, that he cannot purr. He cannot wind himself around her, coils of—no, no.

“Come on,” Janet says, not unkindly. Her fingers are very gentle, where they comb through his fur—hair. “Come. Come with me.”

She helps him to his feet, and Tam Lin is dizzy with how light he is, absent the Queen’s geas. He could detach from the earth and float away. 

Except Janet is there, holding onto his hands. “Well?” she asks, and it is the first time Tam Lin has seen her uncertain—her arms full of lion, a snake, and still she’d held tight, but now he is a man, and that is a different sort of animal.

“I follow you,” Tam Lin says, and he does.

Frederic William Burton - Hellelil and Hildebrand, the meeting on the turret stairs (1864) National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

okay, piper greenmantle everyone. is she lady macbeth? is colin greenmantle macbeth himself? is the raven cycle ALL just macbeth. idk seems like it to me.....

What to do When You Find Yourself an Unwitting Acolyte 

You must discover which god you serve. Study any idols or religious art you see but do so in secret; if the others see you, they will find you either suspicious or impassioned and you will not like what results from either. 

Always leave before daily worship, this way your god will not know you are a part of its congregation and you will be safe. 

If you are unable to do so, keep your eyes down. Do not look when the air around you changes colour or when the ground starts to scream. Cover your eyes with a consecrated cloth and keep silent. 

Leave nothing of yours behind in the sanctuary. You do not know who or what may find it and grow curious. 

Be warned. Should your god find anything you have left behind, they may take it as an offering. This will please them. You do not want their favour. 

Do not invoke the name of your god. Do not let it learn your voice or hear your pleas, for once it knows that you pray to it, it will shelter you in the heat of its many compassionate hearts. 

Never go near the sanctuary property after nightfall. This is the time in which the gods confer and they may be in need of the services of an acolyte. 

The skulls in the tabernacle are only to be touched by the ecclesiastics. You mustn’t go near them. You have yet to learn how to block out their songs. 

Should you find yourself having been given the terrible honour of becoming one of those most high ranking of priests, you must remember to always wear your gloves. Direct contact with any divine body fragments may result in your immediate consecration.

Do not sing any hymns. Do not even let them teach you the words. Once you know them, they will crawl their way up your throat and shriek themselves to the heavens until your voice is left rasping and broken, and even then a whisper will do. 

Lie to yourself, even if just to keep your sanity. Tell yourself that you are beholden to no god and that you worship nothing. Ignore the way your cup refills on its own, the liquid shining gold and tempting. Ignore the jubilant songs that echo through your house, shaking the walls and wrapping your heart in a frenzy of devotion. Do not think on it. 

Your god loves you. Even as you avoid and reject them, they will always love you. And you will love them too. Eventually. 

Tam Lin coming out from between the trees with his shirt open down to his stomach and the chiseled jaw of a greek god: do you not know the dangers of wandering this forest alone, fair maiden?

Bonnie Janet, who knows exactly what she’s doing: