Listen! She knows winter comes, knows we come. When shadows be longest, we UnSeelie rise. So She gathers light into Herself to hold Her weakling people through the cold.
Ha! How I love it then: gnashing of teeth, trembling of limbs, tooth red in the gum, stone in the eye, heart beating in the hand. How I love to hear the weak puling of those milklings, whose blood be like whey. The struggle, dark/light, death/life. Ho!
Already, we prepare the way. Listen! The scream of an old woman brought down by a Ravener. Smell! A man in Founder’s park strangled with twine and mistletoe. Taste! A village well poisoned, a crop blighted, dung in the porridge. Touch! A child stolen from his cradle, a wooden log sprinkled with blood left in his stead.
This be my duty.
This be my delight.
I write sonnets in my enemy’s blood. I dip my red cap in a thousand years of war. Ho!
Strength be needed now: fist, spear, blood. Now I cry vengeance, argue it in our own court, the UnSeelie. I stand here, cap newly red with blood. The old woman’s blood. The man in the park’s blood. The boy child’s blood. My muscled legs spread apart. Let them see my maleness. Let them desire me. Let their jealous natures feed me. All help me reach my ends.
“We be under threat,” I tell them. I speak first in that hushed voice that draws all ears. Even my dark lord listens.
Then loudly I say: “Humans and their iron destroy our world. Let us hunt them as once we did. Not one by one by one. But all of them. Let us make tithes of blood sacrifice. Let the winter be long. Let the dark be king.”
Jackdaws caw my name. Wolves howl. Jackal-headed men caper on the red carpet. Overexcited, one squats and lets loose a series of black pebbles. The King blows him into ashes, along with his shit.
My voice rises even louder. “Now be the time to cull their weakest. Pull down their strongest. Take back their power. No more this easy pax. We must war on the Seelie court. Take the Highborn and we take the Game.”
And then the hall bursts into flames of laughter, shouts of my name. Only my King sits silent on his throne. No smile creases that dark face. But I know he agrees with me.
After all, he has not blown me into ashes. Hah!