Tag Archive | character: bishopmacnamilla

Blood on the Stone

Feb2

* The next time an icon day comes around, someone remind me I need a good icon of some sort for Fairy Town?
* Written to flofx‘s commissioned prompt: A continuation of Old Stories and old Fates.
* Fairy Town has a landing page here..

There were things those people in their tainted church would never say. There were things that no-one in this tainted town would even whisper, not even Bishop MacNamilla. There were things that you didn’t even think.

And one of those things was this: there were fairies and fairies. There were the things that looked like people, that you called “fairies,” or didn’t really even call that so much as shape the label around the space they filled. They went to work with you, if you were a lay person. They owned houses and shopped and, to a casual tourist, looked human. But they were a little strange, a little eccentric, a little tainted.

And then there were the demons that were actually fairies, the spirits and sprites, goblins and boggarts, monsters and mice, and they hid in the wild spaces, lurked around the gateways, lingered anywhere there were too many of the first sort, anywhere there was belief, anywhere the god had touched.

This altar, the place where it was said the god had Lain His Hand, was so thick with fairies it was a wonder the Bishop could move at all.

And every single one of them had heard of him. Is this the one that killed us? Is this the one that shed the blood?

Fairies, true fairies, had ways of knowing who you were that didn’t rely on faces or fingerprints or skin that was once smooth and now was sagging. Fairies, the real ones, it was said, knew your souls.

Bishop MacNamilla figured that was probably true. Most demons would, wouldn’t they?

He stood, his feet spread and his arms loose at his sides. So he had stood, once, explaining to the elders what needed to happen. So he had stood, over the graves of the demons, over the graves of the fairies, his hands soaked with their blood. So he had stood, when he had been weak.

He had let the children go, the spawn. He had let some of the females go, too. And the final nail in their coffin, the living victim – he had not been able to do that, either. He had been weak.

And now he was far, far weaker in body – and far, far stronger in will. He straightened his spine and looked at them, the demons deep in this holy place.

Is he the one? Is this the spirit-killer? Is this the Unholy Thing? Their voices buzzed around him. Their hands brushed over him, leaving places that were too hot or too cold. Their noses sniffed at him, rubbing their scent over him in turn. They couldn’t let it stand. They couldn’t let him live, not after what he’d done.

He was ready for it. Bishop MacNamilla raised his chin and looked them in as much of eyes as any of them had. They would kill him, of course. And his blood would spill over the god-stone. And then the world would shudder and the old magic, the old divinity, would awaken, and all this taint would be cleansed from the world.

His vision was blurring. The Bishop realized with some alarm that he was having trouble breathing. He was seeing spots. He was…

He slumped to the ground in front of the god-stone, his blood unspilled.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/892920.html. You can comment here or there.

The Bishop Speaks, a story of FairyTown

Jan8

Written to flofx‘s commissioned prompt: “Bishop Macnamilla says ‘The elders did not listen to me. They were squeamish’ in Faries in the Church. Just what happened between Macnamilla and the elders? How much did he tell them of what he wanted to do?”

Fairy Town has a landing page here.. This story is set a few decades or more before the “current” storyline.

Bishop Tanner studied the young priest standing in front of him. “Father Macnamilla. I see you are visiting us yet again.”

The others on the diocese’s council of elders shifted uncomfortably. Bishop Tanner didn’t fault them for that – Father Macnamilla brought an aura of discomfort with him. But they needed to remain firm and in control, or the hot-headed priest would be causing them more than just discomfort.

“I will continue to visit you until you listen to reason. I will continue to visit you until this diocese does what needs to be done.”

Bishop Tanner cleared his throat. “I’m sure that it appears to you…”

“No, no, Bishop Tanner. This is not a matter of what ‘appears to me.’ This is a matter of the holy writs and the scriptures of the Blessed Oren. This is a matter of what must be.“

The Father Above save him from zealots with books. “Ah, but the Gospel of the Blessed Leah-“

“Leah was a heretic and no fit prophet!” The young priest’s shout made the rafters shake and the elders flinch. “Don’t you see – can’t you see? Are you truly so blinded by the taint of this place-“

Bishop Tanner cleared his throat again, far more loudly this time. If Father Macnamilla kept going on about taint, Elder Judith was going to say something, and if she said something –

Well, if she said what he feared, then they would all be in a world of hurt. “Please tell me, Father Macnamilla, your plan, then.”

The priest was only too glad to comply. “The consecrated land of all our churches in this Diocese had been filled with the -” he hesitated, eyed the Bishop, and chose another word “-the unique air of this city, but that air belongs… belongs in places that are not the church. Fairies…” he spoke as if navigating his way through a mindfield, suddenly far quieter “…they do not belong in churches.”

Elder Judith might disagree, but Elder Judith had always understood her place on the Elder Council was on sufferance.

“Fairies do not believe in churches.” Bishop Tanner nodded. “If one ignores the Gospel of the Blessed Leah, this is truth as the Church acknowledges it, yes.”

“And, if the Church is going to remain ascendant and pure, we must purge the fairies from our churches.”

Bishop Tanner hid a wince. This was not the conversation to have in such a forum. “There are doctrines for this, yes.”

“Then why is the Church doing nothing?” Father Macnamilla slammed his fist into his open palm. “I’ll tell you why. Because the congregations have grown soft. Because the priests and the bishops and the cardinals have grown soft. Because fairy magic is tempting and we have all been led into temptation!”

“Father Macnamilla, this is not your pulpit.” Bishop Tanner found the strength to silence the tirade, but he feared it was too late. The words were out.

“No.” The young priest looked not at all calmed. “But I tell you, Bishop Tanner, it is not the pulpit where you will have to worry about me. Unlike many members of the city… my parishioners have not gone soft.”

“If you act outside the doctrines, you will be defrocked.”

“Oh, have no fear, Bishop Tanner.” The man was mad, truly mad. “I will act entirely within the doctrines and gospels.”

He stalked out, leaving Bishop Tanner to calm an agitated elders’ council. Between the elders and the thousand other small crises that attack a diocese in a city fairy-strong, it was weeks before Bishop Tanner truly had time to think about the father’s words again.

And by the time he opened the old doctrines to find what Father Macnamilla was talking about, the blood had already starting spilling.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/883555.html. You can comment here or there.

Old Stories and old Fates, a continuation of Fairy Town (More-please)

Jun16

This comes after The Church in the Park and is written to a more-please request.

It is part of my Fairy Town setting.

Some things could only be written in blood and etched in stone.

Some fates could only be erased with sacrifice, changed with pain, altered with devotion and the strongest of emotions: love, terror, aw.

Some stories could be moved from their place in the Book of Life, but only if one had the proper needle, the proper sinew, the proper glue to settle them in their new place.

Bishop Macnamilla knew these things, more than most and definitely more than a man of faith in any other city might know. He knew where the tools could be found, for those things that had tools. And he knew what elements were needed, when it was not something one could change with tools.

There were things he had not learned, however – stories that had been taught to him wrong, pages that had been left out of his book.

All of those things that he had not learned were coming to a head.

It took the fae very little time to find him, a Bishop, a Man of Faith standing at the Godsplace. They slunk and skittered, snuck and slipped up to him, whispering to each other, whispering to him.

Is this the one that killed so many? Is this the one who shed so much blood?

Is this the one come back to us? Does he know where he is? Does he know what that is?

Does he know? It this him? The whispers swirled around the Bishop like a storm, brushing against him, ruffling his clothes but never quite getting through. It didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now but the task in front of him.

Does he know? He did not, not the way the faeries meant it. But he knew this spot – this stone that looked as if it were a table, the stones that looked like a doorway. He knew the crosses set in the ground around it.

And he knew that if he shed the right blood onto the stone, the world would change forever.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/735502.html. You can comment here or there.

The Church in the Park, a story of Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Feb12

This is to kelkyag‘s and flofx‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

It takes part in my Fairy Town setting, after Fairies in the Church.

Names from Seventh Sanctum.

There were fairies in the church again.

Bishop Macnamilla was no longer a young man; indeed, he had not been able to make a pretense at youth for longer than most of the priests of the city had been alive.

And he had been watching the rot spread through his City and his Church for decades. He had seen the spread and done what he could – but not what he should – to stop it, back when he could make a pretense at youth.

The elders of the Church had not listened back then, and the young in the Church would not listen now. It had been up to him, no position and only the strength of his conviction, as a young man. And he had failed.

He tottered – he hated to admit it, but pride went before a fall and he was indeed tottering – back from Father Nehemiah’s abomination of a church. He could not do what needed to be done there, but there were other places. In this city, there were always the proper sorts of places. Before this place had been called ‘fairy town’ by the common people, before it had fallen to rot, it had been called the GodTown.

The Bishop went walking – limping – in the heart of the city, in the heart of a park where angels and demons feared to tread, where the dirty and the dusty had taken over. He tottered to the crossroads in the center of that park, and, from there, walked without fail, his back suddenly straight again and his steps sure, seventeen paces due north.

It did not take long for the fae to find him. In this park, they were lousy on the ground.

It took almost less time for the fae to realize where they were, and only a moment for them to realize who he was. But by then, the Fate was sealed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/665806.html. You can comment here or there.

Faries in the Church

Jun9

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of

⛪
“There are fairies in your church.”

Bishop Macnamilla was of an older school of thought, practically antediluvian. Most of the time, Father Nehemiah avoided conflict by avoiding the Ninth Street house where the Bishop kept his residence. The Father’s church was new, and not entirely conventional, and not near Ninth Street, and the Bishop’s body as well as his mind were old, and did not move easily.

But someone had said something, the Father was certain. The jowls on the Bishop were shaking in the way the once-fat man only did when he had been being yelled at by a parishioner who Didn’t Like Something. Probably not one of Nehemiah’s regulars. But sometimes the gossips from the other churches liked to stop in and visit.

“There are fairies.” Sometimes he could get away with just agreeing with the Bishop until he went away. “Margaret and LaKeisha are in there now. They’ve been helping Mrs. Bao with the cleaning, as it’s almost Easter time.”

“You have fairies in your church services, Father Nehemiah.”

He wasn’t going to be able to dance around this. “Better than having them standing outside the gates, glaring.”

“Do you know what happens when you allow – INVITE the fair folk into consecrated ground?” He was bellowing, or trying to. He must have been an impressive man before the long waste of age started eating him away.

“I’ve heard the stories. Mrs. Bao told me some of them. The kirkevaren told me others – and the fairies told me another set.”

“Ruin and ruination is what you get. Sin and sinners. Filth and the filthy.” The Bishop shook his head. “It leads to nothing but badness.”

“And blood?” Nehemiah drew himself up. He was tall, taller than the Bishop’s shrunken form by nearly a foot. “I know why there were no fairies in the church before, sir.”

“There are no FAIRIES in the church,” the Bishop shouted the word as if it were an obscenity, “because to allow them into out sanctified ground taints not only the ground but the entire city.”

Father Nehemiah was boggled enough by this to lose the edge of his anger, although he did remain standing straight, staring down at the top of the Bishop’s head. “You are aware, sir, that you live in the densest population of fae in the country, correct? The city is teeming with fairies.”

“The city is rotten with them. The elders did not listen to me. They were squeamish.” The older man’s voice finally dropped. “No. It was me. I was squeamish. I knew what needed to be done, and I could not do it. I failed my superiors. I killed them, Nehemiah, I killed those fairies you have heard of. I spilled their blood in the name of the city and its sanctity. I scrubbed the floors with the blood. I blessed the altars with it. But, in the end, I could not do what needed to be done.”

He didn’t have to ask, although he wished that he did. He’d already heard enough to put the rest together.

“You killed them before you buried them, you mean.” It hadn’t been meant to be another lamb under the church at all. “You blessed their deaths, instead of leaving them to roam.”

“I could have saved us all. I could have protected us all from what’s in the wind. But they look human, Nehemiah. They look human. And that was my undoing.”