My First Word at the Fore is ‘Yergh’

A lot of time has gone by since this…what to call it? Some of the girls call it an adventure, but I think of it more as a disaster. A lot of time, and a lot of even crazier adventures. Amazing, how much time, and change, and feelings I had to moil through before I could even touch the first version of this battered old notebook without shuddering.

In fact, I didn’t think I ever would be able to face rewriting this splorch of a record. But a while back, during the recent—and much bigger—mess, I let some people read my records, and their questions made it pretty clear to me that I was going to have to redo it.

I first wrote it right after it happened, when I was still good and mad. I’d thought my memories—so vivid and fresh—were the best perspective on events, but I’ve since learned that the madder I get, the less trustworthy is memory. I recalled my side, all right, but I also remembered a whole lot of anger-driven guesses as facts. That’s the kind of thing I have to fix if I’m going to have these records stand as an honest chronicle of my time, and not just a long CJ rant.

Since I did let others read this, I can no longer assume that my records will just be for Mearsieans further down the stream of time. People who know us just a little were confused, which makes me realize that any id—ah, person trudging through my records in the future might not know anything about us.

You can skip this part and go straight to what happened if you already know who we are. If you don’t, here are some quick details.

You’ll know, of course, that I am Chereneh Jennet, princess, or left-hand splat, to Clair, Mearsies Heili’s queen. Being a princess doesn’t mean fancy clothes (who’d see them?) or fancy rituals (who’d attend ‘em?), but being in charge when Clair’s not around for some reason.

We have no court, and no nobles, in small, mostly-farm-and-wood Mearsies Heili. We’re kids. We’ve been kids for a while, now. It can happen here on Sartorias-deles, I hope you’re aware; I didn’t know any Old Sartoran history when this adventure occurred, so in case you’re still learning old history, I’ll just tell you that our ancestors used to control a lot of things—including their aging process. The light magic non-aging spell is a kind of faint echo of that.

Anyhow, Clair didn’t have any siblings, and when she was small she was alone a lot, learning magic, so she zapped her way around on our continent, finding girls who were unhappy, and offering them a new start, then she discovered how to transfer to other worlds. It was on Earth that she found me, and later Gwen.

Eventually there were nine of us all told—not counting Clair’s cousin, meanly named Puddlenose by the Chwahir who kidnapped him when small (that’s again another story, some of which will get airing here) and his traveling buddy Christoph. They were itchfeet, and regarded Mearsies Heili as home base, rather than home.

Local Villains

We had plenty of fun. Life in Mearsies Heili was great. Sometimes we ran around the white palace up on top of Mount Marcus, and the rest of the time we were down below in the forestland that takes up much of the middle of our small country, staying nights in the cozy underground hideout—nicknamed the Junkyard, so any outsiders who overheard us talking about it wouldn’t think it important—that Clair made with a long series of magic spells.

The only annoyances were the Chwahir. See, way back before Mearsieans settled on this land for a new start, Tser Mearsies (Tser means old, in case this is translated) was fairly near the Land of the Chwahir. This was on the Sartoran continent, halfway around the world. The Chwahir, having ruined most of their land—the part not ruined by the Colendi when they put up those mountains a kabillion years ago or so—needed (they felt) to conquer some new (I guess trade was beneath your average dark magic Sorcerer King—or maybe they were terrible at it) and Guess Who was right in their path.

Chwahir and Mearsieans had been battling it out, not just warfare-type fighting but magic and every other way of force-versus-resistance that humans have come up with, for centuries. When a group of Mearsieans left and came here almost 800 years ago to find peace and settle a new land, it wasn’t long before a land-hungry younger brother of the Chwahir ruler also managed to find his way after them, bringing a lot of warriors (that’s about all you can do in Chwahirsland, if you happen to be a boy, is be a warrior) and the typical Chwahir ruler ‘what’s yours is mine’ attitude.

You can look at my old records on the history of MH if you really want to know how our capital city was raised into the sky to be on a level with the palace, and how the Chwahir took the Shadowland below as theirs. Just know that this was how things looked when Clair inherited her throne at age thirteen.

Locally, then, we had Kwenz of the Chwahir, older brother to the far crueler and nastier Wan-Edhe—back in Chwahirsland, halfway round the world—and Kwenz’s heir was a kid named Jilo. We Mearsieans had had a lot of clashes with Jilo and his gang of follower-spies, you can bet. Duel…to the pie!

You can also bet that Wan-Edhe interfered from a distance. Kwenz hated us, but sometimes it seemed like it was old habit, rather than real conviction. Clair was sure that if his younger brother hadn’t been constantly nosing over his shoulder, Kwenz would have liked to be left alone with his books and old man dreams, and Wan-Edhe had messed up Jilo so much with various spells to keep him from conspiring, about the only clear thing ol’ Pilo wanted was our underground hideout. Hah!

As for Wan-Edhe, he’d ruled way too long, and horribly, and he was known for his cruelty, and his grudge-holding against a loooong list of pet hates. And right there at the top of the list were all Mearsieans. Which is why he’d kidnapped Puddlenose—Puddlenose is the nicest of the things Wan-Edhe called him so often they became his name—when he was a baby, just for the sake of meanness. Well, that was one reason.

The other reason was because he had no other heirs. Wan-Edhe killed off his brothers (that was how things were done in his family) except Kwenz, who wasn’t really a very good villain, more of a library nerd, and had also killed off all their sons.

Except one, who got away.