Feelied: The World-leech

By Jeffrey Arrington

An old legend of the pixies about a monster that could destroy the whole of the world, The World-leech is a tale of bravery and opposition that follows Bjorg, a pixie, blue and lean, an avid hunter of rats, bladesmith, and possibly the only one with the wherewithal to oppose the leech before it consumes the world.

Word count: 8,200

Inspired partly by Norse myth and my frustration with too few fairy-tales actually being about fairies and pixies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312767829

Book preview

Feelied: The World-leech

The World-leech

In the long, long ago...

In the old forest; where the mighty trees grow, their leaves growing big enough for the pixies to use as parachutes, their dark syrup harvested for the most valiant, down to the most humble, of culinary and medicinal purposes; where the grain grew tall and wild, in towering rolling fields, painting the country side in rich amber; where the mushrooms grew healthily, shining golden, and large enough to feed a family for a week; in a small bucolic village, with its stone houses with roofs of straw, its weathered wooden cabins, its rough, uneven roads, there lived a pixie named Bjorg.

Bjorg hunted the most grizzly beasts of the fields, those monsters too savage to speak of, their furs soaked in blood, soiled with dirt; filth are their garments, those vile creatures: rats, rats whose pelts, upon death, are claimed by Bjorg, the trapper of the hills, who sometimes crafts these hides into leather and often trades these leathers and furs with Koli, the blacksmith, for tools, or with Calder, the tailor, for new clothes.

An avid blade-smith, Bjorg makes all his own weapons and knives, and prides himself on the his technique of tempering, from red hot to cherry red, then from cherry to straw color in the fire, then into the Bhrine river, then reheated in the fire and left to cool for one month in the ashes from an oak tree, which he claimed made the metal both hard and flexible. No one claimed to make better blades than Bjorg, not even Koli, but Bjorg would not sell his knives, not a one, but rather he gave his knives as gifts to whomever he liked most, indeed, this was his pride, and it may be said that he cherished no one more than Volund.

Volund, who hated crowds, despised the concept of villages, and even spurned the very notion of society itself, nevertheless spent many hours together with Bjorg, doing what two men of the mountains do, together; hunting, hiking, camping, flying through the trees, telling jokes, as well as stories -both true to life -events experienced by one, or both, of them-, and grand tales of ages past; myths, legends, and history, all three seeming to the two of them to meld together into one narrative.

On a day with calm weather, bright, clean light from the