Sketch by Sketch

Inspired by “The Kith of the Elf Folk” by Lord Dunsany

These I have drawn: a hillside of moonlit clover; creeks cradled by heather; a forest beyond the stone walls of a pasture. And all just to get home; I’ve been gone so very long.

Today you’ll find me in the green layers beyond the city, sidestepping the coiled corpses of men’s dreams, bypassing industrial towns where mechanical beasts gnaw on adolescent hearts. For out here dwell the kith of my childhood: the salamander, fox, rook, and deer. Old friends too are the mosses and ferns, the spirits of pollen, the ghosts of tree rings. All under the watchful eye of Pan.

You see, my troubles began as a child. I had become obsessed with humans, would sketch their tall bodies and lively faces on everything from peeled birch bark to rain puddles to hardened flows of sap. I read and reread all the stories about them—romantic tales of knights and beautiful maidens, of epic battles and hidden treasures. To me, the human soul mirrored endless romance and wonder. The mortals, it seemed, dared to dream of anything—they dared to dream of us.

O how I longed to dance and love and sketch wildly among them! To escape the confines of Pan’s wild domain—to posses a soul!

Such desires led to secrecy, to a thousand sketches wrought in the abandoned swamps where not even the banshee would go. Over time, and at the pace of a snail’s whisper, the leaves of my face turned autumn and blew away. My wings shriveled and fell. I had somehow willed myself, sketch by sketch, into the abrasive, mortal light of Man.

Alas, the humans were not at all as I had expected. Romance played almost no role in courtship or marriage. Foreign to me was their hunger, pain, deep sadness. Strange and worrisome were science and religion. Hardships overcame me, and I soon found myself bowing to the snickering god of apathy. Before long my eyes turned the colour of winter, and my mind broke apart as a flower in a storm. I do not know if I ever gained a soul.

Yet despite my disappointments, one small comfort always remained: my ability to sketch, though I no longer draw anything related to mortals or their dead dreams. Instead I lose myself in the mossy wood and wild heath, desperate to reveal the true music and landscapes of my youth. Always I am trying my best to get the details just right. It is all I can do to return, for I am at the mercy of human imagination.

(From the book The Hunchback's Captive and Others)