The Families
The Families of Osk and Tirrith had long taken blood from amongst the common people. Over time the practice became more formalised through repetition. Osk would take from Tirrith, and Tirrith would take from Osk. Each year, a different Family would take, and each time they would take just one: a child, chosen by a child. And the one of common blood would be taken to the Family land, taken into the Family’s care, and treated as one of their own. The child’s origins would not be mentioned, and soon people would forget – if they had ever known – from whence the child came. Each Family numbered in the hundreds; getting lost within it was easy. What was more difficult, was rising to prominence, and power.
Osk had four great Families, and Tirrith had three. Seven families, taking one child, every seventh year. The tradition had started by accident, perhaps (its origin so long ago, that no historie recorded it), it is easy to imagine how it might have begun. An affair, a mistress. An illegitimate child got with a common woman. And yet, the child - that embarrassment - becomes precious; for while its true-born half-brothers and sisters might sicken and die, it grows up strong and healthy. And it still carries the Family blood, does it not? And the Family blood cannot be allowed to flow outside of the Family, so what is to be done, other than take the child, and make it Family? Time goes on, and that child’s children are healthy too. From embarrassment comes pride. Strong sons and fine daughters to make the Family fortunes flourish. So, it was sanctioned, this mixing with the common folk. But to remove the shame of such unions, do not let Family breed with the common ones, but rather, let the common one become Family first, take them as a child, and let time and change wash away their origins.
All the Families took up the tradition, although with reluctance. Even the normalising habit of hundreds of years has not been able to remove the lingering traces of knowing shame. The practice is little spoke of, never celebrated, and the chooser is always a child, with a child’s ignorant and forgetful mind. Its necessity, however, is as urgent today as it ever has been. If the histories speak of it at all, they say it began slowly. One babe out of ten born weak, or otherwise ailing. The frequency and severity of such births increased over the generations. Every birth anxious, despondent; and most a tragedy of sorts. Misshapen limbs, blindness, deafness, babes born too soon, or never at all, and carrying the mothers with them too, off into that dark unknown that awaits us all. Family strength dwindled, and focus turned inwards. The petty battles between Families lost their savour, and the greater, constant war between Osk and Tirrith died away.
For the Families then, the importance of the taking is such that it is little wonder that, despite the Families’ noble repugnance for the practice, it is a source of much thought, and planning, and hope. With the great minds behind the great machinations of the Families focussed (surreptitiously) upon it, a pattern was soon noticed: unions of an Osk child and a Tirrith Family, or a Tirrith child and an Osk Family produced the healthiest children. Once more, the Families would, with reluctance, make another sacrifice for the Family fortune: they would send the chooser to cross the wayste – the thin strip of nothing land that connects Osk and Tirrith, and is all really, that has prevented those two continents from devouring each other.
Osk lies to the north west, and Tirrith to the south east. The Osk families are the Bear, the Stag, the Lynx and the Wolf. Tirrith is home to the Eagle, the Falcon and the Hawk. It is said they are named such because the people of Osk are earthy and true, whereas Tirrith folk are fine but flighty. Or perhaps the Families of each land claim those differences out of a desire to hide their obvious similarities.
(a note in the margin here reads: Thought scholars were meant to be impartial? Fellow wouldn’t know what the Families thought anyway, doubt he’s had even so much as a sniff of a Bear’s crap …)
- Extract taken from a collection of notes in the library of House Anchwester, Lesser of the Bear. Thought to be preparatory notes written by an unknown scholar prior to beginning work on an amateur Historie.
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The head of House Leynard, Family Hawk, leant against a marble fireplace in the drawing room of his first mansion. His wife sat across the room, on an embroidery chair, a scrap of work upon her knee. Her slim body was swathed in the heavy fabrics she favoured, and great spills of lace obscured her cuffs and neck, so that all he could see of her were fingertips and the pale oval of her face. He could just about make out her frown from this distance and he sighed and scowled back in return, tapping an irritated hand on the cool marble of the fire surround.
‘He’s your Uncle, Marie. You must have some influence with him. I’m sick of House Ilnan treating us like distant cousins rather than next-blood as we are.’
‘There’s nothing I can do or say that will change what happens. Laurie is to be the chooser, it is quite simple. Can’t we just be thankful that he has been given that honour?’
‘Honour? Bah! Why can’t you see what is happening. They want House Leynard to fail. The boy was only chosen to make absolutely certain that the common one could not come here.’
‘Luke …’ she said pleadingly, with that slight tone of disappointment he sometimes heard in her voice.
He turned to face her and took a step forward. ‘We need new blood! I’ll talk of it woman, even if you’re too frightened, or delicate, to mention it. The line is failing. Emily can barely see-’
‘She just needs reading glasses, Luke.’
‘Nicholy is slow. His tutor says he struggles with numbers-’
‘He’s only five, dear.’
‘And Lawrence-
Marie half-raised her hand, an unconscious movement. ‘He’s to be chooser,’ she said firmly, ‘an honour.’
‘He’s a brat. A whiney, pathetic weakling. He spends more time in his bed, sniffling, than anywhere else.’
‘You can’t blame the boy for getting the flu.’
‘He looks like a girl dammit!’
‘The Ilnan’s are fair, look at cousin Renan. He grew up to be-’
‘Your excuses are getting on my nerves, Marie. Won’t you just stop defending them and look at what’s in front of your eyes?’
‘They’re my children. Our children.’
‘They’re the doom of this House.’
Small and slight, in the shadows of the unlit hallway outside the brightness of the room, little Laurie stood where no one noticed him. He had come downstairs because he felt sick, but it was late, and nanny was not around. The sound of voices had drawn him here, and now he stood, transfixed where he was. Too scared to go in to the grownups, but too fascinated by seeing his mummy and daddy to go back into the cold dark stairway and find his way back to bed.
Mummy and daddy were shouting about serious things that made him anxious, though he didn’t understand them. They were talking about him and Emi and Nicky. His daddy said he was brat and he began to cry.
Crying made his tummy feel worse and he knew he was going to be sick, but nanny and Mary weren’t around and there was no where to be sick and no one to hold his hair and stoke his back and clean his mouth. He was scared, because mummy daddy were angry and he was going to be sick on his own. Then his breathing went funny as it sometimes did. His throat went tight and he began to cough and gasp.
His daddy looked up and saw him there and his face was hard and dark. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he muttered, and gestured towards mummy so that she turned round and saw him there too.
‘Oh, Laurie!’ she said surprised and got up at once and came over to him. His daddy came too, but the look on his face was frightening and Laurie was sick on the floor.
Daddy said a word that made mummy flinch, then he walked out of the room and away very quickly. He did not look at Laurie.
‘Oh dear,’ said mummy. She held her pretty skirts out of the way of the mess on the floor and called for Mary to come, and nanny too.