Jacques Voland

23 | Wolf | M: Others Gathered {Ind.}, Sorscha {Dir.}

A platform alive with a group of entertainers paraded up and down the stage in costume and instruments in hand. A crowd gathered beneath a darkening dusk sky in the town square, watching attentively with the occasional roar of laughter. Jacques, dressed purposely poorly in a skirt over his capri-length trousers and a matted, black wig with a powdered face, brought the narrating performer’s story to life by portraying-

“There she stalks! All ye children, beware! Mothers, cradle your babes! Tis’ the hour,” a pause for anticipation building effect, the elder man drawing a torch below his face to illuminate it, “of the Midnight Wench!” The narrator had thundered in a voice to elicit a unified gasp from the crowd, his arms gesturing dramatically to Jacques and his over-the-top tip-toed stalk toward a small group of female performers cowering in a huddle of tattered street children's clothing. Their rehearsed cries were high-pitched, far too overzealous a show to be considered authentic acting, but nobody here was meant to be taken seriously anyway.

“They say she drinks their very souls if she can catch them,” another performer spoke conspiratorially from the far side of the platform, as if engaging in a hushed conversation with the crowd itself. Jacques threw his arms around the huddle of three women, making a scene of dragging them back behind the make-shift curtain as they wailed for help.

“You didn't have to actually scratch at me,” Jacques whined as they all had stepped off the back of the platform, feigning true agony over a small red line along his forearm as he stripped off the feminine costume with a distinct lack of care. The show was nearly over, anyway, having already lasted nearly half an hour. So the dreaded costume changes were done for the night.

“It made it authentic, darling, don't be so sour,” the rich and dismissive voice of the older woman responsible for the crime carried over, each ‘r’ she spoke rolled heavily. The noise from the stage persisted in its fast-paced finale - if Jacques hadn't already been on stage most of the night, he wouldn't have swapped out with Aldorian who wore a parody to Jacques’ discarded outfit. He was hardly someone who portrayed the Midnight Wench’s frightening character well in Jacques’ opinion.

The story varied by region within the kingdom, naturally, and these traveling entertainers changed the name and tweaked the narrative to be tailored to each regional audience. Jacques, and perhaps a vast majority, had grown up hearing varied tales of a woman - sometimes a woodland hag, other times a seaside seductress. Each variation ended with the hollowed corpses of victims. It was a tale commonly told to children to keep them at bay, especially in places like the orphanage Jacques had hailed from before he left several years prior. It had worked back then to scare him thoroughly. Now? A joke he helped portray.

The majority of the crowd had disbanded when the show came to its end, which left the performing crew to clean up everything they had set up earlier in the day into their wagons on the outskirts of the square. While Jacques had only been accepted into this group a handful of months ago for the sake of providing relatively easy labor and the occasional performance stand-in in exchange for money, he found that he quite liked this eccentric band of misfits.

“Jack,” the centerpiece narrator in the group, Dorian, a man well into his seasoned years with peppered hair and a graying beard to match, beckoned him over with an easy wave.
“It’s Jacques,” he corrected with a smile as he jogged over, just to remind the elder man in case he had forgotten. Again.

“That’s what I said,” he dismissed with a long roll of his eyes, coughing into a fisted hand while the other extended a letter toward the bright-eyed young man. “This had come earlier in the day for you. Slipped my mind.” He explained away before hunching his shoulders into another coughing fit. Jacques knew it wasn’t his place, and he would receive a slap upside the head if he were to make such an absurd comment, but he was quite certain that these days Dorian smelled… sick. It was a light scent, and he couldn’t explain its composition to any ear that would be willing to listen to such insanity, but Jacques just couldn’t let the thought go whenever he was in close proximity to him.

“I never get letters,” he said thoughtfully, before bringing it to his chest, his expression brimming with childlike excitement. “Do you think it’s a love letter? I would fancy an admirer. I’m a quite fetching man, just ask Octavia, she said so herself just the other day when I volunteered to unload the carts and-”

“I swear to the Gods alive and dead, boy,” Dorian had interrupted with an exasperated shake of his head. Right. They had this conversation a few times before. Jacques spoke too much and too quickly, which was the kindly summarized version of his usually received verbal reprimands. The older male walked away grumbling beneath his breath. Jacques knew all of what he said. It was faint cursings, but he could make it out. Still, those harsh mumbles did nothing to diminish his sheer excitement as he hastily tore into the letter without exercising any caution. A displeased frown pulled his lips down, a disappointed huff pushing past his lips as he read the letter over. Numbers? This was no good. He’s not a mathematician. Perhaps his secret admirer was a genius who expected him to decode it.

The letter sat heavy in his pocket well into the night as the curly-haired male thought it over while otherwise effortlessly dismantling and hauling the platform pieces into its designated cart. “Why the long face?” A woman with bobbed auburn hair, a handful of years older than Jacques himself, Octavia, crooned in sympathy as she approached with a damp rag to offer to clean the powdered makeup off.

“I have a secret lover, but they’re much too smart for me,” Jacques replied, dusting his hands off on his slacks and plopping onto the edge of the cart, allowing the slender woman to dab his face. “They even sent me a coded letter.” He added, producing it from his breast pocket and passing it to the woman with a hung head.

Silence stretched for a few long seconds before, gently, and with level patience, “Jacques,” she had begun, passing the letter back. “Those are coordinates. A location you would find on a map.” She explained, as if he were a child. Jacques snatched the letter from her hands, eyes narrowed. He wasn’t that oblivious. This was clearly a very carefully coded-

Oh. No. Now that he really thought about it, these were most certainly coordinates. “Oh,” he drawled out loud, raising his other hand and allowing his forefinger to tap against his chin. “So they must want to meet with me somewhere, surely. That’s rather romantic. And mysterious. They must be lovely if they’ve put so much effort into trying to court me so curiously,” Jacques kicked his feet gleefully, clutching the letter closer to himself. It was a bit of an unconventional way for anyone to make a declaration of admiration, but Jacques was so deeply touched to have caught the attention of someone so enigmatic. So of course he would meet his destined lover, with haste!

• • •

With ‘haste’ came at a loosened definition of give or take a week-long span, but Jacques was nonetheless deterred. It must have been fate for him to go, considering the universe aligned the majority of the travel to his destination with where his fellow friends had already set course for weeks in advance. There was really only a day and a half that Jacques had spent walking alone, having had an emotional goodbye with his group and promising a return with whoever loved him enough to want to meet with him in such isolation. Of course, there had been some pessimistic entertainers who called it a scam or a sure ticket to be murdered in the middle of nowhere. But Jacques brushed it off. There was no other explanation for this wonderfully mysterious letter to him.

The curly-haired boy was so excited, in fact, that he walked through the woods overnight due to his restless anticipation. There was certainly a bit of an eerie sensation that had threatened to claw at his bravado, but he would not be so easily deterred from destiny after coming so far. Considering he had traveled concerningly light as well - nothing more than a satchel filled with a few days of food and water at most, and a collection of necklaces he would offer his beloved admirer that Octavia had given him. Aside from that, even his clothes were minimal at best. A tan tunic with rolled-up sleeves and trousers that had seen better days, if the small tears from the knees down were any testament. It was no problem for the determined Jacques, however. He even found a sense of tranquility within the woods once the sun had come up, though he was less observant of its alterations until he came to a clearing.

No matter the creepy stone pillars and symbols or the stone circle, or even the premise of the setting he found himself in, why were there so many others gathered in a place that had surely been meant only for him? A mistake, it had to be. Jacques opened the letter he had kept close to his heart for the last several days and looked over the coordinates again. He had been so careful in following them, so this couldn’t be the wrong place. A dreadful thought washed over him as he stood there stiff-shouldered and with a face that reflected nothing short of disappointment. His secret admirer must have admired others, too. Was this a battle of the best suitor? Jacques drew his gaze up again to the men and women gathered a short distance away. That just didn’t make any sense, though. Perhaps multiple people gather here to meet with secret admirers? Is it a custom of this region he was dense too?

Jacques walked forward with the slow caution and saddened face of someone who had just been told their dog had been struck by a passing wagon - his eyes carefully looking over the faces gathered. Some uncertain, others more stoic, curious, and two who emanated tension between them. Whatever conversations that had been taking place were disregarded with his approach.

“I’m looking for a secret admirer who sent me a letter - I can’t say what they look like, but they must be a very seemly individual,” Jacques said to no one in particular as he stepped into the circle, feeling a strange pull that spoke to his instincts. “See? It was so meticulously done. It’s fate.” Jacques declared to the unsuspecting victim of a woman with darker hair and a warmer complexion of a station most certainly higher than his own, judging by her clothing alone. The wealthy were mysterious, weren’t they? His eyes narrowed in contemplation before he ultimately dropped his letter to the ground and turned away, feigning a hand over his forehead.

“It was all a scam, wasn’t it? I’m a very decent person. How could someone toy with my heart like this?” He complained, glancing between another much shorter woman and a more frighteningly tall male figure. While he was here, it wasn’t a total loss though. Jacques could befriend anybody, he believed confidently, and at least they could share in the agony of being scammed together.

None of these people were accredited members of the scientific community, were they? His original thought of “oh these people must be here for a meeting about the philosopher’s stone” was wishful thinking. Of the few people currently gathered (and more were anticipated due to the size of the circle), they all appeared to be in other trades.

Remy glanced at the others, then nodded to himself as to say, “yep, not alchemists.” A ditzy-looking girl was braiding flowers, lost in her own world; a taller blonde man who had arrived not long after he had commented on the crickets, although none moved to address it until another laughed at the absurdity of finding that man in the gathering. Other people, if they were sensible enough, would probably edge away from the scene. A dark-haired woman in colorful fabric stepped up introduced herself to kill the scuffle. Braver than he would ever be…

People were so funny. None of those gathered had anything in common, nothing to do with each other.

He sucked in the warm air around him and studied the ruins further, tuning out the soft chatter behind him. Thankfully, the ruins did not appear to be made by the lizard people. First of all, they were too far away from a river to be sustained. Second, the carvings were too intricate to have been made with webbed fingers- not that he has experience. He’s not a lizard person, okay?
On the other hand, the symbols left behind weren’t alien. They resembled other Earthen cultures, though less of a language and more… ruiny? If that’s a real word that real people use. Ugh, Remy shook the thought out of his head. Aliens would not be building a stone circle in the middle of nowhere. They were so much more refined than that. Besides, the stones looked less like they were placed there and more like they were escaping from the Earth. Each stone was chained to the ground by vines and a blanket of moss, preventing them from rocketing into space.

Hold on a minute… What stone type is that? Do these even come from the forest?

Remy plopped down on the grass by the nearest stone. Unfortunately, the morning dew had yet to evaporate. It was times like these that he was glad to be wearing thick canvas pants, and ones that were pretty worn out already.

He took in the rustic smell of his new working area. Fresh soil and a hint of honeysuckle. At least it didn’t smell like frogs. His nose scrunched in disgust, frogs were always watching with their beady little eyes. Even if it didn’t look like they were spying, they were. Frogs are untrustworthy, shifty little fellows who are always up to something.

It couldn’t be limestone, the stone wasn’t made up of multiple granules of other kinds of rocks. Shame… limestone was always the easiest to identify, and the most common too! It always had a dusty taste to it, despite whatever it was around. He would find a nearby rock and test that part for himself, but there were too many people around. Some things could not be progressed, even if for the sake of science.

His long fingers brushed over the surface of the stone, completely entranced in his new project. Polished igneous perhaps? It felt smoother, more like it had been formed from volcanic activity. That could be a long shot since there were no volcanoes around and it would have to be carried via glacier, but time and a river could achieve a similar effect.

The problem was that the stones themselves were too light to be many igneous rocks. It wasn’t flaky, wasn’t speckled, didn’t shine, and had a creamier grey color to it. Likely, by the looks of it, it would rank higher on Moh’s scale. It seemed too strong to be scratched, but could probably be taken out by a chisel and a really strong arm. Maybe around a seven.

Remy paused for a moment to lament the fact that he would likely not be a candidate to carve these rocks. Thankfully, the work had already been done.

He wanted to hit his head off of the dinosaur-egg sized rock. Curse you, modern science! The knowledge available to him did not include foreign rocks or strange symbols. Also, he was too low on acid to test that way.

Still, he didn’t give up. He left the characteristics he had found in his head, pulling them off to the side in a little chart and matching up potential links.

Oh.

He smacked his hand to his forehead. Duh, it’s not one rock, it’s a mixture of two. Shinier and harder materials tend to fall toward minerals, although this appeared like something that could be found in the backyard. The original builders needed strong building materials and managed to find something amazing.

A phyllite-quartz mix. Yes, that must be it.

Phyllite on its own could not withstand so well against the carvings or against the rough ware of the forest once brought above the Earth. The quartz within it acts as a support and reflects outward, giving it both a more polished look and letting it not crumble like slate. It’s an ideal building material, due to its resistance to acid and many kinds of heat.

His face lit up like a little girl who swore she saw a unicorn. He scrambled to stand and share his ground-breaking discovery.

Giddily, he whipped around and hopped to the nearest group of people. “Phyllite-quartz!” He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, “These rocks aren’t from here, they were brought in with the ice age! You see- the two must have been blasted together due to the high pressure, but the shifting of the axises and change in position to the sun sent everything flying so it all jumbled up here-” he flung his hands around to demonstrate the glacial creep, hoping they understood the point. “And then the-”

Wait, why did they look like that?

His face contorted with confusion. He interrupted something, didn’t he?
The tall blonde man from earlier had found himself at the receiving end of another man’s dagger. The two were… agitated? No, that couldn’t be it. Of course it was, there’s a sharp and pointy object for goodness sake!

“I’ll just…” his face blanched, wishing he was on the other side of the Earth, “see myself out.” He took a few steps away from the confrontation and rubbed his neck sheepishly, suddenly failing to remember why he even analyzed the rocks in the first place.