VII. Legends, Rumors, & What the Grove Remembers

The Convergence Grove has accumulated stories the way the oaks accumulate rings, and the stories, like the rings, are not always visible from the outside. What follows is neither history nor confirmed account but the residue of what has been whispered, repeated, half-remembered, and embellished across enough centuries to achieve the status of legend if not of fact.

The First Revel

The oldest story told about the Grove claims that the first Revel in Fey history was formed within its boundaries: a gathering of Fey from all three nascent Crowns who shared a single night of accord that should, by every principle that governed the Crowns, have been impossible. No one agrees on what was decided that night. Everyone agrees that it is the reason the Grove has been considered neutral ground ever since, and that the Fey who left it before dawn were different from the Fey who had arrived, in ways their descendants have been working out ever since.

The Tree That Left

At some point in the Grove’s history, one of the oaks departed. Not fell, not died, not was cut: departed. Accounts of the event are consistent only on the fact that one morning the ring contained one fewer tree than it had the evening before, and that the soil where the tree had stood was undisturbed, as though the tree had simply decided to be elsewhere and arranged its roots accordingly. The Grove has never grown a replacement. Those who study the pattern of nine to thirteen suggest the departed tree represents something the Grove has not yet decided to acknowledge again.

The Oath That Bound a Crown

Somewhere in the accumulated memory of those who attend to these things is the record of an oath sworn in the Grove by an individual of such seniority within the Seelie Crown that the oath, by the Grove’s own property, became binding on the Crown itself rather than merely on the individual. What the oath was is not recorded in any source willing to state it directly. What is recorded, obliquely and in several independent accounts spanning different centuries, is that there is something the Seelie Crown cannot do, has not been able to do since the oath was sworn, and that those who know what it is do not discuss it in any venue where a wall or a tree or a bird might be listening.

The Mortal Who Stayed

The persistent claim, appearing in enough independent sources to suggest it is not pure invention, is that at least one mortal has remained in the Convergence Grove voluntarily and has not been relocated to the edge of the ring by the process that removes those who stand too long in the central space. What distinguishes this mortal from those the Grove gently moves is not known. Several Fey who have visited the Grove in recent memory report the faint impression of being observed by something that was not one of the bird-things and was not Fey, and that seemed, when attention was directed toward it, to be entirely content with where it was.

The Grove’s Question

The rumor that circulates most persistently among those with serious knowledge of the Grove is not about any specific event but about a pattern: the claim that the Grove is waiting for something. Not passively waiting in the way that old things sometimes simply persist. Actively waiting, in the way that a question waits for its answer, or a key waits for its lock. What the Grove is waiting for is the subject of significant disagreement among those who have spent the most time in its presence and are willing to discuss it. The two most common answers are: the return of whatever used to occupy the central space, and the arrival of a mortal who can stand there without being moved.

These two answers may or may not be the same answer.

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The Convergence Grove has existed longer than any currently living Fey can remember. It will exist longer than any currently living mortal will be able to observe. In the interval, it continues to be what it has always been: the place that belongs to all Crowns, all Courts, and all Revels and is beholden to none of them, where the oldest pacts were spoken and the newest ones are still being made, where the backward-playing birds sing melodies that are beautiful and deeply wrong in equal measure, and where those who pay close enough attention sometimes learn what they needed to know without being able to say exactly when they learned it.