The Inglenook Storybook. The Origin

Once upon a time, long be­fore the world be­longed to man, there lived a gob­lin with his two broth­ers. Their home was a cave so craft­ily hid­den by branches and bushes that nobody would have guessed it was inhabited. 

I have to tell you, secret­hood was the gob­lins’ way of life. They would hide their homes from other creatures and even from their own kind as they were sneaky and en­vi­ous be­ings. Secrets was what they lived for. Gob­lins were mas­ters of the min­er­als and their know­ledge of plants was un­ri­valled by no other. They would gather rare herbs and moss to con­coct their fam­ous po­tions, they could find pre­cious stones in the moun­tains and used ma­gic to com­bine rare metals. Their craft was their life. 

Fair­ies, fauns, satyrs would come to trade for their po­tions. Some were used to heal, some to poison en­emies, they could cre­ate life or des­troy it. Dwarves and elves would search their min­er­als and metals. As we all know dwarves like mak­ing jew­elry and weapons for which they needed the rare metals from the gob­lins. Trad­ing with gob­lins was not easy since their where­abouts were un­known so they had to wait for the gob­lins’ mar­ket that was held every full moon on a dif­fer­ent loc­a­tion. As their tra­di­tional way of life was based on con­ceal­ment it is no shock their fam­ily ties were not af­fec­tion­ate. Gob­lins mate be­cause it is in their nature but they see kids as their com­pet­i­tion and they are most of the time left to grow up without much sup­port. The secrets of their craft were not passed on from one gen­er­a­tion to the next but stolen. Gob­lins’ kids are very curi­ous and  re­source­ful so they try to sneak out as much gob­linesque know­ledge as they can find and when they have enough they look for a secret hideout and move out. 

It is also rare for gob­lin broth­ers to share a cave. They prefer solitude and that changes only when they meet their mate. Yet, the hero of this story was the young­est of three gob­lins and his name was Ith­ildin that could be trans­lated as Moon­light. He pre­ferred sil­ver to other metals and he would gather crys­tals that he would not trade but keep for him­self. His older brother had an angry tem­per and he was called Tar-culu-knutu which means Golden­nut. The middle brother was noth­ing spe­cial as usu­ally they are and his name was Buskaz which would be loosely trans­lated as Bush, some­thing or­din­ary that nobody would beat about.

Their life was hap­pen­ing pretty much the same as it had been for thou­sands for years when some­thing oc­curred that would change the world as they knew it. That grain of sand into the mech­an­ics of the uni­verse was the ap­par­i­tion of a new spe­cies which would later be known as homo sapi­ens. But, in those times it was called Firya which is the Elvish word for mortal. 

Ithildin’s life was changed for ever the day a group of Firya found shel­ter into the forest where he was busy dig­ging up some roots. The group was not small, there were about ten fam­il­ies and they camped in a clear­ing close to a stream. In or­der not to be seen Ith­ildin hid be­hind some trees and watched them for a while curi­ous to see how they are as he had never met their kind be­fore. He had heard his par­ents talk about Firya with hatred and con­tempt. Gob­lins were not par­tic­u­larly fond of any creature but they dis­liked Firya the most be­cause they would cut down trees to build cot­tages, they would hunt and kill an­im­als in the forest with no fear for the con­sequences. Still, no gob­lin would pass an op­por­tun­ity to study some­thing strange and new so Ith­ildin fol­lowed them for a few days learn­ing their speech and their ways. One day as he was watch­ing some chil­dren play he got so ab­sorbed that he did not hear one of the fath­ers ap­proach­ing his hid­den spot. The Firya got so close he al­most stepped on his feet. Ith­ildin froze not know­ing what to do when to his sur­prise the man be­haved as if he did not see him and he con­tin­ued to walk past him. At first, he could not be­lieve his eyes and in or­der to check he came to the fire and sat near a fam­ily. Nobody saw him. From that day on he would come and stay among them listen­ing to their dia­logues and stor­ies and they were none the wiser for it. Some of the small chil­dren could sense his pres­ence and they would touch him from time to time laughing. 

After a while Ith­ildin real­ized that Firya were not able to see any other creature. One day a fairy was fly­ing over the clear­ing and they did not no­tice, some other time two gi­ants were fight­ing mak­ing a lot of noise and all they said was: “Look, there is a storm coming!”

It took him many weeks to learn their lan­guage. Gob­lins were keen on lin­guist­ics. They could quickly learn and eas­ily re­pro­duce any kind of lan­guage spoken by any creature in the nat­ural world. 

Listen­ing to them chat­ting, Ith­ildin was amazed how Firya ex­plained the world. Everything that happened was done by some in­vis­ible en­tity they called Gudan. There was a big Gudan in the sky that cre­ated the world and many small Gudans that were re­spons­ible for the rain, fire, wa­ter, sun, and so on. In the morn­ing, at sun­rise, sil­very drops of dew would ap­pear on flowers and leaves. Firya were not able to see the fair­ies fly­ing over and spread­ing sil­very wa­ter from their sprink­lers. They would say Gudan wept dur­ing the night be­cause they were not good enough and His tears fell on the ground. When it was stormy and the sky was torn apart by thun­der and light­ning they did not see the gi­ant eagles that were fight­ing in the sky over their ter­rit­or­ies. Firya said Gudan was angry with them. “Where do they take these crazy ideas from?” Ith­ildin asked him­self. Firya also liked draw­ing and writ­ing on stone tab­lets, on pieces of wood. Writ­ten lan­guage was not new to him be­cause elves and dwarves also had books and an­cient scrolls in their homes. Gob­lins did not have a writ­ten lan­guage. They con­sidered put­ting down their secrets would be a weak­ness as they could eas­ily get stolen that way.

Ith­ildin be­came more and more fas­cin­ated with Firya’s stor­ies which were the most pe­cu­liar he had ever heard. First of all, they were en­tirely in­ven­ted and secondly, they had a Firya hero in all of them who would fight other creatures. Some of the creatures were very sim­ilar to the ex­ist­ing spe­cies: fair­ies, gob­lins, elves, dragons and such but they were very dif­fer­ent from their name­sakes from real­ity. How could they de­scribe what their own eyes had never seen? It was like listen­ing to some born-blind be­ing de­scrib­ing the col­ors of flowers or the beauty of the sun­set. Maybe the stor­ies came from their dreams. Still, no other be­ings pos­sessed such an abil­ity: to cre­ate im­ages out of words. Ith­ildin named it in­tyale which is close to imagination.

Maybe it was his gob­linesque nature after all but Ith­ildin felt he found the most pre­cious ma­ter­ial in the world: the stor­ies that were cre­ated by Firya’s  in­tyale. He thought it would be a pity if they were to be lost so he tried cap­tur­ing them in a book. He used the finest ma­ter­i­als to make pa­per for the pages  and he star­ted re­cord­ing all the stor­ies he heard by the fire. 

The prob­lem was his broth­ers had no­ticed his un­ex­plained dis­ap­pear­ances and his more than usual sneak­i­ness. Their fine noses smelt some­thing was not nor­mal about his be­ha­vior and they de­cided to fol­low him. 

Ith­ildin was so thrilled with his dis­cov­ery that he paid little at­ten­tion to them. He was busy writ­ing stor­ies in the book each day and some­times he would add his own ob­ser­va­tions about Firya. He kept his book hid­den in the inglen­ook un­der some fire­wood. When he would leave his home he would put a spell on the book so that nobody could see it. He ad­ded more and more pages to the book and in­fused it with some po­tion that would pro­tect it. 

One day, as he was in the inglen­ook scrib­bling in the  book, his broth­ers came upon him as two angry stormy clouds. They grabbed the book and threw it into the fire. “Noooo” Ith­ildin screamed and jumped into the fire soon to be con­sumed by  the flames. See­ing their brother per­ish in such a stu­pid and totally un­gob­lin­ish way, Tar-culu-knutu and Buskaz took their be­long­ings and left the cave.

Cen­tur­ies after, an ex­plorer found that cave and un­der a pile of ashes, un­touched by time, there was Ithildin’s story­book. It seems his po­tion had pro­tec­ted the book from the fire.

Elena Pet­ro­van