‘…The Bremistans stay on the north, and those who live outside of Bremistan Lind – your family included – don’t tread on their land unless by invitation….

“South of the Valley itself, the Chrysalis lies, veiled behind the falls at Pour’s Rise,...forgotten by everyone and everything except the village Midvale used to be and the scatterings of people who lived throughout the Valley.

            “Before the Bremistans came it was a poor land with a wary populace–gentle, loyal people who kept to themselves but were so poor they couldn’t afford to take care of their daughters who didn’t marry.  We opened our doors to as many of them as we could but we Chrysalans were small in number and our abilities and resources were few. 

            “A woman came to us late in the eleventh century, looking no older than a score and ten.  She called herself Evangelique and said she held in her hand the secrets of the hills.  It was she who taught us the greater knowledge of the earth and gave us the ability to care for the girls who needed a place to live.  We were able to gather more girls, provide a home, a future and a life to everyone who came to us.  That’s when our mission revitalized its outward purpose and got its name.

            “Some of us travel south, skilled and experienced to become nursemaids or companions, some to assist in maternity care in places where doctors are few or non-existent.  So many babies are born without the proper care.  Infant mortality and the deaths of the mothers who birthe them is needlessly high and we change that when we can.

            “…There is much, much to be healed through the earth and what she offers.  She is our mother but only through our cooperation can she nurture.   And we were free to practice our way until the Bremistans came.  Then everything changed.

            “They brought with them money.  Enough to build a glassworks and introduce a trade.  Now glass is exported all over Europe from here.  It was one way the Faeran Valley flourished.  Its people were no longer forced to eke out a life any which way they could.  Now they were able to give more, accept more, accomplish more, acquire enough.   Their daughters were no longer impoverished and desperate.  The Chrysalis was no longer heralded as a haven.  Once again, we were forgotten.” 

She was quiet then, a quiet I didn’t wish to break.   

            Till, “Everything cycles,” she continued.  “It was only to be expected.  They hewed out the new town in stone, paving new paths for the people to profit.  Everyone had a hand in its growth and it steadily grew into the flourishing town you see today.  The only thing that never changed was our haven.  None of us begrudged the betterment of the Valley folk.     

            “What we did begrudge was an unseen pulse, an inexplicable rhythm the Bremistan clan brought with them.  A rhythm that stirred the land, the river, the trees, the air.  Something we were wholly unprepared for.  Something that once begun, held the power to change our world and strike us in our core.  And most of us didn’t even know it was here.”

• • • •

“It was the moths that first revealed the change.  Grey-tipped whispers in the moonlit night.  Two or three here, a single one there.  White ones slipping through the darkness, silent and seemingly harmless, but present.  Growing in numbers until they erupted the quiet like flutters of falling ash.  There was a music in their silence.  The kind of music that attached itself to hums and vibrations in the waters of the earth. 

            “The hums, the vibrations, all but imperceptible.  With the dawn the moths vanished, leaving a broken land in their wake.  The Elian River leaked out into fissures of streams and brooks that first appeared as watery cracks throughout the Faeran Valley.  So small at first, we didn’t recognize the difference.  But as the months and years passed, the Elian slipped further and deeper into the growing fractures of earth the moths had left.  Trails of watery branches and veins that broke the ground until it couldn’t sustain life any longer.

            “This is what we have against the Bremistans.  The land is delicate now, brittle like old bones.  And I fear it is aging beyond our ability to heal it.”

She took a great puff on her pipe, blew it through the window and out toward the grey mists, turned to me and said, “You’ve yet to experience it, but when a person ages, his skin loses the elasticity which pulls it back in place.  The earth in the Faeran Valley is similar.  It doesn’t hold nutrients like it used to.  It is difficult to cultivate plants here now.  Not like it used to be.

            “The trees, ferns, greenery you see everywhere around you are relatively new.  They’ve been cultivated only during the last hundred and fifty years but they’ve managed never to age beyond the saplings you see.  The ancient forests which used to grow here died slowly, with an intensity that reacted to the silent holocaust of the Bremistans’ moths.  The one exception is the triad of pear trees which survive now and continue to fruit in your conservatory.  I don’t know why they, and they only, survived.  Maybe it is something in the pectin of the fruit?  Maybe it is because they are small trees in comparison to the giants that previously dwarfed them.  Whatever it is, the rest of the land is still not yet able to seed itself.  Everything you see growing now is due to a determination of our folk to replant the Valley.  The trees flower but refuse to pollinate and so the blossoms fade into fruitless beauty.  The conservatory here at Cragmoor Hills is full of new cuttings and trailings and seedlings, as you’ve seen. Bremistan Lind has a conservatory likewise, but larger.  Valley folk are able, with the help of the larger greenhouses at the Lind and in Midvale to cultivate pollinating plants in small greenhouses of their own so they have a small supply.  And since the Chrysalis itself lies beyond the devastation of the moths, we Chrysalans bring our own pollinated plants with us when we journey through, planting outdoors all through the warmer months as we are able, but our plants refuse here still, to seed. 

            “So it is with concerted effort you see the Valley as it is.  Breakable. That breakableness is what moves the Chrysalis beyond its own seclusion,” she concluded. “The earth is key, and union — a strange term to use for the mother of us all.  But she — the earth — is not an inexhaustible resource.  We are learning what she needs and how to give it to her.”

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