Tambernanny lowered his head and arched his one eyebrow as he looked up at her upon her magnificent steed. She truly looked as something out of the ancient stories and legends, the queen of the night and darkness and secrets before him as the pale moonlight shown down upon her from the open door. “You wish [i]me[/i] upon this adventure? Truly?” Shaking his head at the folly of the nobles, he reluctantly pulled himself from his comfortable bed of sweet smelling hay to saddle the old mare. “As you so command your Majesty. For a time, at least. Although I should be properly dressed, should I not?”

Reaching into his jerkin, he pulled forth a simple mask of black feathers. A single white feather stood out meekly near the corner of his left eye, one lone virtue against the vices of the face he wore - the sign of The Rook. The gods and goddess who wore the feathers of the corbies were as neutral to the affairs of their fellow deities as they were to those of mortals, an independent sort who wished neither woe nor weal upon others but instead served their own whims. They were the lords and ladies of intelligence, of adventure, and of most of all luck. Strange that this minstrel should happen to so have a masked, however raggedy, so immediately at hand when summoned.

Donning the mask, he paused for a moment as though letting its aspect fulfill him. Then he mounted upon the mare solemnly and proceeded to follow Seraphina out of the stables, through the courtyard, and beneath the bailey’s main gate to pass into the world beyond. None stopped or cried halt. Indeed, no one even seemed to have noticed their presence as they left and rode silently onto the road that wound about the countryside and into the woods.

“Did you ever think,” Tambernanny suddenly asked when they were a distance away, “that both endings your mother gave you are true? Or that all versions are the same in their own way? The tale of the Black Swam and the Devil Himself is an ancient one, and all versions have the truth of it in them.” He chuckled with a smirk upon his lips as he raised his head to the moon. “Then again, perhaps the Cuckoo is the one who spread the tale. It was ever his nature to deceive with the truth, after all. Look at the tale of the Sparrow Maiden!”

He said little more then, merely following her along until they passed through the strangely still town and reached the very edge of the Moorland Woods. It was said there were eldritch things that happened in such dark, enchanting places, especially on Cuckoo’s Eve. Ancient spirits long forgotten came to life, beings neither wholly evil or blessed but alien all the same. The Gods were said to descend from the heavens to dance among the trees, shedding their feathers and beaks to stand as men and women in their own company and of those they favored. The dead, too, were said to return to the world to remember once more what it was to live and to be alive. The hedge of the woods seemed to thrum with the promise that anything could happen within. It might not, of course. One could enter the forests of the world upon this night and see nor hear anything of the ordinary, or perhaps the phantoms summoned up were spun only from their own imaginations and fears. It was only the promise of a possibility, after all, not the solemn vow that one would be changed.

Somehow, that made the nerves tingle all the more in fear and anticipation. Like death, like life, it was the unknown that spread out before the Queen and the Rook between the trees and hillocks within the Moorland Woods.

“There are bandits, your Majesty,” Tambernanny warned softly as they paused at the entrance to the woods. “Even on such a night, mundane dangers take no holiday. Best you be on your guard. I will serve as your knight where I may, but it is a poor knight that a jester makes. The one waiting for you within… His wrath would be most terrible were you to allow yourself to come to harm.”