THE TWELVE DAUGHTERS OF MULL

Deep in the wild, on the border of the great fen known as THE SQUELCH, lies the TOWNSHIP OF MULL.

Mull has, or rather had, twelve daughters—or at least, twelve daughters of any political importance.
For a child was born of a certain hour of a certain moontide in a certain manner, the combination of which was deemed portentous, indicative of a god-given leader who would guide Mull township through present and future troubles and into prosperity. This child was given over to the Care of the Township—which is to say, given over to the care of PERE SPLAYWATER, then just a middle-aged, and not an agéd, man—and a piece of corundum, soft pink as dawn over The Squelch, was carved and polished into the shape of a WREN’S EGG to represent the child’s potential.

All of this would have been good fortune enough, but, by happy coincidence, the same thing occurred again, each year, for the next eleven consecutive years. The people of Mull, a sober and pragmatic folk, were content to know that they had been granted not one but twelve individual chances of a prosperous future—decent odds, by all accounts. And it was these odds upon which, as harvests grew poorer and winters meaner and fen beasts crueler, the folk of Mull grew more and more to rely.

But alas, not even the most decent odds always pay out, and the seventeen years that followed the birth of the twelfth daughter of Mull, young Knotley of the Raven Hair, were full of less than happy coincidences.

Sprightly Warble drowned in a well.
Timid Twigslip was savaged by a wild dog.
Scissor, she who Was Bony, succumbed to the pox.
Sallow Yonder choked on her porridge.
Bramble, she who Laughed so Freely, fell from climbing upon a scarp and was dashed.
Errant Tiresling was brained by a rock during an illicit children’s game of ‘Let’s throw rocks!’
Poor Frail Gill was badly frighted by a fen beast at night, which fright caused her heart to give out.
Sweet Dimple simply passed in her sleep, perhaps taken by a fey dream.
Moony Silt was gored by one of young Dulltinker’s goats. He was driven from town and his goat was drowned in the fen. She perished anyway.
Crimp, she who Was Direct in All Things, wasted away from grief over Silt, for they were very close.
Dryspindle, she of the Somber Expression, went for a walk in The Squelch one day, and never returned.

All of which leaves Belle Knotly, she of the Raven Hair and Stern Will, passing fair and of marriageable age—or at least close enough for the sober and pragmatic folk of Mull—as the last remaining hope.

Which is why it is so distressing that she too has gone missing, as had Pere Splaywater (now quite agéd), and that dashing young suitor with the blue velvet doublet, the day before.

All of this OLD GAMMY FLINGTHITHER of Mull knows, and will tell you at length.