(From Annalynne Tuckle's lesson plan for Iris Henrich.)
THE STRANGERS
Even those who are Strangers themselves have no knowledge as to the origins of this organization. What little we do know comes from a small booklet published by ELWOOD CELEBRATION who claimed to have been a Stranger for fifty years starting shortly after the Great Struggle’s conclusion.
Elwood was a fat twelve-year old errand boy at a small barbershop in what was at the time the westernmost non-Tribal community; a mining town by the name of HARRIDAN’S FOUNDRY. Elwood was assisting his employer in sharpening razors when a trio of men entered the establishment and demanded all the gold within the barbershop’s safe. They were well-heeled with menace in their eyes and the barber quickly decided that discretion would preserve his life and resistance would end it. On this, he was mistaken. After handing over all the coin in his safe these men slashed his throat with his own razors while Elwood wet himself in the corner. These men then beat a hasty retreat. Elwood ran to his employer and was met with fierce, dying eyes. “A coward you are, boy,” were the barber’s last words.
Elwood then details the funeral of his former employer, the great grief of his family, and how the barber’s young daughter collapsed at his feet and wailed, “Won’t someone do something?” From here Elwood describes how we volunteered for the night shift at the mining company and how he spent great hours alone in the near total darkness taking pickaxe to stone and developing his body into more of the same.
Nights in the mine, days on the outskirts of town where he’d practice his marksmanship shooting squirrels and tracking deer with abandoned and broken rifles and guns he taught himself to repair.
Two years to the day after the barber was murdered, Elwood spied his killers laughing and singing outside of Merriwood’s Saloon on a moonless night; their faces lit by torchlight and Elwood’s unshakeable memory. For reasons Elwood does not explain, he walked past the three men and headed to an apartment above the barbershop where the barber’s family had been forced to relocate. Elwood told his daughter that he had found the men and asked what she would have him do with them. With tears in her eyes the young woman said only, “Kill them.”
And that is just what Elwood did.
The details of the slaughter are not important.
What is important is that afterwards Elwood took all their coin, broke into the barbershop, and placed all the coin upon the safe.
The next morning Elwood woke up in the bed he had placed within his cousin’s stable only to find that the sun was red and the skies were black. Outside the stable stood the most beautiful horse that he had ever seen and upon this horse was a woman with long black hair, a gambler hat, a white duster, and a checkered shirt. She dismounted her horse and approached Elwood. She asked him if he felt he had contributed to “The Great Good” by avenging the barber. Elwood answered in the affirmative. She asked if his aim was true. Elwood had heard that phrase all his life yet never quite understood what it meant. Nevertheless, he again answered in the affirmative. She tipped her hat to him, mounted her horse, and rode away. Elwood suddenly felt heavier. He was now wearing a checkered black and red cotton shirt and two shining guns now hung in holsters about his hip. And at his feet was an ancient and beaten book.
From here Elwood’s story becomes odd. He speaks of being “drawn” to certain areas across The New World. He describes a horse named AMELIA who erupted from Marigold Stream when he once thought to himself, “I’m gonna need myself a ride.” He recounts how his guns began to “talk” to him. And he details a visit to Shane When in order to discover exactly what he had become. It was Shane who told him he was a Stranger and that his only duty was to be “the hammer of the impotent.” It was Shane who told him he had the ability to wield magics older than sorrow. And it was Shane who told him about HALCYON SKIES.
Halcyon Skies is a meeting place for Strangers. Like The Wilds of Thought it too is a Wandering Locale. Though said to be found somewhere in the great mountains of the unexplored Northwest it has on occasion appeared in the dead center of the Enameled Plains. No matter where it appears, Halcyon Skies has a strange peculiarity hovering over it: PHANTOM GRASSLANDS--a whole ‘nother ghostly landscape suspended in the air and stretching to every horizon. Upon these transparent grasslands thousands of horses gallop and graze. These spectral horses are capable of frightening speed and endurance though their stamina is not infinite. They also have the ability to, when necessary, take on the form of man or woman depending upon their sex. When a Stranger is in need of a horse, no matter where this Stranger may be found, a steed dematerializes from the grasslands and then reappears in close proximity to that Stranger in a place of earth, air, water, or even fire.
Halcyon Skies itself resembles a tiny town with only the barest essentials: a saloon, a hotel, a barber, a tailor, and a smithy. Elwood Celebration only had one occasion to visit Halcyon Skies and, according to his booklet, he found it rather unremarkable (save the astonishing shimmering landscape hovering above it.) He did however recount that in the middle of Halcyon Skies is a complete and fully legible Obelisk of All The Laws. He did not transcribe them, nor did he record how many they were, and for this Harriet Sneed vowed to strangle Elwood should she ever meet him in the afterlife. Elwood also failed to mention if those who manned the barbershop, saloon, smithy, etc. were Strangers themselves or if there were those without the black and red who inhabited the community (this lack of clarification marked the first time ever that Harriet Sneed threw a book against a wall in disgust.)
We know more about Strangers from tribal bedtime stories and settler folk tales. We know they often appear where a great injustice has taken place. We know they are much stronger than the average man or woman--their physical strength nearly on par with the average Skookum. We know that they can withstand great injury, but we also know that they are not immortal. We know that they can suddenly appear if those in great need possess something of The Stranger’s (an article of clothing, a coin, a lock of hair.) And we know that fifty years ago The Great Graces, without any notice, held a memorial service at THE CENTRAL CHURCH OF APPROPRIATE GRACE for RACK GALADOR, who they claimed was “The Last of The Strangers.” The Great Graces eulogized not only Rack but The Strangers as a whole, lamenting that these “stalwart guardians of The Fertile Wastes” had all fallen in battle attempting to avenge the wickedness of a Croaking Walter raiding party that had slain an entire exploration caravan. They even gave a name to the confrontation: THE NEVER COME AGAIN.
They lie, Iris. Weren’t no such Stranger as Rack Galador. Weren’t no such caravan. Weren’t no Never Come Again. But once the story was churned through the printing presses and seeded through the land, that lie became irrefutable fact, and any dangerous ideas like once more setting out to find what lies Southeast were extinguished.
With the Strangers “gone” there was no reason to think of them when horror darkened your doorstep. And if you don’t think of them, they don’t come. Because that’s the thing, darlin’: unless you track one down, Strangers don’t bring remedy less’n you have them in mind. You ask me, they’re still out there. Might be one who makes their home outside Freedom Beat with a spectral dog named “Tolliver.” Might be another who wanders the wilds of the Great Northwest in the company of Skookum and PENELOPE LONGLEGS. Could be a few more dotted across the Enameled Plains who haven’t spoken to another living soul in centuries. Without any right to wrong and justice to dispense, these Stranger are probably all wondering why the land suddenly got so peaceful-like.
Can a Stranger stop being a Stranger? Good question. They can, darlin’.It’s as simple as taking off the black and red, folding it up all nice, and laying guns over it. Yet very few have ever done it. KALI MANTLO was one. She was a Miss Wizard with mahogany skin that’d take your breath away. Kali had laid down for a nap at a Suffer Swap she was attending. While she slept--and the slumber of a Miss Wizard is deeper than Glory Tale Lake--the swap was raided by DEEJENS who had somehow enlisted the services of not one, but two DEATH SHERIFFS. She awoke just as they were riding away loaded with gold and the corpses of her wizarding sisters--no doubt to keep as playthings until they spoiled.
Kali then did what no Miss Wizard outside of Glory Tale City has done since. She washed away her red and blue face paint, exposed that mahogany to the world, and tracked the trail of those scoundrels across desert and grassland all the way back to their subterranean outpost near the foothills of GREAT MAIDEN MOUNTAIN. Any who dared to impede her for no other reason than the skin that could take your breath away had theirs stolen twice as swift, for Kali Mantlo’s inexorable march to vengeance would brook no small, hateful minds.
It is unknown what magics Kali worked in the bowels of the New World that day to cleanse it of a horde of Deejens and their two infernal avatars of death. What is almost certainly a fact, however, is that The School and the Miss Wizards have been less than truthful when it comes to disclosing the full measure of their abilities.
When Kali emerged from the earth, missing an arm and a foot, she was met by two riders wearing the black and red. Kali knew they were Strangers and she said nothing when they put the black and red around her shoulders and pulled her new gun belt tight. When they offered her a book she stepped forward and took it with both hands, not in the least bit surprised that her arm and foot had returned. For the next fifty years Kali Mantlo traveled from town to town as she was needed and acted as the hammer of the weak. And even those who withdrew in fear and disgust at her skin came to begrudging affection when she brought remedy to their anguish. Her guns were named STARSHINE and BRANDY. Her horse was named BILL RACCOON. She was known as The Greatest of The Strangers.
Kali disappeared shortly before The Never Come Again was announced by The Great Graces. Starshine and Brandy were found crossed over her black and red a little ways outside Mountain’s Majesty. Some like to think she’s still out there somewhere, either giving relief to those in need or living peacefully where silence is the sweetest music of all. At least I do.
