Story for the Day: Myndil Plodostirr

Myndil is one of the many characters in the upcoming Creatures of Fairytale and Myth. He is a missionary, one that davers over the landscape looking for novitiates, and while he always seems to talk his way out of trouble, new enemies are never far behind.

An introduction:

Life happened to most people, but Myndil Plodostirr happened to everybody else. Where other men had grown up with the usual complaints of harsh mothers, small dinners, and work to be done after daily lessons, Myndil had a comfortable home at the orphanage, a good establishment with right-minded well-meaning matrons and masters, where Myndil was tricked into an early education and out of physical labour, where his natural understanding and high glee were wasted on addled children who knew no more of kindliness than they did their daily prayers. Other orphans had nominal friendships: knowing they were going to be adopted and separated from one another, they kept their schoolfellows at a distance, limiting their friendships and rivalries to grades and games. Myndil never maintained the hope of being taken in by new parents, and he therefore tried to befriend everybody, feeling himself loved enough by the Brothers and Sisters at the orphanage and desirous of sharing their affection with everybody else. He was not well-liked amongst his peers and had little idea of it; mantled with childlike innocence, Myndil had no notion of how much his incessant questions and demands to go shares in everything was a source perpetual irritation. He begged to be allowed in every game, would invite himself to every conversation, and would tell every story the Brothers and Sisters told them at bedtime many times over. He was a great prattler for one so young, could talk his way out of any situation he had got himself into, not from any want to be seditious, but from a genuine desire of wanting to rally every rock and tree and child to his cause. He wielded friendliness as a weapon and directed it at everyone who approached him, children eventually grew tired of his blathering, the Brothers and Sisters made the usual excuse of having work to do and fled, and Myndil accepted it all with a shrug and an “Oh, well,” and turned his attention toward God.

                God, he said, had saved him: he was young when his mother died, and the great joke at the orphanage that Myndil had talked his father into abandoning him. It was not unreasonable to think that a father with no ability for raising children and no affection for a rambling warbler would leave him in the care of those who could love and mind him. Myndil, however, mostly cared for himself: he washed and dressed on his own, he cleaned his teeth and tidied his room without being asked, and once he was taught how to read, he would take a book from the library and read it out loud for the benefit of the younger children. He was an exemplary student, eager and busy, always ready to give his interpretation of the passages, always in command of his pen and paper, and always raising his hand without being asked. Whenever the Brothers and Sisters would ask Myndil how knew the answer to their questions, he replied, “God told me.” This was endearing at first, but after he had ended every lesson and received his due praise with the same explanation, the Brothers and Sisters grew tired of Myndil’s admissions and laid it down that he was merely ‘a good but peculiar boy who had learned his book’. God had been Myndil’s first word, and he was much more sensible of a higher power than any other child his age was. He spoke to God every evening, said his morning prayer aloud, that everyone might hear him ask God why there had to be raisins in the frumenty, why the gruel had to be so thin, why Maribel liked to pull his hair after she had dug through the contents of her nose, and why no one wanted to share his warm milk with him at night. He was suspiciously unfazed by things young children were usually frightened of: he loved the dark, because it was quiet and he liked to hear the sound of his own voice band between the walls, looked forward to nightmares, because God would come and save him at the end of them, and enjoyed the company of monsters, especially the ones that corralled under the bed. Closet monsters were second rate and did not factor into much of the conversation at night, fairies and night-hags at his window listened in amazement at Myndil’s ability to charm the dust from the walls. He talked with an ability beyond his age, he reasoned and coaxed without disguise, and he grew up in tolerable ease under the glamour of a god who neither made a public appearance or spoke to anyone but him.